Unsplash Fort of Goree Island, Senegal, was the site of one of the earliest European settlements in Western Africa. Source UN News
The calls for reparatory justice can no longer be ignored, speakers at the fourth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on African Descent said last April.
They urged greater collaboration between governments, civil society and regional organizations to create a system that would compensate Africa and the African diaspora for the enduring legacies of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid and genocide between the 16th and 19th centuries. “Africa was under siege,” said Hilary Brown, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) about the 300 years of enslavement and exploitation on the continent. “Her political, economic and social systems thrown into chaotic instability as Europe plundered the continent for her most valuable asset, her people.”

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Mar 13 2026 (IPS)

Professor Jude Osakwe—a Nigerian scholar at the Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST) and Continental Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation Africa (NIDOAF)—has reiterated the absolute truth over Reparations for Africa, noting that African governments have consistently expressed only ’emotional solidarity’ over Reparations instead of tackling and addressing, with seriousness, this pertinent issue within the context of diplomacy.

He strongly believes that despite sharp political and cultural diversity influencing developments, African leaders can still adopt a collective strategy in pursuit of advantageous aspirations for sustaining continental sovereignty. The concept of Pan-Africanism is noticeably fragmented while grassroot movements lack strategic coordination.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

How well do African people represent the continent on Reparations and Pan-Africanism?

Professor Jude Osakwe: Honestly, inadequately, but not without effort. Representation is fragmented. The loudest voices on reparations often come from the Caribbean and African-American communities, while continental Africans, remain largely sidelined in that global conversation.

Pan-Africanism as an ideology is more spoken about than practiced. There is emotional solidarity, but very little structural unity. The honest reality is that African governments have not made reparations a serious diplomatic priority, and grassroots movements lack the coordination to pressure them to do so.

Does the diaspora media landscape affect how these topics are viewed in a Western light?

Professor Osakwe: Absolutely.

Western media frames Pan-Africanism as either nostalgic romanticism or a political threat, and frames reparations as a Black American issue, effectively erasing the continental African dimension entirely. As an African in the diaspora, you are constantly navigating between your own lived framework and a media environment that either misrepresents or ignores your perspective.

This creates a psychological burden, you must actively resist the dominant narrative just to maintain an accurate self-understanding. African diaspora media exists, but it remains underfunded and underreached compared to mainstream outlets, which means the Western framing dominates public discourse by default.

What are the measures for upholding African identity in the diaspora, and diaspora contributions amid geopolitical shifts?

Professor Osakwe: Key measures:

• Intentional cultural transmission, language, history, and values must be actively taught, not assumed
• Building diaspora institutions that are African-led, not just African-themed
• Political engagement both in host countries and in countries of origin
• Economic networking through platforms like NIDO that connect diaspora professionals to continental development

On geopolitical contributions: The current moment, with Africa renegotiating relationships with Western powers, China, Russia, and Gulf states, is actually an opportunity for the diaspora. Diaspora Africans sitting inside Western governments, universities, and financial institutions carry real leverage.

The question is whether that leverage gets used collectively or dissipates individually. Remittances already outpace foreign aid to many African countries. What’s needed now is moving beyond remittances to strategic investment, policy advocacy, and knowledge transfer, turning the diaspora from a financial lifeline into a genuine development partner.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Feb 24 2026 (IPS)

Despite consistent criticisms over its operations down the years, Russia still finds it difficult to leave the World Trade Organization (WTO), and instead assessing the opportunities and broad benefits of membership. WTO is not just an organization, but a multilateral bridge for strategic trade engagement and securing results-oriented partnerships. Certainly, unlocking and accelerating trade initiatives should be the key focus in the changing world.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk underscored the importance of the work of the WTO, which regulates global trade, further suggested optimizing its operations. Some experts believe the WTO has effectively been paralyzed due to conditions created by the current geopolitical shifts from United States power dominance and its tariffs policy, to the emerging multipolar architecture.

In his view, this reason is driving the current changes as well as “the desire of specific countries, business groups, and companies to establish control, including over deposits of critical minerals, and new transport and logistics routes that ensure the delivery of resources and goods necessary for the functioning of economies.”

“Because whoever succeeds in doing this will secure a leadership position in the world with a new socio-economic order, and, consequently, will create better conditions for the emergence of new enterprises, new jobs, new sources of income for individuals and legal entities, new sources of budget revenue, and, ultimately, of course, a better standard of living for their own population,” Overchuk said, at the forum “Architecture of the Future: Russian Business in Key Multilateral Platforms.”

In his opinion, sanctions, tariff and non-tariff restrictions are playing an increasingly important role in international economic relations, and Western countries are using instruments of unfair competition. Experts believe that Russia has not received substantial economic benefits from its WTO membership.

Now, the world is moving away from globalization altogether, with many countries introducing ever more restrictive measures based solely on their own interests, disregarding international rules.

Experts agree that the WTO crisis is part of a broader process of transformation of the global economy. In a mid-February Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Pavel Seleznev, faculty dean at the Russian Financial University, pointed to the “erosion of international law” and the transition to a model based on “might makes right” and bilateral agreements. According to him, the world is shifting away from multilateral mechanisms toward agreements concluded outside the framework of international institutions.

Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Customs Policy Council Chairman, Georgy Petrov, however described what is happening as a “phase change”: classical globalization is giving way to regionalization, where trade flows and rules are concentrated within macro-regions and political decisions become the basis of economic policy, rather than the other way around.

In practice, this manifests as a sharp increase in restrictive measures. Dmitry Krasnov, managing director of the Rexoft Consulting Competence Center in Agriculture, also noted that participants in international trade are increasingly introducing unilateral steps that contradict established multilateral rules.

Meanwhile, the assessment of Russia’s WTO membership remains mixed. According to Krasnov, the organization provided “leverage for predictability”: multilateral commitments on tariff and non-tariff policies created a clear framework for the state and businesses, reduced arbitrary barriers, and provided opportunities for arbitration.

Petrov recalled that “the main tariff positions were fixed,” and entrepreneurs understood the limits of rate changes. This made customs and tariff policy more stable.

The reduction in tariffs provided for in the accession terms also had a dual effect. In Russia, some industries faced increased competition due to reduced protectionism upon accession to the WTO. According to Petrov, many manufacturers felt the need to produce higher-quality, more competitive products, which was a positive development.

Pavel Seleznev, faculty dean at the Russian Financial University, on the other hand, believes that Russia has not gained any significant economic benefits from its membership. However, even in the current situation, maintaining its membership status allows Russia to continue engaging in dialogue and expressing its views, even with unfriendly countries.

Russia remains the member of the WTO and views its norms as fair and useful but the issue of keeping membership in conditions of sanctions pressure is not a simple one, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, on February 11, in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.

Moscow believes it is necessary to revive the WTO as the sole recognized regulator of multilateral trade. “The issue is difficult and is under control with us and with the economic bloc of the government,” Lavrov said. “The WTO is experiencing crisis at present, just as the Bretton-Woods System on the whole,” he noted.

WTO principles and norms “are clearly established in agreements governing our trade relations with the overwhelming majority of countries of the world, including the global majority countries accounting for more than 70% of the Russian trade turnover,” the top Russian diplomat said. “One more circumstance that cannot be ignored is that the entire legal system of the Eurasian Economic Union rests on these WTO norms,” he noted.

The G20 Summit held on November 22-23 in Johannesburg, at the initiative of South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, the joint declaration which was adopted, called for major reforms and stabilization of the global economy in 2026. “We recognize that meaningful, necessary and comprehensive reform of the WTO is essential to improve its functions so that it is better suited to advance all Members’ objectives,” the declaration read.

At the same time, G20 leaders emphasized its importance as an instrument for resolving trade disputes between countries. “We will strive to ensure that the benefits of trade reach all segments of society and that all people have the opportunity to benefit from trade,” the document reads.

In summary, the collective declaration advocated also for the swift implementation of the agreements reached within G20 to strengthen the role of countries from the Global South and East in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), taking into account their real weight in global economy. It is also important to revive the WTO as the sole recognized regulator of multilateral trade.

Russia joined the WTO in April 2011 after almost 18 years of persistent struggle and several negotiations, and adopting consistent efforts to meet the stringent membership requirements. It is the only international body now supervising world trade.

WTO has 153 members, and negotiations on the admission of a new member are held within a working group that unites countries that have unsettled trade problems with the candidate. It was established on January 1, 1995, as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that had been operating since 1947.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana addressing the UN General Assembly last September. Credit: UN Photo

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Jan 8 2026 (IPS)

Squeezed between import substitution and dependency syndrome, a condition characterized by a set of associated economic symptoms—that is rules and regulations—majority of African countries are shifting from United States and Europe to an incoherent alternative bilateral partnerships with Russia, China and the Global South.

By forging new partnerships, for instance with Russia, these African countries rather create conspicuous economic dependency at the expense of strengthening their own local production, attainable by supporting local farmers under state budget. Import-centric partnership ties and lack of diversification make these African countries committed to import-dependent structures. It invariably compounds domestic production challenges. Needless to say that Africa has huge arable land and human resources to ensure food security.

A classical example that readily comes to mind is Ghana, and other West African countries. With rapidly accelerating economic policy, Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama ordered the suspension of U.S. chicken and agricultural products, reaffirming swift measures for transforming local agriculture considered as grounds for ensuring sustainable food security and economic growth and, simultaneously, for driving job creation.

President Mahama, in early December 2025, while observing Agricultural Day, urged Ghanaians to take up farming, highlighting the guarantee and state support needed for affordable credit and modern tools to boost food security. According to Mahama, Ghana spends $3bn yearly on basic food imports from abroad.

The government decision highlights the importance of leveraging unto local agriculture technology and innovation. Creating opportunities to unlock the full potential of depending on available resources within the new transformative policy strategy which aims at boosting local productivity. President Mahama’s special initiatives are the 24-Hour Economy and the Big Push Agenda. One of the pillars focuses on Grow 24 – modernising agriculture.

Despite remarkable commendations for new set of economic recovery, Ghana’s demand for agricultural products is still high, and this time making a smooth shift to Russia whose poultry meat and wheat currently became the main driver of exports to African countries. And Ghana, noticeably, accepts large quantity (tonnes) of poultry from Russia’s Rostov region into the country, according to several media reports. The supplies include grains, but also vegetable oils, meat and dairy products, fish and finished food products have significant potential for Africa.

The Agriculture Ministry’s Agroexport Department acknowledges Russia exports chicken to Ghana, with Ghanaian importers sourcing Russian poultry products, especially frozen cuts, to meet significant local demand that far outstrips domestic production, even after Ghana lifted a temporary 2020 avian flu-related ban on Russian poultry.

Moreover, monitoring and basic research indicated Russian producers are actively increasing poultry exports to various African countries, thus boosting trade, although Ghana still struggles to balance imports with local industry needs.

A few details indicate the following:

* Trade Resumed: Ghana has lifted its ban on Russian poultry imports since April 2021, allowing poultry trade to resume. Russian regions hve, thus far, consistently exported these poultry meat and products into the country under regulatory but flexible import rules on a negotiated bilateral agreement.

* Significant Market: In any case, Ghana is a key African market for Russian poultry, with exports seeing substantial growth in recent years, alongside Angola, Benin, Cote d’Voire, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

* Demand-Driven: Ghana’s large gap between domestic poultry production and national demand necessitates significant imports, creating opportunities for foreign suppliers like Russia.

* Major Exporters: Russia poultry companies are focused on increasing generally their African exports, with Ghana being a major destination. The basic question: to remain as import dependency or strive at attaining food sufficiency?

* Product Focus: Exports typically include frozen chicken cuts (legs and meat) very vital for supplementing local supply. But as the geopolitical dynamics shift, Ghana and other importing African countries have to review partnerships, particularly with Russia.

Despite the fact that challenges persist, Russia strongly remains as a notable supplier to Ghana, even under the supervision of John Mahama’s administration, dealing as a friendly ally, both have the vision for multipolar trade architecture, ultimately fulfilling a critical role in meeting majority of African countries’ large consumer demand for poultry products, and with Russia’s trade actively expanding and Ghana’s preparedness to spend on such imports from the state budget.

Following two high-profile Russia–Africa summits, cooperation in the area of food security emerged as a key theme. Moscow pledged to boost agricultural exports to the continent—especially grain, poultry, and fertilisers—while African leaders welcomed the prospect of improved food supplies.

Nevertheless, do these African governments think of prioritising agricultural self-sufficiency. At a May 2025 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia’s Economic Development Minister, Maxim Reshetnikov, underlined the fact that more than 40 Russian companies were keen to export animal products and agricultural goods to the African region.

Russia, eager to expand its economic footprint, sees large-scale agricultural exports as a key revenue generator. Estimates suggest the Russian government could earn over $15 billion annually from these agricultural exports to African continent.

Head of the Agroexport Federal Center, Ilya Ilyushin, speaking at the round table “Russia-Africa: A Strategic Partnership in Agriculture to Ensure Food Security,” which was held as part of the international conference on ensuring the food sovereignty of African countries in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) on Nov. 21, 2025, said: “We see significant potential in expanding supplies of Russian agricultural products to Africa.”

It mentioned that the Agriculture Ministry’s Agroexport Department, and the Union of Grain Exporters and Producers, exported over 32,000 tonnes of wheat and barley to Egypt totaling nearly $8 million during the first half of 2025, Kenya totaling over $119 million.

Interfax media reports referred to African countries whose markets are of interest for Russian producers and exporters. Despite existing difficulties, supplies of livestock products are also growing, this includes poultry meat, Ilyushin said. Exports of agricultural products from Russia to African countries have more than doubled, and third quarter of 2025 reached almost $7 billion.

The key buyers of Russian grain on the continent are Egypt, Algeria, Kenya, Libya, Tunisia, Nigeria, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania and Sudan, he said. According to him, Russia needs to expand the geography of supplies, increasing exports to other regions of the continent, increase supplies in West Africa to Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia and the French-speaking Sahelian States.

Of course, Russian exporters have nothing to complain. Africa’s dependency dilemma still persists. Therefore, Russia to continue expanding food exports to Africa explicitly reflects a calculated economic and geopolitical strategy. In the end of the analysis, the debate plays out prominently and also the primary message: Africa cannot afford to sacrifice food sovereignty for geopolitical solidarity.

With the above analysis, Russian exporters show readiness to explore and shape actionable strategies for harnessing Africa’s consumer market, including that of Ghana, and further to strengthen economic and trade cooperation and support its dynamic vision for sustainable development in the context of multipolar friendship and solidarity.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Jan 16 2025 (IPS)

With heightening geopolitical interest in building a new Global South architecture, Ghana’s administration is considering joining the ‘partner states category’ of BRICS+, an association of five major emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

The National Democratic Party (NDC) and the elected President John Mahama, while crafting future pathways and renewing commitments over democracy and governance, designing a new economic recovery programme as top priority, could initiate discussions to put Ghana on higher stage by ascending into the BRICS+ platform.

Certainly, ascending unto BRICS+ platform would become a historical landmark for Ghana which has attained prestigious status in multilateral institutions and organizations such as the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), the African Union (AU), the United Nations and also, from Jan. 2025, the head of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Unlike South Africa, which has acquired a full-fledged membership status in 2011, and Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda were taken into the ‘partner states’ category, Ghana has all the fundamental requirements to become part of BRICS+ alliance.

It is necessary to understand the basic definition and meaning of BRICS+ in the context of the geopolitical changing world. The BRICS alliance operates on the basis of non-interference. As an anti-Western association, it stays open to mutual cooperation from countries with ‘like-minded’ political philosophy.

BRICS members have the freedom to engage their bilateral relations any external country of their choice. In addition to that, BRICS+ strategic partnership has explicitly showed that it is not a confrontation association, but rather that of cooperation designed to address global challenges, and is based on respect for the right of each country to determine its own future.

South Africa and other African countries associated with BRICS+

South Africa is strongly committed to its engagement in the BRICS+. It has, so far, hosted two of its summits. In future, Egypt and Ethiopia would have the chance to host BRICS+ summit. Egypt and Ethiopia have excellent relations with members, and simultaneously transact business and trade with other non-BRICS+, external countries.

The New Development Bank (BRICS) was established in 2015, has financed more than 100 projects, with total loans reaching approximately $35 billion, and it is great that the branch of this bank operates from Johannesburg in South Africa. Understandably, South Africa can be an investment gateway to the rest of Africa. In 2021, Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay joined the NDB.

The BRICS bank works independently without any political strings, and has further pledged financial support for development initiatives in non-BRICS+ countries in the Global South. Its tasks include investing in the economy through concessional loans, alleviating poverty and working towards sustainable economic growth.

According to President of the BRICS New Development Bank, Dilma Rousseff, “The bank should play a major role in the development of a multipolar, polycentric world.”

Ethiopia and Egypt are the latest addition to BRICS+ association from January 2024. South Africa and Egypt being the economic power houses, while Ethiopia ranks 8th position in the continent. In terms of demography, Nigeria is the populous, with an estimated 220 million people while Uganda has a population of 46 million.

South Africa, Ethiopia and Egypt are full members, Algeria, Nigeria and Uganda were offered ‘partner states’ category, but have the chance to pursue multi-dimensional cooperation with external countries. BRICS+ has absolutely no restrictions with whom to strike bilateral relationship.

From the above premise, Ghana’s new administration, within the framework of BRICS+, could work out a strategic plan to establish full coordination with and request support from African members, including South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia. Worth noting that membership benefits cannot be underestimated in this era of shifting economic architecture and geopolitical situation.

Queuing for BRICS+ Membership

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger which historically share the cross-border region of West Africa, are in the queue to ascend into the BRICS+ association. The trio formed their own regional economic and defense pact, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Sept. 2023, and aspiring for leveraging unto BRICS+, most likely to address their development and security questions.

Brazil, as BRICS 2025 chairmanship, has set its priority on expansion of BRICS+, the enlargement wave began by Russia. More than 30 countries are the line join, hoping for equitable participation in bloc’s unique activities uniting the Global South.

Perhaps, the most crucial moment for Ghana which shares border with Burkina Faso. Its military leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré was heartily applauded for attending the inauguration of the new President John Dramani Mahama on January 7th.

Burkina Faso, without International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, is transforming its agricultural sector to ensure food security, building educational and health facilities and sports complex which turns a new chapter in its political history.

In early January 2025, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) took over political power from the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Historically, the political transition has been quite smooth and admirable down the years. Ghana was ranked seventh in Africa out of 53 countries in the Ibrahim Index of African Governance.

The Ibrahim Index is a comprehensive measure of African governments, and methods of power transfer based on constitutional principles, rules and regulations.

Ghana produces high-quality cocoa. It has huge mineral deposits including gold, diamonds and bauxites. it has approx. 10 billion barrels of petroleum in reserves, the fifth-largest in Africa. President John Dramani Mahama, has reiterated to unlock the potentials, creating a resilient and inclusive economic model that would empower citizens and ultimately attracts foreign investments.

Ghana reduced the size of government, a required condition to secure funds from the IMF for development and resuscitating the economy. Ghana’s involvement in BRICS+ will steadily enhance the dynamics of its traditional governance in multipolar world.

Outlining Ghana’s potential benefits

Currently, Ghana has myriads of economic tasks to implement, aims at recovering from the previous gross mismanagement. It could take advantage of BRICS+ diverse partnership opportunities. Closing related to this, Ghana’s headquarter of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) further offers an appropriate collaboration in boosting further both intra-BRICS trade and intra-Africa trade.

With Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, these put together paints an African geographical representation in BRICS+, and presents their collective African voice on the international stage.

After studying the report titled “Ghana Should Consider Joining the BRICS Organization” (Source: http://infobrics.org), the author Natogmah Issahaku, explained, in the first place, that Ghana’s relations with other external nations, particularly, those in the West, will not, and should not be affected by its BRICS membership.

According to the expert, Ghana needs infrastructural development and sustainable economic growth in order to raise the living standard of Ghanaians to middle-income status, which could be achieved through participation in BRICS+. In return, Ghana can offer BRICS+ members export of finished and semi-finished industrial and agricultural products as well as minerals in a win-win partnership framework.

As an Applied Economist at the University of Lincoln, United Kingdom, Natogmah Issahaku emphasized the importance of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), that could play roles by financing Ghana’s development agenda. BRICS development cooperation model is based on equality and fairness, Ghana can leverage its relations to optimize potential benefits.

Given the colossal scale of economic problems confronting the country, President Mahama should take strategic steps to lead Ghana into the BRICS+ without hesitation.

Notwithstanding world-wide criticisms, BRICS+ countries have advanced manufacturing and vast markets as well as technological advantages. As often argued, BRICS+ is another avenue to explore for long-term investment possibilities and work closely with its stakeholders.

These above-mentioned arguable factors are attractive for advancing Ghana in the Global South. Based on this, it is time to grab the emerging opportunity to drive increasingly high-quality cooperation, focus on hope rather than despair and step up broadly for a more constructive parameters in building beneficial relations into the future.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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Russia-Africa Summit, October 2019.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

At the first ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum in the southern coastal city of Sochi, seeking to deepen political and business ties with African countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin in his message and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his powerful speech underlined Russia’s security support to fight terrorism and extremism across Africa.

As Russia has expressed readiness to provide security it signed documents on military cooperation with African countries, according to media reports emerging from the first Russia-Africa ministerial conference held on 9-10 November 2024.

Setting long-term security alliances

In his message, Vladimir Putin reaffirmed the continuity in providing comprehensive assistance to African partners across a wide range of sectors. This includes supporting sustainable development, combating terrorism and extremism in Africa.

On his side, Lavrov also stressed the determination to intensify cooperation in the fight against terrorism and address other new security challenges in Africa, according to a statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

“We confirm readiness to establish a permanent Russian-African dialogue mechanism at the highest level, which will contribute to building peace, stability and security, as well as coordinating efforts to combat terrorism and extremism, address environmental problems, as well as issues related to food and information security,” the document posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website said.

Russia’s military assistance will be in exchange for full access to raw materials and exploiting natural resources, training military specialists and supply of military equipment and weaponry. Russia’s relations with Africa have been strengthening in multifaceted directions over the past few years. Its influence has grown too significantly as authorities demonstrated steps to help Africa struggle against western dominance especially in the emerging multipolarity architecture in this present world.

It is not a hidden fact that Russia earns revenue by increasing exports, including military equipment and weaponry to Africa. It exports grains, oil and gas. And therefore, several agreements signed would allow Russia to have a full access to exploring natural resources in exchange for its military assistance, as these African countries face financial difficulties. Russia has signed bilateral military-technical cooperation agreements with more than 20 African countries.

Challenges arising from security alliances

Given the persistent complex nature of conflicts in Africa and within the local conditions, the African Union Security Commission, Regional Organizations and related specialized security agencies, after exhaustively review and discussions during high meeting, offered strong recommendations.

In the past, African leaders, for example, AUC Moussa Faki Mahamat, South African Cyril Ramaphosa, Rwandan Paul Kagame shared the same position with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, that dealing with existing conflicts and disputes on the continent, it is necessary to mobilize collective efforts to resolve them and “must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.”

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other leaders, at the 36th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) held in Addis Ababa, further highlighted their opinions and perspectives which have been related to the backyard by the Francophones. Developments in these conflict-infested countries have negatively been affected, with millions of people displaced and ultimately pushed into abject poverty.

Until today, Africa’s peace-building processes have remarkably been complicated by external forces, largely imposing their aspirations to exploit natural resources and, to a greater extent, influencing internal policies which shape the future directions in those countries. In the long-run, Africa’s illusive dream of unity makes the future uncertain.

Defeating terrorism through multilateral cooperation

Leading discussions at the United Nations Security Council on challenges posed by increasing terrorism cum extremism and mechanism to eradicate the scourge across Africa, Mozambican Filipe Jacinto Nyusi unreservedly shared his country’s unique experiences, progressive approach and success story with the gathering in New York.

Citing the 2022 Global Terrorism Index, Nyusi reported that some 48 per cent of terrorism-related deaths occurred in Africa, while the Sahel is the “new epicentre” of terrorist attacks. He highlighted the fact African countries, the AU and regional organizations on the continent – such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the West African bloc ECOWAS, and its East African counterpart, IGAD – have accumulated years of experience in conflict resolution.

For example, the regional security force, the SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM), has achieved remarkable success in fighting terrorists in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

Nyusi, very outspoken, shared valuable experiences about the use of well-constituted regional military force for enforcing peace and security in Mozambique. Creating regional military forces to fight threats of terrorism will absolutely not require bartering the entire gold or diamond mines (natural resources) for the purchase of military equipment from external countries. Filipe Nyusi’s sentiments were about Russia’s security partnership with Africa, especially French-speaking African countries.

Russia’s military diplomacy

The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), a policy think tank, has published a special report on Russia-Africa. The report titled – Russia’s Private Military Diplomacy in Africa: High Risk, Low Reward, Limited Impact – says that Russia’s renewed interest in Africa is driven by its quest for global power status. Few expect Russia’s security engagement to bring peace and development to countries with which it has security partnerships.

While Moscow’s opportunistic use of private military diplomacy has allowed it to gain a strategic foothold in partner countries successfully, the lack of transparency in interactions, the limited scope of impact and the high financial and diplomatic costs exposes the limitations of the partnership in addressing the peace and development challenges of African host countries, the report says.

Overcoming the multidimensional problems, especially extremism and terrorism, facing Libya, Sudan, Somali, Mali, and the Central African Republic (CAR) will require comprehensive peace and development strategies that include conflict resolution and peacebuilding, state-building, security sector reform, and profound political reforms to improve governance and the rule of law – not to mention sound economic planning critical for attracting foreign direct investment needed to spur economic growth.

AU Agenda 2063 and continental security

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the entire international community have expressed collective concerns about any use of private mercenary forces, instead strongly suggested the use of well-constituted regional forces approved by regional blocs or organizations, and the nation’s respective legislative bodies and approval by the executive organs as a means of addressing conflicts in Africa.

During the 36th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU), under the chairmanship of Chadian Moussa Faki Mahamat, held in Addis Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, interestingly used the phrase – “African solutions to African problems” – seven times during his speech delivered on February 18.

By emphasizing local balanced or combined solutions, regional organizations become valuable players and their active involvement will steadily enhance continental legitimacy and the dynamics of traditional governance.

Within the context of growing complexities of world’s geopolitical changes, Abiy Ahmed offered objective suggestions including the fact that addressing existing conflicts and disputes with commitment and in practical terms on the continent, it is absolutely necessary to mobilize collective efforts to resolve them and, most importantly, it “must be confined to the continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.”

The African Union is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Its vision is focused on an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena.

It has designed a continental development programme, referred to as the AU Agenda 2063, which is Africa’s development blueprint to achieve inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development over a 50-year period.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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The scientific journal “Journal of the Institute for African studies” – is the only periodical in Russia, entirely devoted to the problems of African countries – and it publishes articles and other materials on international relations, political, economic and social processes occurring in the African continent, its history and cultural anthropology.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Oct 22 2024 (IPS)

At a recent media briefing, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, criticized the United States for its support of educational programs, media and NGOs in Africa. Zakharova argued that these efforts are part of a broader attempt by the U.S. to impose Western values and governance models on sovereign African states, framing it as a form of neo-colonialism.

Zakharova’s remarks, available on the official Russian Foreign Ministry website, suggest that the U.S. is actively promoting anti-Russian sentiment in African media. She stated, “We see this as Washington’s attempt to undermine the favorable socio-political environment for Russia in the region, portraying us as a destabilizing force. This method of unfair competition and misinformation highlights the lack of evidence behind the so-called Russian propaganda.”

However, while Russia criticizes Western influence in African media, it faces its own significant media challenges in Africa. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has done little to encourage African media, particularly those from Sub-Saharan Africa, to establish a presence in the country. Conversely, Russian media outlets like RIA Novosti, Sputnik News, and TASS News Agency have minimal influence in Africa compared to Western media giants.

Despite recent efforts by the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, to increase Russian media presence in Africa, the lack of opportunities for African media in Russia remains a stark reality. During a meeting aimed at enhancing Russia-Africa relations, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin acknowledged the need for Russian media to have a stronger presence in Africa, even as he admitted that their reach is far behind that of the U.S., UK, and Germany.

Experts argue that this lack of mutual media representation exacerbates misunderstandings between Russia and Africa. As a result, African leaders and businesses often rely on Western media for information about Russia, leading to a one-sided view that often reflects Western biases.

Interestingly, while the Russian Foreign Ministry accredits media from across the globe, only two African media outlets, both from North Africa, are currently recognized. This low representation does not reflect the growing diplomatic and economic ties between Russia and Africa.

At the first and the second Russia-Africa summits, panelists repeatedly highlighted the dominance of Western media in Africa and its impact on African perceptions of Russia. Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, pointed out that the absence of Russian media in Africa creates a vacuum that is filled by biased reports from other media outlets.

Professor Alexey Vasiliev, an expert on African relations with Russia, noted that Africa’s reliance on Western media leads to a skewed understanding of Russia, perpetuating narratives of Russophobia and anti-Russian propaganda. He emphasized the need for better communication and understanding between the two regions.

Some experts also criticize Russia for its reluctance to engage with Sub-Saharan African media. Despite the two Russia-Africa summits, aimed at strengthening ties, there has been little progress in fostering media cooperation.

The reality is that both Russia and Africa need to deepen their media engagement to enhance mutual understanding and cooperation. As Africa’s middle class continues to grow, representing a vibrant information market, the need for a balanced and comprehensive media coverage from both sides becomes increasingly crucial.

Professor Vladimir Shubin, former Deputy Director of the Institute for African Studies, stressed the importance of media in maintaining and enhancing Russia-Africa relations. He urged both regions to actively promote their achievements and development needs through media to foster a better understanding and stronger partnership.

To overcome these challenges, both Russia and Africa must take concrete steps towards building a more collaborative media landscape. This includes creating opportunities for African journalists in Russia and increasing the presence of Russian media in Africa.

The relationship between Russia and Africa, deeply rooted in history, needs to be strengthened through increased media cooperation. This would not only improve understanding between the regions but also support the broader goal of developing a dynamic and multifaceted partnership, especially in this emerging multipolar world.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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Damage caused after shelling in Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine.Credit: UNICEF/Evegeniy Maloletka

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Oct 11 2024 (IPS)

Russia is pursuing, during these contemporary times, a new form of economic architecture, non-hegemonic policies and simultaneously portraying its first-class military power in the world. Russia’s development paradigm is distinctively different and largely oriented towards Global South.

While Russia stands against Western hegemony and dominance, and against NATO, Israel maintains a complex relationship between the United States characterized by deep-rooted historical ties.

But a closer examination also glaringly shows Russia and Israel have in common a depopulation agenda, Russia is demilitarizing its neighbour Ukraine, both were closely-knitted republics in the Soviet times, while Israel aims at settling on Palestine territory.

Russia referred to its war with Ukraine as a ‘special military operation’ which it began on 24th February 2022 soon after Federation Council and the State Duma approved (both houses of legislators). It has since been reviewing ‘peace initiatives’ offered by China, South Africa and many others. Brazil and India are currently pushing for a peace summit. In the case of Israel, it has completely brushed aside the ‘two-state’ resolution by the United Nations.

The United States has extended a combination of different kinds of support to Israel since its recognition after its establishment in 1948. The general perception is that throughout the 20th century, particularly during the Cold War, the United States viewed Israel as a crucial ally against common enemies such as Nazism and communism.

Furthermore, it has provided significant military aid to Israel, approximately $3.8 billion annually. Based upon these and without doubts, Israel therefore represents United States strategic interests in the region.

With the escalation of Israel war in the region, Russia has started talking about peace initiatives, in contrast to its accepting peace initiatives in the case of Ukraine. Russia has voiced concerns over potential Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Russia and Iran have excellent relations.

Earlier, a number of foreign media outlets reported that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in retaliation for its earlier massive missile strike. Meanwhile, the United States has indicated that it did not support this idea.

With the conflict continuing and showing signs of disastrous consequences including in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, Russia gave a more realistic warning in early October, especially to its citizens in Israel. Latest Israeli airstrikes attack on the vicinity of Russia’s Khmeimim base in Syria necessitated Kremlin to order its estimated 1.5 million citizens to immediately leave Israel.

It further warned its people to get out before it’s too late. Something big was coming. Russia also evacuated citizens from Lebanon. The perception was that Russia was first neutral and played the double games with Israel as a means to protect its citizens, and also has little moral to advocate for peace between Israel and Palestine.

Palestine-Israeli conflict, which began in October 2023, has received global condemnations. At first, Russia has been extra-cautious talking about the Palestine-Israeli situation because of two main factors. The first is connected to its own military bombardment of Ukraine, distinctive similar to Ukraine.

South Africa has not raised genocide allegations in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, though. As the developments at the Gaza Strip show, it has taken on the genocide case triggered by a disproportionate military response or the high number of Palestinian casualties.

Then, the second point is Russia has an excellent relationship with Israel that it found it extremely difficult to publicly condemned Israel’s atrocities on Palestine. Russia and Israel have been strengthening their bilateral relations.

Both have stressed the importance of continuing active work in all areas of bilateral cooperation and the development of economic and trade, scientific, and cultural spheres, despite the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, and specifically between Palestine and Israel. Russia, at the initial stages suggested adopting measures to undertake a broad dialogue in ensuring territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Putin, as far back, on October 2023, expressed Russia’s sincere condolences to the families and friends of the Israeli victims. In addition, he warned about further escalation of violence and to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. In particular, he informed the Israeli side of the key points of the telephone conversation with the leaders of Palestine, Egypt, Iran and Syria.

Besides warning, Russia’s principled commitment to continue its work to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and achieve a peaceful settlement through political and diplomatic means was reaffirmed.

It was only quite recently, in December last year, that Russian President Vladimir Putin has reiterated Russia’s principled position in rejecting and condemning terrorist in all of its manifestations, the Kremlin press service said after his phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The conversation focused on the situation in the zone of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and, in particular, on the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. Vladimir Putin reiterated the principled position of rejecting and condemning terrorism in all of its manifestations. Along with that, it is extremely important to ensure that efforts against terrorist threats do not entail such severe consequences for the civilian population,” it said.

The situation in the zone of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was among the central topics during Putin’s talks with the Saudi Crown Prince and the Presidents of the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Egypt earlier in December 2023. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Late January, the Israel Defense Forces has stormed a number of cities in the West Bank in sharp escalated battles with Palestinian resistance, according several media reports including Al Jazeera. Israel has declared a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Egypt and Jordan have also submitted settlement proposals for the Gaza Strip.

The Middle East is becoming a new arena of geopolitical confrontation. And Russian experts on the Middle-East issues have been up and offering their views since the conflicted October 7, the beginning of the conflict. The experts maintained that Russia has been actively building up its relations with countries across the Middle East in the context of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Middle East expert Andrey Ontikov told Izvestia newspaper that if the Europeans and Americans truly wanted to promote the idea of a two-state solution, they could put some pressure on Israel’s leadership.

“While a part of the elite is committed to the idea of establishing an independent Palestinian state, others believe that the [window of] time for this has been lost. Much will depend on the outcome of the war,” he said, adding that resolving the Palestinian issue politically would depend on both the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves, Dmitry Mariyasis, leading researcher with the Department of Israel Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oriental Studies.

According to experts interviewed by Russia’s Izvestia newspaper, Moscow’s goal here is to find partner support in its confrontation with the West, including in Ukraine. Finding ways to reduce tensions not only between the Jewish state and radical Palestinian movement Hamas, but also in the region as a whole became a key topic of discussion at a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

On 28th December 2023, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov praised Netanyahu for not criticizing Russia in public statements regarding the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Lavrov said that Russia’s goals of “demilitarization” and “denazification” in Ukraine were similar to Israel’s stated goals of defeating Hamas and extremism in Gaza.

Excerpts from the briefing held on 12th January 2024, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed absolute regret over the massive civilian casualties in the current escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “Russia proceeds from the unacceptability of targeted violence against civilians and the deliberate destruction of medical facilities and other civilian infrastructure.”

“Our country calls for strict compliance with international law, an immediate ceasefire in accordance with the decisions of the Security Council and the UN General Assembly,” argued Zakharova, while she closed her eyes on the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine conflict which began 24th February 2022.

In a nutshell, Russia has appreciable multifaceted relations with Israel these several years, just as it has with South Africa. But what seems to be important for the Kremlin is readiness to provide possible assistance to alleviate the suffering of civilians and de-escalate the conflict.

In the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin’s comments on Palestine-Israeli was in addition to reaffirm its principled position on the essence to avoid such grave consequences for the civilian population while countering terrorist threats. In short, there would not be any attempt, not even the least sign in the near future, to sever decades-old relations between Israel and Russia.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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The next BRICS Summit in scheduled to take place in Kazan, Russia, October 22 to 24. During its BRICS presidency this year, Russia has said it will focus on "promoting the entire range of partnership and cooperation within the framework of the association on three key tracks – politics and security, the economy and finance, and cultural and humanitarian ties."

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Oct 3 2024 (IPS)

In an interview with Sky News Arabia on September 20, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed scepticism but was straight to the point about the strategic expansion of BRICS, an association comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Under Russia’s BRICS presidency which began in January 2024.

Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates became the second wave of the newest members to join BRICS. South Africa ascended in 2011 under China’s initiative.

Tracking down the history, operations and achievements, Lavrov acknowledged in his interview that the BRICS association is consolidating its positions and cooperating with several countries.

At the same time, this association is facing certain challenges. It is necessary to promote collaboration based on a balance of interests, and most importantly, BRICS functions based on consensus.

The consensus principle primarily aims to find agreements that reflect the mutual accord of all participants. This is not easy. The more partners, the harder it is to search for accord. It takes more time to finalise any consensus-based agreement than a vote-based solution.

According to Lavrov, this provides a solid foundation for developing a strategic partnership within the association. Currently, BRICS comprises 10 countries; their number has doubled compared to last year.

More than 30 countries have already submitted applications for interaction or membership in the association. At the summit to be held in Kazan in October, one of the main items on the agenda will be the consideration of applications from states that wish to interact and partner with BRICS+.

BRICS+ expansion had sparked debates and discussions these several years, long before Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were finally accepted on the condition of “consensus” by BRICS members during the South African summit in August 2023.

Lavrov has already indicated and repeatedly explained the “suspension” of membership into BRICS+. Instead of membership, Lavrov mentioned that potential countries can only be accepted as a “partner group” with simple consideration to support and interact with the BRICS association.

The prescription is very simple – BRICS is an association based on a respectful attitude towards each other and on mutual consideration to promote collaboration based on a balance of interests and strictly adhere to the principle of the sovereign equality of states and non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs.

According to information monitored, more than 30 countries, with growing discontent against Western hegemony, have expressed their readiness to join BRICS. Lavrov has also confirmed this figure in his interview with Sky News Arabia, and even earlier explained that “the modalities of ascension have to be collectively discussed” at subsequent summits in future.

In practical terms, Russia has suspended BRICS+ expansion, in other words, the BRICS+ flagship policy of boosting its numerical strength, with unique reports indicating that there were more than 30 countries worldwide – Latin America, Asia and Africa.

At South Africa’s 15th Summit held under President Cyril Ramaphosa, several countries had expressed interest in ascending the BRICS association, but only five (5) finally joined. The official documents, as stipulated by the guidelines, set no concrete criteria or rules for admission except using the flexible term “consensus” – a general agreement at the summit which was utilized in the selection process.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin have described (designated) this circle of BRICS+ friends into … what is now referred popularly to as “partner members” which starkly reflected in official documents.

At the Primakov Readings held in June 2024, the extraordinary key point was an announcement by Sergey Lavrov over ‘suspension’ of BRICS new membership. In mid-June 2024, Lavrov hosted the BRICS Foreign Ministers Council in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod. The BRICS Foreign Ministers decided to suspend admission of new members and this step reflected in the final documents.

Local and foreign media reported Lavrov’s statement: “By the overwhelming majority, the ten members decided to ‘take a pause’ with new members, to ‘take in’ the new members who have doubled the association. At the same time, we are working of categories of partner countries as stages ahead of a full-fledged membership.”

Lavrov said BRICS would use the pause to draw up a list of categories for BRICS partner countries that would serve as stepping stones toward full membership. Understandably, BRICS+ has decided to “take a pause’ in terms of admitting new members. The partner-country model in line with paragraph 92 of the Johannesburg II Declaration.

In a media release after June 10-11, BRICS foreign ministers meeting, noted prospects for promoting strategic partnership within BRICS, including the establishment of a new category of “partner countries” and suspension of new members from the Global South and Global East.

As per the agreements reached at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg in 2023, the ministers reviewed the efforts to coordinate the modalities of the new category, BRICS partner countries.

Within the stipulated guidelines, Russia took over the BRICS one-year-long presidency on January 1, 2024. The initial four BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) met in New York City in September 2006 at the margins of the UN Assembly, but held its first full-scale meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on 16 June 2009. BRICS has experienced two phases of expansion.

In 2011, South Africa joined the association, which included Brazil, Russia, India, and China. On January 1, 2024, five new members officially entered BRICS association namely Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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Vladimir Putin at the Millennium Summit of the UN in September 2000.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Sep 20 2024 (IPS)

After two symbolic African leaders’ summits, Russia’s trading is steadily increasing but significantly in exports of military weapons and equipment. According to Kremlin reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the trade turnover between Russia and African countries had increased by almost 35% in the first half of 2023 despite international sanctions.

During the first summit, Putin promised to double trade with African states within five years as he sought to win new friends with offers of nuclear power plants and fighter jets. He fixed the expected figure at $40 billion, which he repeated in several speeches until the last summit held in July 2023 in St. Petersburg.

According to the Russia Today (RT) report, under the headline “Russia expanding African defence partnerships” issued 5th Sept. 2024, Russia’s arms exporter Rosoboronexport has outlined plans for joint ventures regarding military equipment with the continent. That report indicated that the Russian arms export agency Rosoboronexport has been advancing multiple cooperation projects with African countries, quoted Aleksandr Mikheev, the agency’s head.

Mikheev, speaking on the sidelines of the Egypt International Airshow, further said his agency was working on several industrial cooperation projects with African countries, focusing on the licensed production of small arms, ammunition, armoured vehicles, and fast combat boats.

The head of the Russian arms export agency also noted the increasing importance of Africa and the Middle East in the company’s overall business. “The combined share of Middle Eastern and African countries in Rosoboronexport’s order portfolio exceeds 50%, which translates to over $25 billion,” he said.

Mikheev revealed that over 40 African nations are actively engaged in military-technical collaboration with Russia. “There is a very significant share of signed and executed contracts in the order portfolio. Mostly, of course, it is equipment, air force, air defence, helicopters, small arms, electronic warfare.”

Last December for instance, the Rosoboronexport head said that African countries bought more than 30% of the weapons systems exported by Russia in 2023. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported last year that Russia had overtaken China as the leading arms seller in sub-Saharan Africa, with market share growing to 26% as of 2022. According to the report, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, and Sudan were the top importers of Russian weapons on the continent.

Business& Financial Times also reported that Putin had promised to double trade with African states within five years as he sought to win new friends with offers of nuclear power plants and fighter jets. Moscow remains the biggest exporter of arms to Africa.

The most successful pillar of Russia’s conventional trade with Africa is arms, managed mainly by state-controlled Rosoboronexport. Between 2010 and 2021 Russian arms exports to Africa dwarfed those of every other supplier and were three times greater than those of China, the second-biggest over the period, according to SIPRI.

Other Russian companies with significant operations in Africa include Alrosa, which operates diamond projects in Angola and is exploring in Zimbabwe; Rusal, which mines bauxite in Guinea; and Rosatom, which is building a nuclear power plant in Egypt.

As years move on, few of those promises have concretely materialized and yet Russian influence on the continent is growing faster than at any point since the end of the Cold War. But this trend has fallen short of the Kremlin’s promise to African leaders.

African exporters are not trading in Russia’s market due to multiple reasons including inadequate knowledge of trade procedures, rules and regulations as well as the existing market conditions. Until now, African entrepreneurs have struggled pathways to explore Russia’s market as trade preferences also mentioned several times failed to be implemented.

Multiple challenges still grossly remain and stand in the pathways to ultimately realize the economic cooperation goals set by the two summits. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov plans to hold the first Foreign Ministerial Conference in November 2024 to strategize some aspects of strengthening economic cooperation between Russia and Africa.

Some experts think that the ongoing crisis between Russia and the West is stimulating Russia’s leadership to look for new markets, and besides Asia-Pacific countries, Africa has become its choice. Quite recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote in his article: “We attach special significance to deepening our trade and investment cooperation with the African States. Russia provides African countries with extensive preferences in trade.”

The minister went on: “At the same time, it is evident that the significant potential of our economic cooperation is far from being exhausted and much remains to be done so that Russian and African partners know more about each other’s capacities and needs. The creation of a mechanism for the provision of public support to business interaction between Russian companies and the African continent is on the agenda.”

Reports further showed that Russia has started, after the second summit in July 2023, strengthening its economic cooperation by opening trade missions with the responsibility of providing sustainable business services and plans to facilitate import-export trade in some African countries.

But these Russian trade centres can also embark on a ‘Doing Business in Africa’ campaign to encourage Russian businesses to take advantage of growing trade and investment opportunities, to promote trade fairs and business-to-business matchmaking in key spheres in Africa.

China, India and Russia are members of the BRICS association with the common goal of fighting against Western domination in Africa. However, the three have different distinctive individual economic interests in Africa. China entered Africa immediately after Russia created the vacuum following the Soviet’s collapse, China has developed its economic tentacles across Africa.

For some time, Russia has been concerned with China’s growing presence in Africa. And that points to the fact that Moscow has to step up its activities, whether between governments or private enterprises, more strategically in African countries.

Many Russian and African analysts and policy observers believe that a public-private partnership (participation) strategy in promoting trade will help significantly to polish part of the soft power image both in Russia and Africa.

According to the African Development Bank, Africa’s economies are growing faster than those of any other continent. Nearly half of African countries are now classified as middle-income countries, the number of Africans living below the poverty line fell to 39 per cent in 2023 as compared to 51 per cent in 2021, and around 380 million of Africa’s 1.4 billion people are now earning good incomes – rising consumerism – that makes trade profitable.

Of course, there are various ways to open the burgeoning market for Africa. One of the surest ways is to use the existing rules and regulations. The preferential tariffs for agricultural products exist but only a few African exporters use them, mainly from South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt. Russian authorities should make it possible for more individual African countries to negotiate for their products to enter the market.

The African regional economic blocs can be useful instruments for facilitating trade between Africa and Russia. In addition, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry posted an official report on its website that traditional products from least-developed countries (including Africa) would be exempted from import tariffs. The legislation stipulates that traditional goods are eligible for preferential customs and tariff treatment.

Most of the experts interviewed for this story expressed skepticism and wondered if Russian authorities were seriously prepared to open the market for Africa, while others suggested, that with the context of current global competition, Russian authorities have to provide trade incentives.

An academic researcher at the African Studies Institute in Moscow told me the trade preferential for only traditional African goods would really not promote a large scale trade, unfortunately, Russia’s trade with Africa has mostly concentrated in weaponry and military hard-wares. Simple products such as African tea and coffee trade would face keen competition from other global brands.

As China and India are currently doing, Russia should similarly embark on trade facilitation measures, including simplifying import-export procedures (customs, warehousing and transportation) to encourage trade with African countries.

Some say it’s probably both a mix of negative perception and inadequate knowledge about the emerging business potentials that might have an impact on trade development between Russia and Africa. Trade facilitation focusing on lowering the cost of doing business by minimizing regulations and procedures required to move goods and services across borders.

Russia can change the equation that way, and the authorities can even shift focus and transfer their technology to agriculture, and oil and gas in Africa which is booming these days. The experts believe that new trade alliances are emerging and have great potential for growth amid the economic sanctions. Russia has to capitalize on the historical connection between Moscow and those African elites who had been educated in the Soviet Union.

As it was during the Soviet times, Russia could only offer a few manufactured goods that would successfully compete with Western-made products. African nations will probably continue to acquire Russian-made arms, but otherwise, there are a few prospects for diversification of cooperation in the near future.

While Russia’s trade still straddles with Africa, China and other external players are navigating the single African Continental Trade Area (AfCFTA) which offers huge opportunities, an initiative by the African Union (AU). Russia can build on the historical and time-tested friendly ties with Africa but has to review and take concrete measures to work jointly with African countries in strengthening economic and trade cooperation, an essential pillar of the multipolar world.

A complete departure away from mere rhetoric will be an encouraging step forward, and enhance economic relations between African States and the Russian Federation. With the current geopolitical situation, Russia and African countries could now use the chance to strengthen their trade relations and take further decisive actions from both sides to drive foreign policies in a more qualitative manner in this emerging multipolar world.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions on Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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As Russia’s new president Vladimir Putin begins a new phase of economic growth, trade experts are keeping a watchful eye on Moscow’s policies with the African continent, which they see as a huge, untapped source of economic opportunity.

But experts like Dmitri M. Bondarenko, vice director for research at the Institute for African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences and a long-time critic of Russia’s stagnant relationship with Africa under Dmitry Medvedev’s administration, is not very hopeful that a new president will bring any change.

Russia has a lot to offer African countries and the two regions can easily work together to create the best possible conditions for their entrepreneurs in an effort to develop mutually beneficial economic ties.

Several Russian companies like Russian Aluminuim (RusAl), LUKoil, Gazprom, and Renova, are ready and waiting to offer financial and banking services while others are eyeing local manufacturing industries in the continent.

Still, many potential African exporters still harbour negative perceptions about the Russian market, often comparing it unfavourably to export opportunities presented by the United States, Europe and increasingly by countries that comprise the BRICS group, of which Russia is a part – such as Brazil, India, South Africa and, particularly, China.

Last October, speaking in an exclusive interview with the Voice of Russia, the Echo of Moscow and the Radio of Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov informed listeners that “Russia’s trade turnover with African countries currently stands at four billion dollars, while China’s trade turnover with these countries amounts to 120 billion dollars.”

A study of Russia’s trade statistics between 2001 and 2011 show very little development on the continent; within that same decade, Chinese products have become highly visible in African markets, while traditional African items are also found frequently on the shelves in China.

Fyodor Lukyanov, a senior member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and editor-in-chief of the prominent ‘Russia in Global Affairs’ journal – the most authoritative source on Russian foreign policy and global developments – has acknowledged that China’s strategy is purely based on accessing natural resources like oil and minerals that are vitally important to China’s development.

Beijing has used every tool possible to secure these resouces, including soft power, technical and economic assistance and political support to leaders of countries that have been shunned by the rest of the international community, including to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Sudan’s Omar al- Bashir.

But Russia, a resource and mineral rich nation, has little need to gain these goods by embroiling itself in controversial conflicts, and cannot be expected to compete fiercely with China in this arena, Lukyanov said.

Still, trade experts in the country believe it is very important that Russian authorities use Soviet-trained graduates as a bridge to a business relationship with Africa, particularly in the face of China’s rising influence.

Moscow’s presence in Africa waned after the fall of the Soviet Union, as African countries turned increasingly to Asian states, especially China and India, for mutual economic cooperation.

Soviet activities in Africa were based largely on the logic of the cold war, when two superpowers clashed across the globe to expand and strengthen their ideological influence. Africa, with its huge reserves of human and natural resources, was indispensable to both sides.

But after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Africa vanished from Russian foreign policy.

To make matters worse, Russian media write very little about Africa. If the press and non-governmental sector take steps towards increasing knowledge and awareness about the possibilities of better cooperation, this knowledge will immediately stimulate increased economic interaction.

Jonathan Fianu, a British-born African entrepreneur and managing director of PPP Local Ltd, a Russian- British consulting company operating in regional Russia, believes there was some positive progress by the Medvedev administration to pursue a more active policy in Africa, which ignited a more active debate on what can and should be done.

In June 2009, Medvedev even visited four African countries – namely, Egypt, Nigeria, Namibia and Angola – in an effort to build a better relationship.

In order to stimulate dwindling ties between the two regions, Medvedev also appointed Russian senator Mikhail Margelov as his special envoy for cooperation with Africa in March 2011, but unfortunately Margelov’s diplomatic rhetoric failed to take root in African soil.

Harry Verhoeven, a lecturer on African politics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, explained to IPS, “Russia has continued its traditional arms trading on the continent, including with controversial regimes like the military-Islamist rulers in Khartoum (Sudan). Overall though, despite this activity, Russia strikes most Africans as a secondary actor, which by no means has the same importance as the European Union (or its three leading member states), the U.S., China or Saudi Arabia.”

“It’s now up to the next administration (now headed by Putin) to act in a positive way to pursue a policy of harmonious business development and trade,” Fianu told IPS.

According to James Shikwati, founder and director of the Inter Region Economic Network (IREN) in Nairobi, Kenya, the question now is: will Russia follow the same paradigm as China and Western industrialised nations, which preach peace and non-interference while exploiting African resources at the expense of the continent’s human and economic development? Or will it play a different trade game altogether?

(END)

As the number of migrant Filipino workers in Russia inches closer to 5000, Moscow and Manila are busy negotiating a bilateral labour agreement that could allow thousands more overseas workers into various sectors of the Russian economy.

Formal discussions are slated to be held on May 30, Grace Cruz-Fabella, consul general of the Philippine embassy in Rome, told IPS.

Nilim Baruah, a regional migration specialist at the International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s regional office for Asia-Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand, told IPS that a comprehensive labour agreement between Russia and the Philippines could be positive, if it established procedures and standards for the recruitment, employment and subsequent return of migrant workers.

“Such an agreement (could) guarantee the labour rights of migrant workers and eliminate or limit recruitment costs. But the main question for Russia will be to what extent, and under what requirements, it will provide Filipino workers with access to its labour market,” he said.

According to the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Russia officially registered 128 new Filipino hires in 2010, including 25 service workers.

These labourers fill various employment gaps, and run the gamut from nannies and gardeners to engineers, accountants, builders and nurses, Yevgenia Konkol, chairperson of the Russian-Philippine Business Council, told IPS.

Natalia Shcharbakova-Hofmann, labour migration officer in the ILO’s Decent Work Technical Support Team and Country Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, told IPS that ‘official’ Filipino workers, those carrying work permits or migration visas, are not present in large numbers; but scores of Filipinos are entering the country on tourist or business visas, assisted by middlemen and local licensed agencies that often act as migrants’ direct employers and channel them straight into Russia’s informal labour market.

“I do believe that any initiative that can lead to better employment conditions or simplify the migration process into the Russian Federation must be appreciated,” Shcharbakova-Hofmann said in a nod to the Philippine government, which has been negotiating for better regulations and working conditions for its citizens for the past several years.

In March, the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Albert Del Rosario held an official discussion in Moscow with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, on the possibility of sealing a bilateral labour agreement.

A string of events and conferences over the last year have highlighted a renewed interest in developing the market of overseas Filipino workers, who are believed to be one of many solutions to Russia’s human resource needs. Many experts believe that economic modernisation in Russia depends heavily on skilled foreign labour, limited to certain specific sectors like domestic work, finance, and construction.

Experts have also pointed to the Philippine government’s success in deploying its workforce abroad. Konkol noted that more than 10 percent of the Philippines’ population of 90 million people works abroad, with workers’ remittances accounting for up to 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Some estimates put the total contribution to the Philippine economy by specialists working abroad at 20 billion dollars last year.

Depending on bilateral promises

Viveva Catalig, labour attache at the Philippine Overseas Labour Office in Rome, explained to IPS that the Philippine government has an official policy of deploying Filipino workers only to countries that guarantee protection and promotion of their rights, welfare and interests.

Under a recently enacted law, the Philippine government banned its nationals from seeking employment in states that do not guarantee the rights and welfare of foreign workers, or whose local labour and social legislation does not cover migrant workers.

Since not all countries provide such protections, and because Philippine citizens are often forced to seek greener pastures beyond their borders, or simply follow the desire to gain experience working abroad, the government is making a tremendous effort to forge bilateral labour agreements with potential host countries, Catalig told IPS.

The fact that Russia willingly entered into the negotiations implies not only that it has an urgent need for the services of foreign workers but also that it is fully aware of the benefits of such an agreement.

It is a well-accepted fact that migrants’ labour boosts the socio-economic development of both their home and host country, Catalig stressed, so long as both states establish an accountable and just system of rights and regulations.

Many believe that such a step forward will minimise the problem of illegal recruitment and human trafficking. Others fear that a slip in commitment on either side could make migrant workers vulnerable to the dangers of informal markets.

(END)

Indonesia’s keen interest in becoming the newest member of BRICS – a bloc of emerging-market nations comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – has sparked off a round of debate on the future and efficacy of South-South groupings.

István Tarrósy, assistant professor of political science at the Department of Political Studies at the University of Pécs and managing director of the Africa Research Centre in Pécs, Hungary, said that Indonesia’s development statistics make the country a shoe-in for membership: it is the largest economy in southeast Asia and is a demographic giant with a population of 248 million people, making it the fourth most populous country in the world, ahead of even Brazil and Russia.

It also has an active labour force of 117 million people, as of 2011.

Indonesia has long been recognised as a leading actor in the developing world, most notably for its active role within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ever since it hosted the Bandung Conference in 1955.

“Its voice has always been decisive in any issue connected with the then Third World, today, the Global South. In terms of South-South cooperation, and in light of a redefined system of North-South dialogue within a gradually more multi-polar world, Indonesia has its place among the top categories of states influencing how our transnational global world develops,” Tarrósy told IPS.

Furthermore, given the country’s “pragmatic foreign policy practices and long-term cooperation with countries of the region and beyond, Indonesia could strengthen the common voice of emerging economies via BRICS. With the potential entrance of Indonesia, BRICS would then need to redefine, or rather refine its status as (possibly) one of the most important inter-regional groupings of countries of the global South,” he added.

Another significant issue is the investment sector, on which developing or emerging economies rely heavily. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Indonesia, and Indonesian FDI flown into other, less strong economies across southeast Asia and beyond, could be further encouraged by BRICS membership, which would facilitate better trans-regional cooperation.

For instance, it could pave the way for increased “South-South cooperation in Africa, with a more substantial Indonesian role in project generation and financing. In addition to China’s and India’s growing presence and involvement in the African continent, Indonesia could play (a bigger role), particularly if we (acknowledge) the growing amount of official development assistance (ODA) emerging economies have granted Africa,” according to Tarrósy.

Indonesia is one of Asia’s leading economic powerhouses; with last year’s economic growth recorded at 6.5 percent, the country is poised to overtake Russia in the regional economic race, said John Mashaka, financial analyst at Wells Fargo Capital Markets.

He told IPS that Indonesia recorded exports worth 204 billion dollars in 2011. Compared to its European counterparts like Greece, Italy and Spain, which are still floundering in the economic slush of the 2008 crash, Indonesia’s credit ratings shot up and the country’s economic outlook remains favorable.

Its domestic market is huge and the current economic boom can be attributed to its political stability and sound economic and monetary policies, which have attracted consistent FDI.

“In short, Indonesia is an economic power to be (reckoned) with and its decision to join the BRICS could have a huge impact in terms of the body’s credibility. Indonesian membership will definitely solidify BRICS’ capital composition, and also bring on board extraordinary fiscal capability,” Mashaka told IPS.

BRICS versus IBSA?

Thomas Lawo, executive director of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) in Bonn, Germany, doubts that BRICS will be a major game-changer in global geopolitics in an increasingly multi-polar world, mostly because of its members’ divergent economic trends and political interests.

On the one hand, Russia is set to re-emerge as a strong global power with a dominant role in central and western Asia, along with India and China.

“But India needs to sort out its internal rifts and neighbourhood problems first, while China is becoming a strong force to reckon with in Asia, Africa and Europe. China is definitely the (primary) growth-engine of Asia and is stepping up its influence in the global economy (armed) with military strength to match its ambitions,” Lawo said.

Indonesia, on the other hand, is more comfortably clustered with South Africa and Brazil as a regional power and an economic anchor-country for the southeast Asian region, but lesser on a wider global scale.

Another possibility is the re-emergence of a politically stronger ASEAN, now that Burma (Myanmar) is opening up to its neighbours. In this context, the MIST countries – Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand – will become more relevant, if they can overcome their internal problems and play the regional integration card.

Alexandra A. Arkhangelskaya, head of the Centre for Information and International Relations at the Institute for African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to IPS that after the admission of South Africa, BRICS will likely be expanded to include Indonesia, Turkey, Australia, Nigeria and Mexico.

If this happens, she stressed, BRICS will be pushed to clearly articulate its specific identity in the international arena.

The rise of BRICS as regional bloc also raises the question of whether its role is very different from that of IBSA, the same group minus China and Russia.

BRICS has certainly attracted a lot of attention and it is widely accepted that the bloc will try to achieve certain broad economic reforms as well as attempt to restructure the Western-dominated global financial architecture.

Still, Arkhangelskaya believes that the extent to which IBSA will be forced to live in the former’s shadow will very much depend on South Africa, which is currently “sitting on two chairs”, as well as China’s role in BRICS and the world economy.

Experts fear that IBSA will be forced to dissolve in the light of BRICS’ expansion.

Some analysts still argue that IBSA and BRICS represent the old clash of India versus China; others believe it is more likely that the groups will find themselves on very different tiers of the South-South multilateral cake.

Although there is some overlap in core issues, the fact remains that the BRICS countries are more focused on economy, while IBSA is concerned with promoting democratic values and other causes common to the three countries, and has a distinct personality of its own.

Thus, IBSA can remain an instrumental and practical mechanism of the three countries representing three different continents, sharing their interests and strengthening their economic cooperation to further the interests of the South.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah and - -
MOSCOW, Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

India’s proposal to set up a bank of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will top the agenda at the summit of the group in New Delhi Mar. 28.

India believes a joint bank would be in line with the growing economic power of the five-nation group. The bank could firm up the position of BRICS as a powerful player in global decision-making.

“The BRICS bank does not need much capital for a start,” Alexander Appokin, senior expert at the Moscow- based Centre for Macroeconomic Analysis and Forecasting tells IPS. “What is more important is that the BRICS development bank presents a unique opportunity for indirect investment of central bank foreign reserves inside the countries.”

A BRICS bank could for example issue convertible debt, which would arguably be top-rated and can be bought by central banks of all BRICS countries. BRICS countries would thus have a vessel for investment risk-sharing.

“China will be the biggest beneficiary of that,” says Appokin. “Moreover, infrastructure investment mostly needs not just long-term financing but external monitoring for more transparency and efficiency increases. Here, a BRICS development bank could offer some advice for successful implementation of regional projects.”

But, he cautions, “development structures like a BRICS bank are effective only in case they are given independence in project financing decisions from the governments, or at least room to operate in long- term development framework.”

Yuhua Xiao, assistant professor at the Institute for African Studies in the Zhejiang Normal University (ZNU) in China says the idea of setting up a development bank for financing projects in these countries is a sign of the growing self-assertiveness and of independence or interdependence of emerging economies.

“As the emerging powers’ approaches to development may differ from established norms, such an institutional set-up will test the possibility of cooperation in a different framework which might generate new ideas,” Yuhua tells IPS in an emailed comment.

India’s proposal for a BRICS bank was long overdue, says John Mashaka, financial analyst at Wells Fargo Capital Markets. “It is a way the emerging nations are trying to pull out of the western dominated World Bank and the IMF,” he tells IPS.

“Basically India, China and perhaps Russia are trying to show off their economic clout; they are trying to demonstrate to the west that they can do without them. Above all they need freedom from western financial influence.”

Mashaka says the joint bank besides being a financial institution for BRICS member countries can also support infrastructural projects in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. But it has a long way to go, he says.

“The effectiveness of the bank is yet to be seen; this plan is not going to be cakewalk. China has already said it wants permanent presidency. Russia and India may demand the same. We know that Africa is a lucrative market for China in terms of natural resources and as a market for industrial products.

“Africa being such a strategic region, China may want the bank to finance many of its projects in the African region, or simply cooperate with the African Development Bank.”

Mashaka says there are also unanswered questions about capital structure, such as which BRICS member state will foot the bigger bill needed to establish the bank, and the role of various countries.

Albert Khamatshin from the Centre for Southern African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences believes South Africa will benefit most because the primary focus of the bank will be development projects within BRICS.

Dr. Alexandra A. Arkhangelskaya, head of the Centre for Information and International Relations at the Institute for African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences says a bank like this could shift the weight of economic power even though the creation of such an institution would be difficult.

“It is a good in terms of a multilateral framework of cooperation,” Arkhangelskaya tells IPS. “But the BRICS states have differing economic weight, and to find the right balance to avoid one or some members dominating can pose a challenge. The threat of marginalisation of members in comparison to China is evident.

“BRICS is unity in diversity, and to take new steps towards mutual cooperation can be challenging. Therefore, it is interesting to see the development of this idea and to clearly understand the mechanism of its implementation.”

She further believes the bank could greatly benefit countries outside BRICS if it supports least developed countries in ways similar to the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) Development Fund, which has a number of successful projects.

Prof. Adams B. Bodomo from the School of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, who has researched BRICS extensively, tells IPS that Brazil proposed that developing countries would be willing to contribute money to solve the Eurozone problems in return for more power in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But he warned that the “International” Monetary Fund is not really for developing countries. He called it a Western Monetary Fund.

Excerpt:

A recent government crackdown on Russian media, particularly online information portals specialising in health tips and harm reduction methods for drug users, has sparked widespread public opposition, with critics claiming that the “draconian silencing” of public health advocates could worsen an already perilous health situation in the country.

The crackdown is “over methadone, plain and simple,” Anya Sarang, president of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation (ARF) – an organisation dedicated to providing health information to intravenous drug users, which had its website shut down in early February – told IPS.

The order to shut down ARF’s website came from the Federal Drug Control Service (FSK) of the Moscow Department on Feb. 3, supposedly to prevent the “placement of materials that propagandise the use of drugs, information about distribution and purchasing of drugs and inciting the use of drugs.”

Far from these allegations, ARF advocates harm reduction strategies and has been a vocal critic of the Russian government’s ban on methadone. Its website (www.rylkov-fond.org) often carried extensive international and local research proving that methadone reduces the risk of HIV among users of heroin and other opiates, as well as helps people stay on AIDS and TB treatments.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), methadone is an essential substance for treating heroin dependence and preventing HIV transmission by reducing the practice of injecting, but the Russian government’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to illicit drugs has stalled the use of methadone across the country.

Given that Russia currently has one of the largest populations of injecting drug users in the world as well as one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics, the dissemination of such information is essential to keep the spread of the virus under control.

Some experts estimate that as many as 1.65 million people could be HIV-positive by 2015 if current trends persist unabated. Others believe that even these official statistics are conservative.

An estimated 980,000 people are living with HIV in Russia; in some regions as many as 80 percent of those with HIV contracted the virus through contaminated needles, Eka Iakobishvili, human rights analyst at the London based Harm Reduction International told IPS.

“For years, human rights advocates like ARF have argued that Russia’s colossal failure to provide vital services to (drug users) is a breach of its obligations under international law to respect, protect and fulfill the right to health,” Sarang told IPS.

“The government’s latest crackdown against public health activists has now turned the matter into a (violation of our) freedom of expression as well,” she said.

The fact that the United Nations listed universal treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS as one of its most urgent millennium development goals (MDGs) – with a deadline of achieving universal treatment by 2015 – human rights and health advocates contend that Russia’s failure to allow information or services helpful to drug users breaches international human rights and public health laws.

“We are very concerned about the closure of the website, which is one of very few Russian language websites with accurate information about drug treatment, particularly drug treatment using methadone,” Diederik Lohman, a senior researcher from the health and human rights division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS.

According to Lohman, although the WHO, UNAIDS, and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime have all recommended the use of methadone as the most effective method for treating opioid drug dependence and as a highly successful means of preventing HIV transmission, the Russian government routinely misinforms the public about the treatment, claiming it to be futile and dangerous.

Since ARF is a grassroots organisation, responding directly to the needs of local people, “the shutdown of (its) website would likely have a double impact on Russian society,” Iakobishvili told IPS.

“The first would be to (silence) the democratic voice that opposes current government policies in health and social justice; and the second would be to deprive thousands of people of (vital) information on health issues, which the website provides on daily basis.”

In fact, Lohman believes that the Russian government has exacerbated its country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic by cracking down on public discussion on key health interventions. Thousands of people who have perished over the last few years could have been saved if only the government had allowed proper treatment and prevention programmes, he added.

Academics, too, are deeply concerned about these disturbing developments in Russia.

For instance, Evan Wood, director of the urban health research initiative and centre for excellence in HIV/AIDS and professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, told IPS that it is now estimated that nearly one in 100 adults in the country is HIV-positive, largely because scientifically proven HIV prevention interventions, such as methadone, are illegal.

“This is despite the fact that methadone is on the WHO’s list of essential medicines and has been proven in clinical trials to reduce HIV risk and be among the most effective treatments for heroin addiction,” Wood told IPS.

Wood strongly believes that the Russian authorities’ move to censor the site was a clear infringement on freedom of information and is another “horrifying example” of why the HIV epidemic has such a strong foothold in the Soviet region.

According to several reports, Eastern Europe and Central Asia have the fastest growth rates of HIV in the world, with Russia accounting for between 60 – 70 percent of the epidemic.

By shutting down a site dedicated to promoting and developing drug policies based on tolerance, health protection, dignity and human rights, Russian authorities have shown, to their own nation as well as to the international community, an utter disregard for the constitution, citizens’ rights and Russia’s international human rights obligations, Iakobishvili told IPS.

Election season in Russia promises to be stormy, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin emerges as the leading candidate in the presidential race scheduled for March 4 and unresolved issues of voting fraud and voter manipulation spark massive protests amongst opposition groups.

Current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings reached 50 percent ahead of the March 4 presidential race. Credit: Ria Novosti

The Kremlin-friendly VTsIOM (All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion) said that Putin’s approval rating has reached 50 percent, while the independent Levada Centre pollster reported only 42 percent support for the current Prime Minister.

Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the Levada Centre, told IPS, “The key reason for Putin’s rising popularity stems primarily from an improved development programme that forms part of his (election) campaign.”

Furthermore, ever since the Central Election Commission released the final approved list of qualified candidates for the elections, most Russians have been struck by their lack of options for a suitable leader to run the country.

The four candidates were nominated by their respective political parties: Putin, the founding member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party; Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party; Sergei Mironov of the Fair Russia Party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky from the Liberal Democratic Party.

After submitting over two million valid signatures in his favour, 46-year-old billionaire businessman Mikhail Prokhorov became the fifth registered candidate and the only self-nominee to run in the race on March 4, which will take place at 90,000 polling stations across Russia and several hundred polling stations in 147 foreign countries.

The new president will be elected for an extended six-year term.

According to Grazhdankin, the United Russia Party’s ability to secure majority seats in the State Duma (the lower house of legislators), deep cracks in the post-Soviet political system and the lack of unity between opposition groups have essentially paved the way for Putin’s victory in the upcoming presidential race.

United Russia plans to meet with political parties, opposition leaders and civic groups to discuss how to restore public trust in the country’s elections, State Duma deputy speaker Oleg Morozov said.

“We are carrying out intensive consultation with all parliamentary and non-parliamentary bodies and various civil society institutions interested in fair elections in order to begin open public dialogue and understand what lawmakers, politicians and civil society institutions should do to restore public trust in elections,” Morozov said.

All registered Russian parties, both parliamentary and non-parliamentary, as well as some opposition figures and experts have confirmed their participation in these discussions.

Morozov said he hoped the public movement in support of fair elections, created early January by a group of liberal public figures, would also join the dialogue.

Putin himself has embarked on a nationwide political campaign, meeting various groups across the political spectrum including trade unionists, women’s rights groups, industry directors, regional administrations, sports groups and students, in an effort to seed his profile deeply in the voter base.

Professor Sergei Guriev, rector of the New Economic School (NES), an independent research institution, told IPS, “The government is divided between winning in the first round and in the runoff. The tradeoff is straightforward. A victory in the latter will be more legitimate but will make it clear that Putin is much weaker than he was (during the last two elections) when there was no runoff.”

“If they want to win in the first round, there will be a lot of fraud. And given the level of (public) outrage against corruption, this will completely undermine (the Party’s) legitimacy,” he added.

The authorities’ unwillingness to allow peaceful protests and Putin’s inability to reign in his subordinates’ unstoppable urge to over-count votes will likely exacerbate the problem and large scale corruption will be well documented by independent observers, he added.

“Finally, it is no longer clear that Putin could win an honest election (meaning an election with free media, free campaigning and live debates) against Alexei Navalny,” Guriev concluded, referring to the 35-year-old lawyer who has emerged on the Russian political scene as a fierce champion of people’s power and the need for change in the political establishment.

According to Yelena Shestopal, head of the chair of sociology and psychology of politics at the Moscow State University, years of holding top posts in the government have made Putin complacent with being out of reach of critics.

“Putin is not used to acting in conditions of competition – he is a man with definite views and with a clear inner logic, as a result of which he makes concrete decisions irrespective of the regime.”

“Putin believes in his predestination, almost mystical, that it is he who is going to get the country out of this impasse. And of course, the present situation is very difficult and uncomfortable for him but the fact that he is not losing heart shows that he is a real leader,” Shestopal said.

Many experts and researchers have repeatedly called for political reforms in Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, and strongly urged Putin and his administration to take steps toward reforming the entire political system such that it adheres to democratic values.

But Christopher Walker, vice president for strategy and analysis at Freedom House, told IPS, “Given the track record of the current leadership in Russia and the depth of corruption in the country, it will be enormously difficult for current power-holders to undertake meaningful reforms from within.”

Citing the most recent Freedom House analysis, he characterized Russian democracy “as a consolidated politically authoritarian system.”

Walker concluded, “the development of democratic accountability in Russia in recent years has been suppressed, which explains, in significant part, why ordinary Russians are more actively expressing their discontent.”

Mass anti-government rallies have spread across Russia following the December parliamentary elections that the opposition claims were slanted in favor of Putin’s United Russia Party and more demonstrations are planned for next month in the run-up to the election.

Professor Dmitri Bondarenko, a researcher from the Russian Academy of Sciences, together with many other intellectual elites and middle-class Russians interviewed by IPS for this story, believe one fact: it’s explicitly clear that, social unrest notwithstanding, no other leader – from the left, right or centre of the political spectrum – has emerged as serious competition, making it absolutely clear that Putin remains the leading political figure in the country.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, May 27 2011 (IPS)

More than half of Georgia’s population still lives in abject poverty due to economic stagnation, worsening living standards, rising unemployment and low pay nearly nine years after the 2003 bloodless ‘Rose Revolution’ that promised post-Soviet economic revival, a new political course and better living conditions.

Following a military parade Thursday marking Georgia’s independence from Russia, two people were reported killed and many more injured when police used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets to break up an opposition rally against President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government.

The Georgian opposition has taken to the streets to press for the resignation of the current government that have failed to live up to people’s expectations. They also claim that after the ‘Rose Revolution’ there were many opportunities and resources for normalising Georgian-Russian relations, which would have made it possible to solve vital domestic economic problems.

“I think one of the key mistakes of [President Mikheil] Saakashvili’s government is that it considers rule of law not as the major priority and there is no judicial independence,” Eka Gigauri, executive director of Transparency International Georgia, told IPS. “Good legislation remains theoretically only as paperwork and are not duly implemented. Further, media environment is not free and independent, and many influential channels are state controlled.”

Experts say there can only be speedy improvement if radical economic development and political reforms are implemented with strong support and participation of young progressive groups.

In spite of the fact that after the protests in 2009, the government initiated negotiations with opposition parties on the improvement of the electoral environment, no tangible results have been achieved. Negotiations are stopped and the government does not want to compromise and create the possibility for Georgian people to express their will on fair elections, Gigauri said.

After the Rose Revolution, the Georgian government could not manage to improve the social conditions of the population, the unemployment rate is still high, and people are suffering from the high prices and low social conditions, according to Gigauri.

Building of democracy in Georgia started after the Rose Revolution and that still remains the key challenge. It is obvious that any country with weak government institutions faces challenges in implementing democratic values, but in the case of Georgia, there was an initial achievement in fighting petty corruption, Gigauri admitted.

However, she added that “democratic principles have been sacrificed for stability and security of the country. The main challenge of the government remains to strengthen democratic institutions and to elaborate long-term reform strategy. The reforms in civil and public sectors fall below expectations. People talk about corruption among the elite, however this is very difficult to prove even by civil society organisations.”

Some experts have mixed views. Zviad Eradze, president of the Youth Resource Center here, a non- profit institution that works on youth mobilisation for development and political programmes, said the Georgian leaders and the public believe that opposition protests were funded by Moscow – indirectly referring to the Kremlin. Relations between Russia and Georgia have dwindled since Saakashvili’s election in 2004, reaching an ultimate low in 2008, when the two countries fought a short war over two breakaway Georgian republics.

“At the same time, what I observe from here is that they [opposition groups] do not have support from the general public,” Eradze said. “Secondly, all governments have mistakes, among them is Saakashvili’s, but none of the mistakes are critical. As for the corruption level in Georgia, I would say there is no corruption. The situation is much better than before.”

As a former Soviet republic, Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia and it is located at the crossroads of western Asia and eastern Europe, bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan.

Georgia, with a population of almost 4.7 million, has an agricultural economy and little industrial production. Saakashvili, a U.S.-educated lawyer, has ruled the former Soviet republic since the Rose Revolution that catapulted him into power from obscurity. He took over from Edward Shevernadze, who became the president after Soviet collapse in 1991.

Some international organisations have assisted Georgia’s economy. Inga Paichadze, external affairs officer at the World Bank office in Tbilisi, declined to comment on democracy and human rights issues in Georgia, but explained to IPS that the World Bank provides its support to Georgia through the Country Partnership Strategy (CPS), which now spans 2010-2013.

Prepared against the backdrop of the twin crises of the August 2008 conflict and the global economic downturn, the CPS was built around two pillars, according to the World Bank CPS report: (i) meeting post-conflict and vulnerability needs, and (ii) strengthening competitiveness for post-crisis recovery and growth.

Pleased with strong results, the World Bank is providing 235 million dollars in new financing over the next two years to help sustain economic growth and support the needs of the vulnerable. Much of this will go towards local and secondary roads and regional development, the report said.

Early this year, the U.S. ambassador to the South Caucasus also announced that the U.S. was allocating 90 million dollars for democratic reforms in Georgia – a step that led Georgian opposition leader Nino Burdzhanadze to say that the West had finally begun treating Tbilisi “adequately”.

Despite external efforts, Georgians seem dissatisfied and frustrated about the pace of development. They restarted a series of public protests in May that were often brutally dispersed by pro-Saakashvili’s security forces.

Leaders of the Nation-Wide Assembly of Georgia (NWAG), which organised political action, were joined by nearly all the opposition groups in saying “unity of opposition forces and the entire society was necessary for the resignation of Saakashvili and the holding of early elections”.

Some officials argue that Saakashvili enjoys support of the majority of citizens and will not resign until the end of his term of office – Oct. 2013. The opposition is unable to force Saakashvili to step down ahead of time, they say.

“Any political standoff is a natural phenomenon for a democratic society, but the politics ends where armed persons are brought to the battlefield. Unfortunately, the Georgian history has seen examples where such irresponsible actions and a military standoff provoked by politicians caused fateful and deplorable results that we are still reaping today,” said Giorgi Targamadze, leader of the Georgian Christian Democratic Movement (CDM). “People who wear the uniform of a motherland defender do not need additional explanations that this weapon must be used against Georgia’s enemies and not for opposing their own fellow-citizens.”

Georgia’s opposition groups rallied with frustration and disappointment over the results of the Rose Revolution, and have called for reforms or complete regime change. Georgia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze told reporters that “the country’s authorities recognise the right to freedom of association. This is the principle signed into law by the country that we respect.”

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, May 19 2011 (IPS)

Environmentalists and rights campaigners have mounted pressure on the Russian government to rescind the decision to demolish more than 500-year-old woodlands to make way for the construction of a new super-highway linking Moscow with the country’s northern capital, St. Petersburg.

Activists protest destruction of Khimki Forest. Credit: Kester Kenn Klomegah/IPS

Alexey Yaroshenko, a project director at Greenpeace Russia, explained to IPS that “environmentalists are against the development of this project primarily because the government made the wrong choice: from at least 12 different possibilities of construction of this road, they selected one that leads to the most damage to the environment. Nor is this one the shortest or the least expensive.”

“There are alternative ways of building the road that would not lead to the destruction of Khimki Forest. And although development and environmental conservation are both important, development that allows conservation is more important than development that leads to indiscriminate environmental destruction,” he said.

He further pointed out that corruption as the main obstacle for development in the country, and said this project – construction of the road through the Khimki Forest – is one of the symbols of corruption.

Activists risk abuse

The criticisms of environmentalists and rights campaigners have been portrayed as sabotaging government efforts to undertake development projects in the country, Yaroshenko added.

Conservationists camping in the endangered Khimki Forest would have looked like holiday hikers had it not been for broken jaws and emotional tales of attacks, Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK), a widely-circulated daily, reported this week.

The Khimki Forest, located north of Moscow, looks like a battlefield as riot police regularly – and often roughly – disperse groups of demonstrators protesting the forest’s destruction and arrest activists, including environmental champions Yevgenia Chirikova and Yaroslav Nikitenko, Left Front Leader Sergei Udaltsov and Yabloko political party leader Sergei Mitrokhin.

Apparently, their cases will be considered by the local legal authorities at their places of residence. Mitrokhin was already charged with participating in an unsanctioned rally, but surprisingly he had received a phone call from a Moscow Interior Ministry Department official who apologised and asked if the Khimki police had overstepped their bounds.

All the activists were released, however. Later, police arrested four suspects, including a Khimki administration official, who was suspected of organising the assault. The Yabloko leader filed a complaint about the physical abuse he suffered, but said he doubted it would have any effect, as the controversy and arrests continue unabated.

Ecologist Konstantin Fetisov was badly beaten after being released from a police station where he had been questioned about a rally. Udaltsov had a rib broken during a recent crackdown, and activist Sergei Ageyev suffered a concussion, according to the Grani.ru website.

Several journalists who reported on the Khimki controversy have been attacked and badly hurt in the past. Oleg Kashin, a journalist with the reputable Kommersant daily, was beaten with an iron rod by two unknown assailants outside his home, and Mikhail Beketov, the former editor of a local weekly who criticised the motorway project, was left brain-damaged and unable to speak after an attack in Moscow

Posting on their Twitter accounts, environmental activists have criticised Russian police for using heavy-handed tactics and described their actions as appalling.

“It was a very strange attack by the local police. We went for a peaceful walk in the forest, looking for a place to set up camp, when suddenly the police barred our way telling us we were holding an unsanctioned rally and that they had come to arrest us. They got really tough – I saw them throwing people to the ground and kicking them,” Yevgenia Chirikova, a staunch Russian human rights campaigner and powerful leader of the Khimki Forest Defence Movement, told IPS.

Yuri Belov, an environmental activist who belongs to Greenpeace, told IPS that he created, as a contribution against forest destruction, a group on Facebook called “Defence of the Khimki Forest” which is attracting a lot of supporters.

“I think that a majority of the Khimki Forest defenders agree that the Moscow-St. Petersburg road should be built because the existing road does not cope with the traffic volume,” he said. “But they are against the construction of the road through the forest. They have proposed eleven alternatives for the government, some of which would not affect the forest at all – for example, simply widening the existing road on both sides.”

Belov said Russia is one of the most corrupt countries on the planet, and many environmental problems, such as the destruction of forests, happen due to corruption among local officials who disregard the long-term consequences of projects.

“This type of development is very detrimental to the environment, and unfortunately, the environmental movement and civil society are generally weak due to the previous totalitarian regime and the result of usurpation of power by Vladimir Putin and his close colleagues from the KGB. They continue brainwashing the population with propaganda, and keep the majority just above the survival level. In such conditions, ordinary people cannot show concern about conservation of the environment,” Belov told IPS.

Prime Minister Putin said the government was ready to take into account environmentalists’ concerns over the construction of the controversial Moscow-St. Petersburg highway, but warned against politicising the issue.

“Problems always emerge when it comes to development and environmental protection. Sometimes ecological problems are used for political purposes,” Putin said, adding that in order to find a compromise, both politicians and ecologists should restrain their ambitions.

Following Medvedev’s order, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources said it was prepared to join discussions on new possible routes for the highway.

“We are ready to join the discussion of this issue together with the United Russia party, the Russian Transport Ministry, non-governmental and environmental organisations, and implement the Russian president’s order,” a senior official from the Ministry said.

Russian environmentalists, the Khimki Forest protection groups, and international organisations such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and Transparency International, combined with the leaders of the large-scale grassroots protests, are urging President Medvedev to conduct an independent assessment of the controversial construction of the super-highway through the forest.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, May 12 2011 (IPS)

In the wake of anti-government protests by the opposition and youth activists in Baku, Azerbaijan, authorities have arrested and detained scores of demonstrators and journalists in deplorable and inhumane conditions.

Intigam Aliyev. Credit: Courtesy of Legal Education Society, Azerbaijan

Intigam Aliyev, a human rights lawyer and president of the Legal Education Society (LES) in Azerbaijan, has been offering detainees legal services. Aliyev spoke with IPS about the risks and challenges faced by activists in Azerbaijan. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: There are reports that some activists were detained after the last parliamentary elections, and also during protests in March and April. What are your views on this? A: Azerbaijani authorities detained at least 40 opposition activists at the Apr. 2 opposition rally in Baku. The arrests were the government’s latest attempt to prevent large-scale protests – similar to those that occurred in North Africa and the Middle East – from spreading to Azerbaijan.

Local authorities are determined to prevent any efforts of opposition to exercise freedom of assembly.

Azerbaijan must follow all its international commitments. Azerbaijan is a member of the Council of Europe and a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as well as a number of other international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The crackdown to prevent peaceful protest was a blatant violation of Azerbaijan’s obligations under international law and as a member of the Council of Europe.

Authorities are using the smallest pretexts to silence critics, thus damaging the reputation of Azerbaijan’s justice system. These arrests should stop immediately.

Q: How are political detainees’ cases progressing in court? A: Since the start of this year, all peaceful demonstrations in Baku were systematically dispersed and a large number of participants were arrested and immediately sentenced to administrative detention without proper legal defence.

Many of the detainees, including journalists, were prevented from reporting and filming the demonstrations. Surprisingly, some have been charged with criminal offences for conducting peaceful demonstrations.

Most of the activists were quickly convicted on administrative charges for disobeying police orders… Activists were beaten, tortured and threatened by police while in custody.

The Azerbaijani authorities have initiated criminal proceedings, in absentia, against France-based activist Elnur Majidli; in addition to Hasan Karimov, chairman of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFP); Tazakhan Miralamli, chairman of Jalilabad branch of the PFP; and Tural Abbasli, head of the youth organisation of the opposition Musavat Party, who helped to develop the Facebook.com page calling for all the March and April political protests.

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide all the detained activists with required legal aid and services. Azerbaijan Bar Association (ABA) is under control of the government.

Lack of independent lawyers and tight finances of the detained people make their provision with qualitative legal aid almost impossible. In many cases, the court appoints lawyers financed by the government so their participation in the legal process is a formality, or they just act according to the direction of prosecuting bodies or the court.

Q: How would you describe the conditions under which political detainees are being housed? A: Sanitary conditions in these prisons are deplorable and hardly any medical care is offered. People who suffer from tuberculosis are deprived of any medical treatment. According to the reports of several NGOs, deaths from tuberculosis are frequent.

The prison cells are overcrowded with stale air, saturated with carbon dioxide and fumes, especially in hot weather… These conditions cause frequent respiratory illnesses, shortness of breath, drowsiness, dizziness, apathy and emotional instability. Many of the detainees are constantly coughing, wheezing when breathing – every minute they take a sip of water, so as not to suffocate. All abovementioned facts give us grounds to consider these conditions of life in prison inhumane and close to ill treatment and torture.

For example, Hasan Karimov, chairman of the Supreme Mejlis of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFPA), suffered a heart attack while in detention at the Sabayil District Police Department in Baku after participating in an opposition rally.

Prisoners also face psychological oppression. Lawyers, friends or relatives are prevented from visiting the detainees. Prisoners are deprived from any access to the information. It is prohibited to bring into the prison any books or newspapers.

Unfortunately, the prisons are closed to the NGO representatives. All requests for access to the prisons were rejected without any legal basis.

Q: What do you suggest should be done in order to stop further political suppression and frequent arrest of young political activists in the country? A: The repressive politics pursued by the government since the collapse of the Soviet era, most often against democratic institutions now leading to the one-party system where all the powers are concentrated in one authority, has to be changed.

Long-term repression and strong-handed power of the Azerbaijani president has to give way for popular modern democracy.

Soon after the meltdown of the Soviet system, we enjoyed stable support of international organisations, but that has dwindled or dried up during the past few years, thus making it harder to promote democracy.

International organisations like the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the U.N., and the Council of Europe must be more persistent in their collective demands for the fulfilment of the Azerbaijani government’s obligations… particularly those calling for the release of all political prisoners and the establishment of an environment in which journalists, human rights activists and all opposition groups can conduct their activists free from interference and inhumane intimidation by the authorities.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, May 11 2011 (IPS)

Health experts from around the world have acknowledged rising numbers of ‘lifestyle’ or non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in different countries, admitted inadequate funds are the biggest obstacle in health delivery, and called on the global community to consolidate efforts to effectively tackle the problem.

“The health, socioeconomic and developmental costs are immense. More than nine million people die prematurely in their productive years before the age of 60. Healthcare costs are spiralling,” says Ala Alwan, assistant director-general of World Health Organizations (WHO’s) Non-communicable Disease and Mental Health Cluster. “The time to act has come.”

Jessica Brinton, a representative from the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, explained to IPS that NCDs are no longer a problem affecting only wealthy countries. “No matter what the measure – rank order, proportion, disability-adjusted life years, or deaths – NCD burden exceeds infectious disease burden in developing countries,” Brinton said. “Eighty percent of NCD deaths worldwide occur in developing countries.”

The numbers are stark. Of the 57 million deaths that occurred globally in 2008, 36 million – almost two thirds – were due to NCDs. NCDs are mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. The combined burden of these diseases is rising fastest among lower and middle-income countries, populations and communities, where they impose large, avoidable costs in human, social and economic terms.

“Politicians and health experts alike recognise the growing burden of non-communicable diseases,” Jeffrey L. Sturchio, president and chief executive of the Global Health Council, the world’s largest alliance of organisations working in global health based in Washington, told to IPS.

Specifically, Sturchio pointed out, in Russia, NCDs cause nearly 70 percent of male deaths and more than 90 percent of female deaths. Though numbers vary, NCDs cause the majority of the disease burden throughout ex-Soviet republics and Eastern European countries.

With the exception of Armenia, Russia and other former Soviet republics do not yet have as high a prevalence of diabetes as other parts of Europe. However, they suffer proportionally more deaths from cardiovascular disease. Russia in particular has a high burden of stroke, along with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Sturchio explained.

“Ex-Soviet republics have higher rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease when compared with Eastern European countries,” Sturchio said. “This may be due to high rates of tobacco use, which continue to rise.”

Unprecedented attention is being placed on the fight against these diseases, which share four common risk factors – tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity and poor diet. The health and socioeconomic impacts of these diseases – particularly in developing countries and those struggling with poverty – represent one of the gravest public health challenges of the 21st century.

Governments in developing countries have been slow to adopt cost-effective measures to prevent NCD risk factors and the poorest countries are still working to scale up basic public health and treatment services, Brinton pointed out.

In developing countries, Brinton says, “Both the number of deaths and the morbidity burden of NCDs are expected to increase in absolute and relative terms compared to infectious diseases.”

A range of proven effective tools exists to stop people being exposed to the risks that lead to NCDs. Additionally, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control offers a range of cost-effective measures to curb tobacco-related harm, including taxation, legislation for smoke-free environments, health warnings and advertising.

“The evidence is now overwhelming that tobacco control measures work, and first and foremost taxing tobacco and its products is the most cost-effective tobacco control measure,” says Alwan. “Other strategies that can prevent NCDs include investing in population-wide salt reduction to lower blood pressure, and taxing alcohol.”

Still some experts are sceptical. “Practically governments alone cannot meet the challenges and the burden,” Evgeniya Alexeeva, executive director of Moscow based Public Health and Social Development, a non-profit health NGO, told IPS. “Efforts by private organisations are stifled and pushed out of the mainstream,” she said.

Sturchio strongly suggested that governments are important partners – along with civil society, the private sector, and other stakeholders – in the fight against NCDs, and governments must develop national strategies and policies that establish integrated approaches to prevention, treatment and care, set global and national targets for NCDs, and support coordination at all levels.

Experts, who gathered for the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Non- communicable Diseases Control, hosted by the WHO and the Russian Federation here in April, were gearing up for the U.N. General Assembly high-level meeting on the prevention and control of NCDs slated for September.

A report released at the conference on global status of NCDs provides a baseline for future monitoring trends and for assessing the progress that countries are making to address the epidemic.

The report is also the foundation for a call to action, by providing the knowledge base for a global response, recommendations for the way forward, and guidance for country leadership to contain one of the most significant current threats to global health, development and poverty reduction initiatives.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Apr 25 2011 (IPS)

After almost 18 years of unsuccessful but persistent struggle to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO), experts say that efforts by Russian authorities have not been enough and have often lacked political will.

“Russia’s struggle to join the WTO has been because Russia has had great difficulty in deciding whether it really wants to accept normal WTO disciplines,” Michael Emerson, a visiting lecturer at the Moscow State Institute for Foreign Affairs, told IPS.

Russia, the only major economy outside the global trade body, has been negotiating membership for nearly 18 years, although the average accession period is only five to seven years.

“Russia has come a long way in improving its economy, and by joining the organisation, it will stimulate the economy further for foreign investors,” a senior director at Russian Economic Development Ministry told IPS.

Russian business still only sees the WTO as a threat. Russia’s leaders do not really understand the benefits of membership, but have a clear vision of the limitations that the WTO imposes in terms of public procurement and transparency.

“WTO accession is at the same time an old and a new issue. The agenda of Russia accession to the WTO is a long lasting topic which is still prominent under [Russian President Dmitry Anatolyevich] Medvedev,” Sandra Fernandes, a former researcher on Russia at the Center for European Policy Studies, a Brussels- based academic think tank, told IPS. “This long process of Russian accession to the WTO has been delaying the Russian participation in a set of open market regulations.”

She explained further that the bilateral market access negotiations between the European Union (EU) and Russia for the accession of the Russian Federation to the WTO were concluded in 2004.

Fernandes underlined that the EU is the biggest trading partner of Russia, and that Russia is the third most important partner of the EU.

“The Russian business sector has not been pushing for WTO accession. This sector considers that it does need the trade organisation because it has a zero-sum perspective on WTO accession. Contrarily, the WTO looks for a win-win perspective. Even if recent official declarations point to a will to join until the end of the year, this is not the first time that such calendars are set and not fulfilled,” according to she Fernandes.

Anoush DerBoghossian, spokesperson for the World Trade Organisation, explained in an email from Geneva, Switzerland, that Russia – currently a non-WTO member – is not bound by the organisation’s rules, but once it becomes a full-fledged member it will have rights and obligations.

“In order to be a WTO member, the candidate country would need to follow certain procedures. First, it would need to translate all the WTO law into its national law so that its trade regime falls in line with WTO rules,” DerBoghossian told IPS. “This requires for the candidate country to implement new legislation or amend its current legislation related to trade… Second, the candidate country would have to enter into bilateral negotiations on market access for goods and services. You can see that this process is quite long and technical and that the candidate country is in the driving seat.”

The WTO was established on Jan. 1, 1995, as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that had been operating since 1947. It is the only international body now supervising world trade. The WTO has 153 members, and negotiations on the admission of a new member are held within a working group that unites countries that have unsettled trade problems with the candidate.

As a rule, negotiations focus on four areas: accessibility to the goods market, agriculture, accessibility to the market of services, and systemic matters. The candidate must bring its national laws in compliance with the WTO rules. Two-thirds of votes of WTO members are sufficient for the admission of a new member.

A few more rounds of informal working group consultations are necessary, Russian chief trade negotiator, deputy head of the Economic Development Ministry’s trade negotiations department Maxim Medvedkov said last week.

“We received a dozen of questions from WTO members. There are another seven sections to discuss, including three very difficult concerning technical regulations, veterinary and phytosanitary measures and general legal matters,” Medvedkov said. “We would like to finish the settlement of technical issues within the next few months.”

The next round of consultations will be held in late May or early June, and some of these issues will be on the agenda.

Georgia, a former Soviet republic that has been in political conflict with Russia, has repeatedly threatened to block Russia’s accession to the WTO citing various bilateral disagreements. Russia, however, accuses Georgia of politicising the issue. Tensions between Russia and Georgia came to a head in August 2008 when the two countries fought a brief war over the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has also alleged that Western bureaucratic hurdles are delaying Russia’s WTO accession. “Our accession is largely being lobbied now in Washington not by bureaucrats, but by businesses,” Lavrov said on Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Another important issue is the long-standing Jackson-Vanik amendment on restricting trade with the Soviet Union, which the U.S. Congress adopted in 1974 to pressure the USSR into allowing emigration. The controversial amendment is still applied to Russia, and has proved a key barrier for the country’s entry to the WTO. The U.S. Congress may terminate the application of Jackson-Vanik to Russia during 2011.

In March, Medvedev voiced hope to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that the question of Russia’s accession to WTO will be settled this year with energetic support from the U.S.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Apr 10 2011 (IPS)

Campaigners are asking the Azerbaijan government to introduce radical reforms early to avoid a popular uprising sweeping the Arab world.

Opposition leaders and rights activists have mobilised large protests in March and early April, and plan more – despite the official restrictions on public rallies. Many demonstrators have been detained.

“The majority of the enlightened population is outraged by the systematically falsified elections, absence of freedom of thought and assembly, opposition activists being held as political prisoners, beating and harassment of journalists, politically dependent and corrupt courts, and absence of rule of law,” Dr. Leila Alieva, who heads the Baku-based think tank Center for National and International Studies told IPS.

Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region. Located at the crossroads of eastern Europe and western Asia, it has the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south. Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas, which bring it 50 million dollars a day. About 99 percent of its population of eight million is Muslim.

President Ilham Aliyev took over from his father Heidar Aliyev in disputed elections in 2003. The regime is widely seen as corrupt; a U.S. diplomatic cable that surfaced on Wikileaks describes Aliyev as a mafia boss. Election monitoring organisations have pointed to fraud.

Despite its oil wealth, the majority live in abject poverty. Official salaries are unrealistically low, says Alieva, and the education sector and health system are almost collapsing under increasing demands for bribes. But not unlike Libya, the oil and gas resources allow the government to buy political and social support.

Alieva says up to a quarter of the Azerbaijan population works in Russia due to the worsening economic conditions.

“The government severely restricts freedom of assembly,” Giorgi Gogia, Caucasus researcher for the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS. “They have not authorised a single rally in central Baku for a few years, and police quickly and often violently disperse unauthorised protests. The crackdown on peaceful protests intensified this year after the opposition and youth groups announced their intention to hold rallies calling for a change of government.”

Human rights violations documented by HRW include torture and ill- treatment and deaths in police custody, and near complete impunity for the police.

Gogia says “the recent protests in Azerbaijan were inspired by the popular uprising in Middle East and North Africa, but I cannot comment on the level of grievances of Azerbaijani and their readiness for regime change. One thing is clear: the government takes those protests seriously, and they seem determined to crush any attempts at peaceful protests against the regime.”

The Council of Europe (a grouping of 47 nations to promote human rights) has appointed a special rapporteur to study the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan. “But Baku refuses to cooperate with the rapporteur and has not given him access to the country,” Gogia said. “This is one of the very rare instances when a CoE member-state flatly refuses to cooperate with the special procedures.”

Sam Patten from Freedom House told IPS that “the parliamentary elections held late last year showed no signs of improvement, and there is now the prospect of increased regulations further restricting the independent activity of civic organisations.”

Further arrests following demonstrations earlier this month do little to suggest that the government may be loosening its grip in the wake of “the Arab spring;” rather, it is tightening it even further, Patten said.

Street protests may be stepped up despite the threatening messages the government has been sending would-be protestors, Patten said. Azerbaijan’s population is strikingly young and the most Internet-savvy in the South Caucasus.

In response the government has been warning Azeris to stay off social networking sites. One government television programme suggested that excessive time spent on Facebook would lead to impotence.

Patten said “another sign to watch out for is the government’s official position with respect to Islam. In the past, Azerbaijan has repressed religion citing fears about extremism. But religiosity in Azerbaijan is on the rise, especially among the young who view the government as insidiously corrupt and unable to respond to public and community needs.

“Further repression of religious groups could lead to even greater instability. Aliyev, however, is reported to have recently met with a large gathering of clerics – unusual for him – in a tacit recognition of the need to allow for greater religious freedom in view of events throughout the Middle East.”

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Mar 16 2011 (IPS)

A large ethnic Russian minority population in Latvia and Estonia, which joined the European Union (EU) along with Lithuania in 2004, has repeatedly complained of discrimination and denial of political and social rights by the three Baltic governments.

This includes denial of citizenship, which in practice entails denial of employment, because those who do not possess Latvian or Estonian citizenship are not considered eligible for employment – a situation which both Russia and international organisations fault.

Heiko Pääbo, head of the Centre for Baltic Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia, explained that Estonian and Latvian governments categorised people who came to their territories after the Soviet occupation in 1940 as ‘immigrants’, and that only after 1991 could they be naturalised as citizens of Estonia or Latvia.

The two republics attained full independence after the 1991 failed coup attempt in the Soviet Union which fragmented into the Russian Federation and 10 other independent republics that constitute a loose Commonwealth of Independent States.

Russian authorities have done little to promote social integration in Estonia and Latvia. On the contrary they have been an impediment, often advancing ungrounded statements and facts, and reiterating that the Russian minority faces discrimination, Pääbo believes.

Instead of reiterating complaints, Russian authorities should encourage their citizens to learn the Baltic languages and to apply for citizenship, he says, regretting that policies directed at solving the problem have been rather counterproductive.

“For example,” added Pääbo, “some years ago Russia stopped requesting visas from ‘non-citizens’ of Baltic States travelling to Russia. As much as they can also travel inside the EU without visas, this policy has decreased motivation to apply for Estonian or Latvian citizenship because Estonians and Latvians should apply for Russian visas but without that citizenship they shouldn’t.

“Considering that many of them have relatives in Russia, their motivation to visit Russia is relatively high. Therefore, I consider that the Russian attitude towards this issue is a crucial factor that impedes integration in the Estonian and Latvian societies,” Pääbo stated.

Victor Ivanovich Gushchin, coordinator of the Association of Non-governmental Organisations of Latvia, said the core factor in this situation was that Latvian aliens were not non-citizens (citizens of third states) in the European concept, but stateless persons.

“No doubt that creation of such alien institutions leads to developing a legislation which discriminates against minorities,” he said.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, thousands of members of the Russian minority in the Baltics, especially in Latvia where the problem is getting worse, have launched a united campaign to be recognised as citizens and also for the Russian language to be adopted as a second national language in the region, but with few positive results.

Vadim Poleshchuk, a human rights expert with the Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights, told IPS that there is a significant difference between the terms “ethnic Russians”, “citizens of Russia” and “Russian-speakers”, which the media and academic institutions often use interchangeably.

For instance in Estonia there are ethnic Russians (about 25 percent), Russian citizens (some seven percent) and Russian-speakers (about 30 percent of the entire population). In Latvia Russians comprise about 28 percent of the population and Russian-speakers some 32 percent. Lithuania hosts about six percent Russians, Poleshchuk said in an email response.

“In Estonia and Latvia people who settled there during the Soviet period were not recognised automatically as citizens of Estonia or citizens of Latvia. In 1992 these people were about one-third of all population. They were permitted to naturalise (with some exceptions),” he explained.

“But many people could not naturalise mostly because they did not speak good Estonian or Latvian which is one of the requirements. In both republics, language tests need to be passed before naturalisation and this is a great problem for older generations. Nevertheless, half of all minorities in Estonia and Latvia are now citizens of the country of residence,” he added.

The High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Ambassador Knut Vollebaek, told IPS in an email response from Vienna that non-discrimination and protection of rights of persons belonging to national minorities is an important commitment undertaken by the OSCE member states.

There is definitely a lot of work to be done all over the OSCE region, including in the Baltic states and in Russia, to implement the political commitments undertaken within the OSCE framework and to ensure that the situation involving national minorities does not lead to tensions and/or escalate to a wider conflict, he said.

“My goal is to develop a process of exchange and cooperation between all the stakeholders, including the authorities and civil society. My predecessors and I have been engaged on issues involving national minorities in Latvia and Estonia,” Vollebaek added.

An official statement by Russia’s Foreign Ministry reflects Moscow’s insistence that Estonia and Latvia comply with international resolutions against racial and ethnic discrimination, and stop denying nationality rights to many of their ethnic Russians. Moscow is seeking help on the issue from the United Nations Human Rights Council, the statement informed.

In addition, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had urged the European Union to review the human rights implications of its current policy in the Baltic States, and warned against “double standards,” the statement pointed out.

Putin had urged the EU to ensure that Riga and Tallinn follow the recommendations of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, to ensure equal rights to minorities who have been living in the country for a long time, and for those who arrived within the last decade, the statement said.

He had also called for compliance with the EU Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Discrimination against Russian minorities has been discussed repeatedly by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe or PACE, the OSCE, the European Parliament and even by the UN Commission on Racial Discrimination. All of them have stressed the need to make the Baltic laws commensurate with international standards and human rights provisions in the European Union.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Mar 5 2011 (IPS)

Although the ratification of a new strategic arms reduction treaty (START) with the United States is considered a top priority for the Medvedev administration, experts are debating whether such an agreement could threaten to reduce Russian military power in the future.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ratified the treaty on Feb 5, 2011. The document slashes the maximum amount of Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,550 warheads, down from the current ceiling of 2,200.

One expert, Alexander Fomenko, a member of the foreign relations and security committee at the Russian State Duma, does not believe that the agreement will result in weakening Russian military might.

“The reduction of strategic offensive weapons is quite understandable today, as the strategic arsenals were created during the cold war time,” Fomenko told IPS.

“Today, we see that real modern war is special operations war – it is something new,” he explained.

Formenko added that the strategic weapons serve as a guarantor of non-use of nuclear weapons, and that Russia currently possesses new Topol-M and Ïskander missiles, as well as other weapons capable of responding to an aggressive move.

Tom Collina, of the Washington-based Arms Control Organisation, told IPS that the signing of the new START treaty will greatly strengthen U.S.-Russian relations and build trust between the two nations, as well as make the citizens of both countries safer.

“The treaty is in the interests of both nations, and increases the security of both sides by reducing nuclear forces, resuming inspections, and increasing trust,” he explained.

“It is now time to build on this success by moving on to the next treaty that should cover long-range, as well as short-range (tactical), nuclear weapons,” he said.

But Russia also has its critics of the treaty: Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky claimed that the treaty substantially weakens Russia’s military power. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said any reduction of nuclear potential will undermine Russia’s security. And retired general Leonid Ivashov warned that the treaty is disastrous for Russia because it does not address the U.S.’s superiority in conventional arms.

Chairman of the State Duma International Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev explained the Duma’s position to local media: “Its key idea is that the U.S.’s unilateral understanding of certain provisions of the new treaty does not impose any new commitments on Russia.”

“The document stipulates significant cuts in both sides’ nuclear arsenals, but will not affect the development of strategic components of their armed forces,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov pointed out.

“This treaty does not envision any duties from Russia except the necessity of observing the limits it stipulates. Russia, like the United States, reserves the right to continue to develop its strategic forces in the future,” he said.

“In this regard,” Ivanov added, “the new START treaty slaps no restrictions on the two sides’ strategic offensive arms levels. The plans we earlier mapped out to develop the strategic component of the armed forces remain in full force.”

This means that Russia will continue to develop the Bulava submarine- launched ballistic missile and the Yars RS-24 missiles, among other sophisticated weaponry. The U.S. will undoubtedly pursue similar aims.

Evgeny Bazhanov, vice chancellor of research and international relations at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told IPS, “Russia and the West came together and had a very good discussion.”

According to Bazhanov, the conference signaled to other countries that have or are seeking to acquire nuclear weapons that Russia and the U.S. are ready to continue the process of disarmament, and that others should join them in this effort.

Many people believe that the treaty will lead to a significant improvement in U.S.-Russian relations and to greater opportunities for cooperation between them. Proponents claim that it paves the way for further talks between Moscow and Washington on military issues, particularly the thorny question of a joint missile defense system.

“If an agreement can ultimately be reached on joint missile defense, Russia, the United States and NATO will become true partners,” said Bazhanov.

“(One) positive result of the agreement is that it helps ease tensions on a global scale,” he concluded.

Excerpt:

With less than a year remaining for parliamentary and presidential elections in Russia, human rights activists and opposition forces have become targets of political intimidation and frequent harassment by law enforcement agencies. They see an effort to exclude them from the country’s democratic process.

“Many opposition groups suffer from widespread official suppression,” Yelena Ryabinina, chairperson of the Moscow-based Memorial and the Civic Assistance Committee and a member of the Presidential Committee on Human Rights told IPS.

“I think that this pressure from the government authority explicitly testifies to the weakness of the authority itself, and largely reflects the real state of affairs in the country,” she said.

United Russia is the pro-Kremlin party headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party, and A Just Russia are supposed to play the role of official opposition but are often found to be aligned with pro-government policy.

United Russia has been the dominant political party in Russia since it was founded in December 2001, and has unreservedly supported both President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin. The party currently holds 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma – the lower house of parliament – while the remaining seats, held by the Communist, Liberal Democratic, and A Just Russia parties, openly support the government.

In an apparent attempt to distance himself from Putin, President Medvedev has admitted that Russia is a one-party state without significant opposition.

Last week, Vedomosti, a widely circulated local newspaper, reported that Medvedev warned in a video blog that the country is showing symptoms of political stagnation similar to that of the Soviet era, calling the situation “equally damaging” to both the ruling party and the opposition.

The President said Russia needs radical reforms that are aimed at making the political system fairer and more flexible, as well as more open to renewal and development. It should have greater voter confidence, he said, adding that the current stability is threatening to turn into stagnation.

Medvedev pointed to five significant achievements during his presidency, including criminal penalties for election fraud, equal airtime given to all political parties by state-owned media, a greater role for parties that have a majority in regional parliaments in nominating governors, lower eligibility barriers to federal and regional-level parliaments, and lower numbers of voter signatures required to qualify in a poll.

He admitted that the pro-Kremlin United Russia party had dominated airtime during previous elections and that opposition parties had negligible representation at every level of legislature.

“Our democracy is imperfect and we are absolutely aware of this,” said Medvedev, calling for stronger political competition. “But we are moving forward.”

This is not the first time Medvedev, who has positioned himself as a modernising force in Russia, has talked about the need to revamp Russia’s political life.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Russia has faced serious challenges in its efforts to forge a political system that can follow nearly 75 years of Soviet rule.

With a new constitution, which was adopted in 1993, and a new parliament representing diverse parties and factions, Russia’s political structure began showing signs of stabilisation. Four major parties – United Russia, Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and A Just Russia party – continue to dominate the political scene in Russia.

Sam Patten, a senior programme manager for Eurasia at Freedom House, told IPS, “Russia needs to do much more to respect the legitimate role of opposition parties in public life and elections.”

He said that Russia would be well-served in many ways were it to allow for greater competition in the coming elections; however, actions taken against peaceful protestors in the last month do not suggest that things are going in the right direction.

The arrest of Boris Nemtsov, a former prime minister and ex-governor of Nizhny Novogorod during Yeltsin’s administration, that occurred one month ago should be a source of embarrassment for Russia’s government, Patten said. Video surveillance has clearly contradicted the charges that the prosecution attempted to bring against him.

Patten rhetorically asked, “What is Russia’s government so afraid of? The fact that a man as talented and articulate as Nemtsov would commit himself to public life at a dark moment could serve as an inspiration for the millions of well-educated, publicly-concerned Russian citizens who wish to speak out against an increasingly authoritarian government but have been cowed from doing so by such arrests and unofficial intimidation.”

“Actions such as those taken against Nemtsov do not reveal the government’s strength,” said Patten, “but rather its weakness.”

He suggested that the first thing Russia do to increase political participation and competition is to loosen the restrictions on public debate. Censorship continues to restrict the viewpoints available to the public via television, which remains the medium that reaches the most people.

Boris Kagalitsky, director of the Moscow-based Institute of Globalisation Studies, told IPS in an email that “media censorship is a big problem” in Russia.

Asked what Russian authorities should do to increase political participation and competition, Kagalitsky responded, “Honestly speaking, I don’t think that (the Russian state bureaucracy) can successfully do anything good. Objectively, we need to change the laws on political parties, on elections, on trade unions, and on the freedom to assemble.”

Given all that has been done to restrict political participation and competition, it will take a long time and much sustained effort to start moving things back into a more pluralistic direction, Patten concluded.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Jan 28 2011 (IPS)

A government initiative aimed at rooting out deep-seated corruption in Russia has hit a number of stumbling blocks since its implementation. According to experts, the initiative, adopted by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the beginning of his term, has been unsuccessful in combating the pervasive issue of corruption, particularly in regional administrations and offices, in this eastern European country.

The Berlin-based, anti-corruption NGO Transparency International has persistently rated Russia as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. In the 2009 Corruption Perception Index, Russia was ranked 146th of 180, below countries such as Togo, Pakistan, and Libya. The United States was ranked 19th.

Medvedev, who had declared the fight against corruption a priority for his administration following the 2008 election, admitted in 2010 that the anti- corruption drive had so far yielded few practical results.

The president vowed repeatedly to develop a set of measures to combat corruption in the country’s courts, in addition to other state institutions countrywide. In July 2010, he enacted five laws aimed at regulating the work of Russian police. However, Medvedev gave a caveat that additional legislation would still be needed to eradicate corruption in state institutions.

Medvedev noted the importance of anti-corruption monitoring of international projects that will take place on Russian territory, such as the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and the APEC summit. Control over spending of state funds for these events requires the collaboration of the General Prosecutor’s office, the Accounts Chamber, the Interior Ministry, and other federal agencies.

“I will outline a mechanism that will help control the situation inside the court system by correct, constitutional methods,” Medvedev said during a meeting last week with members of the Russian Public Chamber, a state-appointed consultative body that advises the government on civic issues.

“All in all, the government, society and the courts themselves are to blame for the current situation,” he said.

“We should take steps to help the courts gain their proper place in our system of values. We should do our best to make the courts become as much as possible independent from the authorities and at the same time to absolutely depend on society.”

Medvedev has long championed the importance of independent courts in Russia, but little has changed since he became president on a pledge to fight corruption.

Elena Panfilova, the general director of the Centre for Anti-Corruption Research at Transparency International, explained that Medvedev’s anti- corruption initiatives are not functioning as expected for two key reasons.

“Firstly, all the anti-corruption measures and tools offered by Medvedev are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for anti-corruption work to be efficient,” Panfilova told IPS in Moscow. “Some important instruments have been introduced, but they are only a first step towards improvement of the government system.

“Secondly, efficient anti-corruption measures are always designed for the long-run. Even though there are ways of improving Medvedev’s policy, the measures that have been undertaken can yield results in years or decades – provided that the anti-corruption campaign is expanded, rather than ceased,” she added.

Panfilova explained that theoretically, promoting transparency is an important element of the anti-corruption strategy – but that achieving this goal often falls short of expectations. As an example, she cited a law enacted July 1, 2010, which states that all information on court activity must be published online.

According to the legislation, if any data is missing, the person responsible for the court’s website content must be fined. However, in the six months since the law went into effect, there have been no registered cases of courts being fined for non-disclosure.

Panfilova suggested that stricter punishment for public officials caught by anti-corruption authorities needs to be enacted.

“(Russia should) introduce stricter nominal measures for corrupt businessmen and officials,” she said, adding that independent investigative authorities and judiciary systems must support heavier punishments for violators of the law.

To implement anti-corruption efforts effectively, Panfilova believes that civil society must be strengthened. Full-fledged participation in the drafting and subsequent examination of key bills that deal with corruption need to become the rule, rather than the exception, in Russian society.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Oct 7 2010 (IPS)

Financial remittances to the Central Asian Republics by millions of both undocumented and legal migrants working in Russia have increased substantially, labour experts say.

“Russia is the most important source of migrant remittances for many CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States, former Soviet republics) countries, particularly Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine,” Nilim Baruah, senior migration policy adviser for Central Asia at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Moscow told IPS. “During the economic crisis the volume of remittances fell significantly but still remained large.”

According to the Central Bank of Russia personal remittances from Russia to CIS countries in 2009 added up to 13 billion dollars. The World Bank estimates for Armenia are 729 million dollars, Azerbaijan 1.243 billion dollars, Kyrgyzstan 882 million dollars, Moldava 1.211 billion dollars and Tajikistan 1.747 billion dollars.

Baruah says remittances are particularly important in Tajikistan, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan where remittances as share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008 were as high as 50 percent, 31 percent and 28 percent respectively (World Bank).

An ILO study estimates that about 617 million dollars of remittances were saved by families in Tajikistan in 2008. But most of this did not enter the banking system in the form of deposits or accounts. The survey says 98 percent of remittance receivers did not have a bank account. It finds huge potential for attracting remittances into the banking system provided savers can have greater confidence in banks.

The impact in terms of brain drain is mixed, Baruah said. “On one hand in some professions the labour markets in the countries of origin are simply not able to absorb all of the available labour. On the other hand in certain professions, for example IT, medical, construction, there are skills shortages in countries of origin which are made worse by the emigration of skilled human resources.”

In an ILO survey in Tajikistan in 2008, 52 percent of top managers of 100 surveyed companies said the company had employees who had resigned during the last three years to work abroad.

Prof. Timothy Edmund Heleniak from the geography department at the University of Maryland in the United States, who has researched labour migration in the ex-Soviet republics for the World Bank (WB), told IPS in an email interview that there is considerable brain drain from these ex-Soviet republics.

“However, much of it is not permanent and most consists of temporary labour migration. Most would prefer to live permanently in their countries along with their ethnic kin. Their economies cannot supply enough jobs to keep them employed and Russia, with its declining population, can. In the longer term, it might benefit these countries from having a temporary brain drain as their workers gain skills that could be used at home later.”

When the global economic downturn became inevitable in mid-2008, Russian experts argued that a shrinking volume of remittances from labour migrants would be one major implication of the crisis in Central Asia. Yet, while remittances dropped significantly in the fourth quarter of 2008, now more Kyrgyz, Kazahk, Tajik and Uzbek citizens and those from Ukraine and Belarus seeking jobs in Russia are pushing up the volume of remittances.

Head of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) Konstantine Romodanovsky said at a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month that an estimated four million undocumented migrants from the ex-Soviet republics now live in Russia.

“There are over five million foreign citizens, of which only a million are officially registered; four million work in the shadow economy,” Romodanovsky said. Labour experts estimated the number of undocumented workers at between 10 to 15 million.

Dmitry Valentey, liaison coordinator with the International Organisation for Migration in Russia told IPS that in the coming years it’s likely to become easier for Central Asian migrants to earn more as Russia ‘s economy expands due to the recent changes in the legislation, and a political will on the part of the Russian officials to simplify registration procedures for migrants.

The migrants are benefiting Russia as well. “It significantly benefits the Russian and Kazakh economies as these countries have relative labour shortages — manual or lower paying jobs that nationals do not fill — that are filled by migrants,” said Baruah.

“The employment and working conditions in such jobs should be closely monitored by the authorities and social partners so that they meet national and international labour standards, and more people working in these jobs are brought into the formal economy.”

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Sep 4 2010 (IPS)

Efforts by the U.S. and Russian governments to move speedily towards the abolition of strategic nuclear weapons have hit stumbling blocks and continue to generate debates among experts about the practicality of achieving a nuclear- free world in the near future.

The main point, experts say, is that Russia and the U.S. have only taken weak steps to fulfil the objectives of the first strategic arms reduction treaty signed in 1991.

“Russia assigns significant military utility to its nuclear arsenal and so has less interest than the U.S. in promoting nuclear disarmament. For instance, it maintains several thousand tactical nuclear weapons in western Russia to counterbalance NATO’s conventional military superiority,” Ben Rhode, a research associate for non-proliferation and disarmament at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London told IPS in an e-mail interview.

“Many in the West have said such weapons will need to be included in future arms control talks, but I don’t know how enthusiastic Russia would be about this. A world free of nuclear weapons would see the U.S.’s military superiority increased, and Russia would lose one of the very few ways in which it can justify its claims to be a great power.”

The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START expired in December 2009. The new START agreement, signed on Apr. 8, 2010 by the Russian and U.S. presidents in Prague (and followed by the first round of negotiations in Moscow from May 18 to 20) has allowed Russia to limit U.S. nuclear forces at the expense of its own rapidly aging delivery vehicles and unattainable warhead ceilings – each country being limited to 1,550 strategic warheads on 700 delivery vehicles.

But, Robert Orttung, a senior fellow at the Jefferson Institute in Washington, DC, told IPS: “In order to keep the past achievements valid and in force, the two parties have engaged in updating the key provisions of that treaty. When finalised, this may have positive repercussions in the wider world.”

Beyond the agreements on nuclear weapons and Afghanistan, Orttung noted that it would be hard for the U.S. and Russia to work together because of the fundamental values underlying their regimes.

He pointed out “Russia is increasingly authoritarian and relies heavily on official anti-U.S. rhetoric to boost its legitimacy. Through the election of Obama, the U.S. recently proved that change is possible through a peaceful political process. This is the kind of message that the Russian leadership does not want to hear or transmit on to the rest of the population.”

Tom Collina and Greg Thielmann, both senior fellows at the Washington- based Arms Control Association told IPS “Russia can commit to President Obama’s call to negotiate another treaty after New START is approved, that will cover strategic, tactical and non-deployed weapons. The greatest challenge will be Russia’s reluctance to give up its tactical weapons as it would not want to reduce its nuclear arsenal any more. And it will also seek limitations on U.S. missile defences, which the U.S. will not want to provide.” However, to make major strides toward nuclear abolition, it is also imperative to address the complicated issues of tactical and non-deployed nuclear warheads. The major obstacle here is the difficulty of verifying arms control limits in these categories.

For example, Russia has no intended use for the hundreds of nuclear warheads for surface-to-air missiles and many of Russia’s shorter-range nuclear weapons have little utility in the post-Cold War era. Once Russia comes to recognise its large tactical nuclear arsenal as a liability in a world where the most dangerous threat is nuclear terrorism, it will be free to take unilateral initiatives and propose mutual arms control limits.

Last week, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev called on all countries to adopt a comprehensive declaration for a nuclear-free world. “This declaration would reflect the determination of all countries to move step-by-step toward the ideals of a nuclear-free world,” he said in a message to participants at a conference on International Day against Nuclear Tests.

Pavel Andreyev, RIA Novosti political commentator, observes in his comments that there is every reason to believe that a significant reduction – let alone abolition – of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals would not serve as a positive example for other countries to follow. The idea of a non-nuclear world with today’s unstable security conditions is a non-starter.

The Russian elite’s lack of trust in the U.S. undermines the idea that Washington is ready to abandon its nuclear weapons. On the other hand, if Russia and the U.S. write off their nuclear warheads, it could provide additional impetus for the more threatening elements in the international community to further develop their own nuclear capabilities, Andreyev added.

For Russia, there is an additional stimulus to avoid a reduction of its nuclear capability. It is the long overdue military reform which would cut back on conventional forces, increasing the role of the nuclear deterrent.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Aug 26 2010 (IPS)

– Environmental experts in Russia have warned that unless urgent steps are taken internationally, climatic changes combined with man-made factors could reduce the world’s population of polar bears by as much as 70 percent by 2060.

A polar bear on Russia's Chukchi Peninsula. Credit: WWF/Russia

“The climate changes seem to be caused partly by natural factors about which we can do nothing, such as anomalous solar activity,” said Vyacheslav V. Pankov, director for the Guild of Russian Ecologists. The guild was created to unite Russian ecologists and experts on the environment.

“But the environmental effects of human activities — pollution, destruction of natural migration routes, a reduction of food sources — create additional problems for the conservation of biodiversity,” he added.

Other experts agree. Vladimir Tchouprov, a Greenpeace researcher in Russia, said the arctic region is especially vulnerable to the effects of global warming. But he said Russian officials also feel concerned because the U.S. seems to be deviating from a plan worked out by the Moscow office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

He said the WWF had categorically told the U.S. to impose a moratorium on the hunting of polar bears, since experts believe that poaching and illegal trading have severely reduced the population. Though the plan was worked out in collaboration with experts in other countries, the U.S. still allows indigenous peoples to hunt polar bear.

The bear mainly inhabits Alaska and the neighbouring Russian Chukotka peninsula. Of the worldwide population of 25,000, an estimated 6,000 are to be found in Russia. Polar bear hunting has been banned in Russia since 1956, and in 2008 the animals were deemed an endangered species.

“A bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Russia came into effect in 2007, which obliges (the two countries) to reinforce the protection of the polar bear,” a WWF report said. The first Russian-U.S. commission on polar bears met last year to discuss ways of complying with the agreement.

“We believe the commission should use all its efforts to introduce a moratorium on polar bear hunting in Alaska until there is evidence that the population has increased,” the report quoted the head of the WWF in Russia, Viktor Nikiforov, as saying.

Another factor threatening the largest predator on earth is the melting ice in the Chukchi Sea which depletes the animal’s main hunting ground. According to Russian scientists, the polar bear population could decrease by 50-70 percent over the next 50 years, unless immediate steps are taken to protect them.

Russia needs to thrash out a conservation strategy, particularly by reducing man-made negative influences, said Evgeny Shvarts, WWF representative, in an interview on Russian radio.

“We want to ensure that each species is registered in the red book, and to make certain that the Russian Natural Resources and Ecology Ministry, along with scientists, academic institutions, the WWF and other non-governmental organisations, work out a combined strategy to protect polar bears. This could be approved by the ministry on behalf of Russia,” Shvarts said.

“Already two strategies for the protection of the polar bear and the Amur tiger have been approved. These explain the steps to be taken to understand what is happening to the polar bear and what should be done to prevent its extinction. The white bear serves as an indicator of the health of the arctic ecosystem and, at the same time, is one of the most vulnerable of species,” he stressed.

In April this year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave Russian scientists a hand by putting a satellite collar on a polar bear. Putin was visiting Alexandra Land, an island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the far north of Russia, where scientists are studying the bears.

Satellite collars allow scientists to follow the migration of animals, observe their daily and seasonal movements and identify habitats. “Habitats are being depleted by melting ice caps. It is important for us to know the movements of the polar bear, how it reproduces and how it rears its young,” Putin said. Russian polar bear specialist Nikita Ovsyannikov said the shrinking habitat has forced the animals to move to dry land, where there is less food and a greater threat from poachers.

“It’s difficult to count the bears because they live on the ice, but we can record increased mortality,” Ovsyannikov added.

The deputy director of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Vyacheslav Rozhnov, said research into the redistribution of polar bears is being carried out in Europe, the U.S. and now, for the first time, in Russia. Rozhnov says the findings of the studies should be an incentive to preserve conditions for the survival of the bears.

An official expert on arctic project development in the Russian Economic Development Ministry, Evgeny Konygin, said the government is keen to develop tourism in the region as a key source of revenue and that this was now a developmental priority.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service, and IFEJ — the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.)

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah and Claudia Ciobanu
MOSCOW, Apr 26 2010 (IPS)

The popular revolt in Kyrgystan this month should “serve as a wakeup call to the European Union and the United States, prompting some serious rethinking of their policy priorities in Central Asia,” says a leading area expert.

“Ignoring people’s grievances and overlooking repression because of other, supposedly more important interests, doesn’t pay off,” said Veronika Szente Goldston, New York-based advocacy director for Europe and Central Asia with the Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“Whether geostrategic or other, such interests and the promotion of human rights and democracy are rarely, if ever, mutually exclusive goals, but can and should be pursued at the same time,’’ Goldston told IPS in an e-mail interview.

Recent events in Uzbekistan, the most populous nation in Central Asia with 28 million people, serve as a case in point.

In March this year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a damning report on Uzbekistan, condemning the use of child labour, governmental persecution of human rights defenders and journalists, widespread repression of civil society, the persistent torture and ill-treatment of detainees, and the lack of independence of the judiciary.

The UN Committee also criticised the “continued lack of accountability” for the 2005 massacre of mostly unarmed protestors in the city of Andijan. An estimated 750 civilians were killed in May 2005 in Andijan after security forces opened fire on a peaceful protest.

Visiting Uzbekistan this month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged President Islam Karimov to pay more attention to human rights, albeit the U.N. chief’s comments were more restrained than the report of the U.N. Human Rights Committee. Karimov has been in power in Uzbekistan since 1989.

Yet, in spite of documented human rights abuses in the country, Western powers have recently softened their stance on Tashkent over geostrategic interests.

In October 2009, EU foreign ministers scrapped an arms embargo on Uzbekistan – the last remaining EU sanction against the country – citing “positive steps” undertaken by Tashkent over the past year.

Among the signs of progress quoted by the EU are the country’s participation in a “structured human rights dialogue” with the EU, ratification of international conventions prohibiting child labour, and the introduction of habeas corpus.

Human Rights Watch, however, claims that, “apart of isolated annual talks (on human rights) whose content and outcome remain obscure, none of the steps cited by the EU took place in the last year.”

Germany, which has a military base in Uzbekistan, was the main promoter of the elimination of the embargo. Furthermore, the rich oil and gas reserves of Central Asian countries are a potential further reason for the relaxation of the EU stance towards Uzbekistan.

The U.S. too has softened its stance on human rights abuses in the country since last year, when the Karimov government allowed Washington to use Uzbekistan as a transit route to Afghanistan and to operate from an air base in Navoi.

In 2005, the U.S. had to withdraw from the air base (Karshi Khanabad) it was using in Uzbekistan after criticising the Andijan massacre, hence its more careful stance this time around.

Meanwhile, news of human rights abuses from the country keep making their way into the Western media.

Late February, reports surfaced about the seven-year imprisonment of 28-year-old psychologist and AIDS activist Maxim Popov.

Popov was convicted late last year for “promoting homosexuality” and “corrupting minors” through his AIDS-prevention work. Homosexuality is illegal in Uzbekistan and punishable by three years of jail. The activist was further accused of fiscal impropriety.

Popov is the founder of Izis, an Uzbek AIDS-fighting organisation of young medical professionals and activists funded by UNICEF (the U.N. International Children’s Emergency Fund), the British department for international development and other international groups. He has also published a brochure on safe sex with funding from the Global AIDS Fund. Since Popov’s arrest, his NGO has been forced to shut down.

“The work of Maxim Popov did not harm the population of Uzbekistan, as he wrote from the point of view of contemporary medicine,” Surat Ikramov, chairman of Human Rights Defenders in Uzbekistan, told IPS. “The work of Popov does no harm to a Muslim society.”

“The court trial was conducted in a closed regime, therefore it is now much more difficult to prove whether the judgment was justified,” added Ikramov.

“The release of Popov can only be obtained through pressure by the main partners of Uzbekistan, namely the U.S. and the EU,” Nikolai Alekseyev, leader of Moscow Gay Pride, told IPS. “But the problem here is geopolitical, as the U.S. has a strategic military base in Uzbekistan,” said the activist who has been working on promoting Popov’s cause at EU level.

Yet, the chances for such international pressure remain slim. “The release of imprisoned human rights defenders was an explicit criterion the EU had set for lifting the sanctions,” Goldston told IPS. “The fact that the sanctions were scrapped in the absence of any progress in this area – indeed, not even just no progress but outright regression – speaks volumes about lack of international resolve in the face of persisting abuses perpetrated by the Uzbek government.”

“Key international actors, including the U.S. and the EU, have grown increasingly silent in the face of Uzbek government abuses, arguing in favour of what they term ‘quiet diplomacy’ instead of a more public, robust stance,” Goldston said.

“The effect of this weak policy has been to further embolden the Uzbek government in its abusive practices and to help perpetuate its aggressive quest for monopoly on any information about the state of human rights in the country,’’ she added.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Apr 12 2010 (IPS)

Apas Kubanychbek, who hails from the high mountainous area of Ysyk-Ata in the Chuyskaya province of Kyrgyzstan, was involved in the political movements and democratic struggles of the former Soviet republic in the early 1990s.

Apas Kubanychbek Credit: Kester Kenn Klomegah/IPS

Q: How would you explain or interpret the latest political developments leading to the unexpected change of government in Kyrgyzstan? A: The mass anti-government protest was really an indication of more than a decade of disillusionment and dissatisfaction that accumulated in the political, economic and social spheres from the period of the first post-Soviet president Askar Akayev to his successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev who came to power in 2005 during the Tulip revolution. People supported the revolution simply because they wanted a change, but that popular revolutionary interest was short-lived.

It’s worth recalling that during the Soviet times, Kyrgyzstan was one of 15 socialist republics and it was governed by Moscow. However, after the collapse of the Soviet era, what we have witnessed cannot be described as democracy but mismanagement of state power. Authorities have consistently used state power to suppress opposition voices, limit media freedom and basic rights. There was also hidden and deep-seated corruption.

El-Jurt (People), the political party I founded about eight years ago, alongside other opposition groups has been fighting against injustice and for the welfare of the impoverished in the 5.3 million population in Kyrgyzstan. We really need a better and more democratic society. Governments were not competent to carry out necessary democratic reforms for the building of a flourishing economy. Both the Akayev and Bakiyev governments consisted mainly of close friends, relatives and former communists who strongly and conservatively opposed radical changes and democracy. Thus, what happened a few days ago in my country should be expected and can be described as a grassroots revolution against official authority.

Q: Could you say more about accusations of corruption and infringement of human rights in the country? A: Akayev and his wife Mayram were not held back from the temptation of corruption. He created a corrupt political system where state ministers were appointed on bribes. Fish rots from the head and, seeing Akayev’s style, government officials also took bribes from subordinates.

My party, El-Jyurt, was suppressed because I began to publicly to criticise the embezzlement of Kyrgyz gold (four tonnes) together with the international adventurer, B. Bershtain, the head of the western firm ‘Seabeko Corporation’, and began to put journalists into prisons. I was also arrested for public criticism of government corruption and thrown into prison. In 1994, they prevented my candidacy for the parliamentary election, considering me the most dangerous political opponent.

Today, in Kyrgyzstan executive power is totally struck by corruption, beginning from the president and ending with the heads of regions, law courts, and law enforcement agencies. Corruption over the years has contributed to Kyrgyzstan’s political and economic crisis and rising unemployment. Many specialists, even the unskilled, have emigrated. The level of poverty according to international experts exceeded 80 percent during the years of Bakiyev’s administration. Unemployment led to the emigration of more than two million Kirghiz citizens into the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and further abroad.

One interesting fact is that the Kremlin has paid heavily to Bakiyev to remove U.S. military bases in Kyrgyzstan and this issue has links to what is currently taking place, although Russian authorities have described the recent anti-government protests as purely internal.

Q: How do the opposition groups, such as yours, feel about the ousted government’s tight control over the media? Do you think the human rights situation got worse during the Bakiyev administration? A: It was really beyond description, worse than any of the ex-Soviet republics. I was supported by people very strongly for the 2005 presidential elections in contrast to Bakiyev. I appeared on the Kyrgyz national television as the future presidential candidate and people supported me as a hero of the emerging revolution. Unfortunately, Bakiyev did everything through the Central Election Commission (CEC) of the country, illegally excluding my name from the list as presidential candidate and using the entire administrative resources to win the elections. This was just one classical example how democracy was stifled with members of opposition languishing in deplorable conditions in prison while others fled abroad.

Q: What measures do you suggest should be put in place in pursuit of democracy in your country? And what lessons are there to draw from the Kyrgyzstan case? A: The new provisional government has to rebuild or restructure the state and civil institutions by flushing out the remaining conservatives, bringing in more active, young and progressive-minded specialists. As chairman of one of the largest opposition parties, I can testify that Bakiyev suffocated media freedom in Kyrgyzstan using authoritarian methods, just as his predecessor did. For example, the West, for some reasons, banked on the former officials from the executive branch who erroneously assumed that they have experience in state administration. Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine and Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia are examples of leaders who have disappointed their people and their countries.

The new authorities have to learn from the negative tendencies of the two previous regimes. They should do away with authoritarianism, follow democratic principles and change the atmosphere of intimidation for Kyrgyz people. I will strongly appeal to democracy loving countries in Europe and the West to help opposition groups including El-Jyurt.

In summary, authorities in Kyrgyzstan must establish international standards and norms of democracy, observe fundamental human rights, establish checks and balances, ensure the independence of the judicial authority, the freedom of the press, fight corruption and work towards democratic elections within the shortest possible period.

Excerpt:

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Apr 4 2010 (IPS)

The executions of two Belarus citizens in March and calls by Russian senators to reintroduce capital punishment for terrorists are being seen as indications that the death penalty is not about to fade out soon in the former Soviet republics.

Amnesty International (AI), the London-based human rights organisation, said in a report that no executions took place in Europe in 2009. Belarus remains the only nation to use the death penalty in the region with two executions last month.

Friederike Behr from AI’s Europe and Central Asia Programme explained to IPS that the Russian constitutional court has clearly stated that the path towards full abolition was irreversible.

“Russia has committed itself to a number of international human rights treaties which simply do not allow the return of the death penalty. Politicians may pay lip service to those among the people of Russia who still believe that the death penalty helps to reduce crime rates,” Behr said.

It would be appropriate, Behr said, for Russian politicians to remind those who still favour the death penalty in Russia of Andrei Sakharov’s words: “savagery begets only savagery”.

The executions of Andrei Zhuk and Vasily Yuzepchuk were shocking and disappointing. President Alexander Lukashenko chose not to exercise his right to grant clemency despite pressure from the Council of Europe and the general global trend to move away from the death penalty.

The UN Human Rights Committee was considering applications from the two men and had asked the Belarusian authorities not to execute the two men until they made a decision. But the authorities went ahead with the executions showing a lack of respect for human rights standards which Belarus has voluntarily signed up to by ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Behr said that the way the death penalty is carried out in Belarus violates international fair trial standards.

‘’Condemned prisoners have only one level of appeal after which they can apply for clemency to the president. Most death row prisoners are executed within a year. They are not informed of the date of execution and will only be told that their application for clemency has failed minutes before they are taken into a separate room and shot,’’ Behr said.

‘’Their families do not have the chance to see them for the last time and are kept in ignorance of the execution, sometimes for weeks or months,” Behr added.

For the first time, AI and local human rights organisations had access to death row prisoners and their families and were able to organise worldwide campaigns on their behalf.

The campaigning had some impact and the prisoners’ relatives reported that they were treated more humanely as a result. Unusually, Andrei Zhuk’s mother was informed by prison guards of her son’s fate within a week of the execution being carried out.

Many former Soviet satellites banned capital punishment in the 1980s and ’90s. Russia and Ukraine have not executed anyone in more than a decade. Amnesty said Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have executed about 130 people between them over the past 10 years.

Since 2006 Belarus has been the only European state to carry out death sentences.

Rait Kuuse, regional director of South Caucasus for Panel Reform International, told IPS in an email that all South Caucasus countries abolished the death penalty years ago. The death penalty was abolished in Georgia in 1997.

The upper house of the Russian parliament may propose amendments to the criminal law stipulating the death penalty for organisers of terrorist attacks resulting in multiple deaths, according to Anatoly Lyskov, chairman of the Federation Council’s Committee on Legal and Juridical Issues.

“This is our reaction to tragic events in Moscow,” Lyskov said referring to the Mar. 29 metro blasts that resulted in the deaths of 39 commuters. .

His committee is working on a draft law which would introduce death penalty for terrorists. The current law provides for life imprisonment for terrorist acts leading to the death of a single individual.

The death penalty was de facto abolished in Russia in 1996. The country imposed the moratorium after it joined the Council of Europe that year and signed the European Convention on Human Rights, but it has not yet ratified the document.

The Russian parliamentarian said amendments to be worked out by the Federation Council’s committee stipulated that people involved in terrorist attacks resulting in multiple loss of life could not be pardoned.

Lyskov said the committee would work out the amendments at the earliest possible date and send them to the government and the Supreme Court for approval.

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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Feb 26 2010 (IPS)

Russian efforts to acquire oil and gas fields in Africa and prospect for minerals on the resource-rich continent have yielded little success over the past decade due to lack of a coherent national strategy, experts say.

Questions are being asked as to how China has scored in Africa with its resource exploration policy, infrastructure projects and three international summits on the continent since the turn of the 21st century.

Andrei Petrov, chairman of the ‘New Africa Initiative’ non-profit organisation, told IPS that Russia lags critically behind China, India and some countries in Western Europe in promoting its interests in Africa.

Petrov said there appeared to be a lack of coordination among Russian ministries, agencies and private companies when it comes to dealing with Africa.

“As competitive advantages over other countries have been effectively foregone, other players, notably China and India, have secured strong positions of dominance in the region by pursuing their long-term economic policy on the continent consistently. Such policies have primarily targeted the strategic sectors of the economies in the African countries, notably transport, power, natural resources and telecommunications,” Petrov explained.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin spearheaded a powerful economic delegation to select resource-rich African countries in 2006, but it was followed up by President Dmitry Medvedev only June.

Medvedev has admitted to tardiness in returning to Africa to pursue agreements on exploring natural resources.

Prof. Tom Wheeler, a research associate at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, believes that Russian involvement in the exploitation of resources would bring balance to the current control of African oil and gas by Western, Chinese and Indian oil companies.

“Russia, one of the world’s largest sources of oil and gas, has sought to strengthen ties with two of Africa’s largest oil producers, Nigeria and Angola, the current chair of OPEC. If this delegation succeeded in creating a strong link with Nigeria’s parastatal, that will give Russia another lever in its aim of controlling access to the gas that heats western and central Europe,” Wheeler told IPS.

“Is all this attention to Africa and the rivalry between countries outside of the continent in the interest of Africans? That is for each country to decide. It is important that governance structures and legislation be put in place which will enable African governments to judge whether proffered cooperation and contracts are truly to the benefit of their countries and their populations,” he asserted.

According to Wheeler, Africans must control their own destinies and their leaders must ensure that the poor and hungry also enjoy the advantages that can flow from the exploitation of the natural resources their countries have been endowed with.

Unlike China, Russia currently has little need of African resources but is desirous to sell Russian nuclear technology and possibly armaments to African countries, he explained. He added that Russia’s objective seems to be to control the access that other countries have to Africa’s resources by forming cartels with African oil and gas producers.

‘’Given its own financial problems, Russia has not been able to contribute much financially to Africa’s development,’’ said Wheeler. ‘’This contrasts with China’s insatiable appetite for Africa’s resources and its provision of infrastructure of various types without conditionalities.”

China’s role in Africa, however, has not been uncontroversial. China has been heavily investing in Sudanese oil developments, ignoring human rights issues there.

For their part, Africans tend to look at Russia and India as “a third force” to counterbalance Western and Chinese investment, Ivetta Gerasimchuk, director of the Trade and Investment Programme at World Wildlife Fund-Russia and author of the book ‘Rethink Russia’s Investment Policy in Southern Africa’, told IPS in an interview.

‘’China is hungry for virtually all raw materials, offering a guaranteed market and financial pledges for importing the African oil and gas, therefore its expansion in Africa covers almost every extractive industry,’’ said Gerasimchuk. ‘’In contrast, Russia itself is an important oil and gas producer and exporter.’’

“An explanation of Russia’s investment efforts in Africa could be the fact that our country has to a considerable extent depleted its deposits of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, diamonds, and uranium. Therefore, Russia’s interest in the African resource base has been primarily focused on these sectors,” she added.

Russia is strongly interested in Africa’s growing demand for manufactured goods, although the focus has been mainly on arms sales. “Importantly, the financial crisis has also changed the rules of the game as China is one of the few countries in the world that continues its economic growth and has enough financial resources to support its expansion,” Gerasimchuk observed.

Basically, China has better access to financial resources, which is backed by the state and also influenced through an effective Africa policy determined through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) process, Sanusha Naidu, research director at China/Emerging Powers in Africa Programme, FAHAMU – Cape Town (South Africa), told IPS.

Perhaps, through the BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China] bloc, Russia could carve out better relationships through joint ventures and other investment relationships to get into the mineral sector in Africa, Naidu suggests.

The Washington-based Centre for International Strategic Studies has projected that Africa would provide up to 45 percent of China’s oil by 2010 and China is determined to outspend Russia and the other foreign players in Africa to raise its stature on the world stage.

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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Sep 30 2009 (IPS)

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s recent official visit to a handful of African countries has provided new impetus to Russian business’s interest in the region.

Albert Bakov: 'Africa has great potential.' Credit:

Medvedev’s visit in June this year has provided an added impulse for the Machinery and Industrial Group, a leading producer of facilities and spare parts for light and heavy engineering and off-road machinery, to find markets for its trucks in sectors such as oil and gas, agriculture, construction and road-building sectors as well as mining, metallurgy, transport and defence industries.

In this interview Albert Bakov, first vice-president of Machinery and Industrial Group (also known as Concern Tractor Plants), speaks to Kester Kenn Klomegah about efforts to extend the company’s reach in the African market.

IPS: What are the reasons for the expansion of your company’s sales into the African market during the past few years? Albert Bakov (AB): We undoubtedly see Africa as a region with great potential for Russian manufactured trucks and long distance haulage vehicles and other construction equipment.

Governments of African countries have set very ambitious goals for upcoming years, primarily in such spheres like health care development, combating child mortality, increasing adult literacy and education uptake. Together with economic and industrial development measures, this should lead to rapid overall development, growth of key markets and increasing demand.

Thus, trading with African countries means creating bigger opportunities for the future.

IPS: In your opinion, how open is the African market to these manufactured products, including Russian-made tractors and other agricultural equipment? AB: Speaking about openness, we should first of all consider such factors as government protectionism and corruption. Protectionism is not a problem. Corruption is what really matters. Political issues also play an important role. But the most important factor in every business is the kind of trade policies that are put in place by government authorities.

We are looking at mutually beneficial policies, especially from the side of African countries so that we can export our machines, together with Russian technology, to help their economy develop faster than at the present pace.

For instance, methods of agriculture should be mechanised. Value should be added to agricultural products. Moving the products to the consumers as quickly as possible will raise living standards, and that’s why African leaders need our equipment. Further to that, I can say that entering the African market is a rather challenging task.

IPS: How do you estimate your involvement in this sector in Africa, most especially when there are other keen foreign competitors in the market? AB: Almost every prospective developing market is full of keen competitors. Competition in the African market means that we should carefully choose the right models and types of machines when compared with the product lines presented by our competitors.

If we speak about the market and its competition, the key factor is not the manufacturers’ country of origin but quality, price, product lifetime, maintenance conditions and so on. If we take government procurement, then politics also plays an important role. Governments pay attention to the origin of the machinery. That is normal.

In the Soviet period, Russia had quite good political and economic relations with many African countries and, of course, we hope that this historical factor will help us to do business successfully in Africa now.

Our Russian-made machines have a number of competitive advantages and we are confident about the niche that our machinery occupies in the market. We do not fear competition; we consider it a positive stimulating factor. Given our experience, the quality of our trucks and other services that we provide are increasing becoming known among African customers.

IPS: So are African buyers, both in government and the private sector, purchasing your products? AB: African businesspeople are showing great interest in our machinery, especially in bulldozers and agricultural tractors.

This year, we have delivered quite a number of machines under the brand Chetra to Zimbabwe, which is when our cooperation with this African country began. We have also signed a number of contracts with Algeria and Egypt.

Besides that, we have signed a memorandum of understanding with the representatives of the Nigerian Kogi state for the delivery of heavy industrial machinery and there are other negotiations lined up.

IPS: Are there political or economic events that have affected the company’s business since it started operating there? AB: In June 2009, the president of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, visited a number of African countries which included Egypt, Nigeria, Angola and Namibia. The Russian delegation was really large and included businesspeople representing the most important and powerful Russian companies.

In Abuja, for example, within the framework of this visit, a meeting between the Nigerian business community and representatives of Russian business took place. We signed a memorandum on cooperation between business councils of Nigeria and Russia.

The company also plans to launch production of heavy bulldozers in India this year and we are currently studying the possibility of entering the African market and opening an assembly line in Nigeria. Talks are expected to begin soon.

We have also discussed with many African countries the next steps or measures in enhancing the effectiveness of trade and economic interaction in the context of the current global crisis.

Intergovernmental agreements on support and mutual protection of investments signed with the countries concerned will help us to develop our business cooperation.

IPS: What's your vision for developing business cooperation with African countries against the backdrop of the challenges still posed by the global recession and economic crisis? AB: When entering the market of any country, one has to deal with existing conditions. We have to accept government policies as they are and adopt our activities to the conditions we are put in while, at the same time, minimising possible risks and losses. Every action, I think, will have to intensively focus in that direction. We see huge opportunities in Africa and we consider three regional markets as the most prospective. North Africa countries, for example, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Morocco. We are negotiating the possibility to supply these oil producing countries with CHETRA heavy machinery such as bulldozers and pipe layers.

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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Sep 25 2009 (IPS)

Russia should reconsider its trade policy towards African states if it wants to keep up with the likes of China, the European Union (EU) and the U.S., say experts.

Authorities in Russia seem utterly unprepared for business deals such as the U.S.’s Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). However, Russia is wary about China’s increasingly active role in almost every viable sector of Africa’s economy over the past few years.

Some foreign policy analysts have explained the issue of Russia opening its market for Africa as one of political motivation.

Bright Simons, Sino-African and Russian foreign policy researcher at the Accra-based Imani Centre for Education and Policy, a non-governmental think tank, told IPS in an interview that “Russia, unlike the U.S. and China, has production patterns that do not immediately encourage an expansion of trade between Russia and Africa, and African and Russian trade technocrats know this.”

He further explained “what’s more crucial is that the Russian private sector – unlike the Chinese, Brazilian, Indian and U.S. private sector – has failed to build the requisite networks in Africa. The necessary interests have thus not emerged to push for closer trade between Africa and Russia.”

Earlier this year, just before the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Italy which reconfirmed a collective “commitment to keep markets open and free and to reject protectionism of any kind”, Namibia’s President Hifikepunye Pohamba told visiting Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev in Windhoek to open Russia’s market for Namibian goods.

African leaders and private businesses have been looking for trade which ensures that more people benefit from the exchange of goods and services, as is the case with the introduction of AGOA.

As a first concrete step taken towards the realisation of the goal of improving trade between Africa and the U.S., the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) set up a West Africa Trade Hub in Accra where they provide technical assistance to people who want to export to the U.S..

Simons noted that AGOA itself has been less effective than was anticipated with regards helping African non-traditional exports gain access to U.S. markets. “The bulk of exports from Africa successfully entering the U.S. market continue to be primary products such as petroleum, though in a few categories, like textiles, a few African countries have managed to break this pattern.

“Given that Russia remains such a major producer of primary products itself, one wonders whether the motivation exists on either the Russian or African side to push for a wide-ranging, inter-regional, preferential trade treaty,” Simons concluded.

Dr Arndt Hopfmann, regional director for Africa at the Berlin-based Centre for International Dialogue and Cooperation, believes that under the current conditions of an international economic crisis, there is the tendency that some nations may resort to “selfish” approaches under the headline “buy local”.

“But one should not be fooled about the rhetoric. There are various forms of protectionism still in use, in particular by the G8 (Group of Eight). Unfortunately I have no clear picture whether Russia applies any special protectionist measure against trade with African countries,” Hopfmann told IPS in Moscow.

“But, given the fact that Russia itself exports most of the products that are also exported by African countries and imports goods that are not provided by them but by China, India and other G8 nations, I doubt that any kind of Russian AGOA would have any remarkable effect on African-Russian trade,” he added.

For example, Namibia has diamonds, uranium ore, beef, meat and fish. Many African countries export agricultural products. While Russian agricultural production in general has fallen during the last years, this doesn’t indicate that there is a shortage in supply, Hopfmann said.

In general, he explained, there is certainly a point in believing that collective bargaining would help African states to achieve more.

But a closer look at the current economic partnership agreements (EPA) negotiations between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries shows that most African governments struggle to counterbalance the expertise of EU negotiators with African experts.

“They simply lack the skills and a precise and jointly supported definition of aim and objectives to successfully negotiate any common agreement – whether with Russia or anyone else,” Hopfmann claimed.

Economists suggested that Russia and African countries can agree on more equitable trade relations but only on certain terms.

“Fairer trade between developed and developing countries can only happen if developed countries assist producers in developing countries to achieve economic self-sufficiency. This should be based on transparency and dialogue to achieve greater equity,” Adrian Njau, a trade economist at the East African Business Council, told IPS from Arusha, Tanzania.

“Essentially, fairer trade should contribute to development by offering better trading conditions that seek to improve the lives of poor producers in developing countries. This will strengthen the participation of developing nations in international trade.”

Njau agreed that Russia is an economically significant country and therefore presents a good market opportunity for African products, but currently Russia seems to be more interested in Africa’s natural resources without a comprehensive preferential trade deal with Africa.

On the other hand, Africa is attracting a lot of interest from China, the U.S., and the EU. G8 countries will not force Russia to open up its markets to Africa but rather Russia will soon find it necessary to open up its markets in order to keep up with the rest of the global economy.

Many African countries, including Namibia, are not classified as least developed countries (LDC) and therefore do not qualify for the current preferential treatment enjoyed by LDCs.

Collective efforts on the part of the Africa Union (AU) or at sub-regional levels, such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), present more solid bargaining power as opposed to isolated efforts from individual countries. Much focus is put into negotiating such polices and less on strategies to boost African exports, Njau suggested in conclusion.

According to conventional trade theory, trade provides an avenue through which surplus national production can be exchanged for products of other countries based on the principle of comparative advantage.

In an e-mail response to an IPS request for comments by Matfobhi Riba and Jennifer Kargbo, both officials at the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), it was pointed out that the trade structure of most African countries has barely changed in the aftermath of trade liberalisation.

First, the majority of African countries are still predominately non-fuel primary product exporters and vulnerable to volatile global commodity prices; and secondly, trade liberalisation has generally tended to stimulate imports more than it has exports, thereby worsening the balance of trade in many African countries.

Thirdly, African economies display very low levels of export diversification, with no discernible trend away from this situation. Rather, episodes of diversification have been sporadic and short-lasting.

Riba and Kargbo pointed out that African countries need to maintain a resolute focus on export diversification, enhancing supply capacities and migrating up the product value chain. In this context, regional integration offers opportunities to reap economies of scale and scope and attendant increases in productivity and competitiveness.

Regional integration also offers the possibility for African countries to negotiate more favourable conditions under trade preference schemes (i.e. conditions that reinforce development goals and initiatives) because their bargaining power will be enhanced by their operating as a regional economic bloc.

The AU secretariat is perhaps better placed to judge whether or not an intervention on their part would be warranted or even the optimal course of action.

“We can only hope that Russia stands by its commitments as a member of the G8. AGOA and similar initiatives are unilateral policies extended by nations to other nations,” Riba and Kargbo suggested.

“In as much as the focus is often primarily on the gains that the beneficiaries of such initiatives stand to acquire, it should be borne in mind that such arrangements are often also designed to deliver benefits to their sponsors.

“Consequently, one can expect that Russia’s willingness to adopt an AGOA-like initiative will depend primarily on the answer to the question: what does Africa have to offer Russia?” Riba and Kargbo asked rhetorically.

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By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Sep 16 2009 (IPS)

Nearly all of the former Soviet republics have adopted native languages that were suppressed during the communist era at the expense of Russian. This is affecting Russia’s influence over the commonwealth of independent states.

For more than seven decades, the Russian language spanned all 15 Soviet republics with a combined population that had grown to 270 million. Russia is still looking for recognition of its language in these republics.

Russia’s effort stems from the fact the authorities still view it as an instrument by which they can exert control in the Soviet region, says Aleksandr Lytvynenko from the Kiev-based Razumkov Centre, a non- government think tank researching public policy.

“This relates especially to Ukraine and Belarus, whose population in Russia is considered an integral part of the united Russian people,” Lytvynenko told IPS from Kiev. “The strengthening of the position of the Russian language and culture in these states becomes more important, and also in the Baltic states and central Asia.” Russian is widely spoken in many parts of the former Soviet republics, but is not officially recognised as state language.

Some analysts think that the Russian language cannot be used as an instrument for exerting influence, even though it has a role to play.

“During the period of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) it was absolutely a necessity which, in my opinion, remains today,” Bahodirkhon Anvarhojayevich Eliboyev from the Independent Human Rights Defenders in Fergana, Uzbekistan, told IPS. “Russian language was and remains the language of inter-ethnic communication. However, during that period, there was suppression of other language cultures, which has taken a heavy toll on society.”

He said the Baltics states Estonia, Latvia and Lituania have joined the European Union (EU), and “for these republics there is no benefit in speaking Russian; they need a language which Europeans speak.”

Ara Sanjian from the Armenian Research Centre at the University of Michigan says that in Armenia and in many of the republics there are now few Russian language television programmes, and as a rule they are shown with subtitles in native languages.

In the south Caucasus, Sanjian said, (where the number of Russians is small compared, say, to Kazakhstan), use of the native language “is a by-product of growing national consciousness and pride. Russia is definitely seen as using economic pressure and energy resources to maintain its grip. I am certain it will also use language if it believes it can be used as a tool to achieve the same aim.”

In July, Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon proposed banning the use of Russian in public institutions and official documents. He said the move would promote the development of Tajik, and bolster patriotism. The Baltic states banned the use of Russian soon after the Soviet collapse.

Language has been a contentious issue in relations between Russia and Ukraine, where some political groups have opposed the ‘Russification’ of the country. Russian dominates in the east, the Crimea and the capital. Many in the former Soviet republic never learnt Ukrainian.

Use of Russian has been restricted in many republics despite Russian government efforts at preserving the language. Last year Russia earmarked 16 million dollars for promoting Russian and to support an estimated 30 million ethnic Russians living abroad, mostly in former Soviet states.

Russian is the official state language in Belarus, and has official or semi- official status in some ex-Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, says Alexander Chepurin, head of relations with the Russian diaspora at the Foreign Ministry.

Russian officials say ‘de-Russification’ policies and the forcible adoption of native languages in education, media, judicial and administrative institutions is creating cultural gaps in the former Soviet space.

Several international human rights organisations have called on the former Soviet republics to make Russian a second official language, but most governments have not changed their policies.

“No one disputes efforts by a state to reinforce the state language, but it is also well known that such actions must not harm the language rights of national minorities, especially when a country’s population is nationally heterogeneous,” the Russian foreign affairs ministry says in an official statement.

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