By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2019 (IPS)

Since 2010, donor funding to fight HIV/AIDS in low-and middle-income countries has dropped significantly, according to a new report released here.

The study, Communities at the Centre, released July 16 by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), points out a $1.0 billion decline in funding from 2017-2018.

This most heavily affects low-income countries in East and South African countries (except South Africa), which rely on donor funding for 80% of HIV responses.

However, seven of 14 donor governments increased their funding between 2017 and 2018 (Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden).

But funding by five countries declined (Denmark, Ireland, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S), and two were flat (the European Commission and Germany).

Jose Antonio Izazola, the UNAIDS Resource Tracking and Finances Director told IPS: “The flattening is a result of multiple factors like competition for scarce funds (migration in Europe, climate change, 17 SDGs, health systems, political preferences of donor governments, and economic situations in the donor countries.”

Jen Kates, Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health & HIV Policy at KFF agreed with Izazola.

She told IPS, “The Global Financial crisis, rising refugee and humanitarian costs, especially for donors in Europe. Donor fatigue, and decreasing attention to HIV by the media and others” were among the reasons for the decline in funding.

According to a report from HIV.org, “AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by more than 51% since the peak in 2004. In 2017, 940,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide, compared to 1.4 million in 2010 and 1.9 million in 2004.”

But Kates worries that “because of many of the successes, [there is] a false sense that HIV is no longer a problem.”

HIV is still highly prevalent globally. According to UNAIDS, there were 36.9 million people world-wide living with HIV/AIDS, as of 2017..

53% of that global population living with HIV/AIDS (around 19.6 million people), were in eastern and southern Africa, countries that rely most heavily on donor aid.

The United States as Top Donor

The report looks both at bilateral funding (provided directly to or on behalf of countries), and multilateral funding (which includes contributions to the global fund and Unitaid) for HIV/AIDS.

“Donor funds can be channeled directly from the government of one country to the recipient country (like [The President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief] PEPFAR), or be provided to an organization which pools resources from many sources, eg UNAIDS, and all UN agencies, Global Fund, Unitaid, etc. exclusively for HIV or for various purposes,” Izazola explained.

According to the report, this funding mainly comes from the United States, which remains the top donor in the fight against HIV.

The U.S. disbursed $5.8 billion last year, “and also ranks first in disbursements relative to the size of each donor’s economy.”

The United Kingdom (US$605 million), France (US$302 million), the Netherlands (US$232 million) and Germany (US$162 million) are the next largest donors, trailing the U.S. by a significant margin.

Asked why we see continued, and largely unwavering, support from the United States, Izazola said: “There is strong political will by the US government, including Congress (bipartisan support) for a program [PEPFAR] which has support from multiple constituencies and shows results (lives saved, infections averted, etc).”

He added that he sees there is still “strong leadership: technically and diplomatically,” in the U.S. government to fight HIV/AIDS.

The KFF/UNAIDS report argues that if the current trends continue, “future funding from donor governments is likely to remain stable at best, and will hinge largely on future U.S. support.”

But support from the U.S. may not be as stable as it appears.

The report states that “In the case of the U.S., Congressional appropriations in 2019 were essentially flat, and the PEPFAR funding pipeline has diminished, which could lead to decreasing bilateral disbursements over time.”

“There is also uncertainty about the U.S. pledge to the Global Fund, although the Congress has indicated its intention to increase support,” the report added.

The Need for Continued Funding

Despite the successes thus far, Izazola thinks there is still more to be done, and the resources needed are funded by donor governments.

“The additional resources are needed not only to provide for the services needed, but to change the epidemic by reducing the number of new HIV infections below the AIDS-related deaths to reach epidemic control which would lead to controlling the financing of the HIV response in the medium term,” he said.

“There is also a need to finance ways to overcome the barriers to access to services known as social enablers and services to the populations labeled as ‘key populations,'” he added.

He sees the need to increase resources for testing, treatment and prevention. But this cannot be done by local governments alone.

Kates explained that “Even if [countries] were to increase their own spending, it would be hard for them to replace what donors provide.”

There has been an increase in focus on sustainability for funding, by starting to transition from donor aid to domestic aid.

In 2014, about 50% of the resources available within a country came domestically. Today, it is 57%.

While the transition between donor funding and government funding has been a steady one, it is not yet enough to meet the demands needed to fight HIV/AIDS.

“Donor funding will continue to be critical to addressing HIV in the near and mid-term but clearly is not filling what is a growing gap between what resources are available and needed,” she said.

She added that “The challenge is that if funding falls short now, costs rise in the future.”

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 12 2019 (IPS)

Parliamentarians met in Laos last week to discuss violence against women and girls.

The meeting was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and hosted by the National Assembly of Laos.

It was a chance to push parliamentarians to continue developing programs to protect women. For the Members of Parliament (MPs) who participated, it was an opportunity to demonstrate how they are already increasing protections for women and girls who face physical and sexual violence, and to commit to doing even more for their security.

The discussions held by the APDA and participating organizations, (International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Plan International, and UN Women) focused on the specific challenges and progress made within the region.

“A majority of the countries in the region have laws in place criminalizing violence against women, including sexual violence,” Sujata Tuladhar, the Asia-Pacific Regional Gender-Based Violence Programme Specialist at the United Nations Population Fund, formally the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), told IPS.

The meeting covered topics such as ‘Where Are We Now? The Current Situation surrounding Women and Girls: Progress and Challenges in the Region,’ and ‘Gender and ICPD PoA: Empowering Women and Achieving Universal Access to Reproductive Health.’

The subjects under discussion also included the prevalence of violence and progress made in limiting that prevalence within the region.

The National Assembly hoped the meeting would give knowledge and voice to violence against women and girls. They note that “Parliamentarians play a lead role in advocacy, policy making, and monitoring in relation to the prevention of violence against women and girls and other women-related laws and policies in their countries. They can hold governments accountable for the implementation of laws and policies.”

A Cambodian Member of Parliament, Damry Ouk, told IPS the meeting was a place where Cambodia could “share with other countries about the empowerment of women [both in and outside of Cambodia].”

Ouk articulated that the particular focus for Cambodia was on “labor, education, the decision-making process (public service and political participation) and the rights-based approach that promotes choice and access to social services including institutional health deliveries.”

In Cambodia, the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of Victims (September 16, 2005), is meant to aid women who are victims of domestic violence.

It states that “Domestic violence is required to be prevented in time effectively and efficiently and that it is required to take the most appropriate measures in order to protect the victims or the persons who could be vulnerable.”

This includes sexual aggression, which involves: “Violent sex, Sexual harassment, and Indecent exposures.” A further explanation of sexual harassment or violent sex is not offered. Marital rape is not specifically referred to, though it may be included in violent sex.

According a report out of UNFPA in 2017, 33% of women in the region have experienced violence in the region of Kampong Cham, Cambodia.

The UNFPA and Cambodia have been working to combat this through the Partners for Prevention Regional Joint Programme that trains participants to share knowledge to caregivers and community members to prevent violence against women and girls.

But still, according to Tuladhar, not enough progress has been made in the Asia-Pacific region to combat violence against women and children.

“While most countries in the region prohibit domestic violence, many still do not include marital rape or violence by an unmarried intimate partner,” Tuladhar said.

She says that legislation in place to protect women in countries like Cambodia can be undermined by several factors including “limited awareness and knowledge of existing laws, barriers to reporting violence, bias, unresponsive or weak capacity among service providers (health, police, judiciary, shelter, psychosocial support providers), and legal systems and courts that are insensitive to the needs of survivors of violence.”

The UNFPA and participating countries are still working on the best way to prevent violence against women, and the meeting was only a continuation of efforts.

“The evidence base on what works to prevent different forms of violence against women is still evolving,” says Tuladhar, “UNFPA has initiated several programmes in the region to change these harmful social norms and promote healthier, happier and more equal and respectful relationships between men and women.”

She said UNFPA’s project Generation Breakthrough works with children aged 10-19 to promote healthy relationships and give children the tools to be knowledgeable about and have access to their reproductive health.

Drivers of violence against women (VAW) internationally are largely similar to those in the Asia-Pacific region.

Tuladhar sees the three main drivers as harmful social norms, toxic masculinity, and patriarchal societies, factors that most regions are not immune to.

Social norms in the Asia-Pacific region play a key role for the prevalence of violence against women in the region, and this role is changing.

The percentage of women who report experiencing physical/sexual violence from a partner varies widely across the region, being anywhere from 15% to 68%.

Tuladhar explains that “social norms that under pin and perpetuate this violence are embedded very early in life.”

She reports that the Partners for Prevention, a United Nations joint program on the prevention of violence against women, showed that “experiencing or witness violence in childhood and growing with and adopting inequitable gender norms, are among the key risk factors for men’s use of violence in adulthood.”

But Tuladhar says that the Asia-Pacific region faces even more trouble because it is so disaster prone.

“During emergencies, national systems and community and social networks weaken, increasing the risk of violence, exploitation and abuse – particularly for women and girls,” she said.

45% of the world’s natural hazards occur in the Asia-Pacific region. On top of this, the region is fraught with long-term conflicts that result in high levels of refugees.

Tuladhar says that for the Asia-Pacific region in particular, “all investments in addressing violence against women and girls need to ensure a resilience framework that makes the policies, provisions, systems and services adaptable to both humanitarian and non-humanitarian settings.”

For Cambodia, Ouk sees trafficking as a big problem still in need of being eliminated.

Ouk looks to the National Committee for Counter Trafficking in Person under the Ministry on Interior for prevention.

The goal there is “to collaborate together [with national and international non-governmental organizations] for combatting human trafficking in transparent, accountable and highly effective manner responding to the commitment of the Government to suppress trafficking in persons UNFPA remains focused on prevention and increased awareness,” she said.

The meeting in Laos was a reminder to parliamentarians across the Asia-Pacific region that despite progress, there is still a need to increase protections.

Moving forward, Tuladhar believes that action must take the form of “strengthen [ing] protection mechanisms for women and girls through improving quality and accessibility of services for violence against women survivors, while ensuring the survivor’s interest and wishes are the focus.”

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

Refugee and migrant women often face inescapable violence in the home. And the potential for intimate forms of violence is exacerbated by humanitarian crises and job insecurity.

On June 25th, UN Women released its report on the Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020: Families in a Changing World, which focuses on women in the family.

According to the report, one factor that contributes to increased violence in the home is decreased opportunities in work, especially for migrants.

The report states that in Cambodia, when “men struggled to find work, [this] was linked to increased prevalence of violence against women by intimate partners.”

Not only do migrant women face increased violence at home, they are often unable to escape this violence. Women who rely on their male counter-parts to remain in a country do not have the independence afforded to their companions.

This is “particularly dangerous when women are facing, for example, violence against them, domestic violence, in the family,” Shahra Razavi, the Chief of Research and Data at UN Women, told IPS during a press briefing on June 25.

“So, it’s very important that they have the right to stay independent of that particular relationship,” she added.

The report recommends, among others, that there should be a focus on policies and regulations which support migrant families and women’s rights within those families.

The report also points out that “states can make regulatory and policy choices that strengthen women’s bargaining power.”

This can take various forms. Women registered separately from men in their household, or granted residency independent of the men they migrate with through marriage or family ties are less likely to remain in violent relationships in order to remain in a country.

Making Progress

The report cites Indonesia’s recent policies as a step forward in protections for migrant women.

In 2017, the government of Indonesia passed legislation which states that “for the first time, guaranteed some basic rights to workers migrating through official channels,” according to the report.

The new law adds protections like social security programs, protections against trafficking and violence, and gender equality.

Of around 9 million estimated Indonesians working abroad in 2016, about half were women.

Migrant Care, an organization cooperating with UN Women, added that 10 countries (Brunei Darussalam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam) across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) added protections to migrant workers through the signing of the Consensus on the protection and Promotion of the Rights of migrant Workers (2017).

One of the principles in the consensus aims to “Uphold fair treatment with respect to gender and nationality, and protect and promote the rights of migrant workers, particularly women.”

But progress has not been seen everywhere.

Dr. Nicole Behnam, Senior Technical Director at the Violence Prevention and Response Unit of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) told IPS that “rates of gender-based violence (GBV) are shockingly high in all contexts,” but that this “increases during and because of crisis.”

According to a report on child brides from the IRC, in Lebanon, 41% of young displaced Syrian women are married before 18.

In Syrian refugee communities in Jordan, rates of child marriages nearly tripled between 2011 and 2014, going from 12% to 32%.

Scenes from Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan” Al Mafraq, Jordan, 27 March 2016, UN Archives

In Jordan, it is illegal to marry before 18, but the IRC states that “the complex process to register a marriage, and the fact that many refugees lack official identification, means that girls who can’t prove their age are even more vulnerable.”

Another concern for many countries comes with the rapid repeals of protections for women in families.

While the UN Women’s report aims at establishing policies not even seen in many developed countries, like paid parental leave, Razavi told IPS of her worries in sliding backwards.

“I think that some of the issues obviously are going to be different for the developed countries,” Razavi said.

But it appears that these differences are in scale, and not in kind.

“Many countries where some of these systems have been built up, at the moment, since 2008, in the context of austerity, these policies are being rolled back,” Razavi said.

She specified that “In particular, violence against women services have had to be cut back in some countries.”

Behnam thinks that for both developing and developed countries, there needs to be “clear acknowledgement of how serious and pervasive the problem is and a matched urgency to both preventing and responding to GBV.”

The IRC sees the need for: continued and increased participation of women’s organizations to address local issues, improving in tracking and reporting of investments for increased transparency in funding to combat GBV, and increasing the number of specialists focused on GBV.

Behnam sees these improvements as necessary for women in migrant and refugee families, but also for women in all contexts.

“Violence is pervasive in women’s lives – it’s the reality of their every day – and it is not just strangers who commit violence against women. Often, it is the people who they should be able to trust the most – their family members,” Behnam said.

She added that “We cannot ignore violence because it happens out of view; in fact, that is the violence we must fight most to name and respond to because it is so hidden.”

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The feeling in the air at a recent meeting of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was one of compassion and benevolence.

The focus was on children as Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs), a subject that everyone at the panel discussion argued is delicate and politically sensitive.

Alexandra Martins, the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer at the UNODC, pointed out that “”Nobody is a lost cause, and there is always a possibility to rehabilitate and reintegrate children from these groups.”

Two of her words were repeated by almost every speaker: “rehabilitate and reintegrate”.

The meeting was meant to discuss the release of the UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups.

The roadmap’s main goal is to provide UN’s 193 Member States with guidance on how to treat children associated with terrorist and violent extremist groups. It argues for an approach to rehabilitate those associated with or accused of being FTFs, and to reintegrate them back into their communities.

Though many of the children accused have taken part in terrorism, the UNODC advocates for a change in the way Member States handle the children.

Speaking during the release of the handbook, Dr. Jehangir Khan, Director at the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism/Counter Terrorism Centre (UN OCT/CCT), said “children must be seen first and foremost as victims.”

The roadmap was released alongside 4 technical assistance tools: UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups: The Role of the Justice System (2018); the UNODC Training Manual on Prevention of Child Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (May 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Child Victims of Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (to be released in July 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Justice for Children in the Context of Counter-Terrorism (May 2019).

The documents are based on three years of technical assistance work conducted by the UNODC to Member States that have found children as FTFs.

One country already advocating its support for the Roadmap is Lebanon. Until 2013, children accused of being or associated with terrorist fighters were kept in adult prisons and tried as such.

“It is in prison that I learned the meaning of life” one of the boys, aged 19, remarked in a video played by the representative from Lebanon stated.

A step in the direction of treating children as victims came in 2013, when they were moved to a juvenile prison.

Lebanon’s Head of the Prison Administration at the Ministry of Justice of Lebanon, Judge Raja AbiNader, said: “By showing them the same respect we showed the rest of the children, things started to change.”

Martins told IPS that there are many such countries, like Lebanon, whose children and communities have already benefited from the guidance offered in the Roadmap.

“As a result of the protocol, children deprived of liberty for association with Boko Haram were released and transferred to child protection authorities to begin a process of reintegration in their communities,” she said.

Martins stated that more than 30 countries have received guidance on child FTFs from the UNODC’s, from 6 different regions (West Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia).

Despite the Roadmap offering guidance, at the panel discussion, Martins clarified that “there is no one size fits all approach” on handling children.

There have been different approaches offered on handling the children in general, and specifically when dealing with different genders.

There will be a second event during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September that Martins hopes will “promote the guidance further.”

Gender and the Roadmap

But there appears to be some disagreement still on the treatment of boys and girls during the rehabilitation and reintegration processes.

Under international law (Havana Rule 87.d., Bangkok Rules), boys and girls must be held in separate detention facilities. But the Roadmap encourages them to still engage together, to foster development.

The Roadmap also advocates for targeted approaches on the treatment of girls.

Martins told IPS that girls are “considerably more vulnerable to both physical and sexual abuse and require special attention in this regard.”

She noted that “girls deprived of liberty are exposed to other forms of sexual violence such as threats of rape, touching, ‘virginity testing’, being stripped naked, invasive body searches, insults and humiliations of a sexual nature.”

Given these sensitive issues, and the fact that girls are different physiologically and often psychologically from boys at certain development stages, the Roadmap advocates for an awareness of gender and for specific targeted approaches.

“A section in the manual alludes that girl victims of recruitment and exploitation by terrorist and violent extremist groups require specific approaches to reintegration, because of their increased exposure to violence at multiple levels and from different actors,” Martins said.

But it is not clear yet that this section on gender differences has been implemented.

While Martins says the Roadmap takes seriously the different approaches for girls and boys, Judge AbiNader told IPS that in Lebanon “Very honestly, we’re not working specifically with girls concerning rehabilitation.”

As of June 7th, Lebanon has 10 boys and 2 girls in prison for being associated with or accused of being FTFs.

When asked why there were not specific programs that tackle children of divergent genders differently, he argued that they girls “should be treated the same” during rehabilitation.

“And it hasn’t been discussed because the number [of girls in prison for accusations of being FTFs] is so low,” he added.

Despite the low numbers of accused girls in detention facilities, Martins believes that targeted women’s health education should be provided, and that “Access to age- and gender-specific programmes and services, such as counselling for sexual abuse or violence, has to be given to girls.”

Though the UNODC has advocated a change in outlook on children involved with terrorist organizations, the Roadmap’s release is just the beginning of that change being implemented.

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21 2019 (IPS)

A recently-released report by the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD) shows that generic drugs, like omeprazole (used to treat heartburn), can cost 20-30 times more in low and middle-income countries than in high-income countries.

Rachel Silverman, a researcher with CGD who worked on the report, told IPS that “There is a lack of competition at the country level, even for basic, off-patent generic medicines. One firm can sometimes control 85% or more of the market share for specific drugs or therapy classes in some countries.”

The report also points out that low- and middle-income countries purchase more expensive branded medicine. Often, these unbranded drugs are not as trusted to be real.

There are laws to regulate unbranded medicine and ensure its quality, but Janeen Madan-Keller, a researcher at CGD, alongside Silverman, told IPS that it’s more an issue of a lack in enforcement.

“There are typically laws on the book about the quality of medicines…but regulatory agencies in many countries are ill-equipped and under-resourced to effectively enforce quality standards,” said Madan-Keller.

Silverman points to the private sector and calls upon them to ensure quality control. “Pharmaceutical companies have an ethical responsibility to ensure that their products are safe and effective,” said Silverman.

But for Silverman, the problem is bigger than the private sector alone can handle.

“Health product markets are extremely susceptible to market failure—from asymmetric information, barriers to entry, and forms of anticompetitive behavior, among other issues,” Silverman said.

Silverman and Madan-Keller think the solution lies in a combination of an expansion of programs already in place and the introduction of resources from institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) already aims to counteract some of the problems addressed in the report through the Collaborative Registration Procedure (CRP).

According to the WHO, the measure aims to accelerate the registration of finished pharmaceutical products (FPPs) thus “ensur[ing] that much-needed medicines reach patients more quickly.”

But the CGD report sees this program as only being a step in the right direction. The report explicitly calls for a “reform [of] WHO guidance and policy to support modern and agile procurement policy and practice.”

Silverman believes that an expansion of the CRP by the WHO would be “a global fix to the problem of burdensome country-by-country registration processes that impede market entry and competition.”

Asked for a comment, Fadela Chaib, of WHO told IPS, “We have not seen the report so we cannot comment at this stage.”

Financing of Health Products

The report also analyzed the different forms of funding for health products across countries. The three forms considered in the report are donor financing, the private sector, and government funding.

Donor financing takes first place in the level of funding for health products provided in low-income countries.

But donor financing contains both good and bad elements. It has been beneficial in providing a reduction in cases of HIV and malaria, but the large-scale politics behind donor financing has had some ill-effects.

“In countries like the US and UK, domestic politics drives a lot of uncertainty about the level of aid year-to-year,” says Silverman.

She worries that this uncertainty “trickles down to the recipients of donor-based medicine, limiting their capacity for accurate medium- to long-term planning.”

Silverman points to the concentration of purchasing power in only a few hands as another potential problem of donor financing.

It can lead to a lack in access to necessary supplies that can have detrimental effects, sometimes leading to deliver delays of life-saving medicines.

This is a potential shortcoming of a method called pooled purchasing, which combines several small buyers into one larger entity (giving it more power) which then purchases things, like medicines, on behalf of those small buyers.

But the researchers at Toulouse School of Economics and CGD think that, when done well, pooled purchasing can be beneficial because it drives down costs.

With small buyers making small purchases, Silverman says “This can introduce large transaction costs, that are typically passed down to the consumers; it also reduces purchaser negotiating power to secure better prices.”

The report argues that at a national level, pooled purchasing would be able to reduce drug prices by up to 50 – 75 percent because small buyers can have more purchasing power, which in turn drives down the prices of health products.

While in low-income countries, donor financing accounts for half of procured health products, in higher income countries, there is a stronger reliance on government procured products.

The transition between donor financing and government procured health products can be rocky, with middle-income countries often seeing limited financing from donors or the government.

Silverman says that in these countries, “Most families turn to the private sector where the quality of medicines can be unreliable and prices can be very high—and they often pay out of pocket.”

In low-middle-income countries, the private sector procures around 80% of all health products.

“This is sometimes called the “missing middle” problem; countries are “too wealthy” to receive substantial donor resources, but they have not yet built robust universal health coverage systems to provide health services and financial risk protection to their citizens,” Silverman says.

The transitions countries go through levels of funding that could be smoothed over if donor financing was not cut off as soon as a country has enough income. The researchers as CGD believe that there should be continued support for low-middle-income countries, even after government funding increases.

Finding this balance of funding during transition periods and the expansion of protections for those in need of life-saving medicines is now left open to the global health community, and to UN agencies like the WHO.

Traditional indigenous attire of a Mayan woman from the Quiche region of Guatemala. Credit: UN Photo/John Olsson

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 2019 (IPS)

Rural and indigenous populations in countries like Guatemala and Honduras are increasingly on the move – either migrating internally or to neighbouring countries.

But the focus on these populations has been limited, leaving them forgotten and marginalized as they continue to be disproportionately affected by climate change.

The disappearance of farmlands and unreliability of crops due to climate change have led families to experience increased food and economic insecurity—that have forced some of them to migrate.

“In general, we can say that the majority of rural migrants are poor people, but often not the poorest, because the latter cannot afford the significant costs of these journeys,” Ricardo Rapallo, Senior Food Security Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told IPS.

According to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), between 2000 and 2010, the number of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras increased by an average of 59% and the number of illegal immigrants apprehended by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) increased from 50,000 during 2010 to over 400,000 in 2016.

Elizabeth Kennedy, a researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW) based in Honduras, told IPS, “When we talk about climate change, we have to think about historical and social factors that leave certain groups more impacted than others…many of the people who farm and fish on the lands most vulnerable to climate change have been historically mistreated.”

“Realizing that those most impacted are indigenous is critical, because it hasn’t been part of the main stream conversation, and it needs to be,” Kennedy added.

The United Nations does not label those forced to migrate due to climate change as ‘climate refugees.’

A change in language would require an agreement among member-states altering the definition of refugees (currently defined as: “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence”.

And a refugee also has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

However, Kennedy emphasized that “Indigeneity is a protected factor, and that is a reason to claim asylum.” But she warns that in the case of migration from Central America, “many people around the US, including lawyers are not aware that they need to be looking at historic and systemic inclusion.”

She added that this is true “even in Guatemala and Honduras. This is in fact demonstrative that the state doesn’t take it seriously.”

Researchers, like Kennedy, are frustrated as they see little data and few programs that help indigenous and rural people which also take into account the fraught history that indigenous people have in Central America, a place where a number of massacres occurred in 1996 and many are still recovering from the violence.

Kennedy said there are six indigenous groups in Honduras and over 30 in Guatemala, but she expressed her desire to see “updated statistics on the various indigenous groups.”

Many climate migrants are also left out of the public eye because they only migrate within their own country.

“It is important to stress that, even if the international migration is the one gathering public attention, and motivating political reactions, internal migration is by far larger,” said Rapallo..

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has estimated external migration in 2015 at around 244 million people, while internal migration (as of 2009) was estimated at 740 million people.

For many who experience food insecurities, families will send one member to another country to provide for the family from afar, but the rest of the family will remain in their home country.

The FAO says “what has been observed is that young people represent a major part of the international migrants.”

Alongside the increase of internal migration and external migration among youth, Kennedy also sees an increase in family units migrating away from Guatemala and Honduras in recent years, which, she says, “shows that more is happening than needing to just provide economic stability to the home.”

Rapallo said: “If we want to give people options and make an impact on migration movements, we should work on the root causes of migration.”

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has taken a specific policy initiative to protect climate migrants: the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD).

UNHCR representatives told IPS that the PDD “…promotes policy and normative developments to address gaps in the protection of people at risk of displacement or already displaced across borders in the context of climate change and disaster.”

UNHCR says that member-states and stake-holders will have an opportunity to “…deliver concrete pledges and contributions that will advance the objectives of the Global Compact and highlight key achievements and good practices” at the Global Refugee Forum on the 17 and 18 of December 2019.

But, thus far, it remains unclear to what extent the PDD has had an effect on the admittance or protections of climate migrants.

The 2019 Climate Action Summit will take place this September during the UN General Assembly sessions.

Luis Alfonso de Alba, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the summit responded to a question from IPS about the potential need to update language surrounding climate migrants.

At a press briefing on May 28th, he said: “This is not a meeting for negotiations… So I think the topic of language will continue to rather be an issue for member states.”

“We are obviously taking into account the impact of climate change into migration as a topic,” he added, but said “We are not negotiating language.”

Though de Alba assured IPS that indigenous populations will be involved in the summit, rural and indigenous populations migrating internally and externally in Central America are still largely over-looked.

Kennedy worries that not enough is being done. “They need targeted programs, they need targeted statistics, and these are not provided,” she said.

Rapallo said: “The right to migrate also involves the right not to migrate. Migration should be an option, but not the only option to pursue a better life, or sometimes even to survive.”

A group of activists calling themselves the Embassy Protection Collective protested against the U.S. and opposition party leader Juan Guide's representatives taking over the Venezuelan embassy. Credit: Backbone Campaign/ (CC BY 2.0)

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2019 (IPS)

Venezuelans in the city of Washington D.C., in the United States, are currently without consular protection as access to their country’s embassy has remained unstable since April.

“I went to get my passport…and then of course April 2019 is when it expired. And that limits me because you know my parents are at an age that anything could happen,” Luis*, a 35-year-old Venezuelan living in the U.S., told IPS. He asked not to be identified by his real name as he still has family living in Caracas and is concerned for their safety.

While the situation regarding the embassy remains uncertain, Venezuela still has other consulates in the country, but IPS was unable to reach them.

Where do Venezuelans in need of assistance go to?

Luis’s inability to renew his passport through the embassy comes amid a continued power-struggle at the embassy. Protestors had occupied the Washington embassy two weeks prior to the revocation of visas for representatives in the embassy on Apr. 24 by the Trump Administration.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro won re-election in May 2018, but the U.S. and other nations, including Canada, recognised the leader of the opposition party Juan Guaidó as president in January.

The U.S. revoked the visas of Maduro’s representatives at the embassy and helped establish Carlos Vecchio, a representative of Guaidó.

Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Code Pink, a NGO that describes itself on its website as “a women-led grassroots organisation working to end U.S. wars and militarism”, which participated in protesting, along with other activists, against the U.S. and Guadio’s representatives taking over the Venezuelan embassy in May. She told IPS: “It is such a critical international convention on diplomatic relations, one that has global implications.”

“If you’re a Venezuelan in need of assistance, where are you going to go? You need representation.”

Luis moved to the U.S. at 17 and eventually naturalised. He now has dual citizenship, but according to the U.S. Department of State – Consulate Affairs, if a person is a dual national, they must still have a valid Venezuelan passport in their possession to enter and leave Venezuela.

In the almost two decades that he has been in the U.S., Luis said he “never encountered any issues”, having at least three passports during that time.

But now, should Luis wish to travel to Venezuela he would have to travel out of state, or possibly to the Venezuelan embassy in Canada, to renew his passport. It’s a trip that he said is too expensive and time consuming.

There are some consulates still open in the U.S., including the one in New York. But Luis said he believed the New York consulate has already been taken over by representatives of the Venezuelan opposition.

“I do not recognise the opposition’s president. I wouldn’t go and get my paperwork with an institution that I don’t recognise,” he said.

Luis told IPS that he is part of the local Venezuelan community and has many Venezuelan friends, but that he thinks many of them are not as concerned as he is about the embassy.

“I’m a minority, because the largest amount of Venezuelan people are people from middle and upper class that have the means to travel,” Luis said, referring to the ability to travel out of state to other consulates or out of country to other embassies to renew their passports.

“It’s a class-struggle and also an ideological struggle,” he added.

IPS tried to reach out to the embassy for a statement from Guaidó’s representatives, but the phone lines were cut, and there is no other contact information listed on their website.

Safety of Embassies

Protestors fighting against the U.S. intervention in Venezuela had kept a small group of four protestors inside the Washington embassy, starting about two weeks prior to the visa revocation on Apr. 24 until May 16 when police in Washington used a battering ram to enter the building. 

Adrienne Pine, an associate professor of anthropology at American University, was one of the final four protestors occupying the embassy. Other protestors had left after an eviction notice was posted by U.S. police on May 13. She was arrested on May 16, and released the following day after a court appearance. She is neither a member of Code Pink nor a Venezuelan.

When asked why she remained in the embassy until her arrest, Pine told IPS: “I am a United States citizen, and I feel passionate about our government not engaging in regime change operations and not acting as an imperial actor around the world.”

On May 15, the permanent representative to Venezuela, Samuel Moncada, stated to the United Nations that the U.S. actions in attempting to occupy the embassy was a “pretext of war”.

He called for the U.S. to respect international law and warned of a violation of respect for diplomats worldwide.

In response to Moncada, spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, Stéphane Dujarric, stated in a U.N. press briefing on May 16: “We hope that the situation is resolved peacefully, bilaterally between the United States and Venezuela.”

The U.S. is legally allowed to recognise Guaidó, but under international law in Article 45 of the Vienna Convention, the violation of diplomatic offices of other governments is not allowed.

Pine warned of the U.S. police occupation of the embassy, “What it basically signals is that no embassy around the world is safe.”

Dozens of nations, including the U.S. and many of its western allies, recognise Guaidó as president of the Latin American nation. The U.N., however, continues to recognise Maduro as president. 

Though the U.N. has not agreed with the actions of the U.S., Benjamin believes the response from the U.N. and the international community has been too limited. She explained that this is “absolutely because of the United States. In any other country, I think the U.N. would have stepped in.”

Luis, who has family on both sides of the political aisle, is in support of the on-going international dialogue. He told IPS: “The ones who are left to pay are us, you know, the ones who want to have peace.”

“I just want my family to have a normal life,” he added.

*Not his real name.