Civilians leaving old Mosul. This boy is going to fall of exhaustion just after this picture is taken. Credit: Herve Jakubowicz

By Ann-Kathrin Pohlers
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 18 2018 (IPS)

With upcoming elections in May, the Iraqi government is urging Internally Displaced People (IDPs) to return home. After the defeat of ISIS in December 2017, an increase in security and number of returnees to their region of origin is expected; however, many IDPs see no way to leave the camps just yet.

While two million people have returned to their homes, three million people farther remain displaced. The eruption of ISIS in January 2014 and the following years of violence have led to a humanitarian disaster; on top of that, the number of IDPs displaced between 2006 and 2007 is still at approximately one million.

Nearly 9 million Iraqis require humanitarian assistance of which 5 million are in critical need of safe drinking water, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A drastic reduction in armed conflict is anticipated for this year, however, the complex pattern of second displacements may continue to occur even though Iraq expects an increase in returns, according to UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children Report.

“There is an impetus for people to return to their area of origin ahead of elections in May,” Melany Markham, media coordinator for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told IPS. The May elections were originally scheduled for September 2017, but were delayed by six months due to the Iraqi civil war.

The Muttahidoon, the Uniters for Reform Coalition and Iraq’s largest Sunni political alliance, called for a further six months’ delay to allow enough time for IDP voters to return home, however, Iraq’s Supreme Court ruled a second delay unconstitutional.

In camps east of Mosul, the numbers of arrivals after their second or even third displacement now surpass the number of departures of returnees. “We cannot go back to Mosul without guarantees and international guarantees to be safe and to be some people to protect us,” an unidentified IDP told NPR correspondent Jane Arraf.

A similar development can be witnessed in Anbar Province. “At least one in five of the displaced people who left the Kilo 18 camp in Anbar Province in December returned back to the camp because they couldn’t go home. Sometimes it’s an issue of safety and sometimes they return because their homes have been destroyed or they are occupied by others,” said Melany Markham.

“In our consultations, it doesn’t seem to be ISIS that is posing the threat. The threat is of tribal violence or retribution towards people who have proven or suspected affiliations with ISIS. Other people are afraid or unexploded ordinances,” stated the spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council. “In order to mitigate these threats, land needs to be decontaminated or cleared before people can go home. Those who fear violence from the community will need to be able to settle in other places – more permanent solutions for these people must be found.”

On April 3, Iraq’s Ministry of Justice published the country’s 2018 federal budget. After voting in favor of the $88 billion draft on March 3, President Fuad Masum ordered to publicly share the document after previous weeks of dispute over the reduction of Iraq’s Kurdish region’s share from 17 percent to 12 percent.

A girl at a refugee camp in Erbil doing daily chores. Credit: Giulio Magnifico

The tense relations between Baghdad and the regional government in Erbil worsened after Kurdistan’s September referendum with 93 percent overwhelmingly endorsing the secession from Iraq. The budget cuts will affect the region around Erbil and Mosul, where ISIS caused a tremendous devastation and a surge of refugees.

In retaliation, Iraqi forces closed Erbil International Airport, took disputed territories, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, from Kurdish control, and shut down border crossings with Iraq’s neighboring countries. At Baghdad’s request, Iran closed seven unofficial border crossings with Kurdistan in support of the measures taken to isolate the Kurdish region.

The effects of Iraq’s political and financial crisis in retaken areas like Erbil and Mosul impact the establishment of a stable, safe environment for IDPs to return to. About $30 billion were pledged for the rebuilding of infrastructure at a recent reconstruction conference in Kuwait. Yet, the World Bank estimated that a total $88 billion dollars of damage has been caused.

Outside of refugee camps, Iraq’s public services such as water networks and health systems, essential but costly, remain overburdened in the war-affected regions, struggling to provide service to returnees. It will take time to restore Iraq’s infrastructure.

In 2017, Iran’s oil exports came close to 1 billion barrels. Pictured here are oil fields in West Iran. Credit: Nicholas V.

By Ann-Kathrin Pohlers
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 30 2018 (IPS)

Over the last few months, the United States’ rhetoric on the Iran nuclear agreement has been ambiguous, creating an uncertain environment for investors. With John Bolton, President Donald Trump has now appointed a national security adviser who is actively seeking to leave the Iran deal.

In December 2017, a new wave of protests swept Iran’s cities. As the uprising movement faced repression, more than 25 people ended up dead in a few days. Many of them died in prison; the official story is they all committed suicide.

As these escalations caught most by surprise, there is a significant difference in the Iranian Green Movement. A movement much larger than the recent one, the Green Movement wasn’t as widespread as the December protest and mainly showcased within the city borders of Teheran.

The 2017 unrest, however, took place in small to midsize cities across the country and featured a different demographic. While the Green Movement is considered a middle-class movement, the recent uproar is one of Iran’s working class.

Iran’s economic crisis led many companies to lose money and workers to lose their pensions. The triggering factors for the protests, primarily political and economic, can be linked to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the Iran nuclear deal.

“Unemployment is a very critical factor in all of this. Then you have Rouhani going to the Parliament and hinting at the new budget and what it would look like,” Trita Parsi, author of ‘Losing an Enemy – Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy,’ told IPS. “You have a tremendous deep frustration in the population with things such as corruption and mismanagement.”

This frustration escalated seven months into moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s second term after he beat the Conservatives in a landslide, even though the Rouhani administration faced accusations they had promised more than the sanctions relief did for the Iranian economy. Surveys show that the promised economic benefits of the deal were significant and so was breaking out of isolation and not finding themselves in a situation in which the risk of war with the United States would be a constant presence.

“That, the deal has achieved,” Parsi said. “The expectations where the economy would go after the deal, however, were not met. Despite that though, there was still strong support for [Hassan Rouhani], partly because the majority opposed the alternative which was a return to conservative rule.”

So it wasn’t the situation Iran which drastically changed, it was the United States’ Iran policy. While the nuclear agreement went into effect under Barack Obama, the new administration takes a two-track approach to the nuclear deal as they renegotiate with allies as well as prepare to withdraw from it.

“If you take a look at Iran’s economy on paper, it looks as if it’s doing quite well. There’s a growth of roughly six and a half percent. Well, that growth is almost entirely because of oil sales. As a result of the deal, they were capable of selling oil again, and it’s probably the only area in which they have been able to go back to the pre-sanction years,” Parsi said. In 2017, Iran’s oil exports came close to one billion barrels. “But oil sales do not create jobs.”

In the absence of job creation, Iran’s unemployment rate continues to increase, especially among young people and particularly among young women. “Combined with the fact that this is a highly educated population, you have a lot of people with two master’s degrees driving the Iranian version of Uber,” Parsi added.

Even though Iran’s economy is growing, its population is still stagnant as job-creating investments aren’t taking place. Companies interested in the Iranian market face the problem that they can’t find financing as none of the major banks are willing to invest as they fear the United States’ withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and new sanctions.

“Many job-creating projects are five to seven years long, and banks are not charities. They want to have some degree of security and certainty that the deal will be in place for that period but they can’t even get four months of security because Donald Trump is constantly saying he will not renew the sanction waivers,” Parsi said.

The waivers temporarily deactivate the sanctions on Iran and are part of the nuclear agreement. Many, Trita Parsi included, expected Trump not to renew them but then the President pushed back the original January deadline for his administration and its European allies to agree on renegotiations to May 12.

“The White House strategy is to infuse uncertainty which is already working because now you see protests in Iran. All they need to do is to continue to constantly make everyone guess if they renew the waivers or not.”

The United States is not the only party to the deal – European banks and entities are as well.

“Those sanctions are targeting countries trading with Iran which means Europe, China, India, and Asia,” according to Parsi. “The question then is will Europe stand firm and continue to honor the deal?”

To do so, Europe would have to revive 1990s-era sanction blocking mechanisms as already suggested by David O’Sullivan, EU ambassador to the United States. This threat, however, will most likely remain empty as it essentially means the United States sanctions Europe and Europe sanctions the United States to block the secondary sanctions on Iran. These blocking mechanism would shield companies from U.S.-imposed fines, but they can’t shield European banks from losing access to the American market. “Would I choose the Iranian over the U.S. market? I would not,” Parsi stated.

And it’s that uncertainty preventing banks and businesses from coming in, in effect imposing de facto sanctions on Iran and paralyzing its economy.

At least 1,000 people marched in Rio de Janeiro on March 15 to protest the targeted assassination of 38-year-old political activist Marielle Franco. Credit: Mídia Ninja

By Ann-Kathrin Pohlers
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 21 2018 (IPS)

With March marking Women’s History Month, the debate over gender-based discrimination couldn’t have reached its new peak at a more critical time.

Speaking on International Women’s Day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Around the world, women and girls are calling out the abusive behavior and discriminatory attitudes they face everywhere and all the time. They are insisting on lasting change. This is what women and girls want. And that is what I want. And it is what every sensible man and boy should want.

“There is no better path to a more peaceful and prosperous world than the empowerment of women and girls. […] As we still live in a male-dominated world with male-dominated culture, and until power is fairly shared, the world will remain out of balance. Gender inequality, discrimination, and violence against women harm us all,” he concluded, defining the importance of a robust women’s rights movement seeking equality.

Research conducted by MTV and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on young people’s political participation found striking results: Compared to four in ten young men, about six in ten young women agree that gender stereotypes encourage men “to treat women weaker and less capable” and encourage “sexually aggressive behavior.”

Compared to 17 percent of young men, around 38 percent of young women feel pressured by stereotypical gender roles. Regarding double standards in the labor market, only 55 percent of young men, compared to 81 percent of young women, “believe that women must be more qualified than men to compete successfully for the same job.” Forty-two percent of young men say “women use gender as an excuse when they don’t get what they want from the labor market.”

These results translate to gender impacting the likelihood of young people’s political involvement. Therefore, young women are more likely to become politically active, “from online participation to volunteering for a cause to attending a public rally or demonstration.”

Women took to the streets in Curitiba the day after the killing of Marielle Franco. The sign reads “The state killed Marielle.” Credit: Oruê Brasileiro

Young women activists are a vital element to sustain these movements as they raise new women’s rights issues. According to the National Democratic Institute, there is hard evidence in places where women saw political empowerment of an eventual increase in “democracy,” “responsiveness to citizen needs,” “cooperation across party and ethnic lines,” and “sustainable peace.”

In Rwanda, where women hold 56 percent of the seats in the Parliament, female parliamentarians receive credit for “forming the first cross-party caucus” tackling “controversial issues, such as land rights and food security.”

While some argue the #SayHerName,#HeForShe, #MeToo, and #TimesUp movements marked the beginning of a new feminist era, women human rights activists are not only targeted for their activism but also for their identity. Women’s rights activists around the world face repression and poor assistance from governments in the context of the motto “Good girls don’t protest.”

“Female human rights activist are particularly politically targeted,” Nyaradzo “Nyari” Mashayamombe told IPS, repeating “Particularly!” for emphasis.

Mashayamombe is the core founder of the Tag a Life International Trust, a Zimbabwean Girls and Young Women’s Rights organization also working with boys and men to tackle religious and cultural practices that expose girls and young women gender-based discrimination with the government targeting their activism.

“In Zimbabwe, before the recent change in leadership, it was sometimes difficult to get into the communities,” she said. “The government feared we would influence people, so local authorities refused us entry. With the new government voicing respect for international human rights, we are hoping for change.”

The death of Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro on March 14 made the councilwoman and LGBTQ activist a global symbol. Crowds of ten thousands of protestors turned out in the streets across Brazil when it was reported her assassination was politically motivated and in retaliation for her criticism of police brutality in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. The hashtag #MarielleFrancoPresente was used 3.6 million times in 42 hours and more than 30 languages, pledging to stand together.

“Around the world, when they come for one of us, when they come for one women’s rights defender, they come for all of us,” Noelene Nabulivou, Political Adviser for DIVA for Equality, told IPS. “Whenever one is killed or harmed in the process of our work, the rest of us needs to look at what we have learned from the feminist movement which is intersectionality. They come for an LGBTQ-activist, we are all there in support. Online and offline.”

Time’s up.

MONUSCO Peacekeepers Help Launch Soccer Schools in Goma, DRC. Credit: UN Photo

By Ann-Kathrin Pohlers
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 2018 (IPS)

Ahead of the pending ‘list of shame,’ the Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflicts, child protection actors share concerns about the politicization of humanitarian aid putting child protection capacities at a disadvantage.

UNICEF described 2017 a “nightmare year” for children living in war-affected regions.

Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba stated the progress made last year was outweighed by the “extremely worrisome situation” for children exposed to escalations of violence and denials of humanitarian aid.

“States don’t want to be on the same list as terrorist groups so they’ll do anything to stay off those lists. Blackmail is the most blatant example of politicization of humanitarian aid,” Dragica Mikavica, Advocacy Officer for Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, told IPS.

Saudi Arabia was the most recent publicized example of blackmail when former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon removed the Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen from the U.N. blacklist because its supporters threatened to cut U.N. funding. Saudi Arabia denied the allegations.

To deepen Saudi Arabia’s commitment to protecting children, current Secretary-General António Guterres added the Saudi-led Coalition to the annexes again — for killing and injuring 683 children in Yemen and 38 attacks on schools and hospitals in 2016, all incidents verified by the United Nations.

Though, according to Watchlist’s recommendations for the 2018 Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict, this year’s report draws a line between parties “that have put in place measures during the reporting period aimed at improving the protection of children” and parties who haven’t.

It’s a ploy to still list but concurrently appease Saudi Arabia.

“They’re on the list but there is a list A and list B. On list A are parties that have not taken any measures to protect children and list B is for parties that have taken “positive measures.” The Saudis went straight to B because they are taking positive measures although none of us know what these measures are,” said Dragica Mikavica.

Child protection actors like Watchlist and Human Rights Watch now demand more transparent updates on the criteria for these lists. “Of course this is in the spirit of trying to be more proactive about efficiency in peacekeeping, it’s just gone under the radar that U.N. agendas have been undermined as a result.”

Mikavica presumes a much more substantial danger for agendas being eroded from below, “Member states essentially use budget negotiations to undermine agendas at the U.N.”

While some contributions are treaty-based and therefore compulsory, the United States provides 22 percent of the United Nations’ operating budget and around 28 percent for peacekeeping.

When the U.S. government pressed to cut financial assistance to member states that vote in favor of the U.N.’s calling for the U.S. to withdraw from its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, they eventually secured a $285 million cut.

The 2015 report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations previously pointed out that “too often, mandates and missions are produced on the basis of templates instead of tailored to support situation-specific political strategies, and technical and military approaches come at the expense of strengthened political efforts.”

Political agendas threaten peacekeeping’s principle of aid neutrality.

Negotiations within the United Nation’s budget committee recommended the General Assembly to adopt a $5.3 billion budget for the 2018/2019 biennium, five percent less than the budget approved for the previous biennium.

According to UNA-UK, the $5 billion budget saves member states around one billion dollars, but it’s a
reduction that small missions would not save enough. Resources of large missions need to be drastically reduced, putting particularly child protection capacities at risk, notably in the war-affected regions of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.

Last year’s budget negotiations for MINUSCA, the mandate in the Central African Republic, suggested cutting off human rights posts of which 90 were intended for child protection.

In 2016, the number of child casualties in the Congo had increased by 75 percent compared to the previous year. One of the UN’s most complex missions, the Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), will see a budget reduction of $96 million; however, the budget was reduced by much less than the United States had initially demanded.

As of August 2017, due to the lack of access to medical aid and excessive rates of malnutrition among children, over one million South Sudanese have fled to Uganda alone. The 1.0 percent budget cut to UNMISS, the U.N. Mission in South Sudan, came after a significant budget increase request and meant a fall by 10 percent to the number the U.N. projects the Mission will need.

These consequences fundamentally affect the security of children because of their unique vulnerability and exposure to exploitation and violence. “Rapidly shrinking place for the protection of children is given,” Dragica Mikavica concluded.

Oxfam estimates that 800,000 people in South Sudan have reached “emergency levels” of hunger. Credit: Ann-Kathrin Pohlers/IPS

By Ann-Kathrin Pohlers
MUNICH, Germany, May 28 2015 (IPS)

After peace talks failed earlier this month, the ongoing conflict in South Sudan between government forces and opposition forces that began at the end of 2013 is having a severe impact on the country’s food security and civilian safety.

While fighting continues, widespread burning, destruction, and looting of property have aggravated the efforts of both sides to gain control of the oilfields in the north of the country.

"South Sudan is locked in a horrible cycle of conflict and abuse and there has been absolutely no accountabillity whatsoever for any of these horrific abuses." -- Skye Wheeler, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Researcher for Sudan and South Sudan
“South Sudan is locked in a horrible cycle of conflict and abuse and there has been absolutely no accountabillity whatsoever for any of these horrific abuses,” Skye Wheeler, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Researcher for Sudan and South Sudan, based in Nairobi, told IPS.

To date, 10,000 people have been killed and two million forced to flee their homes.

Aid organisations are calling this a severe humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has decried the brutal violence against civilians and children, including the burning down of entire villages and the rapes and murders of women, and children as young as seven years old, over the past few weeks.

The states of Unity and Jonglei are the worst affected. It is unclear exactly who is responsible for the violence and destruction of property.

An estimated 13,000 children under 15 years of age have been recruited by both government and opposition forces, an act that constitutes a war crime, not only in South Sudan but also according to international law.

Another concern is the displacement of civilians and destruction of agriculture.

“People should be planting crops right now, instead they are fleeing,” Pawel Krzysiek, a staff member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, told IPS.

With the rainy season fast approaching, farming communities in Unity State need to plant their crops now to ensure decent harvests, something they cannot do due to the fighting. Many people have little choice but to depend on food aid.

According to Oxfam,  two-thirds of the population is now food insecure, with 7.8 million people in “Phases 2, 3 and 4 of food insecurity.”

The number of hungry people is projected to rise to 4.6 million by the end of July, accounting for 40 percent of the population. The rights group further estimates that 800,000 people have reached “emergency levels of hunger, facing extreme and dangerous food shortages.”

An Oxfam statement released Wednesday cautioned that this latest analysis “was undertaken before the recent escalation of the war, so it is expected that for thousands of people in South Sudan, the outlook is now even worse.”

Hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan have been cut off from food and medical supplies by fresh bouts of fighting. Credit: Ann-Kathrin Pohlers/IPS

Children have been badly hit, with malnutrition at a “critical level” in 80 percent of all counties in the Greater Upper Nile, Warrap and Northern Bahr El Ghazal states.

Dependence on food aid will only increase now with worsening displacement – gaining access to those most in need is becoming increasingly difficult, aid workers say.

“ICRC is providing food and medicine for about 120,000 people. Many of them are displaced as a result of the fighting, which is challenging our aid workers,” Krzysiek says.

More than two million people are displaced, about 500,000 of them are completely cut off from services.

Besides civilians, aid organisation now find themselves affected, with ongoing violence limiting both the options and capacity of various humanitarian groups.

According to Krzysiek, medical facilities in Unity State and Jonglei State were attacked, targeted and detroyed. Aid organisations were forced to evacuate staff to ensure security.

ICRC was forced to move its base from the city of Kodok to Oriny to the disadvantage of civilians.

“The hospital of Kodok is the only one in its region and therefore very important. People now have even more limited access to health services and food because of the country‘s insufficient infrastructure,” Jean-Yves Clemenzo, based at the ICRC headquarters in Geneva, told IPS.

Humanitarian organisations putting their operations on hold could spell disaster for the roughly 50 percent of South Sudan’s 12 million who are almost entirely dependent on the delivery of aid supplies.

UNICEF estimates it will distribute aid to meet the humanitarian needs of children alone to the tune of 165 million dollars by the end of 2015.

Human Rights Watch is very concerned about the continous deterioration of the conflict. Over the last couple of months, dozens of cases have been documented in which civilians were arrested arbitrarily, beaten up or tortured by unidentified forces.

“It looks like we are seeing a repeat of late 2013, when government forces moved through these areas burning, looting and destroying large parts of it,” Wheeler told IPS.

South Sudan became an independent state in 2011, in a moment that marked the end of a two-decade-long war for independence, which claimed 2.5 million lives. But peace was short-lived.

In December 2012 a power struggle between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his then-vice president Riek Machar escalated after Machar was accused of attempting to depose Mayardit.

War broke out once again on Dec. 15, 2013, and since then the world’s ‘newest country’ has been consumed by a tide of violence.

Back in March 2015, peace talks hosted by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa failed.

In response, the United Nations security council imposed sanctions on the country, in a resolution that threatened travel bans and asset freezes on individuals or entities “responsible for, complicit in, or engaged directly or indirectly in actions or policies threatening the peace, security or stability of South Sudan.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida