Lakshmi Puri. UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz

In Bangladesh and Cambodia, the shocking loss of life by garment factory workers, many of them women, sparked global debate on how to secure safe and decent jobs in our globalised economy. In Europe, the disproportionate impact on women of austerity cuts, and the use of quotas to get more women on corporate boards continue to make headlines.

Even though women have made real gains, we are constantly reminded how far we have to go to realise equality between men and women.

World leaders recognised the pervasiveness of discrimination and violence against women and girls when they signed onto the visionary Millennium Declaration in 2000. Amongst the eight Millennium Development Goals, they included a goal to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

With these goals set to expire in 2015, we are now in a race to achieve them. We are also in the midst a global conversation about what should replace them. It’s time for women to move from the sidelines to the centre.

In a new post-2015 development agenda, we must build on the achievements of the MDGs while avoiding their shortcomings. Everyone agrees that the goals have galvanised progress to reduce poverty and discrimination, and promote education, gender equality, health and safe drinking water and sanitation.

The goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment tracked progress on school enrolment, women’s share of paid work, and women’s participation in parliament. It triggered global attention and action. It served to hold governments accountable, mobilise much-needed resources, and stimulate new laws, policies, programmes and data.

But there are glaring omissions. Noticeably absent is any reference to ending violence against women and girls. Also missing are other fundamental issues, such as women’s right to own property and the unequal division of household and care responsibilities.

By failing to address the structural causes of discrimination and violence against women and girls, progress towards equality has been stalled. Of all the MDGs, the least progress has been made on MDG5, to reduce maternal mortality. The fact that this has been the hardest goal to reach testifies to the depth and scope of gender inequality.

To make greater progress, UN Women proposes a stand-alone goal to achieve gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment that is grounded in human rights and tackles unequal power relations. We envision three areas that require urgent action.

First, ending violence against women and girls must be a priority. From sexual violence in the camps of Haiti and Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to intimate partner shootings in the United States and elsewhere, this violence causes untold physical and psychological harm. It is one of the most pervasive human rights violations, and carries tremendous costs for individuals, families and societies.

Second, women and men need equal opportunities, resources and responsibilities to realize equality. Equal access to land and credit, natural resources, education, health services including sexual and reproductive health, decent work and equal pay needs to be addressed with renewed urgency. Policies, such as child care and parental leave, are needed to relieve working women’s double duty so women and men can enjoy equality at work and at home.

And third, women’s voices must be heard. It is time for women to participate equally in decision making in the household, the private sector and institutions of governance. Despite progress in recent years, women comprise just 20 percent of parliamentarians and 27 percent of judges. For democracy to be meaningful and inclusive, women’s voices and leadership must be amplified in all public and private spaces.

Any new development agenda must be grounded in human rights agreements that governments have already signed onto. This includes the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, and U.N. resolutions, including the recent agreement of the Commission on the Status of Women on eliminating and preventing all forms of violence against women and girls.

There is plenty of evidence to show that countries with a higher status of women also enjoy higher levels of social and economic performance. There is also evidence to guide countries on what works, from equitable labour market policies, to the removal of discriminatory laws and policies, to universal social protection and social services, to security and justice reforms that end impunity for violence against women and girls. The activism of the women’s movement everywhere has been critical in demanding and driving change in all of these areas.

The discussions to shape the post-2015 global development agenda offer a real opportunity to drive lasting change for women’s rights and equality. A strong global goal can push our societies to the tipping point of rejecting violence and discrimination against women and girls and unleash the potential of half the population for a more peaceful, just and prosperous world and a sustainable planet.

*Lakshmi Puri is Acting Head of UN Women and Assistant Secretary-General.

A port of entry into Myanmar (Burma) from Thailand. Credit: Preethi Nallu/IPS

Nangnyi Foung reaches into the dryer, pulls out another pair of pants and places it on the ironing board. “I still have several more loads to go,” she says as the clock strikes nine p.m., marking the start of her 14^th hour on the shift.

She has been on her feet in this laundromat in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai since seven in the morning and had been hoping to call it a day when two more customers walked in.

She is not in a position to turn anyone away: “I need the money. My family needs me to work,” she tells IPS, her voice tinged with desperation as she begins yet another load.

Six do-it-yourself washing machines stand like sentries at the entrance of this storefront-turned-laundromat. A flight of stairs leads to Nangnyi Foung’s living quarters, where she retires late at night only to collapse in exhaustion before waking up and beginning all over again.

Originally from the Shan State in neighbouring Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nangnyi Foung came here saddled with debt.

Fleeing persistent violence in her home country, she took out loans and paid middlemen hefty sums in order to win safe passage to Thailand, where, she had heard, employment opportunities awaited.

Ten years later Nangnyi Foung is still working to pay off her debt, awaking daily to a rigorous fourteen-hour shift of washing and ironing. Her earnings after seven days’ work without a single day off amount to little over six dollars, much of which is remitted back home.

Reaching for the steaming iron Nangnyi Foung tells IPS she saves on living expenses by sleeping in the basement of this facility. If she also had to pay for lodging she would not be able to send money home to her family of four.

Accounting for over 80 percent of Thailand’s 2.5-million-strong migrant labour force, Burmese migrants like Nangnyi Foung provide a lifeline to cash-strapped families back in Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s poorest countries that is struggling to recover from decades of economic stagnation.

Today, the minimum wage in Myanmar – about 180 dollars a month – buys eight to 10 times fewer daily consumption commodities like rice, salt, sugar and cooking oil than it did twenty years ago. The average Burmese lives on less than a dollar per day.

Though Myanmar is the world’s largest exporter of teak, jade, pearls, rubies and sapphires, and boasts lucrative extractive industries such as mining, timber and power generation, very little of the country’s natural wealth trickles down to the masses: approximately 32 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, while unemployment is at 5.4 percent.

According to a 2006 survey of migrant workers from Myanmar, conducted by the Asian Research Centre for Migration, more than two-thirds of the 600 respondents admitted to being unemployed before migrating to Thailand.

Remittances jump hurdles

While migrant workers fill crucial gaps in Thailand’s labour market, and their remittances account for five percent of Myanmar’s gross domestic product (GDP), neither government has attempted to make the flow of money between workers and their families any easier.

Despite the existence of commercial banks or official ‘Xpress Money’ outlets, most migrants prefer to use the informal remittance channel known as the “hundi” system.

These unauthorised transactions involve dealers in Thailand relaying messages to members of their network in Myanmar, who then deliver the necessary amount to the family.

Some migrants rely on friends and loved ones who travel between the neighbouring countries to act as conduits, thereby circumventing costly bank transfers.

“The banks can’t be trusted and they require a work permit, a letter of recommendation from our employer and a passport,” Nangnyi Foung says, documents very few migrants have access to.

Migrants with families in rural areas go through brokers, who deliver cash to the recipient’s doorstep, eliminating the hassle of them having to locate cash points.

According to a new report released Monday by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Asian countries dispatched over 60 million migrants into the world, “who sent almost 260 billion dollars to their families in 2012. This represented 63 percent of global flows to developing countries.”

Yet the continent seems ill equipped to deal with the influx of remittances, which benefit one in 10 Asian households.

“Although the clear majority of the region’s population lives in rural areas, 65 percent of payment locations are in urban areas,” the report found. In most Asian countries, only banks are authorised to deal with foreign currency transactions, making it difficult for poor rural communities to access funds coming in from abroad.

The report stressed the urgent need to provide remittance-receiving families with “more options” to secure and spend this money, especially since nine Asian countries currently receive remittances “exceeding 10 percent of GDP.”

The report has particularly vital policy implications for Southeast Asia, where 13 million migrants are currently living and working abroad. Thailand has become a “net importer” of migrant labour – attracting more than double the number of migrants to work in its expanding economy than it is sending abroad.

Women forfeit rights for employment

Constituting nearly 49 percent of the global population of 214 million migrant workers, women are responsible for the lion’s share of remittances flowing around the world.

Acutely aware of their families’ needs, like food, housing costs, education for children or younger siblings, and healthcare – women often endure extreme conditions in order to remit money back home.

The town of Mae Sot, located along the Thai-Myanmar border, hosts the largest number of women migrant workers in Thailand, who toil over fifteen hours a day in garment factories. In 2012, this sector netted estimated profits of 6.3 billion, while labourers who keep the industry running earned between 66 and 100 dollars per month.

Kyoko Kusakabe, associate professor of gender and development at the Asian Institute of Technology and co-author of ‘Thailand’s Hidden Workforce’, told IPS that most female migrants in Mae Sot “avoid labour strikes and forfeit their rights in favour of (continued employment).”

She says this is part of a culture that forces women to be “responsible” from a very young age, while their male counterparts have few obligations.

According to Kusakabe, this culture is reflected in remittance patterns: when the economy is booming, remittances from men increase, falling again when the economy enters a slump. Remittances from women, on the other hand, remain steady regardless of the overall economic climate, suggesting that women save more, or forego their own needs during times of economic austerity in order to preserve their family’s lifeline.

Her research found that even if women are not paid their salaries, or lose their jobs, they borrow money in order to send home, fearful that their children or parents will starve without financial support.

The Senate voted 99-0 to adopt a resolution that urged President Barack Obama to fully enforce existing economic sanctions against Iran and to “provide diplomatic, military and economic support” to Israel “in its defense of its territory, people and existence”.

Washington, it said, should support Israel “in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force” if Israel “is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

The measure also re-affirmed the official policy of the administration of President Barack Obama that it would take whatever action necessary to “prevent” Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Republican-led House of Representatives unanimously approved new sanctions legislation that, if passed into law, would blacklist foreign countries or companies that fail to reduce their oil imports from Iran to virtually nil within 180 days.

The same bill would expand the current blacklisting of companies that do business with Iran’s financial sector to include those engaged in the country’s automotive and mining sectors, as well.

In perhaps its most controversial section, the bill also eliminates President Obama’s ability to waive most sanctions for national-interest or national-security reasons.

Such waiver authority, which has been routinely included in existing sanctions legislation, has been used by Obama to ensure that countries that have historically enjoyed important trade and financial relations with Tehran continue cooperating with Western-led international efforts to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear programme.

The president’s waiver authority is also considered critical to prospects for a negotiated agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany) by which such curbs would be accepted by Tehran in return for easing sanctions.

Both moves come as the Senate Republicans unveiled yet another bill even more far-reaching than that approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee by blacklisting companies that do any trade with Iran and deprive the president of all waiver authority. Under the draft legislation, which so far lacks any Democratic co-sponsors, sanctions could be eased or lifted only by an act of Congress.

Approval of both the Senate resolution and the House bill were hailed by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier group of the Israel lobby here.

“The passage of this resolution is an extremely significant and timely state of solidarity with Israel and a restatement of America’s determination to thwart Iran’s nuclear quest – which endangers America, Israeli, and international security,” it said about the Senate action.

The House bill, it noted with approval, would impose a de facto commercial embargo against Iran and would “maximise the effectiveness of American economic and diplomatic efforts as Iran nears a nuclear weapons capability.”

But other observers said the latest Congressional moves marked a dangerous escalation in tensions at a critical moment.

“Congress should abstain from any more reckless threats or sanctions that push us closer to the brink of war with Iran,” Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said of the Senate action.

“Attacking the president’s waiver authority is a cynical attempt to weaken his hand at the negotiating table and sabotage diplomatic efforts,” he added about the House bill. “If the president can’t lift sanctions in exchange for concessions, the Iranians will have little incentive to cooperate.”

The latest Congressional moves came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear programme detailing the installation of more advanced centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium, a buildup of stockpiles of 3.5-percent and 20-percent enriched uranium, and advances in the construction of its heavy-water reactor at Arak.

While a number of senators made much of the latest report, suggesting that Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon, experts here said that the report offered no major surprises and that Iran’s 20-percent enriched stockpile – which could most easily be further enriched to bomb grade – remained substantially below what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last September defined as Israel’s “red line”.

“The report findings underscore the urgent need to intensify negotiations with Tehran to resolve the political questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and to resolve the outstanding questions regarding the potential military dimensions of the program,” according to an analysis by the Arms Control Association (ACA) here.

“But, at the same time, the findings reinforce earlier assessments that Iran remains years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is designed to develop a weapon, and, since 2007, the U.S. intelligence community has insisted that the country’s leadership has not yet decided to build one. But the progress Iran has made in building and mastering the technology would shorten the time it would need to construct a bomb if such a decision were made, according to nuclear experts.

On the diplomatic front, meanwhile, progress has been more or less frozen since the latest P5+1 meeting with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan in early April when Tehran rejected a Western offer to ease sanctions on gold and precious-metal trade and some Iranian exports in exchange for suspending 20-percent enrichment and transferring its existing 20-percent stockpile out of the country.

Most observers believe the new talks are unlikely until after Iran’s elections next month and the inauguration of a new president, despite the fact that decisions on nuclear issues are ultimately made by the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Among the favoured candidates approved this week by the Guardian Council is Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who is considered by veteran Iran watchers a hard-liner who has often frustrated his P5+1 interlocutors.

Some had hoped that former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who entered the race at the last minute and has occasionally urged better relations with the West, would offer a major challenge, but his candidacy was rejected by the Council.

Another approved candidate in the race, Hasan Rowhani, served as former president Mohammed Khatami’s chief nuclear negotiator. In that post, he struck a deal to suspend enrichment with the so-called EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany). But his lack of prominence makes him an underdog in a race dominated by conservatives closely associated with Khamenei.

Whether the flurry of new threats and sanctions by Congress will affect the election – or the calculations of Khamenei himself – remains to be seen.

Even the strongest supporters of sanctions have conceded that the economic pressure they’ve exerted on the regime to date has not produced the desired result and may even have strengthened regime hardliners who are convinced that Washington’s ultimate aim is “regime change” – a conviction that is likely to be strengthened by a review of Wednesday’s Senate debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Toasted grasshoppers on sale in the Benito Juárez market in the capital of Oaxaca state, Mexico. Credit: Nsaum75 CC BY-SA 3.0

The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s recommendation to consider using edible insects as a food source to combat hunger may have particular repercussions in Colombia and Mexico, two Latin American countries that have a tradition of eating insects and a high degree of biodiversity.

Mexico has 300 edible insect species, according to a study published in May by the entomology department of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), titled “Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security”.

But local researchers have identified more than 500 species in the centre, south and southeast of Mexico, a mega-biodiverse country with a poverty rate of 47 percent.

“Insects are a viable, cheap source of high quality food that could be even better than the packaged foods that are consumed at present,” researcher Julieta Ramos-Elorduy, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Biology Institute, told IPS.

In her view, “This country is ready for mass consumption of insects, but people need education about techniques and ways of marketing them. Protecting them is not a concern. There are no official measures,” said the expert, who has been carrying out research since the 1970s on the benefits of insects, and has reported 549 edible species.

The issue acquires an environmental dimension, particularly on International Day for Biological Diversity, celebrated this Wednesday May 22.

Eating insects or entomophagy is an indigenous tradition in Mexico, attested to by the Florentine Codex, written by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1499-1590) who described the consumption of 96 species.

Some insects provide up to three times more protein, weight for weight, than beef, and their nutrient concentrations are surpassed only by fish, according to the National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO).

The Mexican insect menu is made up of blood-sucking bugs, worms, beetles, butterflies, ant and fly larvae, bees, wasps and “chapulin” grasshoppers. They can be grilled, fried or served with different kinds of sauces.

In recent decades, several of these delicacies have vaulted from kitchens in poor rural homes to tables in fancy restaurants.

In Mitla, a town close to a Zapotec archaeological site of the same name in the southern state of Oaxaca, a small business uses moth larvae (Hypopta agavis) that feed on American aloe leaves to make a hot spicy salt to accompany mescal, an alcoholic drink distilled from the same aloe plant.

“We follow a homemade recipe. Grinding is done by hand and we use a hand mixer. We also package by hand,” Diana Corona, the commercial manager of the firm Gran Mitla which produces 300 kilograms of “sal de gusano” (larva salt) a month, told IPS.

It takes 300 grams of ground larvae, 300 grams of dry chili peppers and 400 grams of salt to produce one kilo.

The larvae or worms are collected from August to October and frozen to ensure continuous production, as from November to the following May harvesting is banned throughout the country.

The FAO publication says that more than 1,900 species are part of the traditional diets of at least two billion people worldwide. The favourites are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets.

Collecting and farming insects could create jobs and income, and could have industrial-scale potential, the authors say.

“That could be achieved if the insects are farmed and marketed in large quantities. But producers need to be aware that their resources are being depleted,” said Ramos-Elorduy, who is investigating the productivity of insect species that feed on maize and pumpkin, and seeking ways of increasing it.

“Collecting techniques are the same everywhere, but there is no legislation stipulating proper techniques. People do not know what they are. Besides, wages are very low,” she said.

In their research paper “Edible insects in some locations in Central Region of Mexico State: Collection techniques, sale and preparation”, Ramos-Elorduy, Andrés Juárez and José Manuel Pino warn that “this valuable food resource is in danger of disappearing, due to a variety of environmental and socio-economic problems.”

The paper, published in December, concludes that “impacts on the environment, cultural change and changes in land use are causing the consumption of insects to decrease, especially among young people.”

Corona, of Gran Mitla, agreed that measures should be taken to protect these species. “Regulations are needed for collection and marketing. Insects are part of the Mexican diet and the resource must be protected,” she said.

For the same reason, many collectors are reluctant to talk about where they find their insects and grubs, and how they capture or harvest them.

The FAO report recommends automated infrastructure and regulatory frameworks to ensure stable, reliable and safe production. It also stresses that insect biomass could be used as the raw material for animal feed.

In Colombia, a snack available from street stalls is the crunchy “hormiga culona” (Atta laevigata), a leafcutter ant species, sold toasted and salted. The origin of this and other dishes is native culture.

But “going into the rainforest for large-scale extraction of insects is a touchy issue, because they are found in wildlife habitats,” Colombian biologist and regional planner Jaime Bernal Hadad told IPS.

Colombia has a poverty rate of 33 percent, and it is the second most mega-biodiverse country on the planet, after Brazil.

“In tropical ecosystems, although there is a great diversity of species, there are only relatively few individuals per species,” said Bernal Hadad. “Large-scale extraction could lead to the extinction of species, or create environmental imbalances.

“Beetles on fallen trees in the forest help decomposition and the balance of those forests,” he said. “Wasps and bees have an important role in pollination. And while there are native groups who eat beetles and prize them highly, they are minority groups and do not create problems.”

In Bernal Hadad’s view, farming insects “is an interesting option. But other factors come into play, such as the issue of cultural acceptability and consumption.

“Of course, in Europe it may be regarded as exotic, but if we consider marginalised populations in Latin America, the issue is very different,” he said.

The fight against hunger “cannot ignore structural issues,” he said. Moreover, “it is worth asking whether the proposal could be controlled or if it would become another method of interfering with conservation, not as a result of ranching and the timber industry, but because of insects,” he said. “Then we would continue to reproduce the destruction of natural systems, without real solutions.”

With additional reporting from Helda Martínez in Bogotá.

An eight-month-old boy with pneumonia is examined by a doctor at Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

PATH, a Seattle-based global health development organisation, is aiming to save two million lives by 2015 by jointly tackling diarrhea and pneumonia, the leading killers of children globally.

Steve Davis, president and CEO of PATH, delivered the message at the ninth annual PATH Breakfast for Global Health held in Seattle on Tuesday.

“Today we placed a bold stake in the ground, with partners around the world, to save two million lives by the end of 2015,” Davis told IPS.

PATH will begin its efforts in India, Cambodia and Ethiopia, where intervention is most urgently needed and PATH has resources. While all three countries have seen their child mortality rates from diarrhea drop, India’s pneumonia death rate remains stagnant, accounting for 24 percent of deaths of children under five, the same as in 2000, according to 2013 World Health Organisation statistics.

“No parent should have to bury a child because of something we can help prevent or treat,” Davis said.

Diarrhea and pneumonia are two diseases that overwhelmingly affect children in African and Asian countries, Davis said, with diarrhea claiming around 760,000 lives a year. And while the number of children dying in Africa before the age of five has decreased, it still vastly outnumbers all other parts of the world, according to the 2013 WHO statistics.

Melinda Gates, philanthropist and founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund health development and vaccines world wide, spoke at the breakfast of the importance of vaccinating children as well as “appropriate” science that meets the needs of communities in the developing countries.

“[The] developing world is littered with pilot programmes,” Gates said.

As he took to the stage, Davis pointed to a tool belt around his suit jacket. A visual aid, the belt allowed Davis to show and carry some of the tools that can prevent the deaths of so many children from diarrheal disease, tools that will be used to achieve PATH’s life-saving goal.

Clean water, soap, zinc tablets for oral rehydration therapy and the rotavirus vaccine, which stops some diarrheal diseases before they start, were all included.

But it’s not just science and vaccines that can improve the lives of communities ravaged by diarrhea. Deeply held cultural traditions and ideas about the disease have to be altered as well.

Dr. Alfred Ochola, PATH’s Technical Advisor for Child Survival and Development in Kenya, spoke about educating Kenyans on how to reduce the risk of diarrhea in their communities through hygiene practices like hand washing.

But Ochola, who lost a brother and sister to a diarrhea outbreak in Kenya as a child, has found that at first, people are reluctant to embrace change.

“A big [challenge] is combatting old beliefs that diarrhea is a curse and not an infection, and that the death of a child is an inevitable part of life. ‘God will give you another one’ is a common saying in Kenya,” Ochola said.

Many people believe a child who has diarrhea is cursed, Ochola said. Vomiting and diarrhea are welcomed because it rids the body of the evil inside it, while it should be taken as a sign that something is seriously wrong.

Poverty is another challenge in combatting the diseases. Although heart disease and diabetes are becoming the new illnesses of poverty, according to Davis, diarrhea and pneumonia still adversely affect children of developing countries in Africa and Asia.

In Africa and Southeast Asia, the percentage of child deaths are higher than the global average and have not significantly decreased in 10 years. Both regions have seen child mortality from diarrhea fall from 13 percent to 11 percent of deaths from 2000 to 2010, but in Africa, the rate of death from pneumonia has actually increased, from 16 percent to 17 percent.

“Too many people lack the financial means to seek care when it’s most needed, like paying for transportation to get to a health facility far from home… We often reach women and their children too late,” Ochola said.

Ochola told the story of Jane Wamalwa, a Kenyan woman who came to understand the reasons behind making a change in long-held practices in treating and preventing diarrhea. Wamalwa lost three children to the disease, and has now become a trusted source of information on good anti-diarrhea practice in her community, Ochola said.

“It has become her calling,” he added.

When Gabriela Blanco tells other Cubans that she works in an organic vegetable cooperative and is getting ready to study agronomy at the university, she gets surprised looks.

She is not sure where her vocation came from, but she does know that this is what she wants to do.

In Cuba, which is seeking to boost agricultural yields, there is a scarcity of young people working in the sector.

Blanco, a petite 20-year-old, dropped her math studies after two years to try her hand at the Vivero Alamar, a successful agricultural cooperative in Havana that operates as a Basic Unit of Cooperative Production.

“I began working here in September 2012; in three months they made me a member of the cooperative. I realised that I really like it and I want to stay here. The agricultural sector has lots of possibilities and many fields of investigation; it’s a very interesting and lovely experience,” she told IPS.

Mercedes Cepero, 18, has had a similar experience, although she came to this cooperative to fulfil her professional training requirement as an agronomy technician. “I’ve passed the student stage, and now I have to get trained and learn as a worker. I used to think that agronomy was just working with a hoe in the sun, but I was wrong,” she told IPS.

Cepero is also preparing for university entrance exams, which will be held this month, because she wants to be an agricultural engineer. Unlike Blanco, she was told about this career when she was in secondary school. “That was when I became interested,” she said.

Blanco thinks that the lack of interest in agricultural careers among young people is due in part to today’s society. “A lot of people see agriculture as something that is not studied, that doesn’t involve science, because it’s just planting and harvesting. Other people view work in the countryside as a lot of hard work that brings few benefits,” she said.

Twenty young people, between the ages of 17 and 30, work at the Vivero Alamar.

However, most young people leave agriculture when they find jobs that are more in line with their aspirations for better incomes and less hard work.

Cepero has little patience with the general attitude toward agricultural work: young people “are a little bit lazy, and they want everything to just fall into their lap,” she said.

According to figures provided by the national urban and suburban agriculture programme, about 70,000 young people in this country of 11.3 million are working in agriculture.

The Vivero Alamar urban farming cooperative is located in the housing project of Alamar about 15 km from downtown Havana. The housing development is home to about 100,000 people.

Research by the Centre for the Study of Youth has found that young Cubans prefer to seek jobs in the emerging economy, such as foreign companies, and reject jobs related to sanitation services, construction and agriculture.

“People view agriculture today as if it were punishment. Whoever misbehaves will go work in the fields. The children of farmers do not want to continue their parents’ work; they want to move to Havana and become doctors,” said Isis Salcines, who describes herself as a worker-of-all-trades at the coop, and who is about to graduate as an agronomist.

Shortly after beginning her university studies, Salcines decided to create a kind of vocational club at an elementary school close to the coop, dubbed “Agro-ecological Kids”. But first she conducted a couple of surveys. One asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and another asked them to complete the sentence: “When I grow up, I want to be.…” with farmer as one of the choices.

Not one of the children chose farmer. Salcines, who is the daughter of the coop’s founder and president, Miguel Ángel Salcines, set herself the goal of holding weekly sessions to teach the children about how the coop is run using agro-ecological methods, and why it is important to eat healthier.

By the time the first course was over, the “Kids” would eat every bite of vegetables they were served in tasty salads, and they knew how to work on the farm, understood the importance of producing food, and had learned about the comprehensive management of pests and diseases.

In a new survey she conducted at the end of the first workshop, 15 of the boys and girls – nearly three-quarters – marked agronomy as a possible career. “This experience was a real incentive. It made me see how it was possible for them to choose this line of work once they are grown-up,” Salcines said.

For Norma Romero, a plant protection engineer, the formula must include education from an early age and assurances for young people that they will feel recognised, motivated and encouraged to continue working in agriculture, despite any difficulties.

Good wages, a flexible schedule to allow them to study, free breakfast and lunch, work clothing and shoes, and other benefits are motivating factors, “because in agriculture there is mud, lots of sun, dust, and really hard conditions. For us it is vital for people to come and stay, especially young people,” Romero said.

As part of the recent reforms of the Cuban economy, the Education Ministry expanded in 2011 the number of agronomy specialties offered at the vocational school level and ordered a reinforcement of vocational guidance toward agriculture in the early years of primary education, in line with the characteristics and needs of each province.

Agriculture accounts for 20 percent of total employment but less than five percent of GDP because it has the lowest productivity of any sector. Last year, the country imported 1.6 billion dollars’ worth of food.

A man hauls water at the Chico Mendes landless peasant camp in Pernambuco, Brazil. Credit: Alejandro Arigón/IPS

Everyone knows water is life. Far too few understand the role of trees, plants and other living things in ensuring we have clean, fresh water.

This dangerous ignorance results in destruction of wetlands that once cleaned water and prevented destructive and costly flooding, scientists and activists warn.

Around the world, politicians and others in power have made and continue to make decisions based on short-term economic interests without considering the long-term impact on the natural environment, said Anik Bhaduri, executive officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP), a research institute based in Bonn, Germany.

“Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed,” Bhaduri told IPS.

The list of human impacts on the world’s water – of which only 0.03percent is available as freshwater – is long and the scale of those impacts daunting.

“We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean,” Bhaduri said.

On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years, which distorts the natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia. Two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking due to pumping out groundwater, oil and gas. Some deltas are falling at a rate four times faster than global sea level is rising.

More than 65 percent of the world’s rivers are in trouble, according to one study published in Nature in 2010. Those findings were very “conservative” since there was not enough data to assess impacts of climate change, pharmaceutical compounds, mining wastes and water transfers, Charles Vörösmarty of the City University of New York previously told IPS.

Recently, China’s First National Census of Water discovered they’d lost more than 28,000 rivers compared to just 20 years ago. Most experts blame the loss on massive overuse and engineering projects to shift water from one region to another.

“We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes…by throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year,” said Vörösmarty, who is also co-chair and a founding member of the GWSP.

As these problems continue to mount, the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs, he said in a release.

Protecting and investing in natural infrastructure is far cheaper than concrete and pipes, representing the smarter solution to water security. This approach also benefits tourism, recreation and cultural benefits, improved resilience and biodiversity conservation.

World experts are meeting in Bonn, Germany this week to consolidate this understanding and offer policy makers solutions to prevent ongoing damage to the global water system.

The Water in the Anthropocene conference will also make recommendations on how decision makers can adapt to the multiple challenges of growing water use, declining ecosystems and climate change.

The public and policy makers are not aware of these huge water challenges, said water expert Janos Bogardi, senior advisor to GWSP. Education aside, there is an overwhelming need to have well-defined global water quantity and quality standards that meet the needs of people, agriculture and healthy ecosystems.

The upcoming U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are expected to include “water security”, which is huge step forward, Bogardi told IPS.

“Defining these interrelated needs is huge challenge for scientists and politicians alike,” he said.

Reasonable daily water use to meet sanitary needs and drinking is 40 to 80 litres, but U.S. per capita daily use is over 300 litres, while Germany is 120 litres. In urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, consumption is 80 litres/day.

But how much water does nature need?

GWSP scientists’ best guess at this point is that taking 30 percent to 40 percent of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes “extreme” water stress which could tip an ecosystem into collapse. This can be mitigated if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.

“We have to be careful that the water security goal is truly sustainable for ecosystems,” Bogardi said.

It is not clear that the Sustainable Development Goal on water will “simultaneously optimise water security for humans as well as for nature”, said Vörösmarty.

“The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the decision makers?” he asked.

Indigenous students learning to operate equipment at a communications workshop. Credit: Courtesy of PCSAN/Daniela Silva

Indigenous communities in remote areas of Brazil have begun to recognise that they have the right to not be hungry, and are learning that food security means much more than simply having food on the table.

Rosiléia Cruz, 19, dreams of studying journalism. She chooses her words carefully during her interview with Tierramérica* by mobile phone from Tabatinga, in northwest Brazil, which can only be reached by plane or river travel.

Cruz is a member of the Ticuna indigenous ethnic group, one of the most numerous in the country. The Ticuna live in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, in the Alto Solimões region around the river of the same name, near the borders of Peru and Colombia.

The lands of their ancestors were invaded for decades by “seringueiros” (rubber tappers), fishermen and loggers, who left poverty and destruction in their wake.

Up until three years ago, young people like Cruz had few prospects, and many sought relief in alcohol and even suicide.

But in January 2010, the Joint Programme on Food and Nutrition Security for Indigenous Women and Children opened a window of hope, with activities aimed at creating agricultural and other nutritional solutions, but with particular emphasis on training and awareness raising.

Cruz forms part of a group of 50 young people from Ticuna and Kokama indigenous communities participating in communications workshops held in local schools. At the Umariaçu II community school in Tabatinga, she learned how to conduct interviews, take photographs, and produce daily news billboards and radio programmes.

She was thrilled by the opportunity to handle a microphone or camera in order to question the village chief about community problems, explain the importance of breastfeeding to mothers-to-be, or inform children about healthy habits, soft drinks, processed foods and the fruits of the region.

“There are a lot of young people that we can rescue from alcoholism,” she said. “We just prepared a news report on ‘Indian Day’ (a Brazilian holiday celebrated every Apr. 19) and I’m going to participate in Indigenous Babies Week.”

The aim of the workshops is to motivate young people to promote and defend their rights. An agreement with a local television station made it possible for the youngsters to be trained in the use of the equipment donated by the joint programme. The radio station in Tabatinga provided them with space in its Saturday programming schedule so that they could broadcast their own radio show.

The group also uses loudspeakers mounted on posts in their villages to get their message across. The daily news billboards are displayed on the walls of medical clinics and schools, and internet workshops have provided them with the skills to run their own website, which will be launched on May 21.

Once all the workshops are completed, the participants will share what they have learned with other students. Partnerships with local governments, universities and indigenous organisations will ensure continuity, and the internet will serve as a platform to disseminate the results, expand communication and inspire other young people.

These experiences form part of a wider project to help Ticuna and Kokama communities to organise in order to demand health care, education and economic and political participation.

The joint programme is an initiative of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Achievement Fund, set up with a financial contribution from the government of Spain and administered by various United Nations agencies, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in partnership with the Brazilian government.

Now in the stage of collecting data and evaluating results, since it will conclude in June, the programme focused on the municipalities of Tabatinga, Benjamin Constant and São Paulo de Olivença in the northwestern state of Amazonas, and the municipality of Dourados in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, which are home to a combined total of 53,000 indigenous people.

These areas were chosen because of their high rates of malnutrition, substance abuse and violence, as well as their remote and difficult-to-reach locations. It is hoped that the positive results expected can be extended to other regions of the country, Fernando Moretti, the national coordinator of the joint programme, told Tierramérica.

In the three and half years since the programme was launched, International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples has been translated into the Guaraní, Terena and Ticuna languages. Brazil ratified the convention in 2002, but its implementation remains a challenge.

Another concrete outcome was the publication of a book that shares the perceptions of 25 children and adolescents in villages in Mato Grosso do Sol and neighbouring Paraguay on food and nutrition security. The book, which includes photographs, letters and artworks, will be distributed in a Portuguese-Guaraní bilingual edition to schools, libraries and cultural centres.

“When we talk about food security, it is not simply a matter of food production, but also of training in health and self-esteem,” said Moretti.

The activities are aimed at motivating people to use the region’s biological and agricultural diversity sustainably.

Communities were provided with rural technical assistance and guidance for the establishment of agro-forestry systems, which combine farming with sustainable use and recovery of local forests, and of school gardens. In Dourados, indigenous farmers reintroduced yerba mate – used to prepare a hot beverage widely consumed in southern Brazil and neighbouring countries – and other native plant species with significant commercial potential.

In the village of Panambizinho, two plant nurseries were constructed, and the local residents learned how to make eco-friendly stoves that use less firewood, thus preserving the forest, and reduce harmful smoke emissions.

There were also discussions of concepts and practices related to healthy eating and disease prevention. Awareness raising and the creation of opportunities allowed the project to grow naturally, said Moretti.

Some families created gardens in their homes. Indigenous community members were trained to measure and weigh babies and children in order to provide data on these populations to the Food and Nutrition Security System.

In Alto Solimões, the ILO is supporting an association of craftspeople with a market study to help their products reach buyers.

For Moretti, what was most important was strengthening institutions and expanding interaction with the indigenous population. From now on, there will be two indigenous representatives on the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security, the agency responsible for implementation of the Zero Hunger policy launched by the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration (2003-2011). Indigenous community members are also organising to participate in municipal councils.

In Dourados, the National Indigenous Fund and UNICEF organised a colloquium in order to create a network for the protection of indigenous children and adolescents and to define the measures to be adopted in cases of abuse, abandonment and alcoholism. A similar event will be held with communities in Alto Solimões on Jun. 17-19.

An ethnic mapping exercise was also conducted, which included the identification of what is produced in each region. “These are tools that the indigenous people themselves will be able to use,” stressed Moretti.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

HIJOS, the acronym for “Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence”, is an Argentine rights group founded in 1995 when children of people “disappeared” by that country’s 1976-1983 military regime came together to hold escraches or outings of human rights violators.

Argentine victims of forced disappearance. Credit: ha+/CC BY 2.0

An estimated 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship’s systematic suppression of dissent. In 1976, then army chief Videla led the junta made up of the commanders of the three military forces after the coup d’état that overthrew the democratic government of Isabel Perón.

Videla, who died on May 17, may be physically no more, the 25-year-old Parodi told the audience in her acceptance speech, but Argentina is still trying to correct the historical wrongs of the regime he led for most of its seven years in power.

Parodi was with her colleague Marcos Kary in Gwangju to share the human rights experiences of Argentina and South Korea.

The Gwangju Prize is awarded by the May 18 Memorial Foundation in South Korea, which like HIJOS was established by the families of those subjected to the brutal excesses of a dictatorship. Protests against the rule of South Korean military commander and strongman Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1988) had culminated in the May 18-27, 1980 uprising in Gwangju, also known as 518, an allusion to the date the bloody crackdown began.

In spring 1980 there was a wave of demonstrations across South Korea. In Gwangju, in the southwest, the military responded with brute force, firing indiscriminately into crowds. Even passersby were killed. The final death toll is still uncertain, but up to 2,000 people may have died.

The uprising is seen as a pivotal moment in the struggle for South Korean democracy.

The May 18 Memorial Foundation was established in 1994, and the Gwangju Prize was created in 2000. Xanana Gusmao, who fought for the freedom of East Timor in Southeast Asia and was elected as its first president when it became a new country in 2002, was the first recipient of the prize.

The award has since gone to other leaders in South Asia, notably Aung San Suu Kyi, the icon for democracy in Myanmar/Burma, in 2004; Manipur’s Irom Sharmila, fighting the excesses of the military in northeastern India, in 2007; and Dr Binayak Sen, a civil rights activist working for the rights of tribal populations in India, in 2011.

For the first time, however, the prize has gone this year to an organisation so many miles and whole continents away from the parent country. HIJOS was chosen for its dedication to get justice for victims of human rights abuses during Argentina’s dictatorship.

Parodi and Kary, both students who work for and represent HIJOS, are not the children of any of those who fell prey to the atrocities of the regime, but are willing to carry on the job that the daughters and sons of the victims began nearly two decades ago.

Like other human rights groups in their country, their aim is to help restore truth and bring justice to Argentine society. The organisation has helped collect evidence, arranged legal assistance for those wishing to prosecute human rights violators, and offered psychological support.

Videla’s sentencing was a part of this effort. Tried and sentenced to life for human rights abuses soon after democracy was restored, he only served a few years in prison before he was released under a broad presidential pardon from Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

But the sustained efforts of organisations like HIJOS ensured that this impunity would not be permanent.

In the mid-2000s, the Argentine Supreme Court struck down the presidential pardon for the former members of the junta, as well as the two late 1980s amnesty laws, ruling that they were unconstitutional.

“In the period that no trials took place,” Parodi told IPS, “we undertook social action by identifying the perpetrators of atrocities and distributing leaflets to their neighbours indicating that the people next door were responsible for the brutal abuses that happened in the 1970s and 1980s.”

The human rights trials resumed after the pardons and amnesty laws were thrown out. In the central city of Córdoba, where Parodi and Kary work, there have already been four trials involving 400 victims and 43 accused, said Parodi. And a fifth trial began in December 2012 and will last another two years, the two activists told IPS.

However, helping to bring the perpetrators to court is not the end of HIJOS’s job, Parodi said, adding that there is still a lot to be done for human rights in their country.

“Human rights continue to be suppressed in Argentina,” Kary told IPS. “The military may no longer be in power, but the police continue to wield power, and their mindset has never really changed. Torture in jails continues.”

Meanwhile, the Gwangju Prize – and its 50,000 dollar cash award – has given the organisation an opportunity to share its human rights experience with rights groups and democratic movements in Asia. It is the first international recognition that HIJOS has received, and one it hopes to build on in its fight for human rights.

At the UN Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, from left to right: Dong Min Ki, Jonathan Lucas, Cecilia Andersson, Martin Xaba, Bilal S. Hamad, and Marin Casimir Ilboudo. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

As people around the world continue to migrate into cities, swelling urban populations, they have sparked growth in another area: crime and security issues.

“Big cities are…where the greatest opportunities are, but also where more criticalities concentrate,” said Piero Fassino, mayor of Turin, Italy, at the plenary session of the Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, held in Turin from May 20 to 21.

“While the quality of services to citizens are usually higher in those centres, they also present more problems of social alienation, youth unrest and crime,” Fassino added.

The forum, organised by United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) with the United Nations Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the municipality of Turin, sought to reduce inequality and injustice in urban settings and address the dynamics of security and crime preventions.

The challenge for the future is to take advantage of opportunities offered by urbanisation while reducing episodes of crime and violence that hinder sustainable development, particularly for the most vulnerable people: women, youth and marginalised groups.

“From 1960 to 1990, urbanisation was accompanied by a severe increase [in] crime and violence, which affected the majority of cities and towns in both the developed and the developing world,” explained Cecilia Andersson, human settlements officer of the Safer Cities Programme of UN-HABITAT, during her opening speech.

“This situation required change. It required the cities and towns themselves to take responsibility to deal with these issues,” she added.

Mayors and representatives of 18 municipalities around the world from Cape Town to Bangkok, from Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to Seoul, discussed the biggest challenges they encountered and the best measures to take to address them.

Martin Xaba, head of the Safer Cities and I-Trump Department of Durban, South Africa, explained how the local municipality decided in 2000 to adopt the Safer Cities strategy.

“The strategy requires the implementation of both reactive and proactive approach,” Xaba explained. While adequate responses to crime are always needed, “prevention remains the most effective tool, and this is where community involvement becomes critical”.

Such tools, in the case of Durban, include campaigns for crime awareness and against the abuse of women and children, workshops on drug abuse, and the active participation of the community in ward safety committees.

It was “upon the request of African mayors, who were having an issue with regards to safety in their cities” that the programme Safer Cities began in Africa, Andersson explained to IPS, with Johannesburg, South Africa and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania as pilot cities. The programme has since gone global.

Meanwhile, local leaders say that exchanging ideas among cities does work. Antonio Frey, director of local security in Santiago del Chile, told IPS, “The experience of Cape Town, South Africa, is very interesting for us. They managed to recover public spaces, thanks to the involvement of citizens from marginalised areas.”

“This strategy has positive effects in the long run, because those people recover that space, and then take care [of] and manage it.”

Despite the substantial differences between cities in terms of crime rates and types of crimes, a key requirement to enhance safety and security is the decentralisation of policies from the national to local level.

When policies are not decentralised, improving circumstances becomes very difficult, as Bilal S. Hamad, mayor of Beirut, could attest during his speech at the plenary session.

In Beirut, a lack of decentralisation is hindering the municipality’s ability to intervene on crime and safety issues. “The central government has its hand in the affairs of the municipality,” Hamad lamented. The city is not in charge [of] a police force, and the central government put someone in the role of governor, “taking all the executive power in the city of Beirut”.

In another example, inadequate housing is a problem indirectly connected to crime, but “we don’t have full power [over] it, because it’s the central government which controls that”, insisted Hamad.

According to Andersson, apart from decentralisation, cooperation is also essential. “The best results come when all the various departments in a municipality [understand] that they have a role to play with regards to providing safety and security for the inhabitants of the city,” she told IPS.

Interestingly, crime and violence differ significantly from city to city, and developed and developing countries do not necessarily face separate types of crimes.

“In developing countries, the biggest challenge is always finding resources,” Andersson told IPS, particularly moving resources from national to local governments. Some problems, however, affect most cities, regardless of the country in which they are located. “Across borders, in all regions, the issue of women and girls’ safety…comes out quite clearly,” Andersson said.

This issue, by limiting the freedom of women and girls, prevents them from participating in and contributing to their communities. As Andersson clarified during the conference, “Communities where all citizens are empowered to participate in social, economic and political opportunities…are instrumental [in reducing] poverty.”