By Siddharth Chatterjee
BEIJING, Feb 8 2024 (IPS)

The Year of the Dragon is upon us.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message for this Lunar New Year, “The dragon symbolizes energy, wisdom, protection and good luck. We need these qualities to rise to today’s global challenges.”

Indeed, we do. Just consider some of the challenges from the past year.

The persistent drag of COVID-19.

Sluggish economies.

The hottest year on record.

Climate disasters, one after the other.

A rising tide of fake news, fake images, and hate speech.

Risks posed by the malicious use of AI, which grows in sophistication by the day.

Conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere, leaving millions highly vulnerable, and sending shock waves all over the world.

Stalled global progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, the world’s to-do list for peace and prosperity. This means that more people will remain without water, electricity, education for their children, or food for their families.

Around the world, people feel despondency and despair.

If ever we needed the spirit of the Dragon, it is now.

Mr. Dennis Francis, President of the UN General Assembly, writes a message of blessing at the National Children’s Center in Beijing. Credit: China National Children’s Center

The Lunar New Year is a perfect occasion to return to the source of our strength. All around the country, people will clean their homes and decorate them in red. There will be fireworks, feasts, family gatherings, and dragon dances.

In these celebrations, the people of China can look to inspire governments everywhere to embody the qualities of the Dragon as we head into the new year.

We saw this at work in the surprise detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China in March 2023 following years of bitter rivalry, and at the COP 28 climate conference last year, when the need to phase out fossil fuels was acknowledged, and the Loss and Damage Fund was agreed upon.

We see this spirit when countries now advocate for trust-building initiatives and international collaboration. These are crucial at a time when so many people around the world are losing faith in global institutions and each other.

This energy will be needed at the Summit of the Future this September at the UN General Assembly in New York. The Summit is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take stock of the state of the planet and its people. It is a chance to summon all our courage and compassion—together.

It is no longer viable, if it ever was, to address one crisis at a time. As soon as one war ends, another starts. A fire is extinguished in one part of the world, and another is ignited elsewhere. One humanitarian crisis here, and another one there.

To create lasting peace and prosperity, the countries and peoples of the world must come together. We must draw on our shared resources, refine our aspirations, and imagine our future. This is what the Summit of the Future will help make possible.

We at the UN in China look to work closely with the Government of China in preparation for this Summit.

China has an indispensable role to play. After all, China is a model for South-South cooperation, in which developing nations support other developing nations. China is also hard at work to deliver on climate action, having set the goal to achieve peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060.

Consider this. In 2023, China’s $890bn investment in clean-energy sectors was almost as large as total global investments in fossil fuel supply.

And the people of China are an inspiration for countless others around the world struggling to lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

The UN family in China thanks the country’s people and Government for their endeavours. You embody the spirit of the Dragon.

This year is auspicious for another reason as well. It will mark the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, an important milestone in the nation’s progress.

In honour of the many people who celebrate the Lunar New Year around the world, I am pleased that this year will mark the first time it joins the UN holiday calendar.

On behalf of the UN family in China, I extend our best wishes for the Year of the Dragon. May it be a time of great success, joy, and good fortune. May the Dragon remind us of our ability to create a more promising future for our own families, and the greater human family on the planet we all call home.

Chun Jie Kuai Le.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China.

Credit: United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation

By Deepali Khanna and Siddharth Chatterjee
BANGKOK / BEIJING, Sep 12 2022 (IPS)

The world today faces a future that is in peril. Our challenges have become more complex and interconnected, as we see the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, an uneven economic recovery, a climate emergency, growing inequalities, and an increase in conflicts globally. This year also marks a grim milestone, with over 100 million people forcibly displaced.

These events accompany increasing division in the community of nations which threatens to push the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further out of reach for the Global South.

Adding to these crises, rising food and energy prices driven by the conflict in Ukraine, could push 71 million people into poverty, according to UNDP. The Global South, typically comprised of countries in South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, was already grappling with economic issues now exacerbated by the triple planetary crisis.

With limited resources, high vulnerability, and low resilience, people in the Global South will bear the brunt of our inaction, on climate and elsewhere. Solely depending on external aid from the Global North or G7 countries cannot be the panacea. Here, countries of the Global South can empower themselves and combine efforts to achieve sustainable development.

Cooperating to catalyse change

In the face of global threats, international cooperation remains vital, as highlighted by the International Day for South-South Cooperation. South-South cooperation seeks to complement traditional development models by throwing light on the transformations needed to deliver on priorities, including the SDGs. It offers possible solutions from Global South to Global South.

Countries of the Global South have contributed to more than half of global economic growth in recent times. Intra-South trade is higher than ever, accounting for over a quarter of world trade. It is time to further leverage these partnerships in the development space.

We already saw this while many countries were trying to obtain COVID-19 vaccines. Citizens of low and middle-income countries faced systemic discrimination in the global COVID-19 response, leaving millions without access to vaccines, tests, and treatments. India sent over 254.4 million vaccine supplies to nations across the world, under Vaccine Maitri – a vaccine export initiative.

Likewise, China has supplied over 200 million doses of vaccines to the COVAX Facility, in addition to providing millions of dollars in medical supplies to countries in the Global South, including in Africa, throughout the pandemic.

Informing partnership models with Africa & China

To advance development priorities, partnerships need to be rooted in shared interests that can lead to shared gains, as seen in traditional development models and assistance from the Global North. This dynamic needs to be at the core of the China-Africa relationship as well.

China, an economic powerhouse, has the potential to advance development in the Global South, especially in Africa, by bringing its experience, expertise, and resources to bear, and its assistance must advance both its interests and those of the countries where it operates.

Investments in shared goals are reflected in efforts by China to improve public health in Africa, including in the construction of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Ethiopia, and in clean energy, through projects such as the Kafue Lower Gorge Power Station in Zambia.

China promises to invest US$60 billion cumulatively in Africa by 2035, directed at agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, environmental protection, and the digital economy. This is most welcome, and those planned investments must answer the needs of the local economies and societies.

What works in one country may not work elsewhere, but true collaboration allows for learning from mistakes and sharing successes. This is where the UN’s expertise can ensure cooperation is demand-driven, in line with local expectations and needs, national development priorities, and relevant international norms and standards.

Platforms like the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) can work to improve that essential partnership. This mechanism has identified shared priorities like climate change, agriculture/food systems, global health, and energy security, among others, between China and Africa.

For the first time in FOCAC’s history and with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, the UN in China is engaged as a strategic partner in this bilateral mechanism between China and Africa. The UN in China is continuing similar efforts in close consultation with relevant counterparts, including the China International Development Cooperation Agency.

For The Rockefeller Foundation, it is a nod to its legacy in China dating back to 1914, rooted in redesigning medical education to improve healthcare and its current priorities to advance Global South collaboration, especially in public health, food, and clean energy access—all global public goods.

Beyond the Global South: Action Together

With less than eight years to achieve the SDGs, truly international cooperation is our only hope. Emerging trends in technology and innovation can get us there, along with enhanced South-South cooperation efforts. But doing so requires us to “flip the orthodoxy”, as UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed advised.

The Ebola crisis is an example of where global cooperation, including South-South cooperation, enabled Sierra Leone to defeat the disease’s spread, notably through a brigade of 461 health workers sent to Sierra Leone to support their overburdened system. Later, other countries made similar efforts to support Sierra Leone and nearby countries, such as Guinea and Liberia. This example shows the potential of South-South cooperation, but also triangular cooperation and North-South partnerships. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are another mechanism for financing and capacity building.

This can be seen in Kenya, where the Government and the UN System convened an SDG Partnership Platform with companies such as Philips, Huawei, Safaricom, GSK, and Merck. The outcomes include a downward trend of maternal and child mortality in some of the country’s most remote regions. Similar PPPs can hold promise in unlocking global progress on the SDGs.

Today, while we face a more volatile world, the spirit of South-South cooperation shows a core value that we need: solidarity. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “The last two years have demonstrated a simple but brutal truth – if we leave anyone behind, we leave everyone behind”.

Deepali Khanna is Vice-President of the Asia Region Office at The Rockefeller Foundation. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China.

IPS UN Bureau

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Visitors at booth for Beyond Expo. Credit: TechNode

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Jingbo Huang
BEIJING, Dec 14 2021 (IPS)

A landscape of shared global challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has moved us farther away from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Data shows that the pandemic has pushed a further 124 million people into extreme poverty. Global poverty is now expected to be at 7% by 2030 – only marginally below the level in 2015. And with the global temperature increase already at 1.2 degrees, we are on the verge of the abyss. UN Secretary-General António Guterres is deeply concerned about the impact of the pandemic on the SDGs. But there is hope. He believes in the knowledge, science, technology, and resources to turn it around. He also urges further financing for development and climate action.

The SDGs can only be achieved with strong global partnerships and cooperation. Building back better calls for inclusive green growth, including integrated policy choices in governance, social protection, green economy, and digitalization.

The UN in China also recognizes the importance of equipping people with the skills in science, technology, and innovation needed for decent work, entrepreneurship, and the achievement of the SDGs.

What’s Next?

Against this backdrop, it was a pleasure to witness and participate in the Beyond International Technology Innovation Expo, which took place in Macao SAR, China, from 2-4 December 2021. The world can be reassured by the strong will for People-first Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) among the over 300 companies and over 20,000 participants gathered in Macao. Both of us joined the Expo, one physically and one remotely, and we commend Jason Ho and Gang Lu, the two young organizers who have shown their belief in the social, environmental and governance impact of technology, financing, and business, in setting the theme of the first Beyond Expo to be “what’s next?”.

The last day was dedicated to an SDGs Summit to highlight one of the major themes of the Expo, technology, investment, business for impact and the SDGs. The SDGs Summit consisted of three panel discussions: Impact investing, AI and ethics, and business social responsibilities. It was encouraging to hear that young start-ups and impact investors embed the SDGs in the DNA of their operations. Among them, there were initiatives on carbon neutrality, green agriculture, technology to empower rural women, and auto-driving boats to clean ocean garbage.

The co-authors Siddharth Chatterjee (left) and Jingbo Huang (right)

UNU in Macao, the UN organization in Macao and the focal point of the UN Country Team in China on digital technologies, played host and provided speakers to the second panel of the SDGs Summit. Attendees discovered how the latest technological developments found in China could offer ample solutions to the world’s development issues, especially those in the Global South, such as agriculture, health, and climate change. Seeing the vision of the organizers, panellists, and participants’ who are putting the SDGs at the core of their business rather than as a public relations tool provides hope for our collective future.

Beyond Expo also hosted a virtual panel featuring some UN organizations, entitled “How would the UN leverage technologies for SDGs: Conversations among technology leaders in the UN system”. It included key senior staff from the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, UNDP, and UNOPS. They discussed how their respective organizations are using technologies to accelerate the SDGs, and how the UN can deliver as one, harnessing big data and innovation.

To 2030 and Beyond

Beyond Expo has shown us its potential as a platform where impact investors, companies, government, academia, and the UN can get together to discuss how to co-create a more sustainable future through technology and innovation. It is also a prime example of how emerging generations of entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors realize that sustainability is not just good for humanity but good for business.

The UN in China calls for action from all stakeholders, including governments, individuals, and businesses, and will stand ready to support future collaborations and new partnerships to generate solutions and explore innovations for the SDGs, towards the 2030 Agenda and beyond.

Siddharth Chatterjee
Mr. Siddharth Chatterjee took office as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China on 16 January 2021 and is the designated representative of – and reports to – the UN Secretary-General.

Jingbo Huang
Dr. Jingbo Huang is the Director of the United Nations University Research Institute in Macau, a UN think tank on digital technology and SDGs. Jingbo has been serving the UN system for the past 20 years across five UN organizations. She holds a Doctor of Education degree from Columbia University and is also an alumna of Peking University.

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Delegation of the People’s Republic of China making its debut at the UN Assembly Hall. Credit: Xinhua

By Siddharth Chatterjee
BEIJING, Oct 11 2021 (IPS)

China was one of the architects of the United Nations and was the first signatory of the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945.

But it was only in October 1971, with the Chinese delegation led by Mr. Qiao Guanhua, that China’s representation at the UN resumed. Since that time, the UN has had the great privilege of witnessing and supporting China in achieving one of the greatest periods of socio-economic progress in world history.

Now, on the 50th anniversary of China in the UN, I am honoured to serve as the UN Resident Coordinator, a post I took earlier this year.

While I took up my post in Beijing on 08 February 2021, I am only just beginning to understand its rich tapestry of over 5,000 years of civilization. The UN in China has had the privilege to shape and witness the profound economic and social transformations that have occurred since reform and opening-up.

As we commemorate a half-century of cooperation, a question naturally emerges: Which way now for the UN and China?

This is a weighty question, as China and the world are at a critical juncture. Tentatively emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, but with many countries still struggling terribly. Staring down the threats of climate change, with record-setting heat, fires, storms, and other disasters. Counting down the years in this “Decade of Action” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

China’s standard-setting leadership in past decades gives me confidence that we can achieve even greater things in the years to come.

CHINA’S RECORD-BREAKING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening-up Policy began to transform the nation, as evidenced, for example, in Shenzhen, which changed from a fishing village on the Pearl River Delta into an international hub for research and innovation in a single generation.

And in 1979, China chose to accept development assistance from the UN, learning from its long experience in poverty alleviation and industrial and agricultural growth.

China’s success in the more than 40 years since then has been nothing short of miraculous. During this time, China:

• Lifted over 750 million people out of absolute poverty.
• Invested in public health and education, investing in human capital thus making possible a happier and healthier workforce that contributed to economic productivity.
• Became the world’s manufacturing centre, based on a growth model of foreign investments, resource-intensive manufacturing, cheap labour, and exports.
• Multiplied its per capita GDP from US $180 in 1979 to an incredible $12,000 today.

The signs of this progress are evident not just in statistics, but in daily quality-of-life matters. Throughout China now lie the classic hallmarks of a market economy, with opulent shops from luxury brands, foreign and domestic. A far cry from what I saw as a young boy growing up near Chinatown in my native Kolkata, India, though fondly remembered as a warren of alleys, narrow aisles of food markets, elderly men playing board games in parks, with Chinese characters on the signs overhead.

For example, in Beijing during the early 1980s, cabbage was often the only vegetable on menus. With help from the UN’s development agency in China, availability at markets expanded — supporting the diversification of domestic vegetables and introducing new ones from abroad, such as broccoli.

This startling success is on track to continue. China’s per capita GDP is projected to more than double by 2025, reaching over $25,000, adjusted for purchasing power. The country’s surging economy is set to overtake 56 countries in the world’s per-capita income rankings during the quarter-century through 2025, the International Monetary Fund projects.

No less an authority than Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a United Nations SDG Advocate and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, has called China an “inspiration” in stopping the pandemic and ending poverty.

This progress is all the more remarkable considering the hit that the pandemic has delivered to the global economy. China’s generosity and leadership on this front are commendable.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the 9th World Peace Forum in Beijing “to build a “Great Wall of Immunity” to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, challenges remain. As with any economy at this stage of development, the relentless pursuit of high growth is reaching its natural limits, and China faces new economic, social, and environmental challenges.

NEW PRIORITIES FOR AGENDA 2030 AND BEYOND

The UN Sustainable Development Goals are meant to be achieved by the year 2030, and we are now in what is called the “Decade of Action.” I see three areas for close cooperation at this critical juncture.

First, a new sustainable development model. The Government recognizes slower economic growth as the “new normal.” Changing demographic, labour, and investment realities present China with new obstacles in addressing food security, pervasive inequalities, and cost-effectiveness in universal healthcare.

In a post-Xiaokang society, China needs to embrace innovations and services that drive equitable and inclusive progress, dealing with the legacies of rapid expansion to achieve the SDGs and leave no one behind.

Second, climate change. As a consequence of its large population and economy, China is the world’s single largest emitter of carbon dioxide, responsible for a quarter of global emissions. Having recognized the environmental costs of this development model, President Xi Jinping has set a bold ambition for China to hit peak carbon emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060.

This enormous feat will require a massive transition in how China’s economy works and its population lives every day. Seismic shifts in investments and technologies will be needed. Here, China’s recent pledge to end all financing of coal plants abroad and redirect its support for developing countries towards green and low carbon energy is most welcome.

We will need to sustain this momentum ahead of and following the COP 15 UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, the second UN Sustainable Transport Conference in Beijing, and the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

Third, multilateralism. China is a champion for multilateral efforts to address global challenges. China has the will, knowledge, and resources to contribute enormously to the SDGs and position itself as an exceptional member of the community of nations.

As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described, “In its successful efforts in the fight against extreme poverty, China’s accomplishments in the past decades set a powerful example that can be shared with other countries, through South-South Cooperation”.

Today, China is the second-largest contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget and has sent more peacekeepers to UN missions than any other permanent member of the Security Council. China also played a vital role in shaping the consensus needed for the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.

Future efforts should emphasize initiatives that expand vaccine access, grant debt relief to lower-income countries, and provide sustainable financing for infrastructure and climate efforts.

On this front, we hope the Global Development Initiative announced by President Xi Jinping recently will accelerate needed international cooperation efforts and we extend our support to contribute our expertise, in line with international norms and standards.

CHINA AND THE UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations family in China is in lockstep with China’s vision. The 2030 Agenda and the recently agreed-upon Country Framework are the blueprints for building on the gains of the past.

In this Decade of Action to achieve the SDGs, the UN can support this ambition and convene, connect and catalyze stakeholders in leveraging China’s development experience to benefit other countries, especially those in Africa, in the spirit of South-South Cooperation.

As the world deals with the pandemic, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres put forward a “Common Agenda” at the 76th Session of the General Assembly, where he said, “We face a moment of truth. Now is the time to deliver…restore trust…[and] inspire hope. Humanity has shown that we are capable of great things when we work together. That is the raison d’être of our United Nations”.

October 2021 will also be time for the UN and China to celebrate our 50-year relationship. China and the UN will reimagine, innovate, reinvigorate and continue the hard and daily work and dedicate ourselves anew to creating lasting prosperity for the people of China and all the world.

The author is Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in China

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UAE Minister of State for Advanced Sciences Sarah bint Yousif Al Amir speaks during an event to mark Hope Probe's entering the orbit of Mars, in Dubai. Photo-Arabian Business, July 2020

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Ali Obaid Al Dhaheri
BEIJING, Apr 6 2021 (IPS)

Women hold up half the sky.

Some years ago, Sarah al-Amiri, a young Emirati engineer, had a fixed gaze beyond the sky and towards our galaxy. “Space was a sector that we never dared to dream growing up,” she noted.

Fast forward and al-Amiri is now the United Arab Emirates first Minister of State for Advanced Science, successfully leading an ambitious project which launched a spacecraft into orbit around Mars, the first-ever Arab interplanetary mission. This has only been achieved by four other nations, including China.

Al-Amiri contends that, “the mission is called Amal, which means ‘hope’ in Arabic, because we are contributing to global understanding of a planet. We are going above and beyond the turmoil that is now defining our region and becoming positive contributors to science”.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, women in the UAE, China and elsewhere have also led ground-breaking efforts against the virus in the fields of public health, vaccines and treatments. The Hope Mission and COVID-19 pandemic highlight the potential gains to be achieved by ensuring full and equal access for women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). As UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphatically stated, “women and girls belong in science and there is a dividend to be gained for countries that acknowledge this truth.”

Greater Participation Needed in STEM Fields

According to UNESCO, women account for only 28 percent of engineering graduates and 40 percent in computer science and informatics. This gender disparity is alarming, especially as STEM careers are often referred to as the jobs of the future, driving innovation, social wellbeing, inclusive growth and sustainable development.

Women account for only one-third scientific researchers globally, holding fewer senior positions than men at top universities. Furthermore, with the growth of artificial intelligence, automation and machine learning, there are risks for reinforcing inequalities, as the needs of women are more likely to be overlooked in the design of products and projects.

Increasing women’s participation in STEM accelerates sustainable development in low and middle-income countries, offering an opportunity to close gender pay gaps and boosting women’s earnings by USD 299 billion over the next decade. Studies indicate that girls perform as well as boys in science and mathematics, and in many parts countries outperforming them. Aptitude is not the issue.

Gender equality in STEM acts as a powerful accelerator for the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Norms and stereotypes that limit girls’ expectations need to be eliminated, while educators must motivate girls to become changemakers, entrepreneurs and innovators.

Thankfully, there are already encouraging signs of change, in both the UAE and China.

Growing Equality and Empowerment in China

In China, the 14th Five-Year Plan provides new opportunities to prioritize gender equality. Central to the development agenda is a strengthening of science, technology and R&D sectors to address a transformation to a digital and innovative economy. In China, women launch more than half of all new internet companies and make up more than half of inventors filing patent applications. The recently enacted Civil Code establishes new mechanisms for addressing sexual harassment and abuse in workplaces.

Success stories of women specializing in STEM fields should be heralded in order to empower others to follow. As examples, Tu Youyou was China’s first Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 2015, with her discovery of a malaria therapy; whilst Hu Qiheng was a leader promoting Internet access in China, being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013 as a global connector.

Pictured: Tu Youyou – Vox

In the private sector there are stellar mentors and roll-models such as billionaire Zhou Qunfei, who rose from a migrant worker to being the world’s richest self-made woman. As the CEO of Lens Technology, she built an empire manufacturing glass for tech giants such as Tesla, Apple and Samsung.

In Shenzhen, the private sector is now embracing its civic responsibilities, with companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei launching initiatives to recruit and promote women in STEM fields.

Rapid Progress by the UAE

The space industry is not the only sector in which Emirati women are exemplary.

According to the World Economic Forum 2021 Global Gender Gap Report, the UAE ranked first globally in four of the report’s indicators: women in parliament; sex ratio at birth; literacy rate; and enrolment in primary education. Meanwhile, in the 2019 UNDP Human Development Report, the UAE ranks 35 of the 189 countries in the world in terms of women’s empowerment.

In terms of education, 77% of UAE women will continue to receive higher education after high school graduation, and 70% are graduates of higher education in the UAE. Female students now account for 46% of STEM subjects in UAE higher education. Two thirds of the public sector positions are held by women, with 30 per cent of which are leadership positions.

On 30 March the UAE National Action Plan for Women, Peace and Security was launched by H.H. Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, Chairwoman of the General Women’s Union, President of the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood, and Supreme Chairwoman of the Family Development Foundation. This Plan is not only a step in the right direction but also spearheads the vital role of women in the UAE.

For many years, Sheikha Fatima and the UAE have championed and presided over a group of specialised conferences in the Arab, international and Islamic worlds to empower women and enhance their stature.

The co-authors Amb Ali Obaid Al Dhaheri (Right)and Siddharth Chatterjee(left). Photo-UAE Embassy China, 03 March 2021

As the UAE approaches its 50th Jubilee since foundation, it is a matter of pride that the country is making outstanding achievements and launching initiatives to empower women, surging ahead in promoting gender equality and ensuring that women play a key role in the nation’s growth. This has earned the UAE a reputation as being among the most progressive countries in the world.

Global Gender Equality Initiatives

In March 2021, International Women’s Day was celebrated with the UN China Country Team coming together in recognizing tremendous contributions and leadership demonstrated by women and girls around the world. Joint campaigns such as #HERstory saw the UNDP and UN Women shared inspiring stories on social media from women leaders in STEM around the world. A workshop was launched to combat stereotypes and encourage women and girls across China to learn and excel in science and technology.

As part of the Generation Equality global initiative led by UN Women, governments, civil society, private sectors and change-makers from around the world are coming together to fuel a powerful and lasting coalition for gender equality.

It is 25 years since the UN Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action committed nations to the advancement of the rights of women. Now is the time to recommit to ensuring gender equality, especially for STEM in order to harness women’s full potential. Then women of China, the UAE and the world can hold up half of the sky, in principle and reality.

This article was originally published in Forbes Africa.

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Excerpt:

UN Women China Qinghai programme beneficiaries. Credit: UN Women

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Smriti Aryal
BEIJING, Mar 6 2021 (IPS)

Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), and the theme for this year’s celebration is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” We recognize the tremendous contribution and leadership demonstrated by women and girls around the world in shaping our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and a more sustainable future.

A global review of the progress achieved towards commitments made at the Fourth World Conference on Women 25 years ago in Beijing, conducted by UN Women in 2020, reveals that no country has fully delivered on the Beijing Platform for Action, nor is close to it. Globally, women currently hold just one-quarter of the seats at the tables of power across the board and are absent from some key decision-making spaces, including in peace and climate negotiations.

This reality is despite the advances that we can see globally: there are now more girls in school than ever before, fewer women are dying in childbirth, and over the past decade, 131 countries have passed laws to support women’s equality.

However, progress has been too slow and uneven.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is further exacerbating pre-existing inequalities and threatening to halt or reverse the gains from decades of collective effort – with data revealing that the pandemic will push 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line globally.

Siddharth Chatterjee

But in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, women have stood tall at the frontlines, serving as health workers and caregivers, where they make up 70% of the global workforce. Women also lead in their capacities throughout government and civil society to give vital assistance, bringing their irreplaceable perspectives and skills to the table.

Answering these complex global challenges while tearing down the barriers to women’s participation and leadership now requires bolder political commitment backed up by adequate resources and targeted approaches to accelerate progress towards parity through legislation, fiscal measures, programmatic change, and public-private partnerships.

China has made progress in safeguarding women’s rights and promoting gender equality. Notably, China’s poverty alleviation achievements have had a multiplier effect on advancing women’s empowerment beyond alleviating poverty among women. Advances in girl’s education, access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, social protection and assistance are admirable – and important not just for the advancement of women’s rights – but in creating a “moderately prosperous” Chinese society with a “bright shared future” for all. Yet, as in many countries, there are still challenges that persist across the course of women’s lives.

Like elsewhere, systemic issues remain in equal pay for equal work and promotion opportunities for decent work in China. Under-representation of women in senior leadership roles impacts many sectors, with less than 10% of board members of listed companies in China being women.

Smriti Aryal

The newly enacted Civil Code offers opportunities to strengthen legislation, including judicial mechanisms, law enforcement and service delivery for addressing sexual harassment, sexual abuse and violence against women and girls. Robust implementation of the provisions for ending sexual harassment and abuse will be a step towards China’s demonstration of “Zero Tolerance” towards ending all forms of violence against women and girls.

The 14th Five-Year National Development Plan, 2021-2025 and the new 10-Year Plan on Development of Women and Children, 2021-2030, also present opportunities for China to ensure gender equality and women’s empowerment are at the centre of the development agenda and address the remaining gender gaps and challenges in the country. The world now looks to China for continued leadership on the SDGs and the Beijing Platform for Action.

We welcome the Government of China’s recent commitment to prioritizing women’s empowerment in its future development cooperation and global engagement. This comes at a time, when we need stronger global action and multilateralism to alleviate the long-lasting impacts of COVID-19 and accelerate actions towards the achievement of the SDGs. As we look at women’s rights issues that many countries are grappling with – poverty, maternal health, livelihood and food security, access to continued education, to name a few – are also the areas where China has seen the most progress domestically. South-South cooperation enables China to share its lessons and continue learning from others, to achieve genuine empowerment for women and girls around the world.

We recognize that gender equality and women’s empowerment are drivers for transformative change and a prerequisite for the achievement of all SDGs. The UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, 2021-2025, signed between the United Nations System in China and the Government of China, is underpinned by this principle and prioritizes the advancement of women’s rights as a key programming area of its own. As the UN Country Team (UNCT), we stand ready to support and continue to work with the Government of China and all national actors for our concerted efforts towards advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.

2021 is only the beginning of our journey on the Decade of Action for the SDGs. We have an unprecedented opportunity to do things differently for current and future generations of women and girls. On International Women’s Day, we call upon our partners and supporters to celebrate the leadership and contribution of China’s women, and become advocates, champions, and influencers that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment today, and every day.

Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China & Smriti Aryal, Head of Office, UN Women in China
On behalf of the UN Country Team in China for International Women’s Day 2021

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Excerpt:

Social development helps narrowing down the disparities between urban and rural areas; and gaps amongst different regions. Credit: UNESCO

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Amakobe Sande
BEIJING, Mar 1 2021 (IPS)

Back in the 1990s, the discovery of antiretrovirals offered a ray of hope to save people’s lives from the HIV epidemic. Over this decade, people living with HIV benefited from the scientific advances and began to have longer, healthier and more productive lives. However, almost all the beneficiaries were from rich countries in the global north. As a result, about nine million people died by the year 2000 due to the inequality in accessing these life-saving medicines.

It is a hard lesson from the HIV response, but unfortunately, it seems the lesson is not yet learned in dealing with today’s health crisis.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world last year and claimed millions of lives, scientists, doctors and nurses, pharmaceutical industries, and experts acted quickly to develop vaccines to prevent further infections. However, when the vaccines were developed, the same kind of inequalities happened. Research shows the world’s wealthiest countries have monopolised more than half of the production doses of vaccines, leaving low-and-medium-income countries struggling to secure vaccines. 10 rich countries have administered 75 per cent of all COVID-19 vaccines – while some 130 countries have not yet received a single dose.

Siddharth Chatterjee. Credit: Newton Kanhema

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and underlined the widespread inequalities in the world. That’s why the theme of this year’s Zero Discrimination Day, “End Inequality”, is so pertinent in today’s world. In today’s world, we are all interconnected. Global inequality affects us all, no matter who we are or where we are from. We cannot achieve sustainable development and make the planet better for all if people are excluded from the chance of a better life.

Inequality happens everywhere: income, health status, occupation, disability, gender identity, race, class, ethnicity and religion. As estimated, inequality is growing for more than 70% of the global population, exacerbating the risk of division and hampering economic and social development. And almost two in ten people reported having personally experienced discrimination on at least one of the grounds established by international human rights law.

Discrimination and inequalities are intertwined. Discrimination against individuals and groups can lead to a wide range of inequalities—for example, in income, educational outcomes, health and employment. Inequalities can also lead to stigma and discrimination. Research shows that this social and structural discrimination results in significant inequalities in access to justice and in health outcomes.

Tackling inequality is not a new commitment—in 2015, all UN member states pledged to reduce inequality within and among countries as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. UNAIDS officially launched the first Zero Discrimination Day on 1 March 2014 in Beijing, calling on countries to examine discriminatory provisions in their laws and policies and make positive changes to ensure equality, inclusion and protection, particularly among key populations such as sex workers and their clients, men who have sex with men, transgender people and people who inject drugs.

As well as being core to ending AIDS, tackling inequality and discrimination is universal in nature and will advance the human rights of people living with HIV, make societies better prepared to beat COVID-19 and other pandemics and support economic recovery and stability. Fulfilling the promise to tackle inequality will save millions of lives and benefit society as a whole.

Amakobe Sande

We take this opportunity to congratulate China for not only lifting nearly 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the last four decades, but in the years since 2013, lifting nearly 100 million people out of poverty in the rural areas, setting China on course to achieve SDG 1 or ending poverty ten years before 2030. A significant milestone towards ending inequality.

Governments must promote inclusive social and economic growth and eliminate discriminatory laws, policies and practices to ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities. A people-centred approach is needed to ensure we leave no one behind.

This approach was explained well by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who made remarks at the High-level Segment of the 46th Session of The United Nations Human Rights Council recently. He said, “Increasing people’s sense of gains, happiness and security is the fundamental pursuit of human rights as well as the ultimate goal of national governance.”

We all have a role to play in ending discrimination and so reducing inequalities. We can all play our part by calling out discrimination where we see it, by setting an example or by advocating to change the law.

We believe equality can and should be achieved. Let’s make it happen.

UN Resident Coordinator to China, Siddharth Chatterjee and UNAIDS Country Director to China, Amakobe Sande

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Scoping out development opportunities in frontier communities. UN Kenya Resident Coordinator Siddharth Chatterjee, Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa, UN heads of missions, and other development partners in Kenya. Credit: Nicholas Wilson / UNDP

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 20 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 is like a rainstorm, a thunderous and powerful rainstorm all over the world. If we didn’t know before, we certainly know now just where the holes are in our roofs, or where there are no roofs. We see ever more clearly who is getting drenched and who is dying, and who remains dry.

But ultimately, no one is untouched. This fact alone must wake us to a basic truth: Humanity will survive and thrive only if all countries work together. We must improve global governance on health and embrace multilateralism.

This is good for all people, it’s good for governments, and it’s good for business.

The United Nations is the institution best positioned to lead the way on this call. I believe with all my heart that global cooperation is possible.

I am privileged to have spent the last nearly five years serving as the UN Resident Coordinator (RC) in Kenya, and now to have been designated as the RC in China, a post which I will assume this month.

In Kenya, I learned a vital lesson that I will carry with me to China. Before I became the RC, I was the Representative of UNFPA in Kenya. At that time, in 2014, Kenya was among the ten most dangerous places on earth to become a mother. The maternal mortality rate was a shocking 500 deaths per 100,000 live births—nearly triple the target of the Millennium Development Goal of a maximum of 170 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Siddharth Chatterjee. Credit: Newton Kanhema

More recently, during my tenure as the RC in Kenya, I was privileged to meet with Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta, to discuss female genital mutilation (FGM). He said in the strongest terms that he wanted to end the practice of FGM once and for all in Kenya, and that he wanted the UN’s partnership on this effort. Thanks to his leadership, Kenya is making remarkable strides.

Time and again in Kenya, my experience showed me the importance of political will, as was the case in my previous postings in Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan (Darfur), Indonesia, and with UN Peacekeeping Operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iraqi Kurdistan.

With committed political leadership, good public policy, and strong partnerships — we can achieve the impossible. With those “three P’s,” we can minimize the number of mothers who die in childbirth. We can end the practice of FGM. We can create a world where girls and boys everywhere can dream big and fulfill those dreams. And we can create a stronger UN to address challenges that cross borders freely, such as this pandemic.

I could not be happier than to take this lesson to my new post as the UN Resident Coordinator in China, a country which has the commitment and the resources to support global cooperation and development. China can share important lessons with the developing world, having lifted over 890 million people out of poverty within 30 years.

China is dedicated to multilateralism. It is the second largest donor to the UN, the second largest donor to UN Peacekeeping, and one of the biggest contributors of troops to UN Peacekeeping. It is a leader in South-South Cooperation, supporting peace and development work in other countries in the Southern Hemisphere.

China has the resources to support multilateralism. With nearly 1.4 billion people, and a powerhouse economy that has perhaps the greatest purchasing power in the world, China is making strides in development and is a major source of global wealth generation in the past 11 years. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is creating infrastructure that will benefit the people of the many countries it touches in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

We need all the countries of the world to give their best to the global community and to the UN, which works so hard to foster it.

Doing so actually serves the self-interests of countries. Many global challenges ignore national boundaries. Disease. Violent conflict. Refugees. Climate change. A country becomes safer when it helps stop these crises across a border or across an ocean. The challenges cross borders, but so, too, do the benefits of solving them.

Multilateralism is also an act of basic humanity. It is compassionate to answer the cry of suffering of other people. Don’t we all want people to get a fair shake, no matter where they are? Don’t we want children the world over to be free and safe and happy? We are enlarged and enlightened when our siblings in the human family prosper.

We have less than 10 years left now to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. We are well past the first blush of celebration of the SDGs, and we are far from the last mad dash. We are wounded by this pandemic, all of us, though some more than others.

But we cannot give up now. We cannot slow down. We must keep our vision focused. We must take heart in ourselves and each other. And we must work together.

This article was originally published by the United Nations.

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Excerpt:

Siddharth Chatterjee with CS Eugene Wamalwa, Heads of Missions from the United Nations Mission and other development partners visited the Frontier Counties Development Council Counties with a view of leveraging on opportunities considering geographic proximities in addressing shared developmental challenges in the marginalized Counties. Credit: West Pokot County, February 2020

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 4 2021 (IPS)

Happy New Year, Kenya.

Several milestones in my personal and professional life have made Kenya a cherished place for me. I started my UNICEF career in Rumbek, South Sudan in June 2000, and my rest and recuperation breaks were in Nairobi. In fact Kenya was the first African country I had ever visited and, frankly, it was love at first sight.

I came back in November 2004 to serve with UNICEF Somalia based out of Nairobi, and in 2006 I got married in Kenya. My son who was 3 years old in 2014, has had his formative years growing up in Kenya, and considers himself Kenyan.

The following year I left to serve in Iraq, and I wondered if I would get an opportunity to return to Kenya. Seven years later, it happened: in April 2014 I came back as the United Nations Population Fund Representative (UNFPA) Representative and in August 2016, I was selected to lead the UN Country Team in Kenya as the UN Resident Coordinator and the UNDP Resident Representative.

Over the years, my bond with the country has been forged through jubilation and the shared suffering of tragedy. I have rejoiced at improvements in many health indicators in counties such as Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Marsabit, Isiolo and Lamu where an unconscionable number of women used to die in childbirth, but where great progress has been made. I have also mourned in horror at the number of lives lost to terror attacks, the murder of 36 quarry workers by terrorists in Mandera county (I was in Mandera the same day), the slaughter of innocent students in Garissa University and the dastardly attack at Nairobi’s DusitD2 hotel.

The end of my tenure as UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya falls on 13 January 2021, with new experiences and challenges awaiting me as I prepare to take up my next position as the United Nations Resident Coordinator (designate) to China.

This is not the end of my relationship with Kenya, but rather an opportunity to strengthen my ties with the country, and for sharing my knowledge and first hand insights about its great potential. It is also a chance to entrench South-South-Cooperation, a crucial part of the answer to Kenya’s, and more broadly Africa’s, unique opportunities to accelerate growth.

I realize that Kenya still faces formidable challenges, and the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to deepen this even more. Devolution has brought considerable resources and autonomy to counties, and yet lack of capacity, weak financial and regulatory oversight, will continue to hinder efforts to combat the asymmetry of wealth and human prosperity which will be a major obstacle to Kenya’s rise.

I am delighted with the country’s progress towards its Vision 2030 aspirations and the SDGs goals. School enrolment rates are up; more families are accessing maternal and child health services; social, economic and political opportunities for women have increased; major inroads have been made against child marriage and FGM, with President Kenyatta personally leading on this.

My experiences as the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya have reiterated that by prioritizing investments in women and youth, Africa’s real potential can be unleashed, and I am proud of the support on this that we have been able to provide through the entire UN Kenya Country Team.

By 2030 agri-business will be US$ 1 trillion worth in Africa. Almost two-thirds of Kenya’s population is below the age of 30, and the future of food production rests in their hands. Kenya’s economy is anchored in agriculture, where 70% of the population earns its livelihood.

In most parts of the world, crop yields have grown ahead of population increases, helping to free them from hunger and famine, but not in Africa. We looked for creative and sustainable ways to harness Kenya’s strong internet penetration to exploit information technology that adds value and strengthens the economic appeal of agri-business for young people and creates digital jobs as well.

President Kenyatta has noted that “the current generation of young people has the potential of expanding Africa’s productive workforce, promoting entrepreneurship and becoming genuine instruments of change to reverse the devastation caused by climate change.”

Africa’s demographic boom has been hailed as its biggest promise for transforming the continent’s economic and social outcomes, but only if the right investments are made to prepare its youthful population for tomorrow’s world. Kenya launched the Generation Unlimited initiative spearheaded by the Head of State, and can serve as a blueprint to harness the demographic dividend that Africa’s youth represent.

Women’s empowerment was our other key pursuit, with special emphasis on access to sexual and reproductive health information and services. Without this, Kenya’s population is likely to continue its rapid increase, putting pressure on land and water resources, threatening livelihoods, food security, and straining already weak health systems. Gains made in women’s sexual reproductive health and rights took several steps backward in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reproductive rights must be a critical part of our arsenal to fight future pandemics.

It is in Kenya also that I witnessed creative ways of overcoming bureaucracy. Large organisations are often accused of responding too late or with too little in times of crisis, and my tenure saw many. Drought, floods and the worst locust invasion in 70 years, plus the Covid-19 pandemic, all upended much hard-earned progress. As a team however, we went beyond individual UN agency mandates in partnership with the Government of Kenya to quickly establish rapid responses to these emergencies, reducing the socio-economic impact, earning the confidence of the Government and overturning the common perception of the UN as an unwieldy bureaucracy.

The Government’s leadership was meritorious on all counts and that is why I have stated unequivocally why Kenya deserves an A+ for its response to the triple humanitarian crisis.

I am proud to have been part of many milestones in the partnership between both levels of the Government of Kenya and the UN, and to count on the unfailing support of the leadership of Kenya at all levels of Government. Kenya’s potential is boundless, and the country now offers stronger platforms for new shared-value investments than ever before.

I also express my sincere appreciation to the entire UN family in Kenya, the development partners, our donors and well-wishers and civil society partners and, most of all, the wonderful people of Kenya.

With a firm belief in a common destiny, I intend to keep telling the story of the emerging powerhouse that is Kenya.

My wife, son and I carry Kenya in our hearts.

Thank you for everything. Your generosity and friendship is nonpareil.

God Bless, Kenya.

Asante, Kenya, na kwaheri hadi tutakapo kutana tena!

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Follow him on twitter @sidchat1

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Credit: Defenders Coalition

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 9 2020 (IPS)

On 10 December every year, we celebrate Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration guarantees a spectrum of human rights that belong to each of us equally, and unite us as a global community and upholds our humanity.

This year, 2020, has been one of unprecedented challenges and has underscored the need for renewed action to promote and protect human rights. The COVID-19 pandemic has tested societies across the globe, and set back human rights gains and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. In Kenya, the multi-faceted impacts of the pandemic – on gender equality, health, education, livelihoods, rule of law and the economy – have tested efforts by the Government, United Nations, development partners and civil society to deliver on the 2030 Agenda, Vision 2030 and the Big 4 development agenda, and challenged us to ensure that we leave no one behind.

The crisis has hit the poorest and most vulnerable communities the hardest, and entrenched existing inequalities, discrimination and human rights challenges. Gender-based violence has skyrocketed; loss of employment and livelihoods have put further strain on families; the right to education is at risk for many children, particularly girls; and inequalities in access to water, adequate housing and health services have heightened vulnerabilities.

In this context, the theme of Human Rights Day 2020 is “Recover Better – Stand Up for Human Rights”, highlighting the need to build back better from the COVID-19 crisis by putting human rights at the heart of recovery efforts. This is a call to action and for unity of purpose to tackle discrimination, address inequalities, encourage participation and solidarity, and promote sustainable development for the benefit of all.

As the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. António Guterres, once remarked, “The pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of our world”. The crisis has exposed and exacerbated deep inequalities, entrenched discrimination and gaps in human rights protection. Only measures to close these gaps and advance human rights can ensure we fully recover and build back a world that is more resilient, just and sustainable.

COVID-19 has created an opportunity to build back a more equal and sustainable world – based on a “new social contract” that respects the rights and freedoms of all, and addresses the inequalities exposed by the pandemic. This “new social contract” – uniting Governments, the people, civil society and private sector – is the only way that we will meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

In this Decade of Action to deliver upon the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, it is imperative to prioritise participation and inclusion, to ensure that we leave no one behind. Successful COVID-19 recovery efforts require the robust participation of civil society and inclusion of communities, to ensure the voices and priorities of the most affected, vulnerable and marginalised inform the recovery efforts. Public participation is a key tenet of the Constitution of Kenya, and has a key role to play in the COVID-19 recovery.

It is clear that this pandemic cannot be surmounted by a single actor. It is against this backdrop that the United Nations Country Team and the Government of Kenya, in line with the motto Umoja ni Nguvu (Unity is Strength), have identified strategic areas of cooperation and engagement under the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, as well as the Socio-Economic Response Plan, that target COVID-19 recovery needs and continue the trajectory towards the Sustainable Development Goals. This is underpinned by a human rights-based approach that prioritises equality and non-discrimination, participation and inclusion, and accountability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that we are all in this together – and solidarity is the only way forward. Everyone has a role to play in building a better post-COVID world for present and future generations, and we must harness the active participation of communities, civil society, private sector, Government and the international community.

On this Human Rights Day, let us all commit to Stand Up for Human Rights to build back a more equal and sustainable society that advances the rights and freedoms of all. This unity of purpose will pave the way to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and delivering upon Kenya’s Vision 2030.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya

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The triple humanitarian crisis. Photo Credits from left and in clockwise direction-UN Habitat, Kenya Red Cross and FAO Kenya.

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 1 2020 (IPS)

The United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Ms Amina Mohammed recently commended “Kenya’s exemplary role in its response to COVID-19 and in advancing Agenda 2030”.

On Monday, 28 September 2020, the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta hosted a national conference on COVID 19. I was invited to speak about Kenya’s response, and without equivocation I restate what I said–Kenya deserves an A + rating.

Here’s why!

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Asia, Europe and the US, experts began to worry about what it would do to poor countries, with predictions of thousands of deaths, serious infections as well as the near-total collapse of already ailing health systems.

How would Africa, characterised by crowded living conditions, widespread poverty and a lack of basic hygienic facilities deal with such a devastating and largely unknown pathogen? Months later, such horror scenarios have not materialised and the question has changed to why most of Africa is seeing comparably less devastation.

As explained by President Uhuru Kenyatta during the National Covid-19 Conference, “the reason why we have managed to flatten the curve is because Kenyans have exercised an impressive civic responsibility and duty.”

A reality that tends to be lost in all the discussions about this novel coronavirus in Kenya is just how much pummelling the country’s social and economic structures have received lately.

2020 was a particularly difficult year for Kenya. A triple crisis, coming on the heels of a protracted period of droughts, a cholera epidemic and not to underestimate the spectre of cross-border terror attacks, which dented one of Kenya’s biggest foreign exchange earners-tourism.

Consider this. In 2017, nearly half the counties of Kenya was reeling from the effects of probably the worst drought in the last 20 years. With nearly 3.4 million people food insecure, Kenya’s food security prognosis looked gloomy, with climate change and natural resource depletion set to pose even greater risks in the long term.

Often unnoticed is the insidious effect on the country’s economy, with experts estimating that there have been, “12 serious droughts since 1990”. The average annual costs of the damage caused estimated at around KHS 125 billion ($1.25 billion) — with each drought reducing the country’s Gross Domestic Product by an average of 3.3 percent.

The two consecutive national elections in 2017 also took a massive financial toll.

Given the dire financial situation, it is quite remarkable, the resilience, tenacity and optimism, Kenya has displayed in the face of such adversity, and done so with their head held high, with stoicism and compassion in its fight against the triple threat.

Since the beginning of the year, Kenya has gone through a series of unprecedented crises, where within six months it has experienced the worst desert locust invasion in 70 years, heavy unusual flooding that has left scores of people dead and thousands displaced, and the pandemic that is taking a toll on health services and the economy.

Aware of the technological and financial handicaps facing the health sector, the government has responded commendably in leading the fight against COVID-19, from mandating physical distancing and wearing of masks, promoting hand and respiratory hygiene, promptly dealing with rumours, to specialised facilities in hospitals, to working with industry to deliver local equipment such as PPEs, to delivering economic relief to impacted families. And above all not allowing politics to hijack the wisdom of science.

In about six months after the first case was reported, Kenya increased the number of infectious diseases isolation beds from eight to just over 7,000 across the country, thus keeping the casualty rates low. This was a remarkable feat achieved through unity of purpose between the national and county governments.

The government rolled out moderate stimulus packages to help families ride out the economic turbulence and cushion companies from financial shocks. The Treasury instituted tax relief for low-income earners and reduced VAT rates as well as corporate sales tax for businesses. In a country already facing slow GDP growth, these were commendable actions of national self-sacrifice and coming together in times of crises.

When you look at some of the most developed countries in the world, buckling to the microscopic and highly virulent coronavirus and their national responses are properly examined, Kenya does score an ‘A+’ in how quickly and decisively the government acted in the COVID-19 crisis. Measures such as travel restrictions, curfews and school closures were implemented early in the country, before the number of infections rose.

As testament to the spirit of coming together to confront a common adversary, there was broad support from the public for these measures. In social media and elsewhere, citizens were quick to express responsible outrage where they felt those responsible for the response at various levels were not keeping to the expected standards.

This grit and determination to rise to the occasion even where resources are hard to come by was key in getting on board international donor agencies and private sector to mobilise funding to support the national response. The UN in Kenya repurposed $45 million from the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) towards the COVID response, and deployed over 150 staff and volunteers to the government response structures.

In partnership with the Government of Kenya, the UN launched a Flash Appeal to mobilize $267.5 million to support more than 10 million vulnerable people affected by the pandemic, of which nearly US$ 60 million was raised. An additional US$ 10 million dollars was allocated by the UN Secretary General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, to construct a specialised 100 bed COVID 19 hospital in Nairobi, which will remain as additional capacity even after the pandemic is over.

The UN in Kenya has prepared a COVID-19 socioeconomic response and recovery plan to address the health care system, social protection, employment opportunities and social cohesion. The recovery plan will be implemented in the next two years and will cost $155 million to focus on recovering better from the pandemic for the Sustainable Development Goals.

The country is still in the maelstrom of the pandemic. The devastating consequences of the pandemic have not fully played out and important challenges remain, some wrought by the pandemic but many that continued long before, such as high health care costs for millions of Kenyans, gender inequalities, widespread poverty, youth unemployment, environmental degradation, corruption and terrorism.

The country must converge at every level to address these threats today or suffer the consequences tomorrow. Recovery will be made much tougher by the economic toll of COVID-19 as well as an exhausted and depleted health system.

Still, the pandemic has shown that Kenya can overcome partisanship, think anew and work on short and longer-term sustainable development priorities towards ‘building back better’, with more resilience to future shocks.

As the UN Deputy Secretary General, Ms Mohammed said, “I am convinced that Kenya will continue demonstrating that results and transformation are possible and I call upon all of you to double your efforts to invest at scale in those critical interventions that will unlock benefits across all the goals, to make bold choices, to take decisive action and to leave no one behind in your pursuit of a better future.

Kenyans can be fully assured of the commitment of the United Nations to overcome every adversity, leapfrog socio-economic recovery and progress to realise Vision 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. This article was originally published in Forbes Africa.

A landmark handshake-former Prime Minister Raila Odinga & President Uhuru Kenyatta bridge their differences and sign a declaration of peace between the two political leaders. March 9, 2018. Credit: State House

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Walid Badawi
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 21 2020 (IPS)

Amid various global conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s, the International Day of Peace (IDOP) was established to commemorate the strengthening of the ideals of peace globally. Today, peace is not just the absence of conflict, but a key prerequisite for development. It is in recognition of the crucial linkages between peace, respect for human rights and sustainable development that more than 36 indicators for peace were included across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Just like charity, peace begins at home.

Kenya stands out as a paradigm of locally crafted peace processes and cross-border initiatives with Ethiopia and Uganda that are gaining global visibility.

March 9, 2018 will go down in Kenya’s history books as one of many defining moments when the country took a step closer towards peace. On this day, on the steps of Harambee House, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Rt Honorable, Raila Odinga, shook hands. This averted a major political crisis that was characterized by calls for regional secession, economic boycotts and mobilization for civil unrest.

The theme of this year’s IDOP is ‘building peace together’ which reminds us of what has been achieved, and what remains to be done to secure a peaceful and just world. In the midst of continuing conflicts around the world, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has appealed for a global ceasefire, urging all warring parties to lay down their weapons and focus on the battle against the common enemy, the COVID-19 pandemic. This call was by no means directed merely to armed parties, but is a call to Member States, regional partners, non-State actors, civil society organizations, to return to the fundamental values of the UN Charter.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a host of inequalities and vulnerabilities in our societies that threaten human progress. For the first time since 1990, human development is on course to decline, affecting the most marginalized in our societies disproportionately, women, the elderly, unemployed youth, refugees, and other vulnerable groups, especially those in humanitarian settings. That is why it is more important than ever to work together across all sectors and at all levels to “build forward better”.

But with every crisis comes opportunity. The UN is working with countries around the world, including Kenya, to take immediate bold action to stem the socio-economic impacts and put in place recovery strategies that are sustainable, transformative and innovative. Together, we have a chance to take a bold leap forward to a sustainable, inclusive, peaceful, and resilient future, with the SDGs as our compass.

In its support to the Government and people of Kenya, the UN is not only responding to the dire health and economic needs of COVID-19, we are also engaging closely on the impact of the crisis on stability and social cohesion.

The National Peacebuilding Strategy on Covid-19, being launched during IDOP 2020, sets out an inclusive and integrated framework for the governance, peace and security sector to respond to and recover from the impacts of COVID-19. The Strategy is a great opportunity for all Kenyans to shape peace together and steer the national debate in the direction of a united, peaceful and prosperous Kenya.

The 17 SDGs provide a framework for improving the conditions which will engender peaceful societies while addressing the underlying causes and drivers of conflict. Peace enables every individual to attain their human capability, dignity and choice. It creates an environment for optimal development. The mutually reinforcing nexus between peace and development places prevention and peacebuilding at the centre of the work of the UN.

This year’s observance of IDOP is particularly special, coming as the UN celebrates its 75th Anniversary. The UN General Assembly will mark the occasion at a time of vast and unprecedented stress on people and planet under the theme: “the future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism – confronting COVID-19 through effective multilateral action.”

Kenya’s unwavering commitment to the UN and to multilateralism has received international recognition, evidenced by the recent election to the Security Council from 2021 to 2023 and President Uhuru Kenyatta’s leadership as a global youth champion.

As Kenya continues to shine on the global stage, so must she continue to demonstrate her resolve to maintaining peace and social cohesion domestically. The inclusion of women and youth in all institutions and decision-making processes as enshrined in the constitution, must serve as the basis for governance, no matter how bumpy the road ahead may be.

Effective implementation of the National Peacebuilding Strategy is the right way forward.

Excerpt:

Kenyan youth at the Kasarani stadium in Kenya's capital Nairobi. PHOTO-Nation media

By Ruth Kagia and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 3 2020 (IPS)

Africa’s demographic boom has been hailed as its biggest promise for transforming the continent’s economic and social outcomes, but only if the right investments are made to prepare its youthful population for tomorrow’s world.

Consider this. Every 24 hours, nearly 33,000 youth across Africa join the search for employment. About 60% will be joining the army of the unemployed. Africa’s youth population is growing rapidly and is expected to reach over 830 million by 2050. Whether this spells promise or peril depends on how the continent manages its “youth bulge”.

President Kenyatta once said that “The crisis of mass youth unemployment is a threat to the stability and prosperity of Africa, and it can amount to a fundamental and existential threat”.

Investing in young people especially so that they are prepared for the world of work is the main mission of Generation Unlimited (GenU), a global multi-sector partnership established to meet the urgent need for expanded education, training and employment opportunities for young people aged 10 to 24.

On 05 August 2020, Kenya will launch the Generation Unlimited initiative. This initiative will bring together key actors from the public and private sector as well as development partners to help put into a higher gear this defining agenda of our time to ensure that we have prepared our children for a prosperous future by giving them the education, training and job opportunities that fully harnesses their potential. With a median age of 18, Kenya’s youthful population represents a real potential to reap a demographic dividend and accelerate its economic progress.

Kenya has one of the youngest populations in the world. With the right investment in their talents, skills, and entrepreneurial spirit, young people present an extraordinary opportunity for transformation, growth, and change.

Three quarters Kenya’s population is under the age of 35. Across Africa there are 200 million people between the ages of 15 and 24, a demographic that is expected to double by 2045.

One of the greatest challenges facing governments and policymakers in Africa is how to provide opportunities for the continent’s youth, in order to provide them with decent lives and allow them to contribute to the economic development of their countries. As things stand, around 70% of Africa’s young people live below the poverty line.

In Kenya, the pillars for achieving GenU objectives are in place, with various initiatives for instance to strengthen education system through the recently-launched competency based curriculum and government promotion of programmes to enhance technical and digital skills.

The fruits of such initiatives can be seen through numerous youthful innovations from Kenya that continue to receive international attention. For instance, inspired by his great urge to communicate with his 6-year-old niece who was born deaf, Roy Allela, a 25-year-old Kenyan invented Sign-10, a pair of smart gloves with flex sensors to aid his cousin’s communication with the other members of the family.

The flex sensors stitched to each finger aid in quantifying the letters formed from the curve of each finger of the glove’s wearer. The gloves are then connected through Bluetooth to a mobile phone application that vocalizes the hand movements. This innovation won him the Trailblazer Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Gen U’s solution is to forge innovative collaborations with young people themselves. Since launching in 2018, the movement has brought onboard leaders from governments, foundations, and the private sector around the world. Its launch in Kenya underscores its government’s commitment to engage young people in pursuit of the Big 4 Development Agenda as well as Vision 2030.

President Uhuru Kenyatta is a global leader for the Generation Unlimited initiative. In Kenya, Gen U’s activities are coordinated by the Office of the President and the United Nations.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres were unanimously endorsed by world leaders to champion a new UN intervention on youth education, training, and employment at the UN General Assembly in 2018. Photo/PSCU

Shifts in today’s global economy demand that young people acquire skills aligned with dynamic labour needs, but local education systems have been slow to adapt. In many countries in Africa, school enrolment is up, but learning outcomes for young people remain poor. Most leave school without the skills the contemporary job market needs, and are ill-prepared for a world in which low-skilled jobs are increasingly automated.

A million young people join the workforce every year in Kenya, applying for jobs in a formal sector that can only absorb one in five of them. Some, however, find work at least intermittently in Kenya’s vibrant informal sector, which accounts for more than 80% of the country’s economy according to the World Bank.

Rather than focusing on opportunities in the formal sector, partners in the Gen U movement will look at strategies for supporting the informal sector with better infrastructure and an improved business environment. In doing so, it is hoped that it will be transformed into a recognised and legitimate sector.

Such initiatives have the full support of the recently launched Kenya Youth Development Policy, which seeks to underscore issues affecting young people. Technology will play a central role, and sector-based strategies will be central to the government’s approach.

The Kenya Youth Agribusiness Strategy, for example, will enable Kenya’s youth to access information technology for various value-addition ventures in Africa’s agribusiness sector set to be worth $1 trillion by 2030.

The Coronavirus pandemic has seen countries face changes in entire social and economic systems. Key industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, public services, retail, transportation, food supply, tourism, media and entertainment have been hard hit by the pandemic. The pandemic is an inflection point that is giving the old system a nudge. The post-COVID-19 world will be founded on a tech-savvy workforce that will inevitably comprise young people.

Calling on urgent action for young people, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on governments to “do far more to tap their talents as we tackle the pandemic and chart a recovery that leads to a more peaceful, sustainable and equitable future for all”.

In the run-up to the end of the SDGs era, we must ramp up the current level of investment in young people’s economic and social potential. As the vision of Generation Unlimited states, if the largest generation of young people in history is prepared for the transition to work, the potential for global progress is unlimited.

As President Kenyatta has noted, “the current generation of young people has the potential of expanding Africa’s productive workforce, promoting entrepreneurship and becoming genuine instruments of change to reverse the devastation caused by climate change.”

Ruth Kagia is the Deputy Chief of Staff to President Kenyatta. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Mrs Kagia and Mr Chatterjee co-chair the Generation Unlimited Steering Committee in Kenya.

This article was first published in Forbes Africa

The “Non-Violence” (or “Knotted Gun”) sculpture by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd on display at the UN Visitors’ Plaza. Credit: UN Photo

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 20 2020 (IPS)

“The vision and promise of the United Nations is that food, healthcare, water and sanitation, education, decent work and social security are not commodities for sale to those who can afford them, but basic human rights to which we are all entitled.” Those were the poignant words of the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, in a hard hitting speech on 18 July 2020 to mark Mandela Day.

For every staff of the United Nations family the Mandela speech by Mr. Guterres was powerful and inspirational. Speaking about the scourge of inequality, he said, “while we are all floating on the same sea, it’s clear that some are in superyachts while others are clinging to the drifting debris.”

For me, the United Nations (UN) is personal. Coming from a family rendered refugees due to the partition of India in 1947, as a child I benefited from its immunization programmes- I actually survived polio. The UN’s work with the Government of India helped to eradicate smallpox and polio in my home country, where these diseases used to take a huge toll on lives and livelihoods.

Although forged in the crucible of wars and crippling ideological rivalries between East and West, the United Nations has since managed to convince the world of the need to compromise and to take each other’s views into account and to listen to others while facing humanity’s enduring challenges. That this has been achieved in just 75 years is remarkable.

In the narrative of the period when humanity made great social, cultural, and economic advances, the UN takes centre stage. For more than two decades during my service in the UN system, I have been part of this story and am convinced that the UN still matters, perhaps now more than ever.

While the calamitous cost of two World Wars and subsequent ideological fault-lines convinced humankind of the need for a body like the UN, the challenges facing us today remain just as formidable. As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, it does not take much to upend not only individual lives, but entire societies and economies. There are numerous reasons for people to feel insecure in today’s world.

Among these are strong indications of resurgent nationalism and warning signs of ethnic and religious isolationism that not only threaten states, communities and individuals. Combined with humanitarian and climate disasters, these challenges have been articulated and framed for action as the Sustainable Development Goals that the UN is spearheading everywhere in the world.

Just as diplomacy was the basis for the establishment of the UN, my experience in the frontlines of combat operations when I served in the Indian Army convinced me that there is a better way to solve conflicts. My early career in the UN was spent in countries almost defined by war and instability, such as Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Somalia. The images of men, women, and children driven from their homes by murder, rape, and the burning down of schools and homes is seared in my mind.

I am proud to have been part of the United Nations response to complex humanitarian challenges. In Indonesia, for example, an innovation by the UN called a “school-in-a-box” helped children return to their regular school routine as quickly as possible during the conflict in Aceh when schools were being burned down. We helped maintain immunization, reproductive health services, education as well as nutrition services, working in difficult and life-threatening situations in Darfur, Somalia, and Iraq. We demobilized child soldiers in the midst of a conflict in South Sudan.

Child soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army march away after surrendering their weapons during a demobilization ceremony at the army barracks in Malou, South Sudan, in Feb. 25, 2001. Under an agreement with UNICEF, the SPLA demobilized 3551 child soldiers aged between eight and 18. UNICEF airlifted them away from combat zones to safe havens in Rumbek, South Sudan. Credit: UNICEF/OLS

With the Coronavirus pandemic raging, UN country teams all over the world are working tirelessly with their respective host governments to flatten the curve.

In various countries today, internecine conflicts, hunger, and disease continue to take a tragic toll, especially among the world’s children. The malignant neglect of our global environment threatens all of us. The UN retains unprecedented respect, acceptance, and mobilizing capacity to rally member states to act together to solve these problems.

The nature of today’s challenges compels us towards integration and collaboration. Humankind must find new ways to work together more effectively in pursuit of our collective interests and to think anew about how our institutions of international cooperation can be strengthened.

The UN has enabled many member states to embark on transformational journeys; life expectancy is rising, jobs being created, and people lifted out of poverty. Yet in many others, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, progress is fragile and unequal. The UN constantly seeking new models that are inclusive and sustainable, and is opening up new opportunities to harness big data, technology and innovation to leapfrog development, through ground breaking partnerships with the private sector.

Many factors have sometimes stymied the United Nations’ work. These range from reliability of funding to the difficulties of achieving consensus between diverse member states on complex topics. Such factors have sometimes made us slow and limited our impact.

Antonio Guterres has said that “worldwide consultation process around the 75th anniversary of the United Nations has made clear that people want a global governance system that delivers for them”. Therefore the bold reforms underway, led by Mr Guterres, will make the organization more nimble, better equipped and prepared to deal with contemporary challenges.

UN country teams are adapting to new realities in their programmes, reflecting the shifts (such as peacekeeping to peace-building) through social and economic development support and humanitarian relief.

In Kenya, the country’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta is spearheading the charge to eradicate female genital mutilation supported by the United Nations. I have seen firsthand the reduction in maternal and infant mortality due to complications at childbirth, universal access to primary education and better a collective push to achieve universal health coverage.

Aisha Hussein and her team pose for a picture during the youth caravan in Isiolo as part of a joint UNFPA-UNICEF initiative to eradicate FGM. Credit: UNICEF Kenya

I continue to see the promise of peace and prosperity for the most vulnerable marginalized that comes with the UN’s work, such as the Kenya Uganda cross border initiative to promote peace and development in the Karamoja area, mired in rivalry over scant resources and experiencing the debilitating impact of climate change. Amina Mohammed the UN Deputy Secretary General said, “It’s exciting to see the new ways in which governments, communities and partners are coming together with UN teams to mobilize across borders especially when it comes to taking climate action”.

COVID-19 has confirmed that the era of national problems is receding fast, by revealing national and global fragilities to an invisible virus. The pandemic is a stark reminder of the need for cooperation across borders, sectors and generations.

Today we can see that most challenges are global and interconnected, and can only be tackled through global action coordinated through global institutions.

At the signing of the United Nations Charter, in San Francisco in 1945, the President of the United States America, Harry Truman said, “If we fail to use it, we shall betray all those who have died so that we might meet here in freedom and safety to create it. If we seek to use it selfishly – for the advantage of any one nation or any small group of nations — we shall be equally guilty of that betrayal”.

Those farsighted leaders who founded the United Nations 75 years ago gave us the momentum to propel humanity to greater security and prosperity. Today, the UN continues to be a sound investment, a real beacon of hope.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. This OPED was first featured in Forbes Africa.

Rafiullah Wardak looks upon his newborn daughter Amina, recovering after being wounded by gunmen who stormed a maternity award in Kabul on May 19, 2020. Mr. Wardak's wife, Nazeya, was among at least 24 people killed in the attack, including women, nurses, and newborns. Credit: Courtesy of the Rafiullah Wardak family published @csmonitor

By Sheikha Hend Al Qassimi and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 26 2020 (IPS)

Consider this. 24 women, children and babies were murdered at a hospital in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Even by standards of a country as accustomed to bloodshed as Afghanistan, the May 12 attack on a Kabul maternity clinic was an event of unmitigated horror.

That anyone could target women at their most vulnerable and infants in their first hours of life defies belief and makes one despair of the world that welcomed little Amina. Born just two hours before the attack that killed her mother, Amina’s leg was shattered by a bullet.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “Any attack on innocents is unforgivable, but to attack infants and women in labour… is an act of sheer evil”.

The incident throws into relief the need to protect vulnerable populations even as the world struggles with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Health workers operating in difficult circumstances, such as the heroic Dr Najibullah Bina who led the team that conducted the first surgery on little Amina’s leg, continue to expose themselves and their families to the virus as well as to terror attacks.

Sheikha Hend Al-Qassemi

The pandemic has an alarming potential to reverse hard-won socioeconomic gains inspired the March 2020 appeal by UN Secretary-General António Guterres for an immediate global ceasefire, which asked all warring parties to silence their guns to facilitate the delivery of aid and open up space for diplomacy

Women generally are at specific risk and disadvantage in Afghanistan, largely for reasons of culture. Their lives, quite separately from their deaths, are constrained in many ways that affect their health, education, nutrition and well-being. One of the most dangerous places in the world for a woman to give birth, Afghanistan is a microcosm of vulnerability for women and children, with a maternal mortality rate of around 638 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births and around two physicians for every 10,000 people.

Afghanistan must figure out how to best support women and children when health efforts are under threat by both terrorists and a dangerous virus.

Around the globe, COVID-19 is worsening the situation for women already at risk, such as those in abusive relationships. Many millions are now required by emergency regulations to remain at home with their abusers, removed from the gaze of those who might otherwise see them and offer help.

And with one in every three women globally experiencing physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime, the issue is startlingly grave.

Siddharth Chatterjee

UNFPA, the UN’s Population Fund, says the COVID-19 lockdown is disproportionately affecting women and children. It is resulting in millions more cases of violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation and unintended pregnancy. “The new data shows the catastrophic impact that COVID-19 could soon have on women and girls globally,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA’s Executive Director.

Their well-being and economic resilience are threatened not only by the lockdown itself, but also by scaling down of health services and support such as hotlines, crisis centres, shelters, legal aid, protection, and counselling services.

The horror in Afghanistan further illustrates the urgency of the UN Secretary General’s clarion call for the peace-humanitarian action-development nexus to deal with conflicts, violent extremism, and other forms of instability. Now more than ever, there is a need for approaches that address social, economic, and political drivers of radicalisation.

There will be no one-size-fits-all model, and each country must continually assess which members of society are at the highest risk. If vulnerable groups are not properly identified and suitable responses developed, the consequences of this pandemic may be more devastating than we have dared to imagine.

Humanity has often been guilty of detachment regarding the plight of vulnerable populations. The COVID-19 threat is an opportunity to change course. While the virus does not discriminate, we must be careful lest our responses to it end up further entrenching current inequalities.

Images of two-hour-old Amina, swaddled in a blood-drenched blanket and with a bullet in her tiny bones must exponentially rouse our collective humanity and question the normalisation of indifference to the most vulnerable.

Sheikha Hend Al Qassimi, a multifaceted Emarati Princess, is an accomplished editor and writer, successful entrepreneur and architect and a committed philanthropist. She has a Masters in Marketing, Management & Communications from the Paris Sorbonne University. A Bachelor of Arts and Design with a double major (Architecture and Design Management) from the American University of Sharjah. Follow her on twitter- @LadyVelvet_HFQ

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. He has served in various parts of the world with UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP, UNOPS, UN Peacekeeping and the Red Cross Movement. A decorated Special Forces veteran, he is an alumnus of Princeton University. Follow him on twitter-@sidchat1

This OPED was originally published in Forbes Africa.

The usually busy UN Avenue in Nairobi, Kenya where traffic is bumper to bumper on the best of days, is almost empty as people stay at home to avoid spreading the coronavirus. Credit: UN Kenya/Newton Kanhema

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 14 2020 (IPS)

We live in a different world to the one we inhabited six short months ago.

With more than 4 million people infected and over 280,000 dead globally by mid May 2020, Covid-19 has ruthlessly exposed the vulnerability of a globalised world to pandemic disease. People are slowly coming to terms with the frightening and heartbreaking death toll, and we are still not out of the danger.

The Greek philosopher Herophilus said, “When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.”

The bio-threat has already upended our notions of community interaction, with face masks, latex gloves and physical distancing becoming the new normal. Science has been challenged and experts in various fields struggle to understand the short and long-term consequences of the pandemic.

Lack of robust global public health systems has proven to be a chink in the world’s armour. It has also revealed a truth that we ignore at our peril: healthcare systems around the world have been sorely tested in managing this outbreak, and without substantial reprioritisation of investment in health and research globally, we will be no better equipped when the next pandemic strikes.

Describing COVID 19 as a threat multiplier, the UN Deputy Secretary General, Ms Amina Mohammed said, “We have a health emergency, a humanitarian emergency and now a development emergency. These emergencies are compounding existing inequalities”.

While no country has been spared, the impact upon families and individuals has varied around the world, exposing huge global and local inequalities.

The consequences of high uninsured rates and high out-of-pocket health costs are being revealed. Even before the Covid-19 outbreak, more than 100 million people per year risked being plunged into poverty by a ‘shock’ in terms of unanticipated expenditure on medical treatment.

World Food Programme analysis shows that, due to the Coronavirus, an additional 265 million people are marching towards the brink of starvation by the year end because of the virus’s effects on jobs and family finances.

Leading UN reforms & ensuring the UN is fit for purpose in the countries they serve, the Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed (centre), at the first-ever high-level meeting on the fight against tuberculosis. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (left), Director- General of World Health Organization (WHO) and María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés(right), President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly. September 2018, New York, USA. Credit: UN / Eskinder Debebe

The social and economic upheaval we face today has changed the world and will go on changing it for many years. Behind the headlines of an economic decline that might rival the Great Depression of the 1930s are families separated by closed international borders, some mourning relatives they never managed to see and comfort, and millions who no longer have jobs.

What must we do to prevent the next pandemic striking the world.

Like rain that exposes a leaking roof, the coronavirus crisis has revealed unanticipated problems inherent in our dependence on global supply chains and amplified longstanding structural deficiencies in health systems around the world. We can see now that under-investment in public health in one country is a threat to global health security everywhere. Responses to health emergencies cannot succeed if any part of the world is left behind.

The central importance of universal health coverage and ensuring healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages, as manifested in Sustainable Development Goal 3, (SDG3) by 2030, is clear.

With Africa’s population expected to grow to 2.3 billion by 2050, for Africa to reap a demographic dividend, as well as prevent disease outbreaks, Governments should:

1. Reassess policy priorities and direct greater funding to health.
2. Invest more in disease prevention.
3. Improved working conditions for medical staff.
4. Offer fit-for-purpose health insurance to their people.
5. Harness big data, technology, and innovation to leapfrog universal health coverage.
6. Forge public private partnerships to address the gaps to attain SDG 3.
7. Create an army of community health workers.

The WHO Chief, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a public health champion, who as Minster of Health in Ethiopia, a country once notorious for the highest maternal and child mortality in Africa, ensured the country achieved the health related Millennium Development Goals, by unleashing the full potential of community health workers. He said that, “By fully harnessing the potential of community health workers, including by dramatically improving their working and living conditions, we can make progress together towards universal health coverage and achieving the health targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Doctors, nurses, carers and paramedics around the world are facing unprecedented workload in overstretched health facilities. The heroism, dedication and selflessness of medical staff allow the rest of us a degree of reassurance. In fact health workers are the frontline soldiers battling the pandemic. They deserve the same recognition and respect as women and men from the Armed Forces who are sent into battle in service of their country.

Additionally, the creation of robust health surveillance infrastructure in low-income countries will benefit the whole world in terms of early warning of disease outbreaks, and the ability to focus resources where and when they are needed.

To achieve this, new models of multilateral and public private partnerships must develop, as well reform, invest and give greater power to the World Health Organisation to protect the world from disease.

As citizens of the world we depend on one another. We are linked by trade and migration and the fact of our humanity as much as we are sometimes divided by politics and faith.

Consider this. Maria Branyas is a 113 year old COVID 19 survivor from Spain. It means she has lived through the flu pandemic of 1918-19, the two World Wars, the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War and now the coronavirus. When asked what was the secret of her long life, she said, “good health”.

In a post-Covid-19 world, global health must be seen as a key component of national and global security as well as of the global economy.

SDG 3 must become pivotal in our post COVID 19 response or we may be sitting ducks, when another pandemic strikes, whose velocity and virulence could surpass what we are witnessing now.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. He has served in various parts of the world with UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP, UNOPS, UN Peacekeeping and the Red Cross Movement. Follow him on twitter-@sidchat1

This OPED was originally published in Forbes Africa.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls on President Ashraf Ghani during a visit to Afghanistan’s capital Kabul to show solidarity with the Afghan people. Photo UNAMA / Fardin Waezi/June 2017

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 11 2020 (IPS)

The world commemorated the 75th Anniversary to mark the end of the 2nd World War also called VE Day on 08 May 2020.

With her nation, and much of the world still in lockdown due to COVID 19, England’s Queen marked 75 years since the allied victory in Europe with a poignant televised address. From Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth said, “the wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didn’t happen again”.

But the world is still at war. Proxy wars or localised conflicts are wreaking havoc on human development and humanity in virtually every corner of the world. By the end of 2018, wars, violence and persecution have driven record numbers of over 70 million people from their homes worldwide, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. This is the largest ever displacement of humanity, post the 2nd world war.

Never has the appeal by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres been more pertinent: “The world is in pieces; we need world peace.”

The United States signed a historic deal with Afghanistan that outlines a timetable and exit plan for American troops, setting the stage for the potential end to nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan. The UN Secretary General welcomed the US-Taliban peace agreement. The United States won the unanimous backing of the UN Security Council on March 10, 2020 to this ambitious peace deal.

The implementation of the peace agreement will need leadership, courage and resolve and there will be spoilers who will attempt to upend the peace process. The road to peace will be characterized by violence, set-backs and numerous false starts, but it will need diplomacy, determination and drive to keep the peace process on track.

Hubris must not prolong the agony of this appalling war.

The war has cost over $2 trillion and killed more than 2,400 American soldiers and 38,000 Afghan civilians. As per various reports casualties among Afghan security forces are estimated to have reached around 40,000 between 2007 and 2017.

Wars are appalling. As a combat veteran, I have witnessed first-hand how armed conflicts have transformed some of our finest soldiers into shells of the people I once knew. Combat is savage, it is brutal, it is reckless, it diminishes us as human beings and jeopardizes our humanity.

General William Sherman once said, “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. War is hell.”

There are no winners in Afghanistan, but let’s consider the consequences on all the women and men who fought in it.

Today, research backs up what soldiers have described for decades, and what was once called shell shock or combat fatigue. We have terms like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), chronic depression, cognitive impairment, and traumatic brain injury to help explain the symptoms suffered by active and returning soldiers.

U.S. Army soldiers on security duty in Paktīkā province, Afghanistan, 2010. Sgt. Derec Pierson/U.S. Department of Defense

For a long time, many of the grim statistics about war centred on fatalities and did not include the conflicts’ deep mental wounds. Today we have a better understanding of the kind of moral and psychological toll wars take on soldiers, their families, and communities.

The United States is a leader in the understanding of psychological and emotional damage to soldiers and has taken some steps to address their mental health. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have left between 11% and 20% of military personnel suffering from PTSD. As many as 375,000 US veterans have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries between 2000 and 2017, mostly caused by explosions.

But suicides in the US armed forces have continued to rise in recent years, reaching record levels in 2018 when there were 25 deaths per 100,000 service members. Former defence secretary Leon Panetta once said that the “epidemic” of military suicide was “one of the most frustrating problems” he had faced.

More than $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Experts say that more than half of that spending belongs to the Afghanistan effort.

Homelessness among veterans is pervasive, and soldiers still struggle to access benefits and healthcare if they suffer from mental health issues rather than from physical wounds. At any given time in the US, more than 40,000 veterans are homeless, constituting around 9% of all homeless adults in the country.

In the United Kingdom, spurred by a dozen suicides among Afghan war veterans in just two months, the government expedited new mental health programs to help deal with former military members’ PTSD and addiction.

What does this now mean for the Afghan security forces? They and their families do not have the same support structures.

All this ‘hell’, but to what end? Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. Since 2004 alone, more than 1.8 million Afghans have become internally displaced. Afghanistan’s human development and progress has been set back by decades. Women and children have suffered the most and countless are emotionally and psychologically scarred for life.

While we like to see soldiers as stoic and heroic, we must open our eyes to the fact that wars scar minds as well as bodies, often in ways medical science cannot yet comprehend.

Just like the world is desperately seeking a cure to end the coronavirus pandemic which has killed over 275,000 people so far and leaving a trail of human, economic and social misery, the world too must find a way to end wars, or else we may be defeated as a civilization.

Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya. Follow him on Twitter @sidchat1

This opinion piece was originally published in Forbes Africa.

A pregnant woman in Kenya's North Eastern Province with one of her children. Overpopulation in the area contributes to poor maternal health. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 27 2020 (IPS)

Sexual and reproductive health and pandemics might seem to be unrelated topics, but large and dense populations are drivers of the high velocity transmission of COVID-19, and there are lessons to be learned for the future.

Gains made in women’s sexual reproductive health and rights just took several steps backward in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to contraceptives has been interrupted, resulting in an increase in unintended pregnancies. With schools closed, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and child marriages are rising. Globally gender-based violence has risen exponentially, as people are advised or required to stay home, and women and girls may not be able to leave an unsafe or violent situation.

The United Nations Population Fund(UNFPA) Executive Director, Natalia Kanem has said, “the world needs to do much more to ensure that the most intimate, yet essential, needs of the world’s women and girls are met while we battle COVID-19.”

Among the chief immediate concerns is severely reduced access to sexual and reproductive healthcare while the pandemic rages on. But diminished women’s rights and services have even greater long-term implications for the outbreak and spread of future epidemics.

Africa has yet to see the devastation from COVID-19 that most developed countries are facing in terms of infections and deaths, but the virus is already wreaking havoc on the livelihoods of millions on the continent. With travel bans, curfews and lockdowns, for countless who depend on daily wages and small informal businesses, are facing hunger and destitution. Unlike richer nations, most African countries have little wriggle room in their budgets to afford meaningful stimulus packages and have social safety nets.

Some forecasts suggest that in the absence of a considerable fiscal stimulus, COVID-19 could see Africa’s GDP decline by over 5% in 2020.

So how can the world–and the African continent in particular–better prepare itself for the next pandemic?

A good place to start is with the root of recent pandemics. Zoonosis is the transmission of a disease from animals to human. COVID-19, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) are all coronaviruses, and all originated in bats, which are a natural reservoir for viruses.

Such jumps from animals to humans are on the rise for reasons that include unhygienic and close proximity to animals, bush meat consumption, wet markets and–crucially–human encroachment into wilderness and wildlife habitats.

One of the main drivers of such encroachment is the exponential population growth.

We are exploiting forests at a calamitous rate, eating away into the traditional buffer zones that once separated humans from animals, and from the pathogens that they carry. Forest destruction also drives climate change and soil erosion. In turn, growing urbanization means higher population densities, providing a ready route for the rapid and extensive spread of disease.

Long-term preparation must begin with the acknowledgment that runaway population growth is a driver of modern pandemics.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres observed on the 2019 World Population Day, “for many of the least developed countries, the challenges to sustainable development are compounded by rapid population growth as well as vulnerability to climate change.”

Most African health systems operate in a constant state of struggle and crisis. There is only one doctor for every 1,000 people in Africa, and each must serve overwhelmingly young, poor and unemployed patient populations.

Family planning and sexual health services are only patchily available, and cultural pressures mean girls and women may find it difficult to access them even where they exist. Too often the result is large families living in poverty and ill-health, and a worrying predominance of early pregnancy.

Africa is the most rapidly urbanizing region in the world, with 50-70% of urban dwellers living in slums. Uncontrolled population growth, crowded and unhygienic conditions, and destruction of natural ecosystems combine to create a perfect storm for the next pandemic, whose speed, scale and virulence may well surpass COVID 19.

Urgent action needed now

In such circumstances there is a central need for bold global leadership. That is why policymakers, led by the US, must reconsider the Mexico City policy, often known as the global gag rule. The recently expanded global gag rule now applies not only to comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare and safe abortion, but also to programmes that include HIV, water, sanitation and hygiene.

In Kenya we are already seeing the domino effect of the global gag rule with increased teenage pregnancies and a spike in unsafe abortions. Almost one in five girls aged 15-19 is either pregnant or already has a baby. Adolescent girls in the worst affected parts of Kenya have lost their ability to make informed choices. It is a crisis of health, education and opportunity, made far worse by COVID 19.

It should concern all leaders that reduced resources for such programmes have led to more poor women suffering the effects of unplanned pregnancies, contributed to higher rates of maternal mortality and to an increase in unsafe abortions. Goals for programmes such as the Family Planning 2020 (FP 2020) launched by Melinda Gates, which includes giving 120 million more women and girls access to contraceptives by 2020, will remain unfulfilled as the deadline approaches. FP2020 is based on the principle that all women, no matter where they live, should have access to lifesaving contraceptives.

Today, Africa has the world’s highest fertility rates. On average, women in sub-Saharan Africa have about five children over their reproductive lifetime, compared to a global average of 2.5 children. Africa’s population is expected to grow from the current 1.1 billion to 2.3 billion people by 2050 while the global population is expected to reach 10 billion at that time.

If Africa accelerates structural reforms, some believe the continent can emulate China’s rapid rise of the last 50 years. McKinsey predicts $5.6 trillion in African business opportunities by 2025. If Africa succeeds, it could be a poster child for Sustainable Development Goal 1-ending poverty by 2030, as well as become a stable and prosperous economic partner for the rest of the world.

At the top of the reforms must be safeguarding the primacy of reproductive health and rights. With a median age of 19 years, for Africa to benefit from the demographic dividend its youthful population could offer, family sizes must fall drastically. Smaller households link directly to improved health, education and living standards, which in turn translate into investment, employment, and economic growth. This can only happen if programmes that increase access to family planning are widely available.

We must look at strategies to stabilize the global population with renewed urgency. Political and religious, globally must show courage, responsibility and vision through a robust commitment to ensuring that every person, everywhere, has access to affordable contraception and is able to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights.

To help stave off the havoc of the next pandemic, the world must unite behind UNFPA’s mission “to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.”

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Follow him on twitter-@sidchat1. This opinion piece originally appeared in CNBC Africa.

This story was first issued by CNBC Africa

Kenyan nurses wear protective gear during a demonstration of preparations for any potential coronavirus cases at the Mbagathi Hospital, isolation centre for the disease, in Nairobi. Credit: Quartz Africa March 2020

By Paul Polman, Myriam Sidibe and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 17 2020 (IPS)

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that now is “a defining moment for modern society. History will judge the efficacy of the response not by the actions of any single set of government actors taken in isolation, but by the degree to which the response is coordinated globally across all sectors for the benefit of our human family.”

Governments, the private sector, and development institutions need to come together in innovative ways not just to flatten the curve of infection and mitigate the economic disruption, but also to prepare for the new normal of the post-Covid world in Africa and the rest of the world.Greater partnership between the public and private sectors is going to be critical. The fight to flatten the coronavirus curve is an acid test for stakeholder capitalism and especially for multilateralism.

As Covid-19 continues to spread sickness and death, Africa has so far escaped the worst effects. The continent’s lagging health care infrastructure, however, makes it highly vulnerable if the virus reachesthe high-velocity community transmission we have seen in Italy, Spainand New York.Not only are health systems delicate,but crucial medical supplies are far from sufficient, and social protections as a whole are weak.

With the health crisis also becoming an economic and soon a social crisis, the continent is under siege.Many companies are struggling through the economic slowdown, with tourism and smaller enterprises the most challenged. With bankruptcy and job losses looming, many families are already reducing spending and consumption. In the absence of significant fiscal stimulus – which few African countries can afford anyway – some projections are cutting the continent’s GDP growth in 2020 by as much as eight percentage points.

L to R: The co-authors Myriam Sidibe, Siddharth Chatterjee, Paul Polman join the First Lady of Kenya, Ms Margaret Kenyatta, in Nairobi, Kenya at an event. Credit: UNFPA Kenya, 24 Jun 2016

There are several areas where private sector support is essential. Current priorities include unified communication platforms to enable populations to practice the needed preventative behaviours (washing hands, wearing masks, and practicing physical distancing), as well as managing stocks of essential materials, test kits, ventilators and oxygen and PPE. Support would also include protecting the most vulnerable people from the economic effects of the pandemic, especially where curfews are enforced.

This is also a unique opportunity to challenge sceptics, in both the not-for-profits and for-profit sectors, with a new blueprint of collaboration. The World Health Organisation has issued guidelines on engaging the private sector as part of a whole-of-society response to the pandemic and has signed an iconic partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce. The African Union and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have also launched a public-private partnership known as the Africa Covid-19 Response Fund, which raises resources to prevent transmission and support sustainable medical responses.

In Kenya the national government has led the charge in fighting Covid-19 by rapidly scaling up a large array of public health interventions and putting into force social interaction rules. To complement the government’s preparedness and response efforts for the next six months, the United Nations, together with humanitarian Non-Governmental Organisationslaunched a flash appeal seeking over US$267 million to respond to the critical needs of 10 million of the country’s most vulnerable people.

So far the pandemic has not been the finest hour for international cooperation. But the role of the UN and the private sector has never been more critical as an enabler of multisectoral partnerships for deliveries, and also to keep the focus on the most vulnerable that these partnerships need to reach.

In Kenya, and under the leadership of the Government, the UN has built a model to catalyse public private action: the SDG Partnership Platform. It is a tested instrument for engagement that has brought together a variety of private players in previous initiatives to co-create and rapidly deploy with government large-scale shared-value solutions to address the challenges our societies and planet are facing. It is through such a mechanism,for example,that the UN mobilized the private sector to carry out a maternal mortality reduction campaign in Kenya’s north-eastern counties, one that was recognised as a global best practice.

Kenya’s National Business Compact on Coronavirus, a gathering of companies aimedat accelerating local action and supporting governmental efforts against the pandemic, got successfully off the ground with the help of the UN SDG Partnership Platform, and champions from private sector and civil society.

The Kenyan model of cooperation could take shape all over Africa. Such models allow governments to foster an ecosystem of purposeful partnerships; to amplify private-sector philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and policy advocacy for national mitigation; and to accelerateshared-value partnerships. It also allows the UN to play its role as a neutral broker, and steer a much-needed balance between lethargic action on one hand and misdirected reactions on the other.

This may well be the blueprint needed to fight the next global pandemic,whose speed and fury could surpass what we are witnessing now.

Paul Polman is co-founder of IMAGINE, Chair of the International Chambers of Commerce and former CEO of Unilever

Siddharth Chatterjee is the UN Resident Coordinator of Kenya

President Uhuru Kenyatta leads the charge against Covid-19. He speaks to the nation fromHarambee House, Nairobi, March 14, 2020. Photo-State House

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 6 2020 (IPS)

Covid-19 infections continue to rise, bringing normal life to a virtualstandstill and causing countries to shut themselves off from the rest of the world.

Increasingly, governments are turning to ever more stringent measures including curfews and lockdowns, with police and military being used to enforce those measures.

Perhaps necessary as the velocity of the virus has already infected nearly 1.2 million people and killed nearly 65,000 people worldwide, wreaking havoc to the health systems of the most advanced countries of the world.

Frontline health workers, are succumbing to the virus as they selflessly treat those under their care, upholding the Hippocratic Oath. Italy and Spain have been among the hardest hit, with more than 25,000 dead and more than 250,000 infected. In Italy, 73 doctors have died treating patients affected by the virus.

Health workers are the real heroes in the fight against the deadly new Corona Virus.

China’s ability to turn the coronavirus corner is a result of what has been described by WHOas “China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic,” it says. “This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real.”

But such effort will inevitably come at a cost, but should not at a cost to basic human rights and the rule of law.

For example in India, my home country, authorities have come under fire after videos surfaced on social media showing officers beating people on the streets to enforce the country’s 21-day coronavirus lockdown.

There is no justification for breaching human dignity and using corporal punishments to humiliate people.Scenes of such violence anywhere in the world, should deeply concern all who want to defeat this faceless enemy.

The way we respond to national challenges such as disease pandemics is an opportunity to hold up a mirror to ourselves as human beings and as societies.

Millions of people across the world are fearful of what the future holds.Those with jobs know they may very well lose them, while those without are already struggling to provide for their families in often desperate circumstances. Shops and businesses will close, transport will be interrupted and gradually vital supplies may be hard to come by.

For the poorest, coronavirus is an existential threat to their tenuous grip on survival.

So excessive use of force by police to enforce the curfew is counter-productive: it does not make people safer and increases the chances that people already struggling to meet basic needs will lash out in fear and frustration, could lead to social unrest.

The Ministry of Health in Kenya, is doing an excellent job in screening and isolating suspicious cases as well as stepping up measures for tracing and quarantining people. Kenya has imposed a curfew from 7pm to 5am and all international flights have been suspended.

These are sensible measures, given that Covid-19 is extremely infectious. People with no or only mild symptoms can spread the virus, unaware that they are even infected, and some epidemiological models suggest that a single source can lead to 400 infections within a month.

The curfew and perhaps lockdowns area painful but necessary measure that we must endure if we are to break the chain of transmission.

This is an all of society fight where every individual regardless of rank or station must observe the rules, of hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, physical distancing and quarantining themselves.

However, forcing crowds of people to huddle together is wrong and dangerous, even to the police themselves.The enforcement of the curfew in Mombasa on 20 March 2020 was an aberration. I commend President Kenyatta for his public apology.

It is better to educate people, inform them of the risks and urge them to go home – as one police officer was captured on video doing in Baringo County on the first night of the curfew. A lesson for countless law enforcement agencies.

To ‘flatten the curve’ in Kenya, we must target resources at those who are most vulnerable, enabling them to take measures that will protect their families and communities – and to help those with the fewest coping mechanisms to ride out the crisis.

Kenya has an opportunity here to be a beacon for the world by modelling wise measures, sanely implemented. We the United Nations family are determined to do everything possible to support Kenya’s drive to flatten the COVID 19 curve.

There is much we still don’t know about the Covid-19 virus, but we do know that defeating it depends on the realization that we’re all in this together, regardless of social status, rank or station. The UN Secretary General, Mr Antonio Guterres has said, “ We are in this together – and we will get through this, together”.

Such cohesiveness can only be built and maintained through communication, cooperation and compassion, underpinned by human rights and dignity.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

Health workers are at the frontlines in the fight against the new Corona Virus. Credit: John Njoroge

By Mutahi Kagwe and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 24 2020 (IPS)

Many soldiers have seen first-hand the horrors of war and, terrifying though it often was, they knew who they were fighting, and could recognise their enemy.

The COVID 19 or the new Corona Virus is different. In this virus we have an enemy which is invisible and sometimes deadly, and the task is harder.

About a century ago the Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people, more than the combined total casualties of World Wars I and II. Our understanding of disease transmission and treatments is far ahead of our position in 1918, but this new coronavirus has shown the limits of our ability to deal with major disease outbreaks.

Advice to protect ourselves is clear: wash your hands well and often, self-isolate if you feel unwell, maintain social distance by avoiding crowded and public spaces and, if your symptoms worsen, contact medical services. Only by following this advice rigorously can we hope to stem the tide of new infections.

For now, however, the virus is spreading and, on the frontline between a nervous public and those responsible for directing national responses, the healthcare workers on whom we all depend can easily be forgotten.

During the Ebola outbreak six years ago, the World Health Organisation estimated that health workers were between 21 and 32 times more likely to be infected with Ebola than people in the general adult population. In West Africa more than 350 health care workers died while battling Ebola.

Mutahi Kagwe

Doctors, nurses, carers and paramedics around the world are facing an unprecedented workload in overstretched health facilities, and with no end in sight. They are working in stressful and frightening work environments, not just because the virus is little understood, but because in most settings they are under-protected, overworked and themselves vulnerable to infection.

The risk to doctors, nurses and others on the front lines has become plain: Italy has seen at least 18 doctors with coronavirus die. Spain reported that more than 3,900 health care workers have become infected,

We need a whole-of-society resolve that we will not let our frontline soldiers become patients. We must do everything to support health workers who, despite their own well-founded fears, are stepping directly into Covid-19’s path to aid the afflicted and help halt the virus’s spread.

In sub-Saharan Africa as elsewhere, pressure on the healthcare workforce will intensify in the coming months. A recent survey of National Nurses United (NNU) members in the US, revealed that only 30% believed their healthcare organization had sufficient inventory of personal protective equipment (PPE) for responding to a surge event. In some parts of France and Italy, hospitals have run out of masks, forcing doctors to examine and treat coronavirus patients without adequate protection.

Siddharth Chatterjee

The situation in poorer countries will be worse. Demand has far outstripped supplies. In Kenya to enable health workers to do their jobs safely we will dedicate resources to providing gowns, gloves, and medical grade face masks, and also arm them with the latest knowledge and information on the virus. As partners the Government of Kenya, the United Nations and the international community are determined to explore every avenue to ensure all the possible support for the health workers.

Evidence indicates that coronavirus can survive on some hard surfaces for up to three days, but it is also easily killed by simple disinfectants. Health workers need the back-up of ancillary staff to increase the frequency and rigour of cleaning light switches, countertops, handrails, elevator buttons and doorknobs. Such measures can give much-needed reassurance to stressed care givers and protect the public too.

Like soldiers, health workers also face considerable mental stress. It is often forgotten that as humans, they feel the sorrow of loss when their patients succumb to the virus. They too have families, and so will also naturally be fearful that the virus might reach those they love most.

Whenever possible we will ensure that healthcare workers have access to counselling services so they can recharge before moving on again, given that this could be a long, drawn out battle.

We need to also use accurate information as a means of defence. Misinformation can cause public panic, suspicion and unrest; it can disrupt the availability of food and vital supplies and divert resources – such as face masks – away from health workers and other frontline workers whose need is greatest.

Covid-19 will not be the last dangerous microbe we see. The heroism, dedication and selflessness of medical staff allow the rest of us a degree of reassurance that we will overcome this virus.

We must give these health workers all the support they need to do their jobs, be safe and stay alive. We will need them when the next pandemic strikes.

Mr. Mutahi Kagwe is the Minister of Health in Kenya and Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

Credit: (Lee Woodgate/Science Source)

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 16 2020 (IPS)

The number of coronavirus cases in Kenya has jumped to three after the government confirmed two more cases. President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced a raft of proactive measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

Barely three months into the COVID-19 outbreak, stock markets have plummeted, and global supply and production systems have wobbled. Across the world panicked shoppers have cleared shelves of hand sanitizer, soap and tinned food, as if preparing for a siege.

The message by UN Secretary-General António Guterres that ‘as we fight the virus, we cannot let fear go viral’ is absolutely pertinent. And the people of Kenya can count on the United Nations Country team as an ally in this fight.

Global pandemics are the new threat to humanity. The number of new diseases per decade has increased nearly fourfold over the past 60 years, and since 1980, the number of outbreaks per year has more than tripled.

Factors such as climate change, rising populations and increased travel have made humans more vulnerable today than they were 100 years ago. An infection in one corner of the world can make its way to the most distant corner within a day.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there are genuine fears over how health systems will cope. Most are ill-prepared and ill-equipped to implement public health measures such as surveillance, exhaustive contact tracing, social distancing, travel restrictions and educating the public on hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette.

These are the basic steps that will delay the spread of infection and relieve pressure on hospitals, even as support is sought for costlier solutions such as personal protective equipment, ventilators, oxygen and testing kits.

For countries in Africa and other areas where health resources are limited, a little-understood pandemic such as COVID-19 is a challenge that requires a whole-of-society response. While science creates the tests and will eventually develop a vaccine, the most effective immediate responses to pandemics depend more on simple actions we can all carry out than on pharmaceutical-based solutions.

Flattening the COVID-19 curve will also be aided by accurate information. Rising public panic and hysteria is stoked by the difficulty in sifting fact from rumour, speculation and inaccurate information. One of the problems of the age of social media and citizen journalism is that it provides a forum for everyone, and enables the dangerous fiction that anyone with an opinion is an expert. In such circumstances a rational, science-driven narrative is difficult to sustain.

Getting ahead of COVID-19 by ensuring that only accurate information and scientific guidance takes control of the narrative is crucial. It is for this reason, the United Nations Country Team in Kenya is offering communications support – amongst other initiatives – to the Ministry of Health in its current commendable response to the problem. Everyone will benefit if they heed the wise counsel of CS Mutahi Kagwe. For example he emphasizes the importance of frequent and thorough hand washing. Hand washing saves lives and is the best defence against communicable diseases.

Though microbes are evolving millions of times as fast as humans, and humans have little or no immune protection against new flu strains, the scientific understanding of the risk of pandemics, and our ability to predict the next pandemic before it even happens, is better than ever.

It is now known, for instance, that most new infectious diseases originate in animals, including SARS from bats and some strains of influenza from birds. Factors that include close proximity to live animals, poor hygiene in relation to meat and live animals at markets, overcrowding, and bushmeat consumption can allow pathogens to jump the species barrier to humans.

These scientific advances are being deployed to find more comprehensive solutions such as vaccines. Widespread access to such vaccines confer immunity to individuals and even ‘herd immunity’ for populations. Vaccines work and have saved countless lives.

Countries in Africa must also take the fight to the pandemic through simple but effective measures for detecting, testing, isolating and mobilizing their people to mitigate transmission.

With simple, fact-informed hygiene measures as the main weapon, the continent can slow the virus’s spread and flatten the curve. And the UN family in Kenya is in lockstep with the Government of Kenya to fight COVID 19 on all fronts.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya.

The economic inequalities plaguing much of the world today are reinforced by many other forms of inequality, including inequalities in sexual and reproductive health-Dr. Natalia Kanem, ED UNFPA. Credit: UNFPA Kenya / Douglas Waudo

By Prof. Margaret Kobia, Amb. Aline Kuster-Ménager, Amb. Erasmo Martinez Martine and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

Development efforts over the past two decades have seen millions of people freed from poverty and hunger, and inequalities reduced worldwide. This is an undoubted achievement, but is no reason for complacency. The fact is that inequality between men and women, between boys and girls, remains not only a social justice concern, but one of the impediments on development in countries across Africa and beyond. Addressing such inequalities is a duty for all of us, and one which is at the heart of the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day on 8th March: Each for Equal.

Facing reality, then act accordingly

Gender inequality is so deeply ingrained in many societies that simply being born female can have a deleterious impact on a girl’s life chances. Too often, girls are still viewed as a drain on their families’ resources, kept out of school in favour of their brothers when money is tight, married off as children to older men, and condemned to a lifetime of poor health, unwanted large families and poverty. Too often, they are also condemned to illiteracy and economic dependence on men.

The effort towards achieving gender equality is not only the business of women. It is the business of each of us. Male champions have a critical role to play when it comes to challenging stereotypes, fighting bias and standing up against discriminations and violence against their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. In this regard, H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta, as a gender champion, has set a path by taking personal commitments to End Female Genital Mutilations (FGM) by the year 2022.

Globally, Kenya has demonstrated its engagement against gender-based violence through the development or enactment of the following: a National Policy on Gender and Development (2019), a National Policy for the Eradication of FGM (2019), the Sexual Offences Act (2006), the Counter-Trafficking Act (2011), the Children’s Act (2001), the Prevention against violence Act (2015), and the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act (2011). The wins for gender equality and women empowerment will also be achieved through the implementation of the ‘Big Four’ Agenda which focuses on Universal Health Care, Food Security and Nutrition, Affordable Housing and Manufacturing.

Win-Win

The irony is that gender equality would benefit all and make no losers. In its 2016 Africa Human Development Report, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) pointed out the clear intersections and interdependencies between gender equality and human development. Improving women’s capabilities and opportunities improves in return their ability to contribute better economically, as employers, employees and entrepreneurs, to the common wealth; it brings social and environmental benefits in terms of better health and education, changes the attitudes that enable the scourge of physical and sexual violence against women, and works to improve sustainable resource use. Additionally, the report argues, women’s political involvement leads to fairer and more representative decision-making and resource allocation, to the benefit of all and that of the environment too. Actually, none of the UN-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) will be achieved if girls and women are institutionally and systematically discriminated against and left behind. Hence, these complex issues must be worked on at all levels at a time.

While much of the gender equality debate globally focuses on income disparities, it is crucial to look beyond. Upstream, achieving equality at work is hampered by unequal access to education. Our daughters are profoundly unlikely to earn as much as our sons, or even to be able to compete for their jobs, if they have not been educated, or if societal attitudes to women allow employers to dismiss their applications out of hand. To accelerate the achievement of SDGs and in particular SDG 5 on Gender equality will help, among others, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights. And it happens that healthiest women with fewer chores at home can spend more time prospecting on the job market, and ultimately secure higher revenues to sustain their families.

For these virtuous circles to become our everyday reality, we need to go deeper, to challenge the social and political norms and entrenched interests that prevail in many nations, communities and families.

A mission for each of us

But what can we, as individuals, do? How can we help shape a world where your gender does not dictate your future? Each of us needs to understand how his/her own thoughts and actions shape society.

The Each for Equal campaign urges each of us to challenge our deeply-held assumptions about girls and women, about their abilities and rights. Silence always benefits the status quo and perpetuates situations of oppression. Conversely, speaking up takes courage, determination, and a willingness to stand out from the crowd. Our thoughts and actions are powerful. Our voices are powerful when we use them to speak up against the injustice we testify, or to celebrate women’s aspirations and achievements. It is both an individual and collective responsibility to achieve justice, opportunity and equality for half the world’s population.

The reasoning is valid both nationally and worldwide. 25 years after the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, the 2020 Generation Equality Forum will gather governments, the United Nations, civil society, feminist groups and other stakeholders to call for action and accountability for the full realization of the gender equality agenda. Priority issues and structural obstacles to progress on gender equality will be put at the center of the agenda, and stakeholders will make commitments along six thematic coalitions of action: Gender-Based violence, Economic justice and rights, Bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights, Feminist action for climate justice, Technology and innovation for gender equality, Feminist movements and leadership. An outcome of the Forum will be the establishment of a mobilization strategy to make concrete progress on gender equality. Convened by UN-Women, co-hosted by Mexico (Mexico City, 7-8 May) and France (Paris, 7-10 July), and organized in partnership with civil society, the Forum is animated by a single, overarching ambition: streamline gender equality as an asset – and a prerequisite – to achieve any political objective, anywhere in the world.

At the end of the day, gender equality is not ‘merely’ an agenda item for the UN and the development sector. It is rather a necessity for human society to thrive – and perhaps even to survive – in a future of diminishing resources and mounting global challenges such as climate change. All of us must be #EachforEqual.

H.E. Prof. Margaret KOBIA, Cabinet Secretary for the Public service and Gender Affairs
H.E. Aline KUSTER-MENAGER, Ambassador of France to Kenya
H.E. Erasmo Roberto MARTINEZ MARTINEZ, Ambassador of Mexico to Kenya
Siddharth CHATTERJEE, United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya

Excerpt:

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 14 2020 (IPS)

Every year Valentines Day is celebrated with great relish & celebration. People show their affection for another person or people by sending cards, flowers or chocolates with messages of love.

But there is a tragic dark side which stays in the shadows, when considering violence against women, one is confronted with an apparent contradiction.

“If you don’t fight, silence will kill you,” says Kenyan musician Wendy Kemunto, explaining why – a month after suffering a sexual assault by two Kenyan rugby players early in 2018 – she finally went to the police. For several weeks Wendy had remained silent, blaming herself, paralysed by a toxic mixture of shame, fear and well-founded dread at the usual & insensitive treatment of sexual assault victims by law-enforcement agencies.

But in November 2019, the two rugby players were each handed 15-year jail terms for rape, and now Wendy is speaking out to encourage more women to report such crimes.

Currently less than a third of victims report their ordeal, but data shows more than one in three women globally have experienced physical or sexual violence. In the face of such figures we can no longer shrug our collective shoulders and ignore the misogyny that fosters and encourages sexual violence.

When you know that only a tiny proportion of reported rapes ever make it to court, it is easy to understand, perhaps, why so few rape victims come forward.

The conviction of Wendy’s attackers is an encouraging sign that the Kenyan justice system is shifting from a trend where such cases – particularly those that involve high-profile individuals – remain in limbo in the courts, leaving a swathe of victims of violent assault not only without sufficient legal protection, but with the additional trauma of facing societal stigma.

The commemoration of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM last week is another reminder that all forms of gender based violence are not merely vestiges of historical harmful cultures, but are practices that continue to impoverish women and their families, and lower the productivity of entire countries.

With ever more studies illustrating the developmental hazards of sexual and gender violence, it is to our collective shame that, in the words of UN Secretary-General Mr. Antonio Guterres, women’s rights are increasingly being “reduced, restricted and reversed”.

Around 120 million girls worldwide have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts, with current or former husbands, partners or boyfriends the most common perpetrators. Around 700 million women alive today were married as children. Of those women, more than one in three—or some 250 million—were married before the age of 15.

The UNDP Africa Human Development Report for 2016 says, “Gender inequality is costing sub-Saharan Africa on average $US95 billion a year”. The justice system, supported by the necessary legislation, must pursue individuals who commit such acts with the same vigour that we use to go after economic saboteurs.

Countries must begin by fast-tracking the implementation of progressive policy commitments and institutional frameworks on gender equality and women’s empowerment. For instance, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa has yet to secure universal ratification.

Beyond policies, there is an enormous task ahead in changing the mind-set of insidious male entitlement that finds expression through sexual and gender based violence.

The natural place to begin must be in the home, where husbands must not only set an example of respect for their wives but also raise their sons to value girls and to respect their rights and autonomy. Schools must teach respect and gender equality to both sexes.

Such early formation is invaluable in dealing with societies that see gender based violence and misogyny as expressions of “culture” and “tradition”. In my own country India, culture and concepts such as ‘family honour’ have continued as the distorting lenses through which gender based violence, patriarchy and misogyny are seen.

President Uhuru Kenyatta must be commended for his unequivocal message that such deeply-embedded practices as female genital mutilation and early marriages will not go unpunished.

As the United Nations in Kenya, we believe this leadership is crucial for programmes such as the Government of Kenya and UN Joint Program on the Prevention and Response to Gender-Based Violence, which is supporting the establishment of strong prevention interventions and protection mechanisms for survivors.

While the case of Wendy Kemunto is an encouraging win for assault victims, we must remember that most victims remain invisible, as male-controlled money and power keep their plight hidden. Many are poor and ill-educated. Countless are growing up in cultures where their life chances are severely diminished simply by virtue of their gender.

So on this Valentines Day, Kenya has an opportunity to lead the way in showing that institutions and structures are ready, willing and able to enforce equal and fair treatment of all women.

Excerpt:

Kenyans register Huduma-Namba. Credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 3 2020 (IPS)

A recent opinion piece in the New York Times titled, “Kenya’s New Digital IDs May Exclude Millions of Minorities” raises an issue that the UN is passionate about: that the pursuit of sustainable development should leave no one behind.

In seeking inclusivity of all in the development narrative. Kenya is making important gains in making the invisible, visible.

The court ruling that gave the Government the green light to continue with digital civil registration- if implemented in an inclusive and non-discriminatory manner, could assist many citizens who have come to be known as ‘invisible’ people – including stateless persons, people with disabilities, and people living in rural and remote areas. This will improve inclusion and access to services.

Most of these groups continue to miss out on a range of key services such as schooling, bank accounts, obtaining a mobile phone, getting a job, voting and registering a formal business.

Estimated to number one billion globally, they are ‘invisible’ because they have often failed to get registered, with UN member states adopting SDG Target 16.9 “to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” by 2030, with consensus that identification is a key enabler of many other SDG goals and targets.

Several organizations including the UN and the World Bank Group are currently supporting civil registration and ID-related projects that will enhance and strengthen the transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness of governance and the delivery of public services and programmes.

For years, Kenya has had unique challenges in the registration of citizens, especially due to a migrant population, and those with historical and cultural ties to relatively unstable areas, particularly on the border with Kenya. The terrorist attacks by the Somalia-based Al Shabaab have often led to stricter requirements for proof of citizenship by those living in the bordering counties. This is an issue the national and county authorities must come together to resolve.

I have seen first-hand the scourge of cross border terror attacks in Kenya and we are mindful of the concerns of the state security apparatus, but the primacy of Human Rights must be safeguarded.

A compounding factor is that many Kenyans do not have birth certificates as many mothers give birth at home. In the absence of birth certificates, registration officers have had to demand for other documents as proof of citizenship, demands that have been deemed discriminatory. This is challenge and must be resolved. Birth registration is important because it’s the first step in ending statelessness in the country. As per UNHCR, it is estimated that there are at least another 14,000 stateless people in Kenya seeking nationality who need help.

There have been cases of non-citizens acquiring IDs by corrupting government registration officials.

The issue of registration of minority ethnic groups has been raised by human rights groups for a long time. Embracing of digital technology per se is not in itself the problem. Indeed, a past report by the Kenya National Human Rights Commission proposed the fast-tracking of a bio-metric system of registration among other policy and administrative recommendations.

While biometric registration is expected to reduce cases of fraudulent issuance of IDs, there are also genuine fears that digital technology can increase many of the risks associated with collecting and managing personal data, and this is one of the issues being canvassed in the on-going court case. This underscores the need to implement the digital registration respecting rights to data protection and ensuring participation of the public for their buy in.

The high court emphasized this in its ruling on 31 January 2020.

To its credit, the government has already acknowledged the challenges related to civil registration, and the Minister for Interior Mr Fred Matiangi has been remarkably hands-on in reforming the department.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has launched the blueprint themed “powering Kenya’s transformation” one of whose pillars is the use of digital services and platforms to generate more revenue; reduce waste; improve Government services and efficiency and increase citizen participation.

Despite its unique challenges, Kenya cannot be an exception and will need to join the rapidly growing number of countries implementing new digital ID systems. Kenya is indeed a leader on this biometric ID project and as such the example that Kenya will undoubtedly influence others within the region. This is why the UN in Kenya is dedicated to an ongoing process of support to develop the country’s capacity, institutions, laws and regulations to make the registration process inclusive and fit-for-purpose in the digital age.

This support is in line with the Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development that were developed in 2017 and endorsed widely by the UN and international organizations, non-governmental organizations, development partners, and private-sector associations.

As Kenya prepares for its national elections in 2022, and with over 1 million voters coming of age every year, a robust digital identity can dispense with the need of voter registration which is time consuming and expensive

While speaking to Joe Mucheru, the Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Innovations and Youth, he said, “as emphasised in the court ruling, we will together with all key partners, including the UN to develop rigorous security systems and regulations for data protection”.

The UN in Kenya is committed to partner with the Government to avoid risks of exclusion and discrimination, especially those of the poorest and most vulnerable and leave no one behind.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

Hosted by the governments of Kenya, Denmark and UNFPA, world leaders gather for the 3-day Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 to advance sexual, reproductive health & rights for all. November 12, 2019. Photo Courtesy: Redhouse Public Relations

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 31 2019 (IPS)

Happy New Year, Kenya. 2020 marks a decade of action towards the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Peace and development are inextricably linked, with each making the achievement of the other far more likely. This puts the conflict-prevention and development work of the UN at the heart of the agenda in East Africa, but in a multi-agency and programme environment, making meaningful progress is challenging.

Aware of this, the UN began a process of structural reforms led by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres who made reforms of the United Nations, a priority at the very beginning of his term in January 2017. The aim being to deliver better results through cooperation, collaboration and integration. 2019 was the year that the impact of these reforms became real and nowhere more than in the peace, conflict-prevention and development pillars of the UN’s work.

At the country level, that shift towards a nimble, 21st century UN challenges deeply entrenched practices and operations. In a country team with over 23 individual agencies, funds and programmes, the reform process can be complicated, even messy.

To the credit of the Kenya country team, we overcame the challenges of ceding long-held agency interests for the collective good and achieved some ground-breaking milestones in our partnership with governments, civic organizations and the private sector.

The most outstanding was our venturing out to confront challenges that transcend borders. East Africa faces major threats to peace and development across multiple fronts, and respective UN country teams have, in a remarkable show of teamwork, sought to harmonize their responses to these threats. Internecine border conflicts and the effects of climate change together make a formidable challenge that brought together UN teams from Kenya and Uganda, in a pact that seeks to bring sustainable development to the Karamoja triangle.

This pact follows from another successful regional collaboration project on the Kenya-Ethiopia border where communities accustomed to recurrent hostilities are now reaching out to each other to find solutions to common socio-economic challenges.

We believe that our regional surge towards prevention, peacemaking and diplomacy will have a particular impact on the youth, who suffer an enduring sense of being neglected and ignored. This narrative is a breeding ground for extremism and radicalization, so addressing such concerns was a key point of deliberation during last July’s African Regional High-Level Conference on Counter-Terrorism and the Prevention of Violent Extremism in Nairobi.

The same regional approach was behind the initiative by Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somalia to sign the Declaration and Action Plan to End Cross-border FGM in April 2019. This was the first time multiple countries had come together to tackle this pernicious cross-border crime.

But there remain many in the region still left behind by development, and we continue to stand up for them through our UN Development Assistance Framework 2018-2022. The framework’s gender equality and rights focus is unmistakable, because in too many communities, the simple fact of being born female shatters one’s chances of living in full human dignity.

Our focus on giving a leg-up to those left farthest behind has attracted a positive response from our partners in national and county governments. By staying in lockstep with national priorities on issues such as health, agriculture and housing, the common thread of messages from our partners is that we are staying effective and responsive to the ambitions of Kenyans.

As 2020 beckons, the decade of action starts and it has to be a sprint to deliver on the SDGs, the UN team in Kenya is rolling up its sleeves with greater urgency, ambition and innovation. We will enhance regional cooperation and private-public partnerships as we work with the Government towards lifting millions of the citizens of this region out of poverty and upholding their human rights.

We are re-imagining ways of delivering development in ways such as the co-creation of an SDG innovation lab between the Government of Kenya, the Centre for Effective Global Action at the University of California in Berkeley, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the UN. The SDG Lab will kick off with support for the delivery of Kenya’s Big Four agenda by harnessing, big data, technology and innovation to achieve scale and impact.

As a UN country team, we got off the blocks in 2019 in pursuit of UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed’s challenge to “flip the orthodoxy” for the repositioning of the UN. We have dared to go beyond the typical and will do whatever it takes to respond effectively to the challenges faced by Kenya’s people, now and in the future.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta hailed the strong partnership between his government and UNFPA during a meeting with UNFPA’s Executive Director, Dr. Natalia Kanem in March 2019, which will jointly convene the ICPD 25 from 12 to 14 November 2019 along with the Government of Denmark. Credit: PSCU

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 8 2019 (IPS)

As we count down the remaining days to the opening of the Nairobi Summit or the International Conference for Population and Development(ICPD), I am confounded by how much humanity has managed to simultaneously empower more women than at any other time in history, while at the same time failing to see that ‘women’s issues’ are actually ‘everyone’s issues’.

That countdown evokes memories of my own grandmother, who followed a common trend in India at the time, dropping out of school to get married and give birth to her first child at age 11. In many parts of the world, girls have over the years faced unthinkable obstacles while trying just to get an education, often jeopardizing their personal safety and risking being ostracized by their families and communities.

It wasn’t until a mere 25 years ago at the ICPD in Cairo that the world agreed that population and economic development issues must go hand in hand, and that women must be at the heart of our efforts for development.

Back then, governments, donors, civil society, and other partners made commitments to reduce infant and child mortality, reduce maternal mortality, ensure universal education, and increase access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, amongst many others. These commitments were a massive step forward for the rights of women and girls.

At the Conference in Nairobi, we all have an opportunity to repeat the message that women’s empowerment will move at snail-pace unless we bolster reproductive health and rights across the world. This is no longer a fleeting concern, but a 21st century socio-economic reality.

We can choose to take a range of actions, such as empowering women and girls by providing access to good health, education and job training. Or we can choose paths such as domestic abuse, female genital mutilation and child marriages, which, according to a 2016 Africa Human Development Report by UNDP, costs sub-Saharan Africa $95 billion per year on average due to gender inequality and lack of women’s empowerment.

Fortunately, the world has made real progress in the fight to take the right path. There is no lack of women trailblazers in all aspects of human endeavour. It has taken courage to make those choices, with current milestones being the result of decades of often frustrating work by unheralded people, politics and agencies.

Leaders like the indefatigable Dr. Natalia Kanem the Executive Director of UNFPA and her predecessors, supported especially by the Nordic countries, are pushing the global change of paradigm to ensure we demolish the silo of “women’s issues” and begin to see the linkages between reproductive rights and human prosperity.

Numerous studies have shown the multi-generation impact of the formative years of women. A woman’s reproductive years directly overlap with her time in school and the workforce, she must be able to prevent unintended pregnancy in order to complete her education, maintain employment, and achieve economic security.

Denial of reproductive health information and services places a women at risk of an unintended pregnancy, which in turn is one of the most likely routes for upending the financial security of a woman and her family.

A lot has been achieved since the years of my grandmother, when girls were expected to be demure and remain in the background. In many places the current teenage girl believes that every door is open to them; they can rise to any heights.

Yet in a lot of other countries, girls are up against a system that seems rigged against them for the long-term. These are countries where greater leadership and the right policies are sorely missing; where women and girls are robbed of the education they deserve and the jobs they need to lift themselves and their families out of poverty; where they are victims of sexual and physical abuse in their own homes or sold into child marriage.

As the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya, I am privileged to serve in a country, which is hosting this very important conference. It has shown leadership to advance the cause of women’s right-from criminalizing female genital mutilation to stepping up the fight to end child marriage and pushing hard on improving reproductive, maternal and child health.

When the ICPD opens in Nairobi on 12 November 2019, I wonder how my grandmother’s life might have been different if she had been able to learn how to read and write and achieve her full human potential, but also appealing to all Governments to work towards giving half the world population the final and absolute control over their own bodies.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya.

Hiroshima, Japan. Photo: Internet Archives 1945

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 11 2019 (IPS)

From the ashes of a tragedy that wiped out almost 90% of the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, an institute called the Hiroshima Peacebuilders Center (HPC) rose like a phoenix of hope that is pioneering the creation of a global pool of peacebuilders. It is driven by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development declaration that “there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.”

Hiroshima underwent miraculous post-war reconstruction after World War II, and it epitomizes speed, innovation, technology and efficiency which marks the Japanese character of utter discipline and loyalty to the vision. An architectural and engineering feat of reconstruction.

Today HPC supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, trains professional peacebuilders to assist war – torn societies and they are doing a remarkable job. I have seen this first hand and I have had the privilege of facilitating two mid-career courses which brings together Japanese and non-Japanese United Nations professionals who work in different conflict affected parts of the world.

The UN Secretary General Mr Antonio Guterres once made a profound remark- “the world is in pieces and we need world peace”. With over 65 million people displaced, due to conflict, instability, climate shocks and sheer degrading poverty, the message from the UN Secretary General is a clarion call to action. Japan has stepped up. In fact, Japan’s pacifist constitution may hold the key to a world free of conflict, violence and instability.

At the HPC, various programmes are being implemented to develop practical knowledge, skills and experience in peacebuilding and development among civilians, an important contribution towards transforming conflict-prone countries into peaceful nations engaged in the pursuit of SDG 16.

With Dr Shinoda, Director of HPC and mid-Career professionals in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: HPC 04 September 2019

Having seen both worlds – as a former combat veteran and later as an international civil servant, where I have been working to bring dignity to people ravaged by war in various countries – I know the importance of such institutions. For instance, the many years of my UN career spent in Somalia, South Sudan Iraq, Darfur, between 1997 to date, will always remain a poignant reminder of the disparate harm that women and children are predisposed to whenever one form or other of humanitarian crisis arises.

With recent technological advances on one hand giving a leg-up, and on the other rolling back progress on the United Nations Charter’s vision of getting the peoples of the world ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours‘, institutions such as HPC are increasingly needed.

The strings of guilt have continued to pull at the collective global heart after the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In subsequent years, the world has drafted the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as numerous treaties and conventions, all seeking to ensure global peace.

By telescoping distance and time, scientific advances have given us the ‘global village’, yet the more people have of things that bring them together, the more they have tended to invent others that divide them.

One such development is the indisputable evidence that all of humanity is vulnerable in current rates of ecological degradation. However, while the web of interdependence continues to thicken, debates about what needs to be done and by whom rages, delaying consensus on remedial action.

The reasons we need citizens to drive global neighbourhood are legion: maintaining peace and order, expanding economic activity, combating pandemic diseases, deterring terrorists and sharing scarce resources are just a few of them.

We cannot have any illusions about the scope of the challenge ahead. As we move towards working with others, clashes between the familiar and the different are expected. Stresses will result from people having to come to terms with new circumstances.

A transformation of the mindset will be a key driver of the triple nexus of peace, security and development as the world seeks to draft a post-conflict agenda. To achieve this, a critical mass of leaders who can push countries to adapt universal norms of good neighborhoods is needed, which is what institutions like HPC are helping to build.

Former Prime Minister and Nobel laureate Mr Eisaku Sato. Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

More international institutions that work to create a generation of citizens as the dynamos of the vehicle of peacebuilding need to be established. That one of the leaders towards that vision is a region that carries the scars of the worst devastation caused by war provides inspiration that a moral revolution is possible, even as the scientific revolution continues.

Japan’s former Prime Minster and Nobel laureate Mr. Eisaku Sato once said, “Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the ravages of atomic bombing. That experience left an indelible mark on the hearts of our people, making them passionately determined to renounce all wars”.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

President Uhuru Kenyatta meets young Kenyan artists at the State House-Photo State House

By Francis Owino and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 2 2019 (IPS)

August 12, marks International Youth Day, and the theme for this year is ‘making education more relevant, equitable and inclusive’, is particularly apt for Africa. Consider this. Every 24 hours around 35,000 African youth are looking for work.

The youth make up 37% of the working-age population in Africa, but 60% of the unemployed. Though Africa continues to post impressive gains in education enrolment rates, challenges of access, quality and relevance of education in the continent remain formidable.

The region has the highest number of out-of-school children; four in ten learners score poorly in literacy and numeracy; and the systems are producing many graduates whose skills do not meet the workforce requirements. Estimates indicate that a dollar invested in an additional year of schooling, particularly for girls, generates earnings and health benefits of $10 in low-income countries and nearly $4 in lower-middle income countries.

By 2050, Africa will be home to about 830 million young people, meaning that at current trends, the challenge will only become tougher.

Francis Owino

Clearly, the road towards achieving SDG 4 – to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all – requires bold and innovative action. This is why education must be at the heart of private sector engagement in the journey towards the SDGs.

It is also in line with the UN Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres’s call for the reformed UN to make a “strategic pivot from ad-hoc, transactional partnerships to longer-term, ‘transformational’ partnerships designed for scale”. This will involve collaboration between the UN Global Compact and UN country teams to better mobilize local business communities.

To prepare Kenya’s young people to face the challenges of a rapidly changing world and to build on existing national leadership on young people, the country has joined Generation Unlimited as one of its key partners. President Uhuru Kenyatta, a global champion of Generation Unlimited, has established a high-level steering committee co-chaired by the Government and the UN to guide the implementation of Generation Unlimited in the country, as well concrete steps to attract public and private partnerships in support of its goals.

Siddharth Chatterjee

More significantly, the policy is an outcome of a broad based consultative process that is designed to robustly address eight (8) Priority areas namely: realize a healthy and productive youth population; build qualified and competent youth workforce for sustained social economic development (farming, manufacturing); create opportunities for youth to earn decent and sustainable livelihood; develop youth talent, creativity and innovation for wealth creation; nurture value, moral, ethical generation of patriotic youth for transformative leadership; effective civic participation and representation among the youth; promote a crime free, secure, peaceful and united Kenya where no young Kenyan is left behind; and support youth engagement in environmental management for sustainable development.

This has been successfully done by the setting up of safe spaces for youth through the establishment of the 152 Youth Empowerment Centers (YECs) across the country as One Stop Shop for the youth services. They feature myriad of services to the youth such as a counselling center, an ICT Hub, indoor recreation facilities, affirmative fund desks/focal points, and outdoor game facilities. The Government’s efforts have been fully complemented by both the County Governments, the Private Sector and UN Agencies by adoption and enhancing the variety of services offered in the YECs.

The YECs provide youth friendly services intended to address their physical, psychological and socio-economic needs.

The One Stop Youth Center concept, which is a product of partnerships between the UN and the Government, utilizes an integrated approach to youth development by providing youth with safe spaces in urban settings where they can meet and access information and resources critical to youth-led development including peace building, research and policy development. The model is in line with the Kenya Vision 2030 blue-print and the Big4 agenda which emphasizes on opportunity creation.

The UN in Kenya is scaling up its partnership with the Government in efforts to reform education, as reflected under the UN Development Assistance Framework’s, Pillar 2- Human Capital Development. The outcome is to ensure the continent’s education systems for future economic, technological and demographic trends.

Dr Francis O.Owino, PhD is the, Principal Secretary, Public Service and Youth. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

Secretary-General António Guterres visits a Training Centre in Kamakunji, Kenya, and talked to youth about countering violent extremism, and preventing radicalization. (9 July 2019) Credit: UNEP/Duncan Moore

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

During the egregious Dusit attack, Kenya demonstrated remarkable, resilience, solidarity and stood firm against the terrorists.

Combined with a swift and highly efficient surgical response from the law enforcement agencies, Kenyans united together in empathy and all barriers came down in a collective show of humanity.

It is well known that for a long time all over the world, well-meaning counter-terrorism responses only ended up alienating some sections of society. Recent insights into drivers of extremism however are showing that forging partnerships with such communities, formerly subjected to profiling and hard-line policing, is a better option to challenge hateful extremism.

Globally, race, ethnicity, religion, dress, political ideology or any combination of these traits have all been used to single out people for attention. A whole-of-society approach is now offering communities an opportunity not just to stand up to stigmatization but to engage dialogue that could deal with the root causes of violent extremism.

During his visit to Kenya for the African Conference on Counter-Terrorism Conference in Africa, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had a chance to interact with a community in Nairobi’s Kamukunji suburbs, where grassroots level people have organized themselves to tackle the contentious issues that have made the area a target of radicalization.

In his interaction with the leaders, structural inequalities and alienation from terrorism response agencies were mentioned as important conversations that need to take place.

“Kenya is showing the way in pursuing cohesiveness and creating conditions where diverse people and can live and respect each other and stay alive to prevent manifestations of extremism, and in this the country has the full support of the UN,” said Mr. Guterres.

An important challenge in dealing with extremism and radicalization has been the varied and evolving nature of the drivers of violent extremism within communities, and countries.

The reality is that local communities are best placed to understand what these drivers are, why they change, and how best to address them. Yet, too often they have been excluded from policy dialogue on countering violent extremism.

A relatively common thread especially among the youth is that they simply want to be heard. Led by the area Member of Parliament, Yusuf Hassan, himself a victim of a grenade attack that confined him to a wheelchair for years, the Kamukunji community has identified appropriate interlocutors to lead in the process of countering radicalization at the local level.

This has involved developing trust between the different communities in the area, and between the communities and state actors in the war on terror, especially the police. Leadership has been exceptional in partnering with agencies such as the UN to unlock the potential of the community to develop tailored, local responses to the threat of extremism.

Kenya’s National Counter Terrorism Centre, together with the United Nations Country Team, among other partners, is working in counties and communities to develop county action plans on preventing violent extremism. These plans are notable for their inclusive approach, their attempt to be measurable, and responsive in an effective and efficient way.

For Kamakunji, that has had numerous terrorist incidences, there are very encouraging signs coming out of the area, of a community not just coming together to pick up the pieces after the attacks, but to strive to work together to make such occurrence less likely. The answer has been in taking the fight to extremists through community solidarity, trust, dignity, respect and good citizenship.

The emphasis now is on winning hearts and minds, while ensuring that the pillar of security is robust in countering violent extremism.

A fundamental pillar in the prevention of violent extremism are the youth of Africa. By 2050, there will be 2.3 Billion people in Africa, of which 830 million will be young people.

The way youth resilience manifests itself is highly dependent on their social, economic and political environments. When youth are empowered and provided opportunities for participation, they are most likely to capitalize on their resilience constructively. For this reason, youth are Africa’s most important asset in the prevention of violent extremism and peacebuilding. They are the very foundation of every community.

If Africa is to curtail the spread of violent extremism and achieve sustainable development, there must be determined focus on the empowerment, education and employment of youth- of a generation unlimited.

Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya

UN Secretary General, António Guterres visiting a refugee camp in Uganda. June 2017, PHOTO//Twitter @antonioguterres

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 20 2019 (IPS)

As the world marks World Refugee Day on June 20th to celebrate the strength, courage and perseverance of refugees, a glaring concern remains just how inadequate the global response to the refugee crisis has been.

To a large extent, refugees have been painted with the broad strokes of a burden to host economies or sources of insecurity and crime. The world has lacked the resolve and skills needed to negotiate peace settlements, end the refugee crisis through dialogue and diplomacy and support countries that continue to host refugees.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the world is facing the highest levels of displacement ever in history, with over 65 million people forced from their homes by war, internal conflicts, drought or poor economies. People are forcibly displaced at a rate of 34,000 per day due to conflict or persecution.

The world’s poorer countries are bearing the brunt. Currently, eight out of ten refugees are hosted by developing countries, mostly in Africa, adding to existing challenges such as access to food, water, shelter and health care to both refugees and host communities.

Extensive media coverage of the surge in refugees landing in Europe has tended to divert attention from the challenges that a few African countries are grappling with as they carry the burden of displacement. Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya are among the countries in Africa that continue to extend their hospitality and bare the social and economic burden.

Ethiopia hosts nearly 740,000 refugees, mostly from Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan, the largest refugee population in a single African country. The country maintains an open-door policy that welcomes refugees and allows humanitarian access and protection. In Uganda, the more than 500,000 refugees from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, have been granted free movement, employment opportunities and land for building new homes or farming.

Kenya currently hosts about 480,,000 refugees. Most are Somali refugees, but others are from South Sudan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Great Lakes region, and others. They are concentrated in three main locations: the Dadaab camps, the Kakuma camp, and urban areas.

In Kakuma, the Government of Kenya and various UN agencies led by UNHCR together with the World Bank (IFC) are implementing the Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-economic Development Programme that is enhancing inclusion by empowering the refugees and host communities to participate in socio-economic activities.

The programme has created conditions that are attracting investment from the private sector and impressive gains are already evident in a more vibrant local economy. The International Finance Corporation estimates that there are over 2,500 refugee businesses in Kakuma and Kalobeyei, with economic activities being worth about $56 million per year

Such data supports the need to begin to see refugees not just as a problem to be overcome. Various studies have concluded that refugees have a net positive effect on the welfare of locals. The World Bank, “Yes, in my backyard” established that refugee presence in Kakuma contributes 3% to the GDP in Turkana West.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has observed, “inclusion and social cohesion are the tools with which it is possible to allow refugees and host communities to live together in harmony and create a win-win situation for everyone”.

The world must take collective responsibility for the horrors of rampant conflict, violence and human rights abuses that continue to force people to flee within or outside their countries. Currently, about two-thirds of all the refugees under the UNHCR’s mandate come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia.

Even with the large part of the global crisis emanating from only those few hotspots, humanitarian support remains chronically underfunded. Developing countries, especially Africa deserve better support.

As the world observes World Refugee Day this year, UNHCR has received contributions of only $306 million for its programmes in Africa, which represents a paltry 11 percent of its requirements.

With a keener sense of purpose and will, the world can take better care of refugees, a segment of society that represents humanity at its most vulnerable.

It is the only way to prove that the oft-repeated declaration about all humans being born equal is more than just parody.

The original version of this article appeared in Thomson Reuters Foundation news.

Excerpt:

Droughts are not new to East Africa. However, abnormally high temperatures in the region are linked to climate change and proving deadly for livelihoods and livestock. Credit: Petterik Wiggers/Oxfam

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 15 2019 (IPS)

There is barely a corner of human life that will not be affected by climate change, and some of its impacts are already being felt. Consider this, 821 million people are now hungry and over 150 million children stunted, putting the hunger eradication goal, SDG 2, at risk.

Today 15 May, is the United Nations International Day of Families and the theme for this year is, ‘Families and Climate Action’.

The wellbeing of families is central to healthy societies, but is threatened by climate change, especially in the poorest parts of the world.

Across the world what we understand by ‘family’ takes many forms, but it remains the fundamental unit of society. It is where from our earliest days we learn to share, to love, to reason, to consider others, to stand up for ourselves and to take responsibility.

But families face challenges on many fronts and – particularly in the developing world – climate change is perhaps the greatest of these as it is exacerbating hunger and food insecurity.

The focus on families and climate has most resonance in Africa, where it is estimated that climate change could reduce yields from rain-fed agriculture by 50 percent by 2020, jeopardizing the welfare of seven in ten people who depend on farming for a living.

“Environment is the foundation of development,” said Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta when he launched the government’s 1.8 billion tree-planting campaign in May 2018.

When crops are wiped out by flood or drought, families are robbed of livelihoods and food security. Parents who are already financially vulnerable then struggle to meet the costs of housing, feeding and schooling their children, and of paying for medicines when they are sick.

The greatest killers of children – malnutrition, diarrhoeal disease and malaria – will worsen because of climate change. Children living in developing countries face the greatest risks of all, not always because climate change effects will be worse there than in other countries, but because poverty limits their ability to respond.

Nowhere is this truer than in Bangladesh, with its overwhelmingly young population and almost unparalleled vulnerability to the repercussions of a changing climate. A recent report by UNICEF looked at the impact of climate change on families and children in Bangladesh.

“Climate change is deepening the environmental threat faced by families in Bangladesh’s poorest communities, leaving them unable to keep their children properly housed, fed, healthy and educated,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, who visited Bangladesh in early March 2019.

Increased competition for dwindling natural resources results in political instability, social upheaval, conflicts, forced migration and displacements and once again, children are the main victims. Forced from their homes, many are denied an education, further denting their prospects and threatening social and economic development in some of the poorest areas of the world.

An FAO study says that almost 57% of Kenya’s population lives in poverty, particularly female headed households who are largely reliant on climate-sensitive economic activities including rain fed subsistence or smallholder agriculture.

With Kenya’s considerable advances in mobile technology penetration, important information can be delivered to agricultural actors along the value chain, including weather information and availability and prices of inputs.

With proper investments and policy, Kenya’s youth can spur the transformation of agriculture from subsistence, hit-or-miss propositions to robust commercial operations that can withstand the effects of climate change.

Africa’s biggest threat from climate change will remain the inter-generational downward spiral into deeper poverty that is brought on by decreased farm yields.

Increasing resilience to climate-related shocks in Africa’s agriculture will result in a rise in farm productivity. It will mean women, who make up the largest share of the continent’s small-holder farmers, will have better incomes. Women allocate more of their income to food, health and education for their families, therefore it would also translate into greater gains for children and future generations.

Ending hunger and poverty is the prime mission of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and will demand dramatic shifts in what and how we consume, and above all it will demand cooperation and collaboration on a regional and global scale.

It will not be easy, but for the sake of every family, everywhere, we cannot fail.

A version of this article originally appeared in Reuters

Excerpt:

President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Dr. Abiy Ahmed. Credit: Courtesy Ethiopian Embassy, Kenya

By Johan Borgstam, Stefano A. Dejak, Aeneas Chuma and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 29 2019 (IPS)

Many years of internecine conflict is being replaced by a new narrative of peace along the Kenya-Ethiopia border. Communities that once fought each other are now dreaming of a joint journey towards a better future.

Diverse communities constitute the inhabitants of the border area, a vast swathe with great potential to advance beneficial integration between the two countries. But niggling rivalries and violent conflicts have persisted for years, constraining any meaningful cross-border socio-economic activities.

The conflicts have been driven by a plethora of problems – scarcity of pasture & water, cattle rustling, politics of ethnicity and political/administrative boundary disputes. With such clashes being the dominant motif in the region, leaders from the two countries have become frustrated by adverse impacts on trade, not just along their border but on wider regional integration and development between the two countries.

Kenya and Ethiopia provide a market of about 150 million people. While Ethiopia is known for its agro- based industries such as leather and coffee, Kenya has a relatively advanced manufacturing and tourism sectors, with collaboration between the two capable of developing strong regional value chains.

It is this dormant strength and potential that led the governments of Ethiopia and Kenya, in partnership with IGAD, the European Union and the United Nations, to establish an integrated cross-border initiative (Video) to foster peace and sustainable development around Marsabit County in Kenya and Borana/Dawa Zones of Ethiopia.

While the historic agreement between Ethiopia and Kenya was witnessed by the leaders of the two countries at a high-profiled event in Moyale, a recent peace conference held in Addis Ababa from 17 to 18 April 2018 was a clear sign that the serious business of facing up to the root causes of violent conflict and vulnerabilities is truly on.

The meeting was attended by representatives of national and local governments of Ethiopia and Kenya, IGAD, EU, UN in Kenya and Ethiopia, cross-border peace committees, traditional community leaders and youth & women’s groups. Heart-on-sleeve discussions dominated the two-day meeting, with the resolutions indicating a clear consensus on the respective areas of responsibility towards lasting peace.

President Kenyatta of Kenya and former Prime Minister Desalegn of Ethiopia lay the foundation for the Kenya-Ethiopia cross-border programme in the border town of Moyale on 07 Dec 2015. Credit: @UNDP Kenya

A clear point of convergence was that the challenges facing the communities know no borders, but also that they will not be resolved through solutions of the past. The need for a wider approach to the issues was brought forward, to leverage on non-traditional actors such as the private sector, civil society and academia.

The spirit of the regional conference is in line with UN Secretary General Mr Antonio Guterres’s vision for the Horn of Africa which underscores the importance of prevention, resilience building and reduction of vulnerability.

The priority now is to bring direct benefits to borderland communities. Under the leadership of the national governments and IGAD, the United Nations and the European Union will support concrete initiatives to reinforce stability and realise the economic potential of these areas. Both organizations have committed to support a prosperous, peaceful and secure region, based on mutual values such as human rights, good governance, reduced poverty and peaceful coexistence, the rule of law, that aims at leaving no one behind.

The European Union is spearheading support for cross-border areas in the Horn of Africa through a €68 million programme covering the entire length of the Kenya-Ethiopia border, incorporating south-west Somalia and also supporting the cross-border area between Western Ethiopia and East Sudan. Through providing investment in peace-building, socio-economic development and regional cooperation, the programme aims to transform borderlands into more prosperous and stable areas where communities have a sense of belonging and prospects for a better future.

The bold reforms going on in the UN will see not only the UN family delivering as one but delivering as one across borders. We are already seeing UN country teams that adapt more closely to the priorities and needs of each country, enabling the leveraging of strengths across regions and specialized agencies. This will facilitate the establishing of new architecture adapted to trans-boundary priorities and realities.

One product of that new paradigm is the recent meeting that brought together participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Somalia to develop plans for ending cross-border female genital mutilation (FGM).

President Uhuru Kenyatta talked about turning this region into a “Dubai” of the future. That vision is possible given the winds of goodwill blowing over the region. This is having a transformative shift towards peace for communities along the border and prosperity between the neighboring countries.

Johan Borgstam, the European Union Ambassador to Ethiopia, Stefano A. Dejak, the Ambassador of the European Union to the Republic of Kenya, Aeneas Chuma, UN Resident Coordinator a.i. in Ethiopia & Siddharth Chatterjee, the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki pushing hard for UHC in Kenya. Credit: MOH Kenya

By Felipe Jaramillo and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 27 2019 (IPS)

Consider this. One million Kenyans fall into poverty every year due to catastrophic out of pocket health expenditures.

For the almost four in every five Kenyans who lack access to medical insurance, the fear that they are just an accident or serious illness away from destitution.

Ill health is easily the most destructive wrecking-ball to any country’s plans for sustainable development, which validates President Uhuru Kenyatta’s commitment to deliver Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2022, as part of his Big Four development agenda.

The number of Kenyans who continue to suffer from communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB, as well as the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases like diabetes, cancer and hypertension, present formidable challenges to the country.

Among the poorest in Kenya, only 3% have health insurance, which is provided by the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF). Among the wealthiest, many who also have private cover, this rises to 42%, indicating again that the poorest are at risk of being left behind even further, and do not have an appropriate safety-net to fall back on.

Felipe Jaramillo

Investing in UHC is: 1) a moral obligation – it is not acceptable that some members of society should face death, disability, ill health or impoverishment for reasons that could be addressed at limited cost; and 2) a very smart investment – prevention of malnutrition and ill health will have enormous benefits in terms of longer and more productive lives, higher earnings, and averted care costs.

But delivering quality affordable healthcare for all comes at a cost. And this cost should certainly not be carried by those who cannot afford it.

The delivery of UHC requires robust financing structures. When people have to pay most of the cost for health services out of their own pockets, the poor are often unable to obtain many of the services they need, and even the rich may be exposed to financial hardship in the event of severe or long-term illness. Pooling funds from compulsory funding sources (such as mandatory insurance contributions) can minimise the financial risks of illness across a population.

Health Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki recently unveiled a team of experts to spearhead radical reforms at the NHIF. This new initiative will build on past efforts at reforming NHIF, which were only partially implemented. The team will analyse the financial sustainability of NHIF, oversee legal and regulatory reforms among other propose organisational reforms to reposition NHIF as a national social health insurance provider and ensure its accountability and transparency.

Siddharth Chatterjee

The realization of UHC in Kenya will only be achieved if the Government of Kenya will increase its budget allocation towards health and lead solid health system strengthening initiatives – as for example the NHIF reform – to increase efficiency, effectiveness and accountability within the health sector.

The health system strengthening initiatives currently on their way in Kenya are critical, yet exciting, and require “all hands-on deck” and much collaboration.

The Government of Kenya can count on the support of the World Bank, and United Nations family as its development partners.

Within the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2018-2022 for example, the human capital development pillar (which includes health) is receiving the largest share of human and financial resources – and rightly so, as we recognise the importance of supporting the Country to realise the vision of UHC by 2022.

The World Banks’ Transforming Health Systems for Universal Care Project for Kenya is improving utilization and quality of primary health care services with a focus on reproductive, maternal, new-born, child, and adolescent health services. Supporting health financing reforms is a key component of this project. Under the recently approved Kenya Social and Economic inclusion Project (with US$ 250 million IDA credit and US$ 70 million of DFID grant), the Bank is supporting the Government to systematically enrol and register National Safety Net Program beneficiaries in the NHIF through an established referral mechanism.

The Government of Kenya is aligning forces as well with the private sector. Through the United Nations’s SDG Partnership Platform, the Government has already been identifying and scaling up transformative primary health care partnerships through galvanising support from the private and philanthropic sectors.

The successful delivery of the NHIF reform will demonstrate Kenya’s ability to efficiently pool revenues to cover for a healthcare package with essential services for all Kenyans, at all ages. This again will enhance confidence to join and invest in NHIF and create opportunities within the health sector to develop new partnership models for the delivery of care which all will help the Country to make rapid strides towards the realization of UHC.

Kenya can lead the way in realising Universal Health Coverage – and we stand with Kenya to “Deliver as One” and leave no one behind.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

Felipe Jaramillo is the World Bank country director for Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, based in Nairobi

President Kenyatta addresses the Nation on 16 Jan 2019. “I also commend the civilians who looked after one another. For every act of evil that led to injury yesterday, there were a dozen acts of compassion, overflowing patriotism and individual courage,” Credit: KBC

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 16 2019 (IPS)

On 15 January 2019, terror struck Nairobi’s 14 Riverside Drive.

Kenya is in mourning following a senseless act on innocent and defenseless civilians by individuals preoccupied with contemptible and misplaced ideology; who hope to intimidate others through violent acts of terror. Like in their other past attempts, they have failed, and Kenya remains unbowed.

As President Kenyatta has noted in his address; “We will allow no one to derail or frustrate our progress….We have prevailed and shall always prevail over evil. Let us now go to work without fear and continue with our work of building our nation.”

Our thoughts are with all the affected and families who are experiencing the most inconsolable pain and trauma of this heinous act. The UN Country Team in Kenya stands in solidarity with the families who are suffering the most inconsolable pain and will live for a long time with the trauma of this terrible attack.

As the intelligence and security apparatus continue with investigations, our message to Kenyans remains that, we cannot give in to fear or the temptation to define the attack as a war between races or religions. That has always been the narrative that the perpetrators of terror would wish to spread.

Fortunately, they have always been on the losing side of history. The attack on 14 Riverside Drive should not deter Kenya’s resolve, but should further strengthen the country’s determination to overcome adversity and challenges that threaten its social fabric.

We applaud the work of Kenya’s security emergency rescue services and first responders, who mobilised in remarkable timeliness, demonstrated exceptional professionalism and heroism, thereby keeping the number of fatalities to a minimum. We also commend Kenyans for their heroic acts and solidarity for one another during this time.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his message “has strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Nairobi and extends his condolences to the families of the victims and wishes those injured a swift recovery. The Secretary-General expresses his solidarity with the people and Government of Kenya(GoK)”.

Terrorism remains a global threat and presents a challenging test for intelligence and law enforcement agencies worldwide. No country is immune. Kenya has done remarkably well in preventing numerous other attacks.

The reality is that a multitude of stresses impact vulnerable populations around the world, leaving many disproportionately susceptible to extremist ideologies — driven by factors such as surging youth unemployment — which terror groups take advantage as a considerable reservoir for recruits. There is a need for concerted efforts to weaken the terror groups’ narrative and win the battle of ideas.

The UN remains steadfast in its support to Kenya’s development agenda, including commendable initiatives by the government based on a long view of the prevention of violent extremism in line with the UN Development Assistance Framework.

Together we can pursue smart, sustainable strategies that augment security with what the UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner describes as the triple nexus, “Achieving the 2030 Agenda and ensuring no one is left behind requires a pro-active, evidence-based and holistic approach to risk, resilience and prevention across humanitarian, development and peace effort.” This approach will be a long-term antidote to terrorism and the key to preventing violent extremism.

Already our partnership is underway with several local initiatives that are bearing fruit. Previously characterized by belligerence based on competition for resources, the border regions of Eastern Africa are slowly changing the narrative, replacing aggression with dialogue and socio-economic transformation.

A stand-out initiative is the Kenya-Ethiopia Cross Border Programme, launched in December 2015 by President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and the former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia. This initiative is supported by IGAD, the European Union and Japan and implemented by the United Nations family in Kenya and Ethiopia together with local authorities on both sides.

Such initiatives represent determination and hope. They are a declaration that the soul of those on the right side of humanity can never be destroyed or prevented from living freely by terrorists.

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