By Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 28 2009 (IPS)

Some 1.6 million people die each year due to water and sanitation related diseases, millions of girls do not go to school because of lack of toilets, and prison detainees are denied access to adequate sanitation in some countries as a form of punishment, clear violations of the rights to health, education, and many other human rights.

Catarina de Albuquerque Credit: UN Photo

Yet the crisis is one of the least addressed by the international community.

Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N. Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, urges governments and the international community to take urgent actions to meet the needs of millions of people, and “break the powerful taboo surrounding sanitation”.

According to the United Nations there are 2.5 billion people without adequate access to sanitation, including 1.2 billion open defecators worldwide.

In an interview with IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren, de Albuquerque says that she sees herself as “the so-called ‘Socratic stinging fly’ constantly reminding states and other actors to meet their human rights obligations relating to sanitation.”

Excerpts from interview follow.

IPS: There is virtual consensus that while the MDGs (the U.N. Millennium Development Goals) on water will be met by the 2015 deadline, the developing world will still be far behind in meeting the needs of adequate sanitation. Do you agree with this conclusion? CATARINA DE ALBUQUERQUE: Yes, the United Nations in its most recent report on progress towards meeting the MDG targets on water and sanitation explains that without significant acceleration in extending access to improved sanitation, the world will miss that target by over 700 million people.

In order to meet the target, the U.N. estimates that about 173 million people per year will need to gain access and actually use improved sanitation facilities.

Furthermore, even if the MDG targets are met, there will still be 1.8 billion people without access to improved sanitation and 800 million people without access to water.

These numbers are daunting, and it will be impossible to tackle this sanitation crisis without concerted international efforts and explicit political will.

IPS: What can the U.N. and donor nations do to bridge the huge gap in providing toilets to the millions who cannot afford and do not have adequate sanitation? CA: The United Nations has an important role to play in raising awareness about the importance of sanitation and hygiene among governments, local authorities as well as communities. As sanitation is still considered a taboo in many societies, it is essential to raise its profile and put it on the agenda.

That was exactly the reason for choosing sanitation as the focus during the first year of my mandate. When we all start talking honestly and openly about sh*t, we’ll help break the powerful taboo surrounding sanitation.

In this context I see myself as the so-called ‘Socratic stinging fly’ constantly reminding States and other actors to meet their human rights obligations relating to sanitation – and also water, of course!

Demand-led sanitation interventions are generally considered more successful and sustainable, thus interventions should aim to empower communities to insist on having access to safe sanitation facilities.

Additionally, I would say that it is not necessarily about providing water toilets according to Western standards. Sanitation has to meet certain standards, but this does not necessarily require access to water-based sanitation. There are many technologies, including low-cost technologies – e.g., ventilated pit latrines, eco-san technologies – which meet human rights standards and often have advantages over water-borne sanitation.

IPS: Where is the shortfall felt most? In Asia, Africa or Latin America? CA: According to the most recent U.N. statistics, Sub-Saharan Africa has only 31 percent of its population with access to improved sanitation facilities. Southern Asia is not far behind with only 33 percent of its population with access to improved sanitation facilities.

Latin America, Northern Africa, South-eastern and Eastern Asia are all making better progress with 65 percent or more of its population enjoying such access. (79 percent, 76 percent, 67 percent and 65 percent, respectively)

IPS: There is a move for a proposed international convention to protect the right to water as a basic human right? Is this also feasible for adequate sanitation for those who are deprived of toilets? CA: We do not need more international instruments, but rather implementation of the agreements that we already have. The right to water, and in my view, the right to sanitation can be interpreted within the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These rights are also protected under other existing human rights treaties.

Those who do not have access to adequate sanitation will not be served by years of political negotiations over a new international treaty. Rather, we should be focusing on how to implement the existing human rights obligations related to sanitation – this includes ensuring that sanitation is safe – both the actual facility in terms of maintenance and hygiene, as well as the safe disposal of wastewater – that there are enough sanitation facilities, that they are accessible to everyone, that it is affordable, that it is acceptable in the local culture, that the facilities are physically accessible.

IPS: What is the legal basis of the right to sanitation? CA: In 2002, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights explained that the right to water can be understood as encompassed by the right to an adequate standard of living. In my view, this right also includes sanitation – without sanitation, it is completely impossible to enjoy an adequate standard of living.

While I think the legal basis for recognition of a right to sanitation lies in this right to an adequate standard of living, I must also say that sanitation is inextricably linked to many other human rights. For example, sanitation is indispensable for full realisation of the right to health – consider that about 1.6 million people die each year due to water and sanitation related diseases.

Sanitation is also essential for enjoyment of the right to education – in many parts of the world, girls do not go to school because of a lack of toilets, or lack of sex separated toilets. Lack of proper sanitation can also constitute inhuman and degrading treatment in certain circumstances, for example, when prison detainees do not have access to adequate facilities (in prisons, or when used by the state as punishment of detainees).

Furthermore, a core tenet of human rights law is the prohibition of discrimination, and in my opinion, lack of access to sanitation is usually often a matter of discrimination. We must acknowledge that those who lack access to sanitation are usually the poorest segments of society, those who are most marginalised and discriminated against.

These are just some examples, but I think it demonstrates strong arguments for understanding sanitation as a human rights issue.

Excerpt:

By Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2009 (IPS)

Despite longstanding promises by world leaders to halve, by 2015, the number of people without basic sanitation, 2.5 billion still lack access to basic sanitation, and 1.2 billion don’t have any form of sanitation at all.

Duncan Mara Credit: University of Leeds

“I don’t think that the MDG (the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals) sanitation target can be achieved,” says Duncan Mara, a professor of civil engineering at University of Leeds who has been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse.

Winner of the 2007 Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management’s “Making World of Difference” Award, Mara expressed fears that even if real efforts were made starting today, it would be impossible to reach the goals in six years. And he thinks the picture might get even worse in the future.

“We have to realise that the situation isn’t going to get any easier in the decades to come as almost all the increase in world population in the next few decades is going to occur in urban areas, actually poor urban areas, in developing countries,” he told IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: As one of the world’s leading sanitation experts, particularly when it comes to sustainable, affordable and appropriate sanitation technologies and systems, is there a model that could meet the needs of the 2.5 billion people who lack access to basic sanitation? If so, how can this best be achieved? DUNCAN MARA: There’s not really a ‘model’, certainly not a single model. What I think is necessary, absolutely crucial, is to get the sanitation knowledge we already have to those who need it most: engineers and planners in developing countries at all levels ? local, state/provincial, and central government. If engineers don’t know about sanitation technology x, never mind about how to design it for local needs, then how do they know they’re recommending the locally best option? And it would normally be not just sanitation technology x but in fact more commonly sanitation technologies x, y and z.

We’re only talking about a dozen technologies at most, but we need to make sure that the knowledge we have about them is available to every professional who needs it. The Internet helps a lot, but not everyone has a good connection and anyway most of the information is only available in English ? some, of course, also in French, Spanish and Portuguese, but little if any in, say, Tamil or Chinese.

What we really need is downloadable e-courses on sanitation, and not just on the technologies, but on social, economic/financial, and institutional aspects as well, which local NGOs with good Internet connections can download and then distribute at the local level on CDs. The world really does need highly trained sanitation professionals, and it needs them now.

IPS: Why is the international community focusing more on water and less on sanitation? Aren’t they both equally important, particularly in achieving the Millennium Development Goals? DM: There’s now much more emphasis on sanitation, thanks to last year being the International Year of Sanitation which saw sanitation move well up the political ladder. Of course, all the fine words spoken by ministers at the various regional sanitation conferences have to be translated into action, and we’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out. I think we have to be optimistic, rather than cynically pessimistic, even though recent history might tell us otherwise.

Basically, we have to stop poor people in developing countries defecating themselves to death, and we have to tell developing country governments that, if they don’t invest in sanitation for their poor, then they are effectively allowing them to die at an early age. Poor hygiene, poor sanitation, and poor water together claim more lives each year than AIDS, and governments need to understand this.

I would argue that, from a purely health perspective, sanitation is somewhat more important than water, but really it has to be good sanitation, good hygiene, and good water, all together, for good health.

IPS: As one of the Millennium Development Goals, where does sanitation stand on the list in terms of its progress so far? DM: Sanitation lags behind water by a huge margin: 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, versus just under a billion for water. What’s really worrying is that, of these 2.5 billion people, around 1.2 billion don’t have any form of sanitation ? these people are the ‘open defecators’, and nearly 60 percent of these live in one country: India.

So, you could argue that, if we want to make a real impact on global health, we should concentrate on providing access to good sanitation to these 1.2 billion open defecators. This is where Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is so crucial: get communities of open defecators to realise how not having any sanitation facility is so bad for their health ? but also for their dignity and, for women and girls, their safety as well; and then to get them to install and use a really good, locally appropriate latrine.

IPS: What is the role of NGOs in promoting sanitation and hygiene around the world? DM: There are some really excellent NGOs ? WaterAid, for example, and SPARC, which is an Indian NGO promoting community-owned and -managed sanitation blocks in urban slums where people are too poor to be able to afford individual-household sanitation facilities. NGOs, especially local NGOs and particularly when supported by international NGOs, have a real role to play as they can work with local communities and speak on their behalf to local (and also national) government agencies.

However, I think the greatest role that NGOs, especially international and large national NGOs, have is to show agencies with much more money how best to spend that money, and they do this best by example ? by which I mean the big agencies can copy the small-scale NGO successes on a much larger scale. Thus it’s R&D by NGOs and large-scale implementation by the bigger agencies, both national and international.

IPS: Are these NGOs well supported by their governments? And by the international community? DM: Some are and some aren’t. Some governments seem to be taking the view that, because there are some local NGOs, and maybe also an international NGO, active in the sanitation sector, they needn’t do more. The international community fares better as, in many cases, it supports the work of local and international NGOs ? but this can be another reason for governments not to do more.

I think the ‘big’ agencies ? UNDP, for example, and the World Bank, but also the bilateral aid agencies ? should flex their muscles more and say to developing countries that are failing to invest in better hygiene, sanitation, and water for their urban and rural poor ‘no, you can’t have x million dollars for this project unless you start doing something sensible to improve hygiene, water, and sanitation for your poor’.

Excerpt:

Poor sanitation and hygiene costs the Lao People’s Democratic Republic 193 million dollars per year, an estimated 5.6 percent of gross domestic product, according to figures from the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) of the World Bank.

Poor sanitation, including hygiene, causes at least three million preventable diseases and 6,000 premature deaths in Laos annually. Credit: World Bank

A May report called “Economic Impacts of Sanitation in Lao PDR” and compiled under the Economics of Sanitation Initiative (ESI) showed for the first time that a significant number of people living with unimproved household sanitation impose a large financial and economic loss on the Lao PDR economy, not only to private individuals but also to the public and commercial sectors.

The study found that health contributes 60 percent to overall estimated economic costs, followed by 18 percent for accessing clean drinking water, 13 percent for additional time to access unimproved sanitation, and nine percent due to tourism losses.

“These impacts are expected to cause a mixture of direct financial losses as well as indirect or non-monetary economic losses to the Lao population, who have to pay for health services or for accessing clean water supplies, or who may lose income due to poor health,” said Guy Hutton, the report’s author and a senior economist with the WSP.

The report says that poor sanitation, including hygiene, causes at least three million cases of preventable disease and 6,000 premature deaths annually, costing the economy more than 115 million dollars per year.

It also contributes to water pollution, adding to the cost of households accessing safe and clean water supplies, with economic costs exceeding 35 million dollars per year.

Additional time required to access unimproved sanitation and possible tourism losses cost Lao’s economy 25 million dollars and 17 million dollars, respectively, due to poor sanitation.

The study also highlights the link between sanitation and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which specifically include improving access to sanitation globally, but also address poverty reduction, gender equality, child health, and access to safe drinking water.

“Sanitation improvement contributes to many of Lao PDR’s development goals,” Hutton told IPS.

The WSP economist said that improved sanitation leads to less polluted wells and surface water, which will help reach the “safe drinking water access” MDG.

In terms of health, improved sanitation will reduce transmission of deadly water-borne diseases.

“Prevention is better than cure,” Hutton told IPS. “It averts the entire health burden, and avoids the treatment costs.”

He added that better sanitation would also result in improved school enrollment, attendance and completion, and higher quality of life for students.

Hutton argued that improved sanitation is a driver and not just a result of economic growth, playing a significant role in reaching gender equality.

“Sanitation restores dignity, especially for girls and women, and promotes equality because it is the poorest and most vulnerable who lack it,” said Hutton.

Asked why sanitation is commonly neglected by governments despite the available evidence of its severe consequences, Hutton cited very limited public resources for social development. This is certainly the case in Lao PDR, one of the world’s least developed countries, with many other more visible development priorities such as roads, schools, and health centres.

Another reason, according to him, is the fact that because it is a household item, governments expect people to invest in toilets themselves, with the attitude that if people really want them, they will find the means.

“A large share of the allocation to water and sanitation goes to water and large-scale urban projects such as drainage, which have higher political profiles than rural provision. Sanitation is also an issue hidden from public view – it is not a hot topic for debate, neither for communities to talk about, nor newspapers and politicians,” said Hutton.

The World Bank economist called on governments to free up more funding for sanitation to avert the short- and long-term economic losses, as well as to improve evidence-based planning by developing a sector strategy based on better knowledge of the costs and benefits of improved sanitation.

The Sanitation Impact Study was conducted in five countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The study took two years to complete.

By Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 31 2009 (IPS)

The world’s developing nations, particularly in Asia and Africa, are struggling to cope with two of the basic necessities of life: fresh water and adequate sanitation.

Jae So Credit: Simone McCourtie/World Bank

The United Nations says there are still some 1.1 billion people who lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion without basic sanitation.

The World Bank allocates 60 percent of its 10.7-billion-dollar budget for water supply and sanitation for water, and only 40 percent to sanitation.

Why does sanitation get less and water more? “There are a number of related factors to consider in explaining the relative proportion of funds for water supply and sanitation,” says Jae So, manager of the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), a donor-funded programme administered by the World Bank, and Peter Kolsky, senior water and sanitation specialist at the bank.

In a joint interview with IPS U.N. correspondent Nergui Manalsuren, the two World Bank officials said the portfolio reflects the demands of clients – the governments of developing countries.

They explained that the most pressing needs of those without access to basic sanitation can often be met with local resources at relatively low cost, and clients often do not think they should borrow large amounts of money to meet these needs.

“This doesn’t mean that the Bank and WSP can’t support the promotion of basic sanitation: We can and do. It just means that this may not be as expensive as dams, water treatment works and pipelines for water supply.”

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: The United Nations says that to meet the Millennium Development Goals’ sanitation target by the year 2015, about 173 million people will need to gain access to sanitation each year between now and then. How much money will that cost and how will the World Bank help to meet this target? JS: Estimating the public funding required to meet the sanitation MDG is a surprisingly difficult task. Not only do differing geographical and socioeconomic conditions suggest a wide range of appropriate technologies, but government policies vary widely as to how much should be borne by the government as a “public” investment, and how much should be borne by the household as a private household investment.

The most dramatic improvements in sanitation access, in South Asia and Ethiopia for example, have been driven not by massive public works programmes, but by an approach known as Community Led Total Sanitation which requires relatively small investments from the public purse.

The government’s role in this approach is to promote the idea of sanitation, to share information, and to provide some incentives for households and communities to invest in sanitation…but not to define the technology to be adopted, and to pay all of the capital cost. Even estimating the cost of promotion is not easy: how much will it cost to convince a household in Bangladesh to invest in sanitation?

In addition to traditional capital loans to help governments pay for such sanitation infrastructure as sewers and treatment works, the Bank can very usefully play a role through lending funds for sanitation and hygiene promotion, through sharing experiences around the world about new approaches to sanitation and hygiene promotion, and in helping some governments through flexible results-based support, or budgetary support, where funds are made available with minimal bureaucratic demands as specific targets of sanitation access are achieved.

IPS: The U.N. declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation. What were its achievements? And how did this help to spotlight the problems of sanitation, particularly in the developing world? PK: The International Year of Sanitation helped bring sanitation into the spotlight through various collaborative efforts, including regional events to raise awareness and discuss policy issues at the government level, workshops that educated the media about the sanitation issue to allow for improved coverage and reporting, and continued efforts at the community level to improve sanitation behaviour and practices.

One important indicator of success is the number of national, regional, and international meetings that address sanitation directly. In the recent past, sanitation was always the poor “stepchild” of water supply, and meetings on “water supply and sanitation” would focus largely on water supply with relatively little attention to sanitation…it was as if sanitation were an afterthought or an accessory.

Ever since AfricaSan in 2002, and the addition of sanitation to the MDGs shortly thereafter, the spotlight has helped both practitioners and policy makers recognise the need to recognise sanitation as its own set of challenges and opportunities, and not as an accessory to water supply.

IPS: Are developing countries themselves doing enough to help resolve the problem? And what are the success stories in the developing world, specifically with World Bank funding? JS: Countries are increasingly focusing on the sanitation issue and its impact on people’s lives and on the economic wellbeing of individual nations. The World Bank has been involved in water projects in Senegal for many years, and a major uptake in urban sanitation was achieved in Dakar in a project supported by the Bank. WSP is involved at the technical assistance and advocacy level, as well as in promotion of campaigns such as Community-Led Total Sanitation.

Excerpt:

By Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 2009 (IPS)

Activists are calling for an economic bailout plan for women and demanding that their voices be heard at the decision-making table ahead of the G20 summit of the world’s biggest economies in London on Apr. 2.

Rosa Lizarde Credit: Nergui Manalsuren/IPS

Rosa G. Lizarde, a member of GCAP, the Global Call to Action against Poverty, told IPS during the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women this week that the taskforce is calling for women to be central to crafting solutions to the financial crisis – particularly since 70 percent of the world’s poor are female and the primary food providers for their families and communities.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: On International Women’s Day, Mar. 8, you launched the global Internet campaign, “20 Days to G20”, highlighting the connections between the feminisation of poverty and the global financial and economic crisis. What are the impacts of the current crisis on women? RL: Well, there are many impacts of the crisis on women, primarily exacerbation of the food and energy crises. There is a very large percentage of women in the agricultural sector providing food for families, [so rising prices] creates more hardship for women and families, and has an impact on communities. In turn, those stresses create increased tension, which in turn increases violence against women.

Women also tend to be last to be hired and first to be fired during times of economic hardship. Particularly around the cuts that the private sector makes, there are reductions which impact women receiving services such as health care, education, and other social services. So the burden of the financial and the economic crisis falls on women.

IPS: How does this campaign hope to change the outcome of the G20 meeting? RL: One of the reasons why we launched this “20 Days to G20” was to make those links between the feminisation of poverty and the financial, food, energy, and the climate change crisis. And to have women included in the dialogue and the decision-making of the economic and financial summits – not just the G20 meeting, but also at the upcoming conference on the economic and financial impacts on development. We want to ensure that particular attention is paid to the specific needs of women and girls due to the disproportionate hardships that they bear.

IPS: How much funding should be made available for gender equality and women’s empowerment, particularly for the eradication of poverty? RL: Well, as Sylvia Borren, co-chair of GCAP, has said, the funds that go to the economic bailouts don’t trickle down to women, but impacts of the financial crisis do trickle down to women. One of the issues is to look at how, during this time of crisis and negotiations within and amongst governments, to be able to bail out some of the hardships that women are facing.

Some people have mentioned that 0.7 percent of all bailout funds should go to the developing countries, and that a portion of that certainly should go to assist the conditions of women during this time. So there’s no exact estimate that we’re calling for, but we’re saying that we want to be included in any decision around funding.

IPS: What are some key policies that could provide immediate and long-term relief for women who are affected by the current financial crisis? RL: Some of the key policy points we have outlined in the platform policy paper directed to the upcoming G20 meeting around the issues of justice, accountability, jobs, and the climate change. We’re calling for the eradication of poverty and inequality, within that we want to ensure that needs of women and girls are addressed because it is estimated that 70 percent of the poor are women.

In terms of accountability, we want to ensure democratic governance of the global economy, and we call for the support of the U.N. to serve as the heart of the solutions for the financial and economic crisis.

Within the area of jobs, we call for decent jobs and public services for all with particular attention to be paid to identifying and responding to the specific needs of women and disenfranchised communities.

Around climate, we want governments to commit to investing in women as one of the most effective ways to advance sustainable development and to help to combat the climate change devastation.

IPS: Are there enough women in the dialogue and decision-making processes of the economic and financial summits? RL: I think if we look at the members of the G20 and the heads of those governments, the members of the Stiglitz Commission that are meeting today [Mar. 10] as a matter of fact and have been meeting these past couple of days to provide alternative solutions to the financial crisis, we see that women are not represented as they are in the general population, which is 50 percent.

So I think that until we achieve that 50 percent representation, we can’t say that women are represented equally. Currently, at the table of the G20, the U.N., and other commissions, we know that women are not equally represented at the negotiating [and] decision-making table – that’s the fact.

Excerpt:

The world’s population is estimated to top 9 billion people by 2050, and 7 billion by early 2012, with the biggest increase in developing countries of Asia and Africa, says the U.N. population report launched on Wednesday.

“Still, the future population growth will highly depend on the path that future fertility takes,” the authors say.

According to U.N. experts, in the medium variant, fertility declines from 2.56 children per woman in 2005-2010 to 2.02 children per woman in 2045-2050.

If fertility were to remain about half a child above the levels projected in the medium variant, world population would reach 10.5 billion by 2050. But a fertility path half a child below the medium would lead to a population of 8 billion by mid-century. In either case, the growth of the population is inevitable.

“This report is a timely warning to world leaders of the long-term consequences of failing to invest in the needs of about 200 million women who lack access to safe and effective contraceptives,” the executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA,) Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, told IPS.

She further expressed that funding for family planning must be increased to meet the expressed needs of these women, which would not only shape the world’s future, but also reduce maternal death and reduce unwanted pregnancies.

“Countries should solve these challenges in ways that also ensure the participation of young people as effective actors in their societies,” Obaid said. “We should also expand access to an essential package of reproductive health services, including family planning, safe motherhood and HIV prevention.”

Hania Zlotnik, director of the Population Division at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA,) emphasised the need for funding for family planning programmes, especially for the least developing countries.

“The donor funding is very important especially for those countries that are highlighted, – the least developed countries that badly need help from outside to fund their family planning programmes,” she told IPS.

However, she expressed concern that the recipient governments would direct funds to these particular policies rather than allocating them elsewhere.

The report also shows that when the fertility rate is controlled through education or other ways, populations tend to age. In the developed countries, the population aged 60 and over is the fastest growing and is expected to increase by more than 50 percent over the next four decades.

“This should hasten advance planning for ageing in developing countries by investing in systems to provide older persons with social and economic protection,” Obaid told IPS.

Nine countries are projected to account for half of the world’s population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, the United States, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, China and Bangladesh.

The projection shows that the population of developing countries will rise from 5.6 billion in 2009 to 7.9 billion in 2050, and will be distributed among the population aged 15-59 (1.2 billion) and 60 and over (1.1 billion) because the number of children under age 15 in developing countries will decrease.

The populations of the 49 least developed countries are still the fastest growing in the world, at 2.3 percent per year that will double from current 0.84 billion to 1.7 billion in 2050. The rest of the developing world is estimated to rise from 4.8 billion to 6.2 billion between 2009 and 2050.

The population of developed countries is expected to change minimally, passing from 1.23 billion to 1.28 billion. The numbers would have dropped to 1.15 billion people if not for the projected net migration from developing countries, which is projected to average 2.4 million persons annually from 2009 to 2050, the report said.

The major net receivers of international migrants during 2010 to 2050 are projected to be the United States (1.1 million annually), Canada (214,000), Britain (174,000), Spain (170,000), Italy (159,000), Germany (110,000), Australia (100,000), and France (100,000).

The major countries of net emigration are projected to be Mexico (-334,000), China (-309,000 annually), India (-253,000), the Philippines (-175,000), Pakistan (-161,000), Indonesia (-156,000), and Bangladesh (-148,000).

The populations of 45 countries are expected to decrease at least 10 percent between 2010 and 2050, including Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cuba, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Romania, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

The results of the U.N. revised population report incorporate the findings of the most recent national population censuses and of numerous specialised population surveys carried out around the world.

By Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2009 (IPS)

Ruby Dhalla, a Liberal member of Canada’s Parliament, is also a community activist, doctor, and one of the leading progressive voices in North American politics today.

MP Ruby Dhalla Credit: Nergui Manalsuren/IPS

Born and raised in Winnipeg to a family originally from Punjab, India, she has championed the causes of women, young people, immigrants and Native Canadians, as well as her country’s role in the global arena for democracy, peace and humanitarian relief efforts.

Dhalla is part of the International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics (iKNOW Politics), a joint project by the U.N. and other international agencies with the aim of increasing the participation and effectiveness of women in political life by creating an online workspace where women connect with one another.

“iKNOW is an incredible forum to bring together women from throughout the world to share experiences, to share knowledge, to be able to identify, to mentor, and recruit women, and, I hope through this network women can connect with each other, and continue to believe, to achieve, and to succeed in their goals,” Dhalla said in an interview with IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren at U.N. headquarters, where she is attending the 53rd session of the two-week Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: You’re the first South Asian woman to be elected to federal parliament in the western world and were subsequently re-elected twice. What does that mean for you? RD: I was very blessed to have a great generation of women leaders and men that have broken many barriers for someone like me. There are many challenges that one continues to encounter. There are many struggles and sacrifices, many other barriers that I know are broken down every day.

When I see a young six-year-old girl from a cultural community, a young girl of colour, I look at her when she says to me that she wants to be a prime minister one day, I know that all the barriers, struggles, hardships that I happened to go through are worth it and the most glorifying experience is to be able to hear and to see these young children believing in themselves.

IPS: What obstacles have you faced as a woman? RD: In my case, being a young woman, being a female, and being from my cultural community are fitting into three minority groups. Women’s participation in politics traditionally is not something that a woman of culture, a woman of colour is brought up to believe in.

I was very blessed to have a very supportive mother who really encouraged me to break down those types of traditional stereotypes that people have of what women should and should not do. I really hope moving forward that the issues that impact women are no longer going to be marginalised, every issue whether in regards to foreign policy, the economy, and strategies on how to deal with violence and terrorism, these are issues that are important to women just as issues of child care and health care. The issues, challenges and barriers that women face in politics are many, but you must be strong, you must have a vision, and you must always have a thick skin.

IPS: In your opinion, how does sexism affect women leaders’ performance? And how should they deal with it? RD: Women have to be tougher, women have to be stronger, and women have to believe a lot harder in their vision, and it is incredibly important to surround yourself with pillars of strength whether it’s your family or close friends. Also, to really have that belief and confidence in yourself that if you have a dream regardless of whatever the barriers are that we going to go out there and you’re going to do it because if there is a will, there’s always a way.

IPS: Based on your experience, what is the best way to get ahead in politics for women? RD: Work hard, work hard, work hard. Make sure you have a great team. The benchmark of women achieving is a lot higher than it is for men, that’s why you put your nose to the ground, and work hard from the bottom up.

IPS: What do you think the United Nations should do to bridge the gap between men and women on decision-making positions? RD: I would hope that moving forward, the U.N. has a tremendous role to play in bringing women together throughout the world because even though women from different parts of the world, different communities, villages may share different journeys, may have different stories, there’s a common vision and a common goal and hope to strive for equality.

And to empower women, empower those who are struggling to be heard. And, it is incredibly important to unite the common sense of purpose to establish mentorship programmes, to establish programmes that will bring women together, but also to identify, train, and recruit, and to mentor women.

And to ensure that political parties do the same as well, to get more women candidates, to get more women elected, because when women are at the table – whether you’re elected or not – I can tell you it raises the level of debate and the outcome of the decisions.

Excerpt:

By Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2009 (IPS)

After being blind for years to the needs and rights of women, the United Nations is finally well on its way to create a “fully-resourced” women’s agency, says Stephen Lewis, the former U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Stephen Lewis Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

A long-time vocal advocate for women’s rights, Lewis helped promote the creation of a billion-dollar gender institution, saying it is reasonable to ask for such an amount considering that the agency will deal with issues affecting half of the world’s population, and that the funding is just a third of that given to the U.N.’s children’s agency UNICEF and a quarter of the U.N.’s Development Fund’s (UNDP) budget.

“We have an agency for children, we have an agency for health, we have an agency for sexual and reproductive rights, we’ve got agencies for all kinds of things, but not for women who need one, and I think the time has come,” he told IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren.

The proposal calls for a new “gender architecture”, including the consolidation of three existing U.N. entities – the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women – under a single new U.N. agency.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: You talked about the creation of a women’s agency. Where does it stand right now? SL: The creation of a new international agency for women is well on its way in the next couple of days. I am hoping that a resolution creating the agency will occur before the end of this year, if not, then early 2010.

In the next week or two, the governments will have a proposal from the Secretariat, they will wrestle with the proposed proposal. The president of the General Assembly is very strongly in favour of the need for women’s agency. He hopes that it will happen before he leaves office, which is Sep. 14. That may be too soon, it may be later in the fall or in the early winter, but it’s coming, it’s coming.

What should happen now is actually to get the architecture in place. But there is no question that there is greater and greater momentum to create the agency as people realise how desperately it is needed.

IPS: What is the estimated budget? SL: It is unknown. My agency is suggesting a billion dollars a year to start, which is only one-third of UNICEF, one-quarter of UNDP, so we are not asking for an inappropriate amount considering it’s half the world’s population and it has a lot of time to make up.

I don’t doubt that once it’s created there will be several countries that come on board, some of the major donor countries of course. Even though there is financial difficulty in the world there seems to be some commitment to find the funding.

IPS: Do you think the G-77 alliance of developing countries may block it? SL: No, I don’t. I have great respect for the G-77’s concerns because at first they worried that this might be a kind of western imposition. And they wanted to feel that they would control it, that it’s a serious intervention and that there was nothing about it that would be a threat to the independence of developing country nation states. There would be no hidden conditionality. And I think that this way that there won’t be, that this is an honest effort to intervene on behalf of the women of the world. And a number of the leading G-77 nations have indicated their support – [in] Latin America, Asia, Africa – so I am very hopeful.

IPS: What is the best strategy for bringing men on board? SL: I think the best strategy is to empower women at the country level to assert their rights, to give them the capacity to fight for their rights and change legislation and gradually over time men will understand that there is a shift in the culture and the power relationships in society and they will come onboard. Men are difficult to deal with but over time they understand what is happening. But what we have to do is empower women at the country level. We can’t fight this battle in the abstract.

IPS: What’s the problem with gender mainstreaming at the U.N., especially at the decision-making level? SL: Gender mainstreaming has failed in every respect. What happens with gender mainstreaming is you say we’ll mainstream gender into that and then no one ever thinks of it again. They say it’s taken care of – it’s “mainstream”. And the truth is the gender mainstreaming simply sustains women’s inequality – that’s what gender mainstreaming is. It’s a recipe for inequality because unless you deal with women in a serious way, giving it special consideration, until you have equality then women will always be struggling.

IPS: What is your opinion on the Security Council resolutions? SL: There’s a great pity about the Security Council resolutions, you tend to get good language without implementation. So, the famous Resolution 1325 which passed in October 2000 saying that women must be involved in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations has never been implemented. Women never were at the peace table. It’s like the resolution doesn’t exist, but we talk about it all the time.

It’s pretty ugly in terms of what it means around women. And now we have a resolution of last year about sexual violence, and you get a sense that once you’ve got something on paper then they don’t feel the obligation to implement it. They have endorsed the responsibility to protect. They have principle, which will allow them to implement it, so you have to ask yourself: will they be doing this if it was men? And, the answer is no, they can afford not to care because they’re women.

IPS: What made you become such a strong advocate of women? SL: Because I’m a social democrat who believes in social justice, and there’s no justice in this world for the women, so you fight for it.

Excerpt:

By Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 12 2009 (IPS)

As people around the world celebrate their loved ones on Valentine’s Day weekend, activists are working to ensure that the ongoing horrors of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are not forgotten.

Eve Ensler and Dr. Denis Mukwege Credit: Paula Allen

Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands women and girls have been brutally raped in the DRC, primarily by rebel groups vying over control of land and mineral resources.

More than five million people have been killed in the civil war following the overthrow of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. The United Nations’ largest-ever peacekeeping force of 17,000 has been in the DRC since 2000. However, it is a vast country the size of Western Europe, and with few roads.

A year ago, rebel groups signed a peace treaty with an ineffective DRC government accused of corruption and complicit in the rape of women. Despite the treaty, thousands of women and young girls in the eastern Congo have been raped in the region that borders Rwanda and Uganda where coltan and other valuable minerals are found.

Large-scale fighting resumed last July, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

This week, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the V-Day campaign launched a five-city ‘Turning Pain to Power Tour’, starting at U.N. headquarters in New York City and going on to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington, DC.

Participants include Eve Ensler, the founder of V-Day and ‘The Vagina Monologues’ playwright, and Dr. Denis Mukwege, director and founder of Panzi General Referral Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu province in the DRC, who won the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights for 2008.

The joint initiative hopes to develop the “City of Joy”, a village for rape survivors in Bukavu, an area described by the head of UNICEF, Ann Veneman, as a place where “no one is safe”.

“Simple everyday tasks like gathering water, fetching water, expose these women and children to a great danger,” Veneman told reporters Wednesday.

“I’ve heard him [Mukwege] say before that sometimes women dragged themselves to the hospital, being left to death in the villages or the forest. And he told me that one of the things he has to do is to treat them for malnutrition before even beginning to operate on them because they were so weakened because of being just left with no one,” she said.

The V-Day initiative was first launched in November 2007, and has found support in 60 countries.

Mukwege said that the campaign is very important to give hope to Congolese women and his hospital because they have endured this horrific situation for over 10 years, appealing repeatedly for help from politicians and the international community.

“But sometimes it seems that ears are closed, and so we’ve been wondering: is it because these are women, and do we need men to start being killed so that other men will react?” asked Mukwege, who performs at least 10 fistula operations a day.

Asked how many women he’s been able to treat so far, he said the number was approximately 24,000. Even more need surgery, but the hospital has a limited capacity.

“Our hospital only can handle 10 surgeries a day, so while we don’t know the exact number, the list of untreated women is long. We need to build five to six new facilities in the region,” he told IPS.

Mukwege believes the number of women who have been raped since the beginning of the conflict is far higher than the U.N. estimates of 200,000-300,000, saying the real figure is more like half a million.

He also stressed the importance of both psychological and physical treatment. “We have about a dozen psychologists on hand to treat the women, but our goal is to train a team of 300 psychological experts to work with the women in the field and really be able to track their progress for the long term,” Mukwege told IPS.

“There needs to be judicial system put in place so that rapists can be apprehended and tried and held accountable,” he added.

Ensler hopes that the five-city tour will be a wake-up call for the U.S. government and citizens about what is going on in DRC. Violence against women is everyone’s struggle, she stressed. “It is not particularly an African thing, or a DRC thing – it’s a worldwide epidemic,” the activist said.

However, Ensler, who has traveled to eastern DRC, said that what she saw and experienced there convinced her that it is, without doubt, the worst situation of violence against women in the world today.

Asked whether the United Nations is doing enough, the V-Day founder said that the U.N. is moving towards understanding the centrality of violence against women, but has not yet made it a priority in terms of action.

“I think there’s an enormous amount of protocol around it, and all kinds of 1325s and 1820s [Security Council resolutions], but very often they are not applied. And, I think we’re still living in very patriarchic institution that hasn’t come to understand the importance of women and the role of women in the world,” Ensler told IPS.

She urged a fundamental shift at the U.N. to put more women in positions of power so that they have a voice in driving change, and forging a future where women have equal opportunities.

“I think that we need to keep building the women’s movement and help them to become more and more powerful,” she told IPS.

“For example, we all benefit from the resources of the Congo in the West. We use cell phones, Play Stations – we have blood on our hands essentially, so part of it is waking up the populations to understand that,” Ensler said.

Coltan, for example, is a rare and extremely valuable metal used in mobile phones, DVD players, computers, digital cameras, video games, vehicle air bags, and more. It has long been implicated as both the source of funding and primary cause of the ongoing conflict and extraordinary violence against women.

Ensler said a key goal this year is to raise the funds to continue the V-Day campaign.

“The campaign all in all is about four million dollars, and that’s for the City of Joy and the campaign itself. So far we’re doing very well, but people need to contribute more,” she told IPS.

V-Day says that this year, 4,000 events will take place in 1,400 places that will be focusing on women of the Congo, as well as 600 teach-ins.

Excerpt:

After the recent turmoil in Gaza, ongoing mass killings in Darfur, and the failure to timely intervene to aid survivors of last year’s Cyclone Nargis in Burma, civil society groups are calling on U.N. member states to fully commit to the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) concept.

Rights groups hold a press conference at the U.N. on "R2P". Credit: UN Photo

R2P was adopted at the U.N. World Summit in 2005 and gives the international community the authority – in principle – to take “collective action”, including force, when national governments fail to protect the most vulnerable from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The new International Coalition on the Responsibility to Protect was launched Wednesday at U.N. headquarters, and includes the East African Law Society (Tanzania), the West African Civil Society Institute (Ghana), the International Refugees Rights Initiative (Uganda), Initiatives for International Dialogue (Philippines), Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales (Argentina), and Human Rights Watch and Oxfam International.

All share the belief that R2P has the potential to become a powerful new tool for averting humanitarian disasters, especially when there is a concerted effort between governments and civil society.

R2P has run into controversy in the past with some governments objecting that it could be used to violate national sovereignty or encourage aggression by stronger states.

“Even though the core of the Responsibility to Protect norm addresses the responsibility of sovereignty, states and the international community, R2P cannot succeed without the support of governments, civil society and international organisations working together to prevent and halt genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” William Pace, executive director of the World Federalist Movement and a founder of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), told IPS.

He noted that Edward Luck, a special advisor to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, is helping to prepare a detailed report on how R2P could actually work in practice, which will be released next month. Luck is currently working on a salary of a dollar a year, until his post is fully funded.

Asked whether the G-77, a bloc of 130 developing countries, has refused to provide funding for that post because they fear unwarranted U.N. intervention in domestic issues under the guise of R2P, Pace said that was not the reason why the U.N. budgetary committee, also known as the Fifth Committee, postponed a decision on funding the special advisor’s post and office.

“The summit endorsement called for further discussion on R2P by the General Assembly, in terms of enhancing early warning and other commitments made by the heads of governments,” he told IPS. “The Fifth Committee members apparently felt this discussion in the GA should proceed before considering the secretary-general’s proposed new post was funded.”

“It was the first year of the new secretary-general’s term and many appointments and budgetary proposals were not handled as effectively as they should have been,” he said.

Augusto Miclat, executive director of Initiatives for International Dialogue in the Philippines, told IPS that, “Their [the G-77] fears are founded, but narrow.”

“That is why it is important for the Southern countries to take the lead in implementing, interpreting this norm from the perspective of victims of conflict. It is important that we are all on the same page regarding indicators about the threshold when a situation is identified as an R2P,” he said.

Asked whether the recent Israeli assault on civilians in Gaza was a situation that should have invoked U.N. intervention under the R2P concept, he responded that it was.

“The world saw the disproportionate use of killing machines obviously targeting non-combatants, civilians, women and children. If this is not a war crime, what is?” he asked.

On Dec. 26, Richard Falk, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, also cited R2P, after being denied entry by Israel into the West Bank and Gaza.

“In the last several years, the U.N. Security Council has endorsed the idea of humanitarian intervention under the rubric of ‘a responsibility to protect’, also known as R2P, and no world circumstance combines the misery and vulnerability of the people more urgently than does the situation of the people of Gaza living under occupation since 1967,” Falk said.

“Surely the present emergency circumstances present a compelling case for the application of this protective response under U.N. auspices. If this does not happen, it will again demonstrate to the people of the world, especially those in the Middle East, that geopolitics trumps international law and humanitarian concerns and leaves those victimised with few options.”