By Andrea Bordé
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 2009 (IPS)

Although a professional actor by trade, Djimon Hounsou takes his role as a campaigner against climate change at the U.N. seriously, and hopes to see a strong mandate reached in Copenhagen that puts the spotlight on developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Actor Djimon Hounsou opens the U.N. Summit on Climate Change in September 2009 with a quote from the late astronomer Carl Sagan. Credit: UN Photo/Marco Castro

With the U.N. Climate Change Conference in the Danish city beginning Monday, IPS spoke with Hounsou about his hopes for what will come out of the conference.

He believes that developed countries should take responsibility for their share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, which is currently above 60 percent, but he also hopes to see developing countries launch their own initiatives to combat climate change.

According to U.N. officials, at least 80 world leaders will be at the Copenhagen conference from Dec. 7-18 to negotiate a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

At a time in history that scientists, activists and U.N. officials describe as a crucial turning point to save humanity from the worst effects of climate change, U.S. President Barack Obama will be showing up in Copenhagen for only one day, and some officials worry that the U.S. could throw a wrench in other developed nations’ efforts to set tough emissions limits.

According to a statement from the White House, Obama plans to offer a U.S. emissions target that is about 17 percent below 2005 levels for 2020.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s foremost scientific authority on the issue, recommends a 25 to 40 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by industrialised countries by 2020.

Some other developed nations are following the recommendation. Britain, for example, pledged a 34 percent cut by 2020, while Japan is set to cut its emissions by 25 percent.

However, with the United States accounting for about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, some critics say Obama’s plan is too little, too late.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: How are you handling your role as a campaigner against climate change at the U.N.? DJIMON HOUNSOU: First of all, it’s an absolute honour to work for the United Nations, for climate change at Copenhagen. When they asked me to come and speak on behalf of this, I was really determined.

IPS: What do you hope to see at Copenhagen? DH: You know, I am an actor. I am certainly not a policymaker. I guess what we are looking for at Copenhagen is to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also to teach the third world, the continent of Africa and elsewhere, Asia and the developing world, to help them find ways to cope and adapt. That is the goal.

IPS: What is the most important objective that the U.N. should work to accomplish in the coming year? DH: Certainly to hold the developed world somewhat responsible and accountable for the amount of emissions that they are emitting on a regular basis. To find a tax incentive, ways to deal with it.

IPS: Is it really about the developed world giving aid to developing countries to achieve their environmental goals? DH: No, because I think it is important to encourage and champion the continent of Africa. Third world countries need to be self-sufficient, but in order to do that we have to understand that only 3.6 percent of global emissions come from Africa – 3.6 percent – so the understanding is the ones that are hardest hit by the changing of our temperature are not necessarily the ones that are emitting.

So the understanding is to find ways to adapt to the changing climate, to help them prepare. Farming is definitely the main way of life, which is pretty much the only source of income and survival.

I think what the world and those leaders are trying to accomplish is to hold the countries like China, America accountable and the European continent somewhat accountable for the [greenhouse] gas emissions that they are putting out there.

IPS: As of now, the U.S. Congress has not issued any mandates, and President Obama has only decided to show up for one day at Copenhagen (on the way to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm). What do you think the outcome will be if indeed the U.S. cannot agree on a treaty with other member states? DH: Well, personally, I think it will be certainly devastating. Obviously, in order to find a global solution we need our leaders to gather and champion a solution.

[With] ground flooding and erratic seasons, we need to find solutions. Obama going there in support of the cause sends a message that this is a serious issue, certainly an issue that needs to be tackled now and dealt with, and hopefully champion all of the other countries.

As if someone would one day come and save us from the devastation that we certainly are causing… Obviously this is a global issue that needs a global solution.

Excerpt:

By Andrea Bordé
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 9 2009 (IPS)

On Sep. 14, the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly adopted a resolution that opened the door for the creation of a new U.N. agency specifically for women.

Joanne Sandler Credit: UNIFEM

It will draw together under one umbrella all of the existing entities for women in the U.N. – U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), International Training and Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) and Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues (OSAGI).

The new women’s entity comes at a particularly exciting time in the women’s empowerment movement at the U.N. as another report has just been released by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) highlighting the lack of women’s control over economic and financial resources in both the developing and developed world.

The U.N. World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2009, published by UNDESA addresses increasingly progressive issues such as women’s unpaid work in the household, the urgency of women’s financial empowerment, especially in current times of economic turmoil, and the long-standing inequalities of women in care giving, the labour market and within central financial institutions of the state such as financial ministries and central banks.

This new women’s entity may be just the right environment for enacting legislation on progressive issues such as women’s unpaid work in the household, translating the UNDESA survey into real-life change.

In the meantime, while the U.N. is still coming up with official names for the agency, it is working to depoliticise it and make the nameless agency more gender neutral, so it is unofficially being called “The New Entity”.

IPS spoke with Joanne Sandler, deputy executive director of UNIFEM, about the creation of this “New Entity” and the hopes and challenges of making the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) – the binding convention that established the official women’s empowerment movement at the U.N. – finally work 100 percent for women within this new women’s focused arena at the UN.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: Where will the new entity be located? JOANNE SANDLER: Our hope is that it is present where it can do the most good. We want to make it where it will offer the best use of our resources.

It is ultimately up to the member states.

IPS: There’s so much happening on gender empowerment between civil society and the UN, that it seems only right that the entity adopt a bottom-to-top approach taking its cue from civil society. Is there a likely conflict of interest? JS: A connection to a constituency is absolutely critical, because it’s a stronger, more unified system.

It’s coming from all directions. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top approach. It is a 360-degree process.

IPS: CEDAW is marking its 30th anniversary on Dec. 18, 2009. As of yet, 186 countries have ratified the convention, but there are all kinds of reservations by mainly Muslim and Catholic countries that counteract the influence of the convention. What are the successes and failures of this convention in your opinion and in the opinion of UNIFEM? JS: For UNIFEM, of course, CEDAW is a basic agreement. It’s kind of our entry point.

The trend is toward removal of reservations. There are a growing number of enlightening examples of how you take CEDAW.

Of course there are countries that ratify it, and still have laws in their books that go against it. The main examples are property laws and inheritance rights that counteract the convention.

We want to extend our support where there is a political will to demonstrate. It’s a core part of our community.

IPS: What will UNIFEM be contributing specifically (as far as goals and information) for this new entity? JS: We will be contributing our 30 years of experience. We expect to continue to work on the different background papers and analyses that we have been committed to on gender empowerment.

This is an important moment for all of this to be moving forward.

*IPS is running a series of interviews on the U.N.’s decision to create a new women’s agency.

Excerpt:

Achieving an ambitious set of anti-poverty benchmarks will take much more financing from rich countries, Jeffrey Sachs, the special advisor to the U.N. secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), warned Monday.

There is currently no budgetary plan of action to implement the MDGs as world leaders prepare for a summit next year to assess progress ahead of the final deadline in 2015, Sachs said at a U.N. panel discussion.

“This is not rocket science. This is basic decency,” said Sachs, as he waved blank spreadsheets in the air.

The eight MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.

A summit meeting of 189 world leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the year 2015. But their implementation has been undermined by the shortage of funds, cuts in development aid, and most recently, by the global economic crisis.

Sachs noted that while some MDGs, such as universal primary education, are making strides, this success could ultimately falter because many rich country governments are not investing in hiring teachers and providing meals for students, for example.

“The U.S. is more than 50 billion dollars a year short – every year,” said Sachs. “If you don’t fund the Global Fund, the children will die,” he stressed, referring to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, established in 2002.

Sachs displayed a stack of MDG-related reports and recommendations that the Global Fund lacks money to implement.

“We do lose two million children a year, but we have not run out of time to save them,” he said.

Esther Duflo, an expert in poverty alleviation and development economics at the U.S.-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that vaccination for all children in Africa was critical to several of the goals.

“Children miss a quarter of school days because of sickness,” she said.

Duflo suggested that distributing food to every person who gets vaccinated, which was tested in a successful pilot project in rural India where bags of lentils were given in exchange for vaccination, was a less costly and effective incentive for poor people to make the long trek to a clinic with their young ones.

She also stressed the gap in political representation of women in middle-income and developing countries, which is undermining MDG3 on gender empowerment. The more women are represented, Duflo explained, the less of a gender bias there will be for women to be elected and hold high offices in the future.

Olav Kjorven, founder and director of the Jameel Poverty and Action lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called for coordination of global and regional commitments leading to the 2010 summit. He also said that there needs to be updated studies of the MDG goals, as well as analytical summaries.

“Their needs to be an overall MDG acceleration breakthrough framework promoted,” said Kjorven.

Malawi, Togo, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Tanzania, Malaysia and Thailand were among the countries that have shown significant progress towards the MDGs thus far. However, experts at the panel stressed that overall, much more needs to be done monetarily to help developing countries.

Sachs reiterated that timing is crucial. “It’s a matter of implementation and scale-up of what we plan to do,” he said. “This is our last chance to get this right.”

“I believe the world is not a game, and I believe it is not that complicated,” Sachs concluded.

Pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline hold the future welfare of poor people living with HIV/AIDS in their hands, argues the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, which is urging the companies to release their patents on specific HIV drugs into a collective pool that will increase access and affordability to treatment in developing countries.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF), has launched a new e-mail campaign to pressure pharmaceutical companies to share their patent rights of certain antiretroviral HIV/AIDS drugs.

Ideally, the patents held by different companies on specific HIV drugs would be made available to other companies for both production and development. The companies that own the patent rights would in turn receive royalties by the companies or individuals that use their patents.

The impact is believed to be huge for those living with the disease, because a patent pool would make HIV drugs more readily available for distribution, and, more importantly, much more affordable.

This is because companies using the patents can then develop generic versions of these HIV drugs, as well as versions of the drug that can be taken once a day, instead of three times per day, for example. These types of dosage changes would greatly increase both the convenience and effectiveness of these drugs, MSF says.

Infant formulas may also become more readily available with a patent pool, a lifesaving tool that could be used to prevent high rates of death among the next generation.

According to Michael Sidibe, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the demand for affordable treatment is extremely high, and the number of people in need of these drugs is growing exponentially.

“The demand is high, as nearly 80 percent of the four million people on treatment globally live in Africa, but 80 percent of the drugs distributed in Africa come from abroad,” he said.

UNITAD, the international drug-purchasing agency, will be at the forefront of the project, as it will be establishing the patent pool for these HIV drugs.

For the listed pharmaceutical companies, this is a unique opportunity for them to show that they have a humanitarian side, and that they are seriously committed to treating and preventing HIV/AIDS, advocates say.

According to MSF, some companies have expressed interest in taking part in the patent pool, but so far, no patents have actually been submitted to the pool.

“This opportunity comes at a crucial time,” said Dr. Eric Goemaere, medical coordinator for MSF in South Africa. “Many patients in our programmes have developed resistance to their medicines and need to switch to newer, more effective drugs now. Because these are either unavailable or unaffordable, patients face a return to AIDS death row as treatment options dry up.”

Sidibe stresses that this patent pool should not be the only initiative in place to help Africans get treatment. He says that the time has come for Africa to develop its own system of drug access that is both efficient and affordable since the primary problem for Africans is that they require expensive medicines that are mostly made abroad.

“Demand for AIDS treatment should become an opportunity for Africa to reform its pharmaceutical practices,” said Sidibe. “Too often, drugs made in Africa are spurious or low quality. What Africa needs is a single African Drug Agency, similar to the European Medicines Agency, which regulates the pharmaceutical sector in Europe.”

Margaret Chan, director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), also believes more needs to be done in order to increase access where prevention services often fail.

“At least five million people living with HIV still do not have access to life-prolonging treatment and care. Prevention services fail to reach many in need. Governments and international partners must accelerate their efforts to achieve universal access to treatment,” she said in a statement.

The cost of HIV drugs is the main battle that MSF is trying to wage with this patent pool project. As numbers of people needing treatment in developing countries rises, increasing access to the drugs among vulnerable populations will be absolutely crucial.

“Ensuring equitable access will be one of our primary concerns and UNAIDS will continue to act as a voice for the voiceless, ensuring that marginalised groups and people most vulnerable to HIV infection have access to the services that are so vital to their wellbeing and to that of their families and communities,” said Sidibe.

MSF’s patent campaign is targeting Abbot Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Pfizer and Sequoia Pharmaceuticals.

The HIV drugs that MSF identified as being essential to this campaign were first recommended by the WHO for use in developing countries.