The GEF actively supports climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods in Zanzibar, with a specific focus on the seaweed farming sector, which is crucial for over 20,000 farmers—mostly women—in the region. Here a woman identified as Jazaa is pictured working as a seaweed farmer. She carefully attaches little seaweed seedlings to the rope that she will harvest after two months. Credit: Natalija Gormalova/Climate Visuals Countdown

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Apr 16 2026 (IPS)

The Global Environment Facility, widely known as the GEF, plays a central role in financing environmental protection across the world. It supports developing countries in tackling climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, pollution, and threats to ecosystems.

Since its establishment in the early 1990s, the GEF has grown as a multilateral environmental fund, supporting projects in more than 170 countries.

Over time, the GEF has evolved into what it calls a “family of funds”, each targeting a specific global environmental challenge while operating under a shared strategic framework.

This explainer looks at how the GEF funding works, the origins of its financing model, and the role of six major funds that channel resources toward global environmental goals.

While the GEF predates the 1992 Rio ‘Earth’ Summit, its importance as a financial mechanism grew after the summit. Here UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali opens the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which aimed to develop a global blueprint for balancing economic development with environmental protection. Credit: Michos Tzavaras/UN Photo

Origins of the GEF Funding Model

The GEF was created in 1991, before the Rio ‘Earth’ Summit in 1992, which aimed to develop a global blueprint for balancing economic development with environmental protection; however, its importance grew after the summit.

The Rio Summit produced three major environmental conventions. These were the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity, and, later in 1994, the Convention to Combat Desertification. The GEF became the financial mechanism for these agreements, meaning it mobilises and distributes funds to help countries implement them.

Over the past 35 years, the GEF has expanded its mandate. Today it supports multiple conventions and environmental initiatives through a structured set of trust funds. This architecture allows the facility to coordinate funding across different environmental priorities while maintaining specialised programs for each global commitment.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is now focusing on solving environmental problems together instead of separately. It looks at climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution as connected issues and works with governments, international groups, civil society, and businesses to address them.

The GEF Trust Fund was initially created to support multiple environmental agreements simultaneously. Over time, countries preferred more specific funding for their particular needs.

Because of these changes, the GEF now has different funds, each designed for different purposes and methods of giving money.

Some funds – like the Trust Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), and part of the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) – use a system that helps countries know in advance how much funding they can expect.

The GEF Trust Fund

The Global Environment Facility Trust Fund is the main source of funds for the GEF. It provides grants to support environmental projects in developing countries.

The Trust Fund finances activities across several environmental areas.

These include

• Biodiversity conservation,
• Climate change mitigation,
• Land degradation control,
• International waters management, and
• Chemicals and waste reduction.

Countries receive funding through a system known as the System for Transparent Allocation of Resources, or STAR, which distributes funds based on their environmental needs and eligibility.

Projects funded by the Trust Fund often focus on creating global environmental benefits. These may include:

• Protecting endangered species,
• Restoring ecosystems,
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and
• Improving pollution management systems.

The Trust Fund operates through periodic “replenishment” cycles. Donor countries pledge new contributions every four years, which allows the GEF to finance programs during the next funding period. For example, the GEF-9 cycle will cover the period from July 2026 to June 2030 and focus on scaling up environmental investments while mobilising private capital and strengthening country ownership of environmental policies.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has created Integrated Programs. These are special programs designed to address multiple environmental goals at the same time in a more coordinated and efficient way.

For example, the Food Systems Integrated Program does not fund separate projects for climate change, biodiversity, and land degradation. Instead, it combines them into one unified project, which helps achieve stronger and longer-lasting results while making better use of funding.

The GEF helps fund biodiversity across the globe, helping to create conditions to prevent the further endangerment of species like the Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo abelii). Credit: Thomas Gabernig/Unsplash

Global Biodiversity Framework Fund

The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund is a relatively new component of the GEF family of funds. It was created to help countries implement the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was adopted in 2022 under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The biodiversity framework sets ambitious targets for protecting nature by 2030. Its most prominent targets include the “30 by 30” target, which calls for protecting at least 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean areas by the end of the decade.  The Framework also sets a 30 percent target for the restoration of ecosystems and a target of mobilising 30 billion dollars in international financial flows to developing countries for biodiversity action.

The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund supports actions that help countries meet these targets.

Actions that are supported include the following:

• Expanding protected areas,
• Restoring degraded ecosystems,
• Protecting endangered species, and
• Strengthening biodiversity monitoring.

Another important focus is the integration of biodiversity into economic planning. Many projects supported by this fund work with governments and businesses to match financial flows with biodiversity goals. This means reducing financial support for activities that damage the environment and encouraging more sustainable farming, forestry, and fishing practices.

By providing targeted financing for biodiversity commitments, the fund helps translate global agreements into practical actions at the national and local levels.

It is also important to highlight that the fund sets a target of providing at least 20% of its resources to support actions by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This form of direct financing is unique for a multilateral environmental fund.  To date, this target has been exceeded and mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility are considering replicating this approach.

GEF-9 biodiversity investments will bring together four interconnected pathways:

• Scaling up financial flows to close the nature financing gap,
• Embedding environmental priorities in national development strategies,
• Mobilising private capital through blended finance, and
• Empowering Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and civil society as active conservation partners.

“A renewed emphasis on the Forest Biomes Integrated Program will continue directing investment into the landscapes most critical for achieving 30×30 – ensuring that GEF financing remains focused where the stakes are highest,” said Chizuru Aoki, the head of the GEF Conventions and Funds Division.

Medicinal and aromatic plant species, such as the baobab, are often exploited; however, the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing aims to ensure fair use of the planet’s genetic resources and secure benefits for Indigenous knowledge holders. Credit Noah Grossenbacher/Unsplash

Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund

The Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund supports countries in implementing the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing. This international agreement, part of the Convention on Biological Diversity, aims to make sure that the genetic resources of the planet are used fairly and equitably, with benefits shared with those who provide them.

Genetic resources include plants, animals, and microorganisms that are used in research and commercial products such as medicines, cosmetics, and agricultural technologies. Historically, many developing countries have expressed concerns that companies and researchers benefit from these resources without sharing profits or knowledge.

The Nagoya Protocol fixes these issues by requiring users to do the following:

• Get permission from the country providing the resources, and
• Agree on how benefits (like money or knowledge) will be shared.

The fund supports countries by helping them:

• Create laws and rules for using genetic resources,
• Improve monitoring systems, and
• Build skills among researchers and policymakers.

Projects funded also support Indigenous peoples and local communities, who often hold traditional knowledge associated with biological resources. Protecting this knowledge and ensuring fair compensation is a key objective of the Nagoya framework.

Least Developed Countries Fund

The Least Developed Countries Fund focuses on supporting climate adaptation in the world’s most vulnerable nations. These countries often face severe environmental risks but lack the finances and systems to respond efficiently.

The fund supports the preparation and implementation of National Adaptation Programs of Action and National Adaptation Plans. These are country-specific strategies that identify the most urgent climate risks facing each country and outline measures to reduce vulnerability.

Typical projects include the following:

• Strengthening climate-resilient agriculture,
• Improving water management systems,
• Protecting coastal zones, and
• Building early warning systems for extreme weather events.

Because many least developed countries face multiple environmental issues at once, the fund often supports integrated projects that address climate change alongside biodiversity conservation and land management.

This funding system makes sure that the poorest and most vulnerable countries get the help they need to deal with climate change, even though they did very little to cause it.

Villagers in Nyamisati, Rufiji District, wade through muddy tidal flats to plant mangrove seedlings—part of a grassroots effort to curb saline intrusion that has begun to poison nearby rice paddies as saltwater seeps underground. The initiative reflects growing local responses to environmental degradation driven by human activity along Tanzania’s coast. The GEF supports projects like these that help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

Special Climate Change Fund

The Special Climate Change Fund supports climate action in developing countries and works alongside the Least Developed Countries Fund.

While the Least Developed Countries Fund focuses on the poorest nations, this fund helps other developing countries that are also affected by climate change.

It supports projects that:

• Help countries prepare for climate impacts,
• Include climate planning in development and infrastructure,
• Improve water management and agriculture.
• Reduce disaster risks, and
• Promote environmentally friendly technologies.

The SCCF also, in some cases, supports mitigation efforts, particularly when they involve innovative technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By financing both adaptation and mitigation initiatives, the fund contributes to global efforts to stabilise the climate system.

Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency Trust Fund

The Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency Trust Fund supports countries in implementing transparency requirements under the Paris Agreement.

Under this agreement, countries must regularly report their greenhouse gas emissions and track their progress on climate goals. However, many developing countries do not have the tools or skills to do this properly.

This fund helps by supporting:

• Training for government officials,
• Creation of national emissions data systems, and
• Better monitoring and reporting methods.

Strong reporting systems are important because they:

• Help track climate progress,
• Build trust between countries, and
• Ensure countries meet their commitments.

The fund helps developing countries improve their climate reporting so they can fully take part in global climate efforts.

How the “family of funds” works together

One of the defining features of the GEF funding model is that each part speaks to the others.

Think of it like a team of funds working together, rather than separate, isolated programs.

These funds are coordinated so they can:

• Support the same project from different angles,
• Avoid duplication (no overlapping funding for the same purpose), and
• Align with global environmental agreements.

For example:

• A biodiversity project might use:
  • The main GEF Trust Fund
  • Plus the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund
• A climate adaptation project could combine:
  • Least Developed Countries Fund
  • Special Climate Change Fund

This ‘family’ structure improves:

• Coordination, so different funds work in sync,
• Efficiency, so funds work with less waste and duplication, and
• Flexibility, so projects can tap into multiple funding sources.

Environmental problems are interconnected. A single project (like forest conservation) can:

• Reduce carbon emissions,
• Protect biodiversity,
• Improve water systems, and
• Avoid land degradation.

Because of the integrated funding system, the GEF can support all these goals at once, rather than funding them separately.

The “family of funds” is a coordinated funding system that allows the GEF to:

• Combine resources;
• Support complex, multi-sector projects; and
• Maximise environmental impact

The Future of GEF Financing

As global environmental crises grow, so does the demand for money and resources to meet climate and biodiversity needs. International assessments suggest that hundreds of billions of dollars are needed each year.

The GEF aims to play a “catalytic” role in closing this gap – in short, the GEF acts as a “catalyst” or tool for using limited public funds to unlock much larger investments.

Its funding model mobilises additional resources from

• Governments,
• Development banks, and
• Private investors.

“In practical terms, the mechanisms being supported in GEF-9 include debt-for-nature and debt-for-climate swaps, green bonds, pooled investment vehicles, and outcome-based financing structures. Each of these can serve a different purpose depending on the context – but the common thread is that they allow the GEF to use its resources strategically to unlock much larger pools of capital from the private sector, multiplying the environmental impact that public funding alone could achieve,” Aoki said.

Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Trump 2.0 has been marked by the blatantly aggressive exercise of power to secure US interests as defined by him. While many recent trends even predate his first term, his reduced use of ‘soft power’ has exposed his bullying, extortionary use of US power.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The US has illegally weaponised more laws and policies, especially by unilaterally imposing sanctions and tariffs, especially on dissenting regimes.

Often, such threats are not ends in themselves but actually weapons to strengthen the US bargaining position to secure more advantageous deals.

Under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, members are obliged to extend ‘most favoured nation’ status to all other member nations.

On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced supposedly ‘reciprocal tariffs’, ostensibly responding to others having trade surpluses with the US.

Appealing to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is futile, as the US has blocked the appointment of Appellate Body members since the Obama presidency.

Trump 2.0 has also been trying to get rich investors and governments – mainly from Europe, Japan, and the oil-rich Gulf states – to invest in the US.

Most such investments are in financial markets, rather than the real economy. Such portfolio investments have propped up asset prices, even bubbles.

Trump’s bullying is resented but has not been very effective vis-à-vis strong adversaries. Consequently, allies have been most affected and resentful.

Deepening stagflation
Meanwhile, much of the world economy has never really recovered from the COVID-19 slowdown, while Western sanctions and tariffs have raised production costs, worsening inflation.

Recent trends have also deepened the stagnation since 2009. Many governments and the IMF have made things worse by cutting spending when most needed.

Impacts have varied, generally worse in poorer countries, where the IMF limits policy options and credit rating agencies raise borrowing costs.

US Fed chair Powell’s interest rate hikes, ostensibly to address inflation, also reversed ‘quantitative easing’, which had lowered interest rates from 2009.

Trump’s aggression has reduced economic engagement with the US, inadvertently accelerating de-dollarisation, thus undermining the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’.

Central banks worldwide have responded predictably, refusing to be counter-cyclical in the face of economic slowdown, citing inflationary pressures.

Transactional?
Trump’s transactional approach has meant bilateral, one-on-one dealings, further advantaging the world’s dominant power.

Involving one-time asymmetric ‘zero-sum games’, such transactions ensure the US gains, necessarily at the expense of the ‘other’. Transactionalism also enables ‘buying influence’, or corruption.

The resulting uncertainty reduces investments, not only in the US, but everywhere, due to greater perceived risks, exacerbating the stagnation. Thus, Trump 2.0 policies have reduced investment and growth.

The whole world, including the US, has suffered much ‘collateral damage’, but the White House seems content as long as others lose more.

Unipolar sovereigntism
The transitions to unipolar sovereigntism and then to a multipolar world have been much debated.

Three decades ago, the influential US Council on Foreign Relations’ journal, Foreign Affairs, argued that the post-Cold War unipolar world was actually ‘sovereigntist’.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s ‘Daddy’ reference to Trump suggests that the sovereigntist moment is not quite over, as the US ‘No Kings’ mobilisation suggests.

Trump’s ‘America First’ clearly opposes multilateralism, generating broader concerns. He has withdrawn the US from many, but not all, multilateral bodies.

On January 7, the US withdrew from 66 international organisations deemed “wasteful, ineffective, or harmful”, addressing issues it claimed were “contrary” to national interests.

Trump’s continued, selective use of multilateral bodies has served him well, retaining privileges, e.g., permanent membership of the UN Security Council with veto power.

The UN Security Council’s Gaza ceasefire resolution was used to create and legitimise his Board of Peace, now touted by some as an alternative to the UN!

Trump will not withdraw from the WTO as its Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement is key to US tech bros’ trillions from transnational IP.

End of soft power
Some of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 20th remarks at Davos are telling:

“More recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination… If we are not at the table, we are on the menu.”

Besides exercising overwhelming military superiority, Trump 2.0 has increasingly weaponised rules, agreements and economic relations to its advantage.

The abandonment of ‘soft power’ – accelerated by Elon Musk’s DOGE – has ripped the velvet glove off US ‘hegemony’, exposing the mailed fist beneath.

USAID and other US government-funded agencies and programmes have been crucial for soft power, fostering the illusion of domination with consent. Abandoning soft power may well increase the costs of achieving America First.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Kumi Naidoo with Brazilian First Lady Janja Lula da Silva and Brazilian Cultural Minister Margareth Menezes and others at a panel called “Narratives and Storytelling to Face the Climate Crisis” during the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). Credit: Aline Massuda/COP30

By Joyce Chimbi
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 18 2025 (IPS)

Decades ago, a little girl was born in a place called Cleveland, Ohio, in the heart of the United States of America. Born to a woman from the deep South, the place of Martin Luther King, her mother left her ancestral lands for the economic opportunities in the north.

“Off she went, making it all the way to the east side of Cleveland,” says Rev. Dr. Angelique Walker-Smith. “To the place where most people who look like me lived, and still live, and are subjected to policies of injustice, race and gender.”

Here, she found a more pressing issue.

“I couldn’t breathe, my mother couldn’t breathe, and we all couldn’t breathe,” she narrates.

This urbanization, driven by fossil fuels, occurred in Cleveland, Ohio, where her mother relocated and where her relatives still live today. During the Great Migration, over six million people of African descent traveled from the South, believing that economic opportunities would be better in the North.

Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith, regional president of the World Council of Churches, speaks at an event titled ‘Faith for Fossil Free Future.’ Credit: IPS

“Upon our arrival, we discovered that we just couldn’t breathe.”

As one of eight regional presidents representing the World Council of Churches, Walker-Smith says for the World Council of Churches in over 105 countries, over 350 million adherents, and over 350 national churches all over the world, supporting the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty “is all about the issue of injustice, life and life more abundantly.”

“We are saying yes to the transition from fossil fuels to renewable life-giving energy.”

Kumi Naidoo, a prominent South African human rights and environmental justice activist and the President of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, says if the goal is renewable life-giving energy, the world has been going the wrong way for the past 30 years.

“If you come home from work and see water coming from the bathroom, you pick up the mop. But then you realized you left the tap running and the sink stopper on. What will you do first? Of course! You’ll turn off the water and pull the stopper. You will not start mopping the floor first.”

“For 30 years since the time science told us we need to change our energy system and many of our other systems, what we’ve been doing is mopping up the floor. If fossil fuels—oil, coal, and gas—account for 86 percent of what drives climate change, then we must turn off the tap.”

Masahiro Yokoyama was speaking at an event titled Faith for a Fossil-Free Future co-sponsored by Soka Gakkai International. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Naidoo was speaking at an event titled ‘Faith for Fossil Free Future’ co-sponsored by several organizations, including Soka Gakkai International (SGI), Laudato Si’ Movement, GreenFaith—a global interfaith environmental coalition and EcoJudaism, a Jewish charity leading the UK Jewish Community’s response to the climate and nature crisis.

He spoke about the contradiction of the climate talks at the doorsteps of the Amazon, while licensing for drilling is still ongoing in the Amazon even as the people in the Amazon protest, calling for a fossil-free Amazon.

Continuing with the thread of contradictions, Naidoo said, “Some of you might be shocked that even though fossil fuels are 86 percent of the cause of climate change, it took 28 years before the words ‘fossil fuels’ could even be mentioned in the COP document. It is as absurd as Alcoholics Anonymous holding 28 years of conferences before they get the backbone to mention alcohol in an outcome document. If we continue on this path, we'll warm up the planet to the point where we destroy our soil and water, and it becomes so hot we can't plant food. The end result is that we'll be gone. The planet will still be here. And the good news is, once we become extinct as a species, the forests will grow back, and the oceans will recover.

“And actually, staying with that analogy, can you imagine how absurd it is that the largest delegation to this COP this year, last year, and every year is not even the host country?

“It’s not even Brazil—for every 25 delegates that are attending the COP, one of them is from the fossil fuel industry. That’s the equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous having the largest delegation to its conference annually from the alcohol industry.”

People, groups and movements of different faiths and consciousness are increasingly raising their voices in robust support of a rapid fossil fuel phase-out, a massive and equitable upsurge in renewable energy, and the resources to make it happen—in the form of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Naidoo says the treaty is “a critical success ingredient for us not (only) to save the planet, but to secure our children and their children’s future, reminding ourselves that the planet does not need any saving.

“If we continue on this path, we warm up the planet to the point where we destroy our soil and water, and it becomes so hot we can’t plant food. The end result is that we’ll be gone. The planet will still be here. And the good news is, once we become extinct as a species, the forests will grow back, and the oceans will recover.”

This treaty is a proposed global agreement to halt the expansion of new fossil fuel exploration and production and to phase out existing sources like coal, oil, and gas in a just and equitable manner.

The initiative seeks to provide a legal framework to complement the Paris Agreement by directly addressing the supply side of fossil fuels.

Its ultimate goal is to support a global transition to renewable energy and is supported by a growing coalition of countries, cities, organizations, scientists, and activists. More importantly, it has multi-faith support.

Masahiro Yokoyama of the SGI, which is a diverse global community of individuals in 192 countries and territories who practice Nichiren Buddhism, spoke about the intersection between faith and energy transition and why the fossil fuel phase-out cannot wait.

“The just transition is also about how young people in faith can be the driving force to transformations.”

“So, a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, in my view, is not only about phasing out other fossil fuels but it also represents an ethical framework.”

“It’s a way to move forward while protecting people’s livelihoods and dignity within the context of the environment and also the local business and economies. So, a just transition is not merely a technical issue but a question of ethics, inclusion and solidarity,” Masahiro Yokoyama said.

The most pressing issue at hand is how to implement the treaty in the current environmental context.

“The pathway that we are following is a pathway that has been followed before. We are not going to negotiate this treaty within the COP or within the United Nations system. We’re going to do what the Landmine Treaty did.

“The landmine treaty was negotiated by 44 countries outside of the UN system and then brought to the UN General Assembly for ratification. The second question that people ask, justifiably, is, what about the powerful exporting countries, for example?” Naidoo asked.

“They’re not going to sign it. And to that we find answers in the landmine treaty. Up to today, the United States, Russia and China have not signed the Landmine treaty. But once the treaty was signed, the social license to continue as business as usual was taken away. And you saw a drastic change.”

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

The UN General Assembly endorses New York Declaration on a two-State solution between Israel and Palestine. 12 September 2025. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Oct 16 2025 (IPS)

The ceasefire agreement and the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners are only the first steps on the long and treacherous road that could end the calamitous, decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In my recent article, “A Rare Alignment:The World Stands Ready, Are the Palestinians?”

I tackled what the Palestinians must do to realize their national aspirations. In this article, I address what the Israelis must do not only to end their conflict with the Palestinians, but also to salvage Israel’s moral standing, which lies in ruin in Gaza.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached a new breaking point, more precipitous now than any time before. Although Israelis have experienced unfathomable trauma as a result of Hamas’ horrific attack, now is the time for all Israelis to carefully examine the circumstances that have brought them to this fateful crossroads.

Decades of violent conflict and the persistent denial of each other’s rights culminated in Hamas’ savagery, followed by the longest and most devastating war, which has reframed the nature of the conflict. It made it clearer than ever before that those who wrote the obituary for a two-state solution must now rewrite their script. As much as co-existence is inescapable, so is the inevitable rise of a Palestinian state.

Choosing the right path would require courage and a new vision. The Israelis must first disabuse themselves of several beliefs embedded in their psyche and push for a just solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, which is central to gradually restoring Israel’s shattered moral standing, which only the Israelis themselves can reclaim.

Existential Threat
The Israelis have been indoctrinated to believe that a Palestinian state would pose an existential threat and must be prevented at all costs, which has been falsely promulgated for decades by egocentric, nationalist and corrupt politicians like Netanyahu. At this juncture, the Israelis need to accept the irrevocable reality of Palestinian existence and take action to mitigate their fear rather than perpetuate enmity.

Israel was created as a sanctuary for any Jew who wishes to live in peace and security. This millennium-old dream however, cannot be realized, as time has shown, as long as the Palestinians are denied a state of their own.

The Israelis need to overcome their anxieties and misguided beliefs by finding meaning and self-affirmation, which does not hinge on denying the Palestinians their own state. They should step away from the deeply rooted, misguided fear that a Palestinian state indeed poses an existential threat, because without it, Israel renders itself permanently insecure, as time has shown.

Hatred Toward the Palestinians
The Israelis’ hatred of the Palestinians is rooted in a century-old conflict, which has only deepened due to the continuing acts of violence and the prevalence of mutually acrimonious narratives. This is further compounded by the Israelis’ belief that the Palestinians refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist. Instead of focusing on practical measures of reconciliation necessitated by the inescapable coexistence, they clung to hatred, which subconsciously justifies their continuing resistance to Palestinian statehood.

A well-known proverb notes that “Hatred is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Indeed, hatred is self-destructive, and letting go of it is essential for peaceful coexistence. The Israelis must live in the present to free themselves from the shackles of past prejudices against the Palestinians and reach out rather than shun them.

Such an approach may surprise many Israelis, who will find that generally the Palestinians are a willing partner eager to engage, albeit only if they believe they stand a good chance of realizing their national aspirations.

Refusing the Reality of Coexistence
The Israelis need to come to terms with the fact that accepting what cannot be changed and embracing it with understanding and even compassion would ultimately serve their own interests. In essence, Israelis must use their collective power to create the conditions that produce mutual political, economic, and security gains, which is the only way to coexist peacefully. Israelis must ask what the alternative to peaceful coexistence is.

Has anyone come up with a viable and mutually acceptable alternative whereby both can live in peace, short of a two-state solution?

The irony is that while Netanyahu spent decades trying to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, his devastating onslaught on the Palestinians has only produced precisely the opposite. It has rallied the international community to support an independent Palestinian state like never before.

Israel can annex all the West Bank and Gaza, assuming that it could live with international isolation, sanctions, expulsion from various international organizations, etc., but where will the Palestinians go?

For how long can seven million Israeli Jews suppress seven million Palestinians living in their midst and around them? How many Palestinians can they kill, displace, or starve to death? What choice would the Palestinians be left with other than armed struggle?

Since coexistence is inescapable, under what kind of an umbrella do the Israelis want to live? Hamas’ savagery and Israel’s devastating retaliation only attest to the consequences of decades-long mutual systematic dehumanization.

Unless the Israelis accept coexistence as an unmitigated reality, they will have to raise generations of warriors trained to kill Palestinians, destroy their properties, and live by the sword for as far as the eye can see.

The Catastrophic Loss of Israel’s Moral Standing
There are no words to describe the lasting damage that the Netanyahu government has inflicted on Israel as a country and the Israeli people. The whole world was astounded to see Jews, of all people, committing crimes against humanity in broad daylight beyond the capacity of any human being with a conscience to grasp.

Yes, the world applies a double standard when it comes to the Jews, and for good reason. The Jews have suffered for millennia from persecution, discrimination, and expulsion, culminating with the Holocaust, and are expected, because of their tragic experience, to uphold the sanctity of life.

And while the Jews have lived by and spread the values of caring, compassion, empathy, and altruism—values that have shielded them throughout their dispersion—the barbaric Netanyahu government has betrayed these tenets of Judaism. It has left Israel, and by tragic extension, Jews round the world, with no moral ground to stand on while precipitating the exponential rise of antisemitism.

It is hard to imagine how any Israeli government would desert these values and perpetrate this inconceivable cruelty and vengeance upon the Palestinians. The killing of tens of thousands of women, children, and the elderly, the bombing of hospitals and schools, and the deliberate starvation of a whole people as a weapon of war, sent shock waves throughout the world, bewildering friends and foes.

The countries that admired Israel for its incredible achievements in all walks of life are now looking at it as a pariah state that has lost its moral compass and its way.

My Plea to the Israelis—Facing a Moral Reckoning
No one can make light of the trauma and the horrendous suffering so many of you have and continue to endure because of Hamas’ butchery and heartless imprisonment of the hostages. But your government’s retaliatory war, which quickly became a war of revenge and retribution that killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, did not do justice to your sacrifices by committing horrific war crimes in your name.

The war in Gaza and its consequences demand that Israel face a moral reckoning. You need to confront your government’s actions that plundered the depths of human immorality. Your moral obligation is to rise against Netanyahu’s government.

Remember, the Palestinians will recover from the catastrophe they have endured, rebuild their lives, and coalesce around a renewed effort, with the mounting support of the international community, to realize their aspiration for statehood.

Israel, however, has sustained a far greater catastrophe by forsaking Jewish values. It will take a generation (or more) before your country can regain a measure of moral standing, and that is only if it ends the conflict with the Palestinians in a fair and just way based on a two-state solution.

Now it’s time for accountability. Following the release of the hostages, you now need to embark on bringing an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands and demand the immediate resignation of Netanyahu and force him to face a commission of inquiry about his conduct before and after Hamas’ attack.

What you need to pursue now is building on the ceasefire and demanding that a newly-formed government move step-by-step toward implementing the Trump peace plan, which must culminate in establishing a Palestinian state.

This will not be a gift to the Palestinians. Rather, this is what you must do to transform the calamitous war in Gaza and the horrific pain, suffering, and losses you have sustained into a breakthrough on the road toward the long-awaited and desperately needed peaceful Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

US President Joseph R. Biden Jr.addresses the general debate of the UN General Assembly’s 76th session. September 2021. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 9 2023 (IPS)

With 2023 underway, Democrats in office are still dodging the key fact that most of their party’s voters don’t want President Biden to run for re-election. Among prominent Democratic politicians, deference is routine while genuine enthusiasm is sparse.

Many of the endorsements sound rote. Late last month, retiring senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont came up with this gem: “I want him to do whatever he wants. If he does, I’ll support him.”

Joe Biden keeps saying he intends to be the Democratic nominee in 2024. Whether he will be is an open question — and progressives should strive to answer it with a firm No.

The next presidential election will be exceedingly grim if all the Democratic Party can offer as an alternative to the neofascist Republican Party is an incumbent who has so often served corporate power and consistently serves the military-industrial complex.

The Biden administration has taken some significant antitrust steps to limit rampant monopolization. But overall realities are continuing to widen vast economic inequalities that are grist for the spinning mill of pseudo-populist GOP demagogues.

Meanwhile, President Biden rarely conveys a sense of urgency or fervent discontent with present-day social conditions. Instead, he routinely comes off as “status-quo Joe.”

For the future well-being of so many millions of people, and for the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party in 2024, representing the status quo invites cascading disasters. A few months ago, Bernie Sanders summed up this way:

“The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy.”

Interviewed days ago, Sanders said: “It pains me very, very much that we’re seeing more and more working-class people voting Republican. Politically, that is a disaster, and Democrats have to recognize that serious problem and address it.”

But President Biden doesn’t seem to recognize the serious problem, and he fails to address it.

During the last two years, domestic policy possibilities have been curbed by Biden’s frequent and notable refusals to use the power of the presidency for progress. He did not issue many of the potential executive orders that could have moved the country forward despite Senate logjams.

At the same time, “bully pulpit” advocacy for workers’ rights, voter rights, economic justice, climate action and much more has been muted or nonexistent.

Biden seems unable or unwilling to articulate a social-justice approach to such issues. As for the continuing upward spike in Pentagon largesse while giving human needs short shrift, Biden was full of praise for the record-breaking, beyond-bloated $858 billion military spending bill that he signed in late December.

While corporate media’s reporters and pundits are much more inclined to critique his age than his policies, what makes Biden most problematic for so many voters is his antiquated political approach.

Running for a second term would inevitably cast Biden as a defender of current conditions — in an era when personifying current conditions is a heavy albatross that weighs against electoral success.

A Hart Research poll of registered voters in November found that only 21 percent said the country was “headed in the right direction” while 72 percent said it was “off on the wrong track.”

As the preeminent symbol of the way things are, Biden is all set to be a vulnerable standard-bearer in a country where nearly three-quarters of the electorate say they don’t like the nation’s current path.

But for now’ anyway, no progressive Democrat in Congress is willing to get into major trouble with the Biden White House by saying he shouldn’t run, let alone by indicating a willingness to challenge him in the early 2024 primaries.

Meanwhile, one recent poll after another showed that nearly 60 percent of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again. A New York Times poll last summer found that a stunning 94 percent of Democrats under 30 years old would prefer a different nominee.

Although leaning favorably toward Biden overall, mass-media coverage has occasionally supplied the kind of candor that Democratic officeholders have refused to provide on the record. “The party’s relief over holding the Senate and minimizing House losses in the midterms has gradually given way to collective angst about what it means if Biden runs again,” NBC News reported days before Christmas.

Conformist support from elected Democrats for another Biden campaign reflects a shortage of authentic representation on Capitol Hill. The gap is gaping, for instance, between leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the constituency — the progressive base — they claim to represent. In late November, CPC chair Pramila Jayapal highlighted the gap when she went out of her way to proclaim that “I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out.”

Is such leadership representing progressives to the establishment or the other way around?

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy. His next book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, will be published in Spring 2023 by The New Press.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: White House.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jan 12 2021 (IPS)

When the “year in which we lived dangerously” has ended, let’s ask about a “new era”, once the defeat of Donald Trump has been confirmed.

The new scene is presided by uncertainty. This sentiment is caused by damage caused by the Trump presidency. The only doubt is about the permanence of the disaster caused by the four-year period that is now ending.

Inserted in the context of satisfaction with the cessation of the nightmare, a prediction of a certain nostalgia is detected.

It is based on a strategy of confrontation in the face of what was labeled as the formation of a dictatorship within the oldest democracy in documented history. We wondered what we would do when we woke up. We were obsessed by a schedule filled by a single issue.

Some of us feared that in the supreme moment of expectation of the success of a confrontational strategy we would be reminded that in the panorama of importance and loneliness of questioning the irrational policy of the president we would be unfairly accused. Unusually, we had had an unwanted accomplice in the urgent eviction of the uncomfortable tenant from the White House.

We did not know how we could be grateful, so to speak, for the assistance of the pandemic that still grips the planet. The irrational behavior of the president in the successive stages of the Cobid19, its development, expansion and implantation throughout the planet, had become Trump’s worst enemy and the best ally of the opposition’s behavior.

Joaquín Roy

At the same time there was an awful sentiment consisting of the implantation of the virus and the consequent denial of Trump joining the efforts of the political opposition to achieve the defenestration, even if it was at the limit of his administration.

Every infected human being in the United States, plus every certified death, followed up by Trump’s erratic health policy, were recorded as “votes” in the tally of the November 3 election. The hope that Covid-19 would magically vanish overnight, as Trump himself surrealistically predicted in the early spring of 2020, would spell the demise of the towering enemy that had loomed over the White House.

Meanwhile, the opposition to the president in the apparent majority of the United States and in a universal proportion abroad were dedicating their efforts on an agenda exclusively full of reaction to each one of the president’s outrages. But there was an absence of a strategy with an agenda for “the day after”.

In the Democratic field there was no plan for the future. The discussion about the best candidates dragged on. That detail was not clarified until the decision in favor of Biden and Harris was done. In an environment reluctant to the formation of “kitchen cabinets” there was no government program to be implemented after 3 November.

In view of the poorly concealed feeling of insecurity, it was feared that one day it would be possible to exclaim with poorly concealed nostalgia: “against Trump we lived better.”

This expression has its origin in the thought that the Spanish Communist Party expressed at the time of the re-installation of democracy in Spain after the disappearance of the Franco regime.

Its precedent was the claim that the remnants of the regime put forward: “with Franco we lived better.” The communists, their reserved space was occupied by the neo-democrats, confessed that when they were in the opposition they had more effective power than in parliamentary democracy.

The oposition to Trump may be forced to express itself in the same way once the system is fully opened at the end of January. This feeling will have based all his conduct on criticism of each and every one of the government’s “policies”.

In reality, they were merely whims expressed in the wee hours of the morning by clicking noises on the mobile. The monumental void left by Trump’s mismanagement will still be occupied by an appropriate vaccine and the verification of its excellence, a task that would be extended throughout the rest of 2021.

It will depend on the effectiveness of the implementation of the urgent measures of the new government that the electorate will not be tempted to listen again to the siren songs of 2016.

The reconstruction of the economy, the reduction of the damage caused to the neediest sectors, the better integration of immigration, and the determined fight to eliminate racism are some of the most urgent tasks of the new government.

Only with its reasonable resolution will it be avoided that part of the 70 million who voted for the outgoing president would be tempted to exclaim: “with Trump we lived better.”

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

On Friday the 24th of June, President Trump announced he was skipping a weekend at his New Jersey golf resort to ”ensure law and order in Washington”, tweeting:

I just had the privilege of signing a very strong Executive Order protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues – and combatting recent Criminal Violence. Long prison terms for these lawless acts against our Great Country!

This time, Trump acted with remarkable speed and much more decisively than he had ever done when it came to denouncing racism, or mitigating the COVID19 pandemic. What angered him was an intent to topple over an equestrian statue in Washington, on Monday 20th of June.

President Trump was already incensed by the tearing down of statues and monuments all over the country. Fuelled by the police killing of George Floyd on May 25, people expressed their anger and frustration by vandalizing and destroying monuments – so far almost two hundred have been destroyed, disifigured, or taken away. Similar incidents occur in other areas of the world, where monuments erected to honour racists, colonialists and abusers of native populations are being destroyed, or removed.

After Trump’s announcement, his White House staff added that ”monument destroyers”:

seek nothing more than to destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring. President Trump will never allow violence to control our streets, rewrite our history, or harm the American way of life.

Trump labelled the monument wreckers as left-wing extremists, ”who identify themselves with ideologies – such as Marxism” and are endowed with a ”deep ignorance of our history”. Such a statement makes one wonder what history Trump is talking about. It must be some kind of home-made construction in accordance with a statement he made in his fourth of July speech in front of Mount Rushmore:

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

What values? The vandalization of memorials began as a protest against homages to Confederate heroes. The American Civil War (1861-1865) was fought between northern states loyal to the Union and southern states, which in an effort to maintain slavery had broken loose to form The Confederate States of America. After the war, most supporters of the defeated Confederacy realized that it made little sense to argue that slavery and oppression of people of a darker complexion had been a just cause to die for. Instead, the war was recast as a battle over the principle of states’ rights and Southern honour. It was lamented that the children of brave soldiers instead of revering their fathers had to be ashamed of what they had done.

To unite the nation, the victorious U.S. Government was willing to appease the vanquished and allow them to continue discriminating against people with a different skin colour, while denying them their constitutional rights. Furthermore, it gave free reigns to local chapters of the United Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Sons of Confederate Veterans to fund and erect monuments paying homage to men who had fought for the preservation of slavery and preached inequality of human beings. Their statues and monuments now embellish parks and squares all over the U.S., an honour they occasionally share with killers of the native population, from Juan de Oñatre (1550-1626) and onwards.

It is not difficult to imagine the rancor felt by ”coloured” people while being confronted with statues praising the heroism of white oppressors. They live in a society that not long ago (and often still do) characterized them on the basis of their skin colour. As Ralph Ellison wrote in his novel Invisible Man from 1952.

I am an invisible man […] I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me […] When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me.

Trump declared that the highly visible statues of white murderers and chauvinists are among ”our most sacred memorials”. When the U.S. president affirm this as a fact I wonder if he for one second has contemplated what it means to be the descendant of victims of such ”heroes” and confronted with tangible tributes to these ruffians. Trump would probably not condemn the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue by U.S. troops. He might not disapprove of the fact that hundreds of thousands of statues of Hitler and Stalin were destroyed all over Europe, since people could not stand being confronted with images of such tyrants.

I am not shedding any tears over recently destroyed, or removed, statues representing bullies and profiteers of slave trade and forced labour like Cecil Rhodes, Edward Colston, Robert Milligan, John Cass, Leopold II of Belgium, John Hamilton in New Zealand, or some offensive colonialists in India, who now join ranks with Hoxha, Marcos, Gaddafi, Lenin, and other toppled heroes.

However, statue smashing remains a thorny issue, particularly since representations of controversial, but to a great extent beneficial personalities like Winston Churchill recently have been vandalized, as well as those of generally admirable persons like Gandhi and Frederick Douglass. The right thing would probably be not to destroy any statues at all, and when it comes to the worst tyrants and murderers follow the motto of Indiana Jones, namely that they ”belong in a museum”.

Monuments dedicated to great women and men are often erected after their deaths in remembrance of good deeds and the admiration they fostered. Worse is when dictators and vainglorious men erect monuments in their own honour, like the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo who besides having the highest mountain peak and the capital of the Dominican Republic named after himself, succeeded in entering Guinness Book of Records due to the fact that he during his lifetime had more than 2,000 statues and busts of himself erected in public places. I am somewhat sceptical to that record, assuming that Stalin and Mao Zedong were far superior champions in that particular area of self-glorification.

Another manner of glorifying a living person is to commission her/his portrait and hang it in a public space, an honour generally bestowed upon business leaders and heads of state. One example of this tradition is the official portraits of U.S. presidents, generally loaned from the National Portrait Gallery and hung in the White House. Some controversy arose when Donald J. Trump refused to bring the official portraits of his predecessor Barak Obama and his wife to the White House.

Trump has not yet decided who is going to paint his official White House portrait, though he was recently portrayed by one of USA´s highest paid portrait painters, John Howard Sanden, who painted the official portraits of George W. Bush and his wife Laura, which are ably executed but nevertheless quite bland. Sanden’s portrait of Trump was finished in August 2019 and intended as a homage to a president the artist admires:

I am grateful for the President’s strong pro-life policies, and he sees a need for Christians to defend and proclaim Biblical truth as the culture celebrates immorality in a way that would have seemed inconceivable 50 years ago. Somebody’s got to take a stand for the Lord because we’re going down the tubes.

When I quite recently saw Sanden’s portrait of Donald J. Trump I was struck by the details in the background. On his website, John Sanden describes his painting:

The President wears his signature red tie and dark suit and sits in an attitude of thoughtful determination, an expression well-known to all Americans. Just behind the President´s chair is the American flag, the honoring of which has been a central theme of his Presidential leadership.

As a matter of fact, the Stars and Stripes does not appear in any of the White House´s presidential portraits, but the most curious prop is a miniature of the bronze statue of President Andrew Jackson that occupies the center of Lafayette Park, opposite the White House. The inclusion of Jackson’s equestrian statue in a portrait of Trump now seems to be almost prophetic. As mentioned above, an effort to topple the statue was made on the 6th of June and perpetrators have been charged for attempting to ”destroy federal property”. They will thus be the first offenders charged according to Trump’s new directives and thus run the risk of being condemned to ”up to ten years of imprisonment for lawless acts against our Great Country.”

Why did they try to demolish Andrew Jackson’s statue? Probably because Jackson was a plantation owner who also owned a cotton cleaning factory, and an adjoining whiskey distillery, operated by 150 slaves. One of Jackson’s most controversial decisons was his enforcement of the Indian Removal Act, which allowed for the forced expulsion of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. Approximately 45,000 Native Americans were forcibly displaced during Jackson’s presidency. His policies were continued by his successor Martin Van Buren, when an already planned ”relocation” of Cherokees was initiated, about 4,000 men, women and children died during this so-called Trail of Tears. The anger against the Andrew Jackson´s memorial might thus be understandable, though in its defence it may be said that is not at all a bad piece of art. What is incomprehensible, however, is why the ”historically conscious” Donald J. Trump has chosen to have a replica of it as a background for his portrait.

Ellison, Raph (2001) Invisible Man. London: Penguin Classics. Foner, Eric (1988) Reconstruction: America´s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper & Row. Wallace, Anthony F.C. (1993). The long, bitter trail. Andrew Jackson and the Indians. New York. http://www.johnhowardsanden.com/president_donald_trump.asp

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

African migrants in Libya. Libya is one of the main departure points for African migrants, fleeing poverty and war, to try to reach Italy by boat. Some 3,800 migrants and refugees are held in government-run detention centres in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya in what human rights groups and the U.N. say are often inhuman conditions. A military strike on a detention centre for migrants in Libya claimed dozens of lives on Tuesday. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

A military strike on a detention centre for migrants in Libya that claimed dozens of lives on Wednesday Jul. 3 has reignited a debate over the poor treatment of the mainly African people who transit through the turbulent country.

The United Nations has called for an investigation into the strike on Tajoura detention centre, which held some 600 people in a suburb of the Libyan capital Tripoli — part of a global chorus condemning the attack, which killed at least 44 people and injured 130 others.

But the strike followed repeated warnings about the vulnerability of migrants in guardhouses near Libya’s hotspots, and raises tough questions about whether it was necessary to lock them up in the first place.

“This is not the first time that migrants and refugees have been caught in the crossfire, with multiple airstrikes on or near detention centres across Tripoli since the conflict started in the city,” said Prince Alfani, a coordinator for the humanitarian medical group Médecins Sans Frontières.

“What is needed now is not empty condemnation but the urgent and immediate evacuation of all refugees and migrants held in detention centres out of Libya.”

By one estimate, some 3,800 migrants and refugees are held in government-run detention centres in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya in what human rights groups and the U.N. say are often inhuman conditions.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called for a war crimes probe into the strike, while condemning the “overcrowding” in Libya’s lockups for migrants and the rape and other violations that occur inside them.

“I also repeat my call for the release of detained migrants and refugees as a matter of urgency, and for their access to humanitarian protection, collective shelters or other safe places, well away from areas that are likely to be affected by the hostilities,” said Bachelet.

Libya is one of the main departure points for African migrants, fleeing poverty and war, trying to reach Italy by boat. But many are picked up and brought back by the Libyan coastguard, in a scheme backed by the European Union.

Two U.N. agencies — the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR, the U.N.’s Refugee Agency — said they had relocated 1,500 refugees from lockups in Libya’s hotspots to safer areas in recent months.

“Including those victims at Tajoura, some 3,300 migrants and refugees remain arbitrarily detained inside and around Tripoli,” the two agencies said in a statement. “Moreover, migrants and refugees face increasing risks as clashes intensify nearby. These centres must be closed.”

In May, UNHCR had already called for the Tajoura centre to be evacuated after a projectile landed some 100 metres away, injuring two migrants. Shrapnel from that blast tore through the lockup’s roof and almost hit a child.

This week’s strike was the highest publicly reported toll from an air strike or shelling since eastern forces under Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive three months ago to take Tripoli, the base of Libya’s internationally-recognised government.

The U.N. Security Council was expected to condemn the attack late Wednesday,  Jul. 3, though it remained unclear whether it was the fault of Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) force, the U.N.-backed Tripoli-based government’s forces or another group.

Haftar’s LNA, allied to a parallel government based in eastern Libya, has seen its advance on Tripoli held up by robust defences on the outskirts of the capital, and said it would start heavy air strikes after “traditional means” of war had been exhausted.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was “outraged” by the “horrendous incident” and called for an “independent investigation” to prosecute those responsible for what many onlookers call a war crime, said his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“This incident underscores the urgency to provide all refugees and migrants with safe shelter until their asylum claims can be processed or they can be safely repatriated,” Dujarric told reporters Wednesday.

Haftar’s bid to capture Tripoli has derailed U.N. efforts to broker an end to the mayhem that has ravaged the hydrocarbon-producing North African country since the brutal, NATO-backed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

By Emily Thampoe
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2019 (IPS)

While cities around the world have been providing safe havens to refugees, a few US cities in the Upstate New York region have been integrating refugees and asylum-seekers into their communities.

Specifically, the towns of Utica, Buffalo and Syracuse, are welcoming refugees to live and work. These towns share a border with Canada and so have been allowing asylum-seekers into their communities for many years.

As of 2018, there are 69,058 immigrant residents in the Buffalo Metro Area, according to a report by New American Economy.

This is especially meaningful as immigration policies in the United States have become stricter since the Trump administration took office in 2017.

Eva Hassett, the Executive Director of the International Institute of Buffalo, told IPS: “The Trump administration has lowered the admissions ceiling for refugees coming into the US drastically. There are far lower numbers of refugees arriving in Buffalo, in New York State, in the US – historically low numbers for a program that started in 1980”.

The aforementioned towns fall into the category of “Cities of Light,” as coined by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

This refers to places around the world that have accepted refugees in a warm manner and have provided opportunities and resources that will be beneficial to both the communities and to the refugees who settle in them.

This is just one of the ways that refugees are able to lead lives that are safer than what they would experience in their home countries.

Since 1950, the UNHCR has been aiding in providing assistance to refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced and stateless people.

According to the UNHCR, common solutions for refugees include voluntary repatriation (returning to countries of origin), resettlement in another nation and integration into the host community.

Liz Throssell, the UNHCR’s Global Spokesperson for the Americas and Europe, told IPS: “For refugees who cannot go home, integration into their local community can provide a durable solution, allowing them the chance to build a new life. Integration is often a complex and gradual process, with legal, economic, social and cultural dimensions”.

“It places considerable demands placed on both the individual and the host community. But when refugees are integrated, this can bring benefits all round, as the person is able to contribute economically and socially to the community,” she declared.

With approximately 1.1 million refugees becoming citizens in the countries in which they claimed asylum, the good that Cities of Light do is evident.

These cities have given refugees a way to feel safe and welcome through bestowing governmental provisions and ways to maintain their cultural identity while being helped to adjust to a new environment.

Globally-known Cities of Light include Jakarta, Indonesia; Kigali, Rwanda; Vienna, Austria; São Paulo, Brazil; Erbil, Iraq; Altena, Germany and Gdansk, Poland.

Throssell said, “An increasing number of cities are working to empower refugees and embrace the opportunities they bring. Mayors, local authorities, social enterprises and citizens groups are on the frontlines of the global refugee response, fostering social cohesion, and protecting and assisting the forcibly displaced in their midst.”

In Buffalo, benefits have included, “Affordability, welcoming community, pro-rights and inclusion, lots of support infrastructure, good jobs and cities are easy to get around,” according to Hassett.

Similar social and economic effects have been seen in Utica, New York as well.

Although the number of refugees allowed into the United States has been noticeably cut down to 30,000 this year due, in part, to immigration policies under the Trump administration, refugees are still moving into New York state.

Hassett notes, “Refugee is an immigration status; it is conferred upon an individual by the US Department of State (DOS). Refugees arrive documented and work authorized, they are screened and greenlighted before they arrive by DOS, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They will naturalize to be legal permanent residents.”

The US refugee resettlement program (officially called Reception and Placement) was established in 1980 and provides 90 days of support and financial support to refugees entering the US under the R&P program. This is the program whose ceiling the President has lowered so drastically”.

This sort of migration is possible as residents of the region are promoting job placements, English language services and housing services in order to direct refugees who are already living in the United States to the state.

Much of this advertising is done through video campaigns by resettlement agencies, Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats and newspapers that are run by refugees.

While this will help give opportunity, it also allows New York to expand its population and the size of its workforce.

Having more people move into towns like Utica, Buffalo and Syracuse has turned areas that once were barren or unsafe, into areas that are bustling with life and culture.

By Taina Bien-Aimé
NEW YORK, Apr 9 2019 (IPS)

Prostitution policies are bubbling up again in legislative circles across the United States, but few representatives seem to have much clarity on the issue. 2020 presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris has given mixed messages on her thinking, while Bernie Sanders has said he simply has “no answer.”

At the state level, New York is moving even more quickly – and in the wrong direction. Recently elected Senators Julia Salazar and Jessica Ramos are proposing to fully decriminalize the sex trade, including pimping and sex buying.

They refer to it as “sex work,” a now ubiquitous term coined by sex trade proponents to normalize prostitution and masks its harms.

The sex trade is a multi-billion dollar global industry fueled by almost entirely male sex buyers who pay for sexual access to the most vulnerable people among us, almost always women and girls of color. It preys on individuals with histories of childhood trauma, ranging from sexual abuse to homelessness.

While criminalization of those bought and sold is extremely harmful, full decriminalization – or its close neighbor, legalization – of prostitution has also been a complete failure in the handful of places where it has been enacted.

A growing number of countries including Sweden, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Ireland, France, Norway and Israel have gone down a different path. Recognizing prostitution as a form of violence and inequality, they have removed penalties – and in most cases mandated services and exiting options – to those prostituted, while maintaining penalties on pimps, brothel-owners and sex buyers.

Taina Bien-Aimé

Known as the Swedish, Nordic or Equality Model, this progressive framework is founded on the principle of gender equality. It has gained traction from policymakers, sex trade survivors and feminist groups, proving to be the best policy approach for those caught up in this exploitative industry.

16-year-old Desiree Robinson was one of those girls. Soon after she ran away from home in 2016, Joseph Hazley invited her to live with him on Chicago’s South Side. A week later, he sold her online. That Christmas Eve, a sex buyer purchased her on the classified-ads site Backpage.com. He brutally beat her and slit her throat.

In April 2018, the FBI finally shut down Backpage.com after years of complaints and lawsuits, mostly by adolescent girls across the United States, who sued the website for facilitating their sex trafficking online. Its owners were found guilty of sex trafficking, money laundering and pimping, ironically thanks in part to the then California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

A number of similar websites immediately shut down on their own volition. The intensely profitable virtual sex market, which had facilitated Desiree’s murder, shrunk overnight.

Around the same time last year the Allow States and Victims to Stop Sex Trafficking Act, also known as FOSTA-SESTA, was enacted to help protect and support girls like Desiree. Its goal is to target websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking and pimping.

This removed a loophole under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which had given the owners of some websites immunity for criminal activity that they facilitated online.

Before 2018, if a trafficker specified his young victim’s age in an ad, Backpage coached him to use instead terms like “Lolita,” “New in town” or “Amber Alert.” Sex buyers, the website operators said, would understand she was a child. Section 230 said it was someone else’s content – and therefore their responsibility.

Instead of recognition as a tool to protect girls like Desiree, FOSTA-SESTA became a deafening rallying cry for supporters of the sex trade, whose primary goals encompass persuading the public that prostitution is a job like any other, and calling for its full decriminalization.

A key reason for this backlash is that the sex trade is massively profitable. 99% of Backpage’s global revenues – $500 million – came from the online ads for “adult services”, meaning prostitution and sex trafficking.

Craigslist’s “erotic services” classifieds brought in $122 million. Britain’s National Crime Agency accused Facebook and Google of making millions from advertising the exploitation of vulnerable women in brothels – and the technology industry poured millions of lobbying dollars to stop FOSTA-SESTA from passing.

Just as there is a gun or tobacco lobby, so exists the sex trade lobby, fighting hard to safeguard its financial interests.

False claims about what this vital law does are widespread. It does not jeopardize the lives of those who promote their own sexual services. In fact it does not apply to individuals at all, unless they operate websites that knowingly promote pimping. The report that people in prostitution can no longer exchange information about health is also false.

The idea that sex buyers cannot be screened under the new law is farcical. They never could be. Claims that potentially violent men are detectable online are laughable to any sex trade survivor with the scars and near-death experiences to prove it.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, a decades-long global funder of the movement to decriminalize the sex trade, including pimping, brothel-owning and sex buying, is now offering grants to anyone who will challenge FOSTA-SESTA based on these egregiously false claims.

And myriad media outlets inexplicably continue to irresponsibly copy and paste the same inaccurate information.

We have seen time and time again that those who hold the purse strings are experts in drowning out the voices of thousands trapped in the unfathomable pain and suffering the sex trade inflicts.

If New York – or any other jurisdiction – shows such a dire lack of compassion and decriminalizes pimping and sex buying, the ruthless market of flesh will explode overnight. Instead, state Senators should examine whose interests they are really representing.

Excerpt:

The “bride shortage” in India and China has triggered trafficking as women are lured under false pretences and sold as brides. Pictured here are the rites of a Hindu marriage ceremony.

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 25 2019 (IPS)

Paradoxically, the world’s most populated countries are facing a population crisis: a woman shortage. And it’s women who are paying a brutal price for it.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the natural sex ratio at birth is approximately 105 boys to every 100 girls.

However, decades of gender discrimination, which favoured having boys over girls, has left India and China with 80 million more men than women.

“When women lack equal rights and patriarchy is deeply engrained, it is no surprise that parents choose to not to have daughters,” said Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Senior Researcher in the Women’s Rights Division Heather Barr.

Now that there is a shortage of women doesn’t mean that women become more treasured or valued, she noted. Instead, there are very harmful consequences.

“[Women have] become a commodity which is in demand, so in demand that people will use violence to acquire it,” Barr told IPS.

“The stories we heard were really unbelievably shocking even after having spent many, many years on human rights issues,” she added.

The “bride shortage” has triggered trafficking as women are lured under false pretences and sold as brides.

Bordering China is Myanmar’s Kachin and northern Shan states which has seen iterations of conflicts over the last decade.

HRW found that traffickers often prey on women and girls in those regions, offering jobs in and transport to China. The women are then sold for 3,000 to 13,000 dollars to Chinese families struggling to find a bride for their sons.

Once purchased, women and girls are often locked in room and raped so that they can quickly provide a baby for the family.

Often times, women and girls are even sold by people they know—sometimes even by family members.

“The idea that there is a situation, a set of social pressures, a sense of lawlessness that is so extreme that it is causing people to sell their own relatives…it is shocking,” Barr said.

In India, bride trafficking has become common in the northern states such as Haryana which has only 830 girls to every 1,000 boys.

In a study, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found in over 10,000 households, over 9,000 married women in Haryana were brought from other States.

Most of those women came from poor villages in Assam, West Bengal, and Bihar where their families, desperate for money, struck deals with traffickers. There are also cases of girls being resold to other people after living a married life for a few years.

According to the 2016 National Crimes Records Bureau, almost 34,000 were kidnapped or abducted for the purpose of marriage across India, half of whom were under the age of 18.

While the immediate consequences for women are clear, there may also be long-term consequences of the distorted sex ratio.

“Part of the reason that we should be worrying about it is that we simply don’t know what the long-term consequences of this are. We don’t know how this might change societies, but this is something that is going to have an effect through generations,” Barr told IPS, highlighting the need for action including better prevention efforts and law enforcement on trafficking and violence against women.

But at the end of the day, governments must do more to address the root cause of the imbalance—gender discrimination.

Though sex-selective abortion is illegal in India, it is still a widespread practice in the country. In fact, approximately five to seven million sex-selective abortions are estimated to be carried out in the South Asian country every year.

China’s now two-child policy may also continue to pose a threat to women and girls, as well as the future stability of the country’s population.

“The most fundamental problem is gender inequality and most fundamental solution to this is that you have to change the dynamics in society that makes sons valued and daughters not valued,” Barr concluded.

A desalination plant. Across 177 countries, there are now 16,000 desalination plants, many of which are concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa where water scarcity is already a reality. As desalination plants continue to pop up, so does a hypersaline, chemical by-product known as brine. Credit: RoPlant

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 2019 (IPS)

As the threat of water scarcity increasingly grows, many have turned to the Earth’s plentiful oceans for a solution. However, this has created a new risk threatening public and environmental health: brine.

In a new study, the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (UNU-INWEH) assessed the state of desalination around the world as countries increasingly convert sea water into freshwater for its citizens.

“There is an increasing level of water scarcity across the globe, but there are hot spots of water scarcity like those in the Middle East and parts of Africa. They really need an additional supply of water that they can use to meet the requirements of their population,” one of the report’s authors Manzoor Qadir told IPS.

Across 177 countries, there are now 16,000 desalination plants, many of which are concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa where water scarcity is already a reality.

As desalination plants continue to pop up, so does a hypersaline, chemical by-product known as brine.

In fact, for every litre of freshwater a plant produces, 1.5 litres of brine is produced, a figure that is 50 percent more than previously estimated.

Globally, desalination plants produce enough brine in one year to cover all of Florida in one foot of the waste.

“Historically what we used to see was the equal volumes of brine versus desalinated water—that is not true…there is more brine produced than desalinated water. It really needs efficient management,” Qadir said.

Countries are increasingly turning to the oceans as a solution to water scarcity. Pictured here is Sri Lanka’s southern coast near Hikkaduwa town. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The study, which is the first to quantify brine production across the world, found that just four countries are responsible for 55 percent of global brine: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar.

Almost 80 percent of brine is produced in plants near the ocean and are often discharged back into the ocean, posing major risks to ocean life and marine ecosystems.

According to the UNU-INWEH report, untreated brine increases both the temperature and salt concentration of sea water. Together, these conditions decreases the water’s oxygen levels, impacting sea organisms and the food chain.

The desalination process also uses toxic chemicals such as copper and chlorine, polluting oceans when released.

As desalination plants are predicted to increase in number, the assessment highlighted the need for improved brine management strategies to avoid further and future environmental damage.

The report’s authors pointed to the various economic opportunities to use brine including in the irrigation of salt tolerant crops,  electricity generation, and even aquaculture.

“Using saline drainage water offers potential commercial, social and environmental gains.  Reject brine has been used for aquaculture, with increases in fish biomass of 300 percent achieved,” Qadir said.

“”There is a need to translate such research and convert an environmental problem into an economic opportunity,” he added.

But first and foremost, countries need to minimise the volume of brine produced including the adoption of more efficient modern technologies, Qadir noted.

“[Middle Eastern countries] especially need to take concrete action just to make sure that there is an environmentally feasible management of brine,” he told IPS, while also acknowledging the importance of desalination.

UNU-INWEH found that eight countries including the Maldives, Singapore, Antigua and Barbuda and Qatar can meet all their water needs through desalination. And it is predicted that more and more countries will rely on such plants for their water needs.

“We need to raise the importance of global water scarcity and the key contributions of desalinated water, but at the same time we should not just ignore the other part of desalinated technology which is brine production,” Qadir concluded.

Migrants on a street in Casablanca, Morocco. Courtesy: Alié Dior Ndour

By Sejjari Mehdi
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 18 2018 (IPS)

One of the most common words used by speakers during the Global Compact on Migration was “dignity”—granting migrants the dignity they deserve. As with any advocacy, there is a danger a word can lose meaning through overuse. But on the streets of Morocco the same word means a lot to migrants looking for work. And when they find it—both work and dignity—it can alter the entire migration equation. 

“Despite the difficulties I encountered at first, being in an irregular situation, I am working today in a private communications company after an operation launched by the Moroccan authorities to give residency permits to tens of thousands of immigrants living in the country illegally,” says Ahmadou, a Nigerian migrant, who has been living in Morocco for five years.

At first, he was all set on reaching that supposed El Dorado for so many migrants: Europe. But now the situation is different. Ahmadou says professional integration is the key. If you have no job, he says, then the ambition to reach Europe will never disappear.

“I am able to provide the necessities of life, especially housing,” Ahmadou says. “Of course, there are immigrants who suffer because they have inappropriate skills, or because of the fact some companies give priority to local citizens.”

Amid increasing international bickering—with a lengthening list of countries abstaining from the Compact—eventually 164 countries signed the non-binding Compact for “safe, orderly and regular migration.”

The Compact seeks to ensure migrants enjoy rights within a global vision based on joint management of migration between countries of origin, transit and hosting. Maintaining dignity underpins this effort—both for migrants and countries at large—by establishing a set of principles fostering integration of migrants within societies, while giving states full sovereignty in the enactment of national migration policies.

Indeed, the Compact is not binding, rather it invites countries to “develop national short, medium and long-term policy goals regarding the inclusion of migrants in societies, including on labor market integration, family reunification, education, non-discrimination and health, including by fostering partnerships with relevant stakeholders.”

The process of integration lately has proved arduous in many countries—Germany becoming a poster child for such frictions after welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees from strife-torn countries—especially when it comes to employment for migrants, resulting in high unemployment levels.

Even if jobs are found, migrants in European countries are more likely to work on temporary contracts. Over time, though, the employment gap between migrants and native born does narrow in most countries, and even vanishes in a third, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED).

Morocco is in a similar position to European countries having shifted from being a country of origins and transit to also one of destination for migrants.

Hence Morocco’s authorities have launched a program through its Agence nationale de promotion de l’emploi et des compétences (ANAPEC)—which translates as the national agency for employment and skills—to facilitate access to job search assistance, provide employment assistance and promote work equity within companies.

Its ultimate objective is to is to guarantee an honourable and dignified life for regularised migrants by ensuring equitable access to the labor market.

But despite such measures, the number of migrants and refugees inserted into Morocco’s labor market remains limited. On any given day, young men from various countries in West Africa endlessly pace the streets around Marrakech’s iconic Jemaa el-Fnaa square and market place in the Medina quarter, amiably trying to hawk the likes of iPhones, watches, sunglasses and bright decorative shirts to passers-by.

Hence calls to increase the ANAPEC services and benefits available to migrants, to mobilise and stimulate micro-credit institutions to finance income-generating activities and enterprises by migrants, and to improve communications to incentivise the private sector about the importance of recruiting migrants.

“Parlais vous Francais?” one migrant, sits by his trinkets laid out on the street, says hopefully to a potential foreign customer walking by, asking if he speaks English. But a shake of the head and a school-boy French apology are all that follow.

The migrant smiles and keeps waiting for another potential customer.

“Continuing to improve the conditions of migrants’ access to public services and rights, including the right to decent work, will push lots of migrants to realise their dreams here without the need to ride the waves of death across the Mediterranean,” Ahmadou says.

This week the famous and beautiful Moroccan city of Marrakech is hosting the intergovernmental conference on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), accompanied by a multitude of civil society events among the city’s palm-tree-lined streets. IPS spoke with a number of participants from different backgrounds about the adoption of the GCM and what it means for the future of migration and migrants.

By Salaheddine Lemaiz
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 12 2018 (IPS)

This week the famous and beautiful Moroccan city of Marrakech is hosting the intergovernmental conference on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), accompanied by a multitude of civil society events among the city’s palm-tree-lined streets. IPS spoke with a number of participants from different backgrounds about the adoption of the GCM and what it means for the future of migration and migrants.

This week the famous and beautiful Moroccan city of Marrakech is hosting the intergovernmental conference on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), accompanied by a multitude of civil society events among the city’s palm-tree-lined streets. IPS spoke with a number of participants from different backgrounds about the adoption of the GCM and what it means for the future of migration and migrants.

The GCM brings together 164 countries—who have adopted the Compact—various ministers and heads of states, along with 700 organizations from civil society, the United Nations, the private sector and academia.

A multitude of side events preceded the commencement of the GCA. The purpose of the People Global Action (PGA) event held on December 8 and 9 was to agree on a program of actions to put pressure on governments to maintain mobilization on migration issues.

Members of the African Network of Women Journalists have been very vocal about migrant women during the conference. “We are for a just migration policy that is respectful of human rights,” says Afolasade, a presenter on Radio Nigeria.

Monami Maulik, from Global Coalition on Migration, has confidence in the future of the compact: “We participated in the negotiations for 18 months, we are happy that the Compact has been adopted.”

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel made a remarkable trip to Marrakech. The adoption of the Compact by his country created a political crisis in the Belgian government: “We are on the right side of history,” Michel says. “I appear before you with a parliamentary majority which no longer supports my government, standing upright and proud of the convictions of Belgium, and which I am expressing this morning at this rostrum.”

“The Compact forms a frame of reference for our advocacy,” says Younous Arbaoui from Morocco’s Platform Nationale Protection Migrants. “It is true that this pact is not binding, but Morocco and other countries have a moral obligation to respect its commitments. Already we are integrating aspects of the Compact to demand access to services for migrants in Morocco.”

These members of the Nigerian delegation display their measured satisfaction with the adoption of the Compact: “It is a good step forward for the future of the Nations.”

“The GCM is a huge mobilization of states to manage migration,” says Cheryl Perera, a prominent representative of migrant communities, and founder of OneChild, a non-governmental organization which seeks to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children abroad. “We wait now for actions.”

“With other organizations from many countries, we are expressing our concerns about some of the goals of the GCM,” says Hassan Ammari from Alarm Phone, an organization running a hotline offering support for people crossing the Mediterranean Sea to the EU, who participated in a protest against the Compact in the center of Marrakech. “Security issues have become the main issue and the Compact’s text makes that a priority. This opens the doors for more migrant detention centres.”

Today 164 countries agreed to adopt the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration. Courtesy: Steven Nsamaza

By Steven Nsamaza
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

Safe, orderly and regular migration received support today, Dec. 10, with the adoption by 164 countries of the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration.

After a few last-minute hitches, including more international tension and argument than was welcome, the intergovernmental conference taking place in the Moroccan city of Marrakech agreed to a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), a proactive document that will guide States on all matters related to migration.

Well timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the historic adoption of the GCM was presided over by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres who urged countries to treat the Compact as an obligation to human rights that will benefit all.

“We are not establishing a new right to migrate. No. There is not a right for anyone to go anywhere at any time according to his or her whim,” Guterres said during the official ceremony to adopt the Compact. “What we are establishing is the obligation to respect the human rights of migrants—which of course is absolutely obvious when we at the same time celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It would be unconceivable to exclude migrants from the scope of the Universal Declaration.”

The conference was preceded by increasing concerns about certain U.N. member States not supporting the Compact. Some declined outright to participate and adopt the Compact, while others said their final decision must await further internal deliberation. The United States was the most notable and voluble naysayer, condemning the compact and labelling it a violation of national sovereignty.

“We believe the Compact and the process that led to its adoption, including the New York Declaration, represent an effort by the United Nations to advance global governance at the expense of the sovereign right of States to manage their immigration systems in accordance with their national laws, policies, and interests,” the U.S. government said in a national statement released on the eve of the conference.

Other countries who bridled against the compact or refused to sign it include Hungary, Australia, Israel, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Italy, Switzerland and Chile.

“It will make an enormous positive impact in the lives of millions of people—migrants themselves, the people they leave behind and the communities that will then host them,” said Louise Arbour, the U.N. Special Representative for International Migration.

“This of course will depend on capturing the spirit of today’s event to move to the implementation of the multiplicity of initiatives that this Global Compact will permit member states to put in place. I am delighted to echo the words of the Secretary-General: it is a wonderful occasion, really a historic moment and a really great achievement for multilateralism.”

The adopted Compact lays out 23 objectives covering all aspects of migration, with each having a general goal and catalogue of possible actions that can be implemented by member states. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has drawn enormous criticism for her decision to welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan to her country. It is a decision that may well have cost her another term in power as she recently announced she will not seek re-election. However,  Merkel remarked that the adopted Compact is “about nothing less than the foundation of our international cooperation.”

Such potential significance has attracted to the conference, in addition to high-powered diplomats and officials, approximately 400 non-governmental organizations from civil society, the private sector and academia, and over 700 registered press.

The ceremony adopting the Compact also included speaker Cheryl Perera, a prominent representative of migrant communities, and founder of OneChild, a non-governmental organization which seeks to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children abroad. She called for an end to the drivers of irregular migration on the large scale, and for better protection of migrants on the smaller scale.

“We must do better together,” Perera said. “It is important that we involve the private sector, specifically the national airlines, hotels and others to protect children from trafficking.”

• This story was brought to you by IPS with support from the United Nations Foundation . IPS organized capacity building workshops for media in Marrakech.

In refugee camps at Dolo Odo, Ethiopia there is enough food for small markets to operate. One in every 70 people around the world is caught up in a crisis, including the refugee crisis, with more than 130 million people expected to need humanitarian aid next year. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

Amidst negative sentiments and last-minute withdrawals from the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) by some member countries, the United Nations says the regrettable decisions are being fuelled by misinformation.

Addressing the media Dec. 9 on the eve of the historic two-day GCM conference in Marrakech, set against the dramatic backdrop of Morocco’s snow-capped Atlas Mountains, Louise Arbour, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration, addressed the question of whether the U.N. could have been better engaged with countries to persuade them to come on board.

“I have to tell you, I am not convinced you can persuade those who don’t want to be convinced,” Arbour says. “I am skeptical it would not have turned it into a dialogue of the deaf.”

The GCM is the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner, providing a platform for cooperation on migration. Its genesis lies in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants adopted unanimously by the U.N. General Assembly in 2016. It is the culmination of 18 months of discussions and consultations among Member States, and other actors, including national and local officials, civil society, private and public sectors and migrants themselves.

“It creates no right to migrate; it places no imposition on States; it does not constitute so-called ‘soft’ law—it is not legally binding,” Arbour says. “It expressly permits States to distinguish, as they see fit, between regular and irregular migrants, in accordance with existing international law. This is not my interpretation of the text—it is the text.”

She added that it is surprising there has been so much misinformation about what the Compact is and what its text says, emphasising that “the adoption of the migration compact is a re-affirmation of the values and principles embodied in the U.N. Charter and in international law.”

This was, she conceded, notwithstanding several member States who have already declined to participate, others making last-minute indications they would not adopt the compact, while some have stated their final decision must await further internal deliberation. These include, most notably, the United States. Other countries also include Austria, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Latvia and Bulgaria, among others.

United Nations Special Representative for International Migration Louise Arbour speaks to the media in Morocco. Courtesy: Global Compact for Migration/CC by 2.0

“It is regrettable whenever any State withdraws from a multilateral process, on a global issue, the outcome of which has generated overwhelming support,” Arbour says. “It is particularly regrettable when a State pulls out from a negotiated agreement in which it actively participated a short time before.”

Arbour emphasised the process of adoption would still go on as planned, with over 150 States registered to attend, joined by over 400 partners from the U.N. system, civil society, private sector and academia.

Even with the adoption of the compact, the unwelcome last-minute withdrawals and negative sentiments around the compact have unsettled several stakeholders from civil society.

Carolina Gottardo, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Australia, says the civil society movement is concerned with deliberate false information being peddled about the compact.

“It is your role as media to report facts and ignore political ideology,” Gottardo said during an IPS and U.N. Foundation training session for journalists on the eve of the conference.

The GCM defines 23 objectives covering all aspects of migration. Each objective comprises a general goal and a catalogue of possible actions, drawn from best practices, that States may choose to utilise to implement their national migration priorities.

“Many challenges still stand in the way of implementation – not least the toxic, ill-informed narrative that too often persists when it comes to migrants,” Arbour says.

During an evening reception for U.N. delegates that followed Arbour’s announcement, António Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General, officially launched the U.N. Network on Migration, an agile and inclusive network of all key stakeholders on migration—U.N. agencies that have migration components, private sector, civil society and others—with the aim of mobilising the full resources and expertise to assist Member States in their endeavour to implement the 23 objectives outlined in the compact. 

He announced that the “the International Organization for Migration (IOM) will play a central role” in the network.

The U.N. chief also expressed confidence in the new network, highlighting some of its core features, saying it would focus on collaboration and have an inclusive structure, while embodying U.N. values, like diversity and an openness to working with all partners, at all levels.

“Your participation in this conference is a clear demonstration of the importance our global community places on the pursuit of the better management of international migration, through a cooperative approach that is grounded in the principles of state sovereignty, responsibility-sharing, non-discrimination and human rights,” Guterres told conference delegates.

But, as many attending the GCM acknowledge, in this age of social media and polarised political posturing, success all too often depends more on message and narrative—one of the main challenges the GCM, and the migration issue in general, faces.

“Report on facts, not political ideology,” Gottardo told journalists. “Avoid dichotomies between ‘good’ or ‘bad’ movements of people.”

• This story was brought to you by IPS with support from the United Nations Foundation . IPS organized capacity building workshops for media in Marrakech.

Morocco has in recent years emerged as a continental leader in terms of modelling green growth. Credit:Celso Flores/CC By 2.0

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Oct 22 2018 (IPS)

Science has increasingly made it clear that the world is on an unsustainable growth model where economic development is occurring at the expense of the environment. The need for a well-balanced approach has therefore become a necessity rather than a luxury.

The green growth model, according to experts, is seen as having the required balanced approach that fosters economic growth and development while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which people’s well-being relies.

While Morocco has in recent years emerged as a continental leader in terms of modelling green growth, the country has an estimated green investment gap of USD24 billion.

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), an international treaty-based organisation that assists countries develop a green growth model, is actively supporting initiatives to help the North African country close this gap and transition to a green economy.

IPS had an opportunity to speak to Nicole Perkins, the GGGI country representative in Morocco on the specific aspects of support being offered, and how it relates to the green growth model being spearheaded by GGGI. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): The government of Morocco has requested technical support from GGGI to support the transition to a green economy. The design of the project is dedicated to the development of inclusive green territories in order to contribute to Morocco’s goal of a national overall GHG emission reduction target of 42 percent below business-as-usual (BAU) emissions by 2030, and contribute to the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target of closing the green investment gap of USD24 billion in conditional investments. Could you briefly shade more light on this project?

Nicole Perkins (NP): GGGI’s work in Morocco provides technical support to accompany the implementation of the National Sustainable Development Strategy, aimed at promoting a green, inclusive, integrated and sustainable development model at the territorial (regional) level, and the realisation of Morocco’s NDC number 9, which is to develop a model, low-carbon city centred on optimised energy, transport and waste management.

Our support focuses on the development of policies and incentives, identification and design of bankable projects, and assistance in mobilising funding for their implementation, in alignment with the advanced regionalisation process adopted by the Kingdom of Morocco.

On Oct. 23, 2017, GGGI and the Moroccan government signed in Rabat, a Memorandum of Understanding during a workshop they co-organised on the theme: green growth and development of the green territories in Morocco.

In June 2018, GGGI Morocco received two official letters requesting technical support from both the ministry of interior and the secretary of state for transport, for a total of eight measures in the areas of increasing sub-national access to climate finance, and sustainable mobility, which provides a solid focus for the 2019-2020 programme.

Nicole Perkins, the GGGI country representative in Morocco. Courtesy: Nicole Perkins

IPS: The general thematic area of support is green cities and territories. Could you explain in some detail, the concepts of green cities and territories? What are they, and how do they relate to the green growth model? 

NP: For GGGI, green cities are:

• Innovative and smart: This implies cities that provide a unique environment and an opportunity for innovation, through technology, information, communication and good governance – and the synthesis of these.

• Resource-efficient and based on circular economies: Waste-to-resource and circular economy to lower resource footprints. They are transformational and creative: they decouple growth from resource use.

• Climate smart and resilient: In pursuing low-carbon pathways in support of the Paris Agreement, and underpinned by resilient infrastructure, systems and communities.

• Inclusive and pro-poor: Green cities must provide livelihood opportunities beyond BAU. They are pro-poor, ‘connected’, accessible, and provide affordable solutions for all.

• Healthy and liveable: With an improved quality of life, cleaner air and accessible green spaces.

• Prosperous and bankable: Cities that are competitive, create opportunity and are attractive for (new) investment.

Green territories can be geographically defined as a region or province that inclusively encompass both the urban and rural populations. They leverage the characteristics of green cities and ensure healthy linkages between the urban and rural components in terms of access to economic opportunities and sustainable services such as transport, waste, water, energy, education and health.

IPS: Aside from the key strategic outcome of greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, the project aims to achieve, among others, green jobs, sustainable services, air quality, ecosystem services, and enhanced adaptation to climate change. Briefly explain how the project intends to achieve these targeted outcomes?

NP: The programme aims to increase access to climate and green growth finance; strengthen national institutional capacity to develop policy in the transport/mobility sector; accelerate national and sub-national investments in the National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS), NDCs, and Sustainable Development Goals; and improve the enabling environment in the territories in order to catalyse pro-poor, pro-youth, inclusive, and gender-sensitive investments in environmental goods and services. To achieve these outcomes, GGGI in Morocco is focusing on: supporting the design, implementation and operationalisation of a multi-sectoral National Financing Vehicle, its institutional framework, capacity building, and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation.

This will contribute to the NDC target of closing the green investment gap of USD24 billion in conditional investments and contribute to Morocco’s goal of a national overall GHG emission reduction target of 42 percent below BAU emissions by 2030.

Regarding the transport and mobility sector, GGGI is providing policy advice and project development services to increase access to sustainable transport and mobility, transition to green transport/mobility, and support the implementation of the National Sustainable Mobility Roadmap, contributing to the NDC target of 23 percent energy savings in the transport sector by 2030.

At a sub-national level, GGGI support is to catalyse the development of Morocco’s inclusive green territories and support the Regional Project Execution Agencies in selectively and strategically developing a pipeline of bankable, sustainable, inclusive and scalable projects in order to attract investments into Environmental Goods and Services and transition to a low carbon economy, contributing among others to Morocco’s NSDS target of 23 percent energy savings in the transport sector by 2030; 20 percent recycled materials rate by 2020; 50 percent wastewater reuse rate in inland cities by 2020; 60 percent wastewater treatment rate by 2020.

IPS:  What financing model have you used to raise funds for the project? Is it a wholly public financed project or a mixture? This comes on the back drop that Green cities—the roads, pavements, street lights are all public sector and are owned by governments not the private sector. 

NP: GGGI Morocco has been building ties with in-country priority donors and conducted comprehensive partner and donor consultations on a national level, which provide the foundation for the 2019 – 2020 biennial country programme. Both GGGI and Morocco’s various donors and international financing institution partners have indicated interest in supporting the government of Morocco’s requests for technical support and GGGI’s efforts to assist Morocco in implementing its NSDS territorial approach to transitioning to inclusive green growth. The structuring of project financing, and avenues for partner involvement and contribution is currently in process.

Excerpt:

By Maged Srour
ROME, Mar 9 2018 (IPS)

The agricultural sector in the Mediterranean Area is facing tough challenges and incredible opportunities at the same time: beyond a shadow of doubt, the farming sector is experiencing a critical time of change and transition towards a new era.

In collaboration with the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN) and the SDG Academy the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) has developed the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on “Sustainable Food Systems: a Mediterranean Perspective”. The BCFN is an independent multidisciplinary research center, with the purpose of providing people, institutions and media with “activities and scientifically robust analysis related to food and its relationships with societies and environment.”

This MOOC, which is ready to be launched on March 15, 2018, offers to those who will attend its ten modules, a series of pre-recorded lectures, readings, quizzes and discussion forums. It’s the first MOOC on Agro-Food challenges in the Mediterranean region for the promotion of Sustainable Development and of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

What is the MOOC about ?

The Online course aims to provide an overview on those challenges, in order to be used as an instrument and a roadmap for action and implementation of SDGs, with a specific focus on the Mediterranean basin.

The BCFN is a knowledge-hub that is helping advancelearning about how to save our Planet through the development and implementation of several practical tools such as the “Food Sustainability Index (FSI)” or through awareness raising initiatives such as the “Food Sustainability Media Award” and the “Food Sustainability Report” .

In addition to its independent activities, the BCFN’s MOOC as of March 15, 2018. Will offer the open-ended course with no closing date, providing a unique opportunity to gain knowledge from scientists, professors and top leaders and learn about fresh approaches based on their expertise and experiences on the Mediterranean region. The course is free of any fees.

The agriculture sector in the Med region is increasingly being threatened by several issues: overexploitation of natural resources, water scarcity and poor water management, unsustainable agriculture, food loss and waste, limited agricultural diversification, just to name a few. Therefore, this MOOC was conceived to address these issues and to serve as a guide or handbook of sustainable policies for the Mediterranean region’s people.

The course is for students, policymakers and stakeholders as well as current and future practitioners in the agriculture, food and beverage sectors. Participants may enrol any time after March 15, 2018.

Why so important?

The United Nations has been repeatedly warning that sustainable farming is getting more vital to the health of our Planet. While industrial agriculture has certainly many advantages, as it is highly productive and is able to produce a significant amount of crops within a harvest season, it also introduces long-term damages to the environment that can be solved only through sustainable practices.

While debating over these sustainable practices, experts acknowledge the importance of the vision of going “back to rurality” and “rediscovering traditions”. However, this revival of traditions should not be misinterpreted as an antithesis of innovation. Tradition and innovation are not two different visions of the world: we could consider them as both essential for each other. Indeed, before being considered as such, every tradition was an innovation (think of the printing or the Internet). Moreover, tradition is not necessarily equivalent to “old”: it means also learning from the past and renewing the access and use of those positive practices of the past. At the same time, innovation is not necessarily meant to be “new”: it is also about discovering, passion, enhancement and recovering.

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, UN SDSN and the SDG Academy are working with regional, national and international actors to build the political and social architecture that is necessary to fulfil the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Students, policymakers and practitioners in the agriculture, private sector should seize the opportunity to gain valuable knowledge to meet Agenda 2030, such as those gaining from this forthcoming MOOC. Let’s all save the date: March 15, 2018.

Excerpt:

Rushhour in Los Angeles. Credit: Bigstock

By Richard Waite, Daniel Vennard and Gerard Pozzi
WASHINGTON DC, Feb 23 2018 (IPS)

Burgers are possibly the most ubiquitous meal on Americans’ dinner plates, but they’re also among the most resource-intensive: beef accounts for nearly half of the land use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the food Americans eat.

Although there’s growing interest in plant-based burgers and other alternatives, for the millions of people who still want to order beef, there’s a better burger out there: a beef-mushroom blend that maintains, or even enhances, that meaty flavor with significantly less environmental impact.

Americans eat approximately 10 billion burgers each year. Replacing 30 percent of the beef in those burgers with mushrooms would:
• Reduce agricultural production-related greenhouse gas emissions by 10.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year, equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars (and their annual tailpipe emissions) off the road. That’s like the entire county of San Diego going carless;
• Reduce irrigation water demand by 83 billion gallons per year, an amount equal to 2.6 million Americans’ annual home water use; and
• Reduce global agricultural land demand by more than 14,000 square miles, an area larger than the state of Maryland.

Tastes Great, Less Impact

The Culinary Institute of America and others recommend blending plant-based foods into meat-based dishes as one way to shift mainstream consumers’ diets without requiring lifestyle changes. Mushrooms have a meat-like texture, moisture retention properties, and an umami taste that can enhance the burger’s flavor while enabling chefs to also cut back on salt content.

Beef-mushroom burgers can also be lower in calories and saturated fat than all-beef burgers, making them a healthier choice. Across a variety of important consumer attributes—including flavor, texture, appearance and the ability to make a consumer feel full at the end of the meal—the beef-mushroom blended burger stacks up favorably to a conventional all-beef burger.

Good for Business

Blended burgers represent an exciting sustainability opportunity for restaurants and food service operators, as beef accounts for a sizable portion of these companies’ greenhouse gas emissions. McDonald’s, for example, estimates that 28 percent of its corporate carbon footprint—an amount similar in size to the footprint of its energy use across all of the company’s restaurants and offices—results from beef production.

Similarly, agricultural supply chains tend to account for 90 percent or more of a food company’s total water footprint—and beef production is a particularly thirsty user of water, requiring more irrigation water per pound of product than any other animal-based food. With companies increasingly setting science-based greenhouse gas emissions reduction and water stewardship targets, the blended burger is a sustainability strategy that could sit alongside renewable energy, energy efficiency, water efficiency, and waste reduction measures to make progress toward ambitious environmental goals.

Encouragingly, the beef-mushroom blended burger also appears to not increase costs for food service operators. Effects on costs and profitability will depend on the relative prices of beef and mushrooms, the effects on meal preparation time, necessity for additional chef training and kitchen equipment, and the listed price of the blended burger on menus.

A 2014-15 trial in a Baltimore public school suggested that the blended burger could be at least cost-neutral compared to traditional beef burgers. Over time, if meat producers and distributors sell pre-prepared blended burgers, economies of scale could make the blended burger an even more attractive business proposition to food service.

The blended burger is already starting to gain traction across the United States. Last month, Better Buying Lab member Sodexo introduced “The Natural,” a beef-mushroom blend aimed at meeting increasing consumer demand for sustainable foods with a lighter footprint. It will be used to create full-flavored dishes like burgers, lasagna, and chili in workplaces, universities, and other settings across the country.

Another Lab member, Stanford University’s Residential & Dining Enterprises, has been exclusively offering blended burgers in their operations for several years. And in mid-2017, Sonic became the first national burger chain to join the trend, trialing Sonic Slingers—their “juiciest burger ever”—at locations across the country.

We at WRI’s Better Buying Lab are working with member companies and partners in the culinary world to refine and scale this remixed burger across the market. This includes researching and testing improved names that could further drive demand for blended burgers.

The potential is so great that the Lab is pursuing the blended burger as one its three core Power Dishes, which are more sustainable menu items with the kind of appeal and familiarity to go mainstream.

A Simple Shift to More Sustainable Eating

Shifting to healthier and more sustainable diets does not always need to mean overhauling people’s lifestyles. The blended burger is a nice example of a potential “multiple win”—better for the environment, better for health and enjoyed by consumers.

Blending plants into burgers is only a start. Consider that only about one-third of ground beef is consumed in the form of burgers in the United States. If plants were mixed into all ground beef dishes—tacos, chili, lasagna, meatballs, pasta sauces, and so on—the total potential environmental benefits could be much higher.

Meat producers and distributors, restauranteurs, chefs, food service operators and retailers all have a role to play in serving up this delicious strategy for change.

Excerpt:

125th Station, Broadway. Credit: Joan Erakit/IPS

By Joan Erakit
NEW YORK, May 24 2017 (IPS)

On a busy Friday afternoon, the number 1 subway train heading north through Manhattan’s Westside comes out of a dark tunnel –and if one takes a minute to release oneself from communication devices—one can catch sight of the approaching 125th street in the distance, the crosswalk buzzing with yellow cabs.

The train station at 125th street and Broadway that sits high above the commotion below on a green arch bridge is the first clue that a passenger has reached Harlem, the gateway portal to the historic New York City neighborhood.

Last week, the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization and UN-Habitat organized a discussion at the United Nations headquarters that brought together stakeholders from the private sector, the UN system, government, academia and civil society to share ideas for creating and sustaining gateway portals — ultimately emphasizing the need to utilize urbanization as a tool for development.

Whilst many in the room were probably used to such discussions taking the route of creating bustling cities that could accommodate the highest number of urbanites in order to support political, economic and cultural agendas, it was refreshing to instead witness a focus on urban planning through gateway portals that put infrastructure center stage.

A gateway portal is an emblem of a city and can be everything from a bridge, plaza, or historic site that often welcomes one into a city or specific neighborhood. California’s Golden Gate Bridge is the most famous, linking Marin County to San Francisco in an architectural piece designed by engineer Joseph Strauss in the 1930s.

As one heads east of California, other gateway portals across the United States start popping up such as the Minneapolis Stone Arch Bridge that crosses the Mississippi River, connecting the southern and northern parts of the Midwest City. Arriving in New York, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island join the historic Manhattan Bridge as portals to the urban jungle – each depicting an intentional narrative of its own.

Famed architect Santiago Calatrava, a man known for his extraordinary body of work was invited to the discussion last week where he not only shared various projects, but also highlighted the necessity of portals. In his own words he mentioned that, “bridges are important pieces of infrastructure and gateway portals are to a city what infrastructure is to Sustainable Development.”

If this is true then city planners, architects and government officials are now tasked with the challenging job of thinking critically of where and how they place gateway portals. Instead of just creating entrances that mark an area and alert taxi drivers to charge toll fees, planners now have the opportunity to address issues of sustainability by utilizing smart, inclusive design that goes beyond just a pretty facade.

In 2013, author Charles Montgomery published a book called ‘Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design’, an anthropological text on what it meant to create sustainable spaces that were not only focused on developing a city, but also on underscoring the temperament of its citizens in relation to that development. If people were generally happy and continued to live happy lives within urban bustling communities, then was it possible that their surroundings would eventually be transformed socially, economically and politically?

“Urban spaces and systems do not merely reflect altruistic attempts to live the complex problem of people living close together, and they are more than an embodiment of the creative tensions between competing ideas,” he wrote. “They are shaped by struggles between competing groups of people. They apportion the benefits of urban life. They express who has power and who does not. In doing so, they shape the mind and soul of the city,” he concluded.

Citizen Driven Planning

The premise of the conversation last week was straightforward: development cannot succeed without conscious urbanization. This, meaning that urbanization for development needed to include a citizen driven approach to planning and design that accounted for inclusion, health, resiliency and equality.

According UN Habitat, it is estimated that around 54% of people now live in urban areas and as this number steadily grows, the question of how to sustainably house, provide and protect a large population in such dense spaces has become a top priority for both the UN system and government officials.

A timely discussion as Habitat III concluded last year in Quito, Ecuador with the goal of adopting a new urban agenda that would offer a set of action oriented global standards that would guide the way in which we designed and sustained our cities – citizen driven urbanization would need to prioritize these global standards when building or reshaping gateway portals.

Additionally, such plans would also need to uphold the fact that gateway portals established the economic and political power of the city, and to be citizen driven would essentially mean that the portals were of service to the people who used them daily, and not the other way around.

Frederick Douglas Plaza, Harlem. Credit: Joan Erakit/IPS

What’s In A Narrative?

During the 5th and 6th centuries, grandiose gates and high towering walls that circled a city – sometimes serving as a safety barrier in the chance of attack – illustrated the gateway portal. The narrative of a powerful gate or great wall such as the one in China laid forth the cities ambitions and easily communicated its priorities.

In 2017 with more and more people moving into urban areas, we are forced to ask ourselves what sort of narrative we’d like to have. When one arrives in Harlem, what narrative is being shared once you’ve crossed the threshold of the gateway portal on 125th street and begin your descent into the colorful street below?

New York City Commissioner Feniosky Pena-Mora spoke during the panel last week about the plans that the De Blasio administration drawn up towards creating sustainable, healthy public spaces with the agenda of changing the narrative of its city.

“We often say that we want to create spaces that work for everyone – diversity is key,” he said, continuing, “We must design to invite, and design to delight.”

This – NYC’s actual design mantra – when applied to redefining gateway portals is to simply put the citizen at the center of the vision. Yes, happiness is key, sustainability is key but city planners must also focus on creating spaces that encourage openness.

In the end, it cannot be disputed: gateway portals emphasize the importance of a city. They provide a first impression and a lasting one if curated with intent. It is with this measure that city planners and government officials must consider portals as the ‘opening line’ of their cities narrative.

Sustainable urbanization can most certainly be an effective tool for development, but must not be approached with naiveté. As the Executive Director of UN Habitat Dr. Clos put during his remarks last week, “when you address one problem, you generate two more.”

Addressing one gateway portal at a time, a city’s quest for sustainable urbanization becomes an actual possibility rather than just a city plan.

By Johan Galtung
ALICANTE, Spain, Feb 1 2017 (IPS)

Attacking the Affordable Care Act; the “global gag rule” against abortion; the federal regulation and hiring freeze; canceling the TPP; restarting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline; limiting entry with the Mexican Wall; the 90-day travel ban on seven countries; more undocumented people prioritized for deportation; no federal funding for cities refusing to cooperate; communications blackout from federal agencies; Guantánamo torture continued–What does it add up to?

Johan Galtung

Fascism? Too early to say; but in that direction. It opens for questions about the inner workings of Donald J. Trump. Who is he?

A Johns Hopkins psychologist sees Trump suffering from “malignant narcissism“. A Norwegian historian, Öystein Morten, in a detailed analysis of Norwegian king crusader Sigurd Jorsalafare (1103-1130)–clearly crazy–has a Norwegian psychiatrist diagnose him as suffering from “bipolar depression”, manic-depressive. Is Trump only manic?

This column early on saw Trump as suffering from “autism”, living in his own bubble, speaking his babble with no sense of reciprocity, the reaction of the other side. The column stands by that.

However, this column drew a line between his words and deeds; denouncing his rhetoric as grossly insulting and prejudicial, but pinning some hope on his deeds. Wrong, and sorry about that. After one week, Trump clearly means every word he says, and enacts them from Day 1; even what he once retracted in a New York Times interview.

Combine the two points just made: autism and immediate enactment. He acts, and from his bubble does not sense how others will react, and increasingly proact. He assumes that others will accept his orders, obey, and that is it. It is not. His orders my even backfire.

As many point out, terrorism in the USA after 9/11 is almost nil. But his actions may change that. Some Mexicans may hit back, not only against the wall but the border itself, drawn by USA grabbing 53% of Mexican territory in 1846-48, then soaking Mexico in debt and violence importing drugs and exporting arms, even unaware of the harm they do.

Take the seven countries targeted by Trump for collective punishment: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen; the old seven with state central banks targeted by Bush, with Yemen substituted for Lebanon. All mainly Muslim.

Imagine them reacting by cooperating, learning from China to raise the bottom up, starting building a West Asian community with links across the Red Sea, and “Saudi” Arabia soon joining?

If their governments do not do that, imagine the Islamic State doing exactly that? What a gift to the Islamic State/Caliphate!

As a minimum, the 7 might reciprocate and block US citizens’ entry for the same period. How would that affect US military operations? Would it force Trump to use force? In fact, are his demands on other countries so extreme, not only in words but in deeds, that there are no more words and deeds left short of force? Does his extremism limit his range of options, making war as probable as under Hillary Clinton?

And yet what he has done so far, firing and backfiring, is little relative to what other US presidents have done of harm.

Take FDR spending much of his presidencies on beating Japan, scheming to provoke Japan into war, defeat and permanent occupation to eliminate Japan as a threat to US economy and polity. That policy is still being enacted, now as “collective self-defense.”

Take JFK getting USA into the Vietnam War in 1961.

Take Eisenhower eliminating Lumumba, maybe Hammarskjöld.

They caused devastation of Japan, of Vietnam and set back Africa on its way to freedom, autonomy, independence. Trump is retracting, contracting, away from others, but not expanding into them. So far.

The reaction inside the USA has been from judges challenging the legality of the orders and launching court suits. The market has been ambiguous but generally down with heavy protests from Silicon Valley. Trump claims the orders are working. What else will happen?

It is difficult to imagine that there will not be a CIA response, being challenged and provoked by Trump, not only for accusing Russia of intervening to his advantage.

There are probably at this moment countless meetings in Washington on how to get rid of Trump. Yet, he has command over not only his Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court, but also over the overwhelming number of states in the union.

US presidents have been assassinated before Trump when the forces against are sufficiently strong. Could somebody from the Travel ban 7 be hired to do the job, making it look as a foreign conspiracy?

Another and more hopeful scenario would be nonviolent resistance. Difficult for border officials. But inside the USA people to be deported may be hidden, protected by their own kind and by others–with care though, Trump also has some good points.

More constructive would be alternative foreign policies by cities, at present not by the federation, nor by most of the states. Reaching out to the seven and above all to Mexico for dialogue; searching for better relations than at present and under Trump.

Preparing the ground for something new, under the Democratic Party or not. Not a third party, impossible in the USA it seems, but as general approach. The relation between New York and Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, Tripoli, Khartoum, Mogadisciu and Sana’a as an example. Still some space!

There is no greatness in what Trump does, he makes USA smaller. Trying rebirth instead of rust, canceling stupid deals like TPP: OK. But retracting into a self-glorifying strong state is not greatness, it is isolation. Greatness is not in what you are but in how you relate. And Trump relates very badly.

Johan Galtung’s article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS): TMS: The Trump Presidency: The First Week

The statements and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS.

Excerpt:

A food garden at UN headquarters in New York City. Credit: Phillip Kaeding / IPS.

By Aruna Dutt
NEW YORK, Jul 11 2016 (IPS)

Habitat III, the UN’s conference on cities this coming October will explore urban agriculture as a solution to food security, but here in New York City, it has shown potential for much more.

Record-high levels of inequality are being felt most prominently in the world’s cities. Even In New York City, the heart of the developed world, many urban communities have food security issues.

Since the year 2000, New York City food costs have increased by 59 percent, while the average income of working adults has only increased by 17 percent.

Forty two percent of households in the city lack the income needed to cover necessities like food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and healthcare but still earn too much to qualify for government assistance.

Last year, OneNYC was introduced, a plan specifically aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, aiming to lift 800,000 people out of poverty in a decade.

“OneNYC has high expectations and they are working hard in terms of addressing equity in the food systems, waste, and making sure that more and more of its citizens have access to good, healthy food.” Michael Hurwitz, director of GrowNYC’s Greenmarket, which has been working on OneNYC, told IPS.

“In a city like New York City, urban agriculture can play a number of roles on top of feeding people, from education to safe spaces, and helping off-set food budgets.” Hurwitz told IPS.

Urban agriculture plays a significant role in feeding urban populations around the globe. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that 800 million people worldwide grow vegetables or fruits or raise animals in cities, producing what the Worldwatch Institute reports to be an astonishing 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food.

There are parts of the world where urban and peri-urban agriculture account for 50-75% of vegetable consumption within that city.

In Africa, it is estimated that 40 percent of the urban population is engaged in agriculture. Long-time residents and newcomers farm because they are hungry, they know how to grow food, land values are low, and fertilizers are cheap.

In the U.S., though, urban farming is likely to have its biggest impact on food security in places that, in some ways, resemble the global south —  that is, in cities or neighborhoods where median incomes are low and the need for affordable food is high.

Hurwitz saw this transformative power of agriculture when he was a social worker in Redhook, Brooklyn, a community where 40 percent of households were making less than $10,000 a year. He was working in community gardens with 16-17 year-olds in a court diversion program. The food that the kids grew, they took home or sold at farmer’s markets, local restaurants and stores.

“Our youth became leaders of change in their communities. A lot of the kids we worked with were kids that nobody else wanted to work with, but when they became the main source of healthy food in their neighbourhood at the organic farmers market, peers and adults would see that they were the ones actually bringing change to the community.”

This system is now significantly scaled up through GrowNYC, a non-profit that operates from NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office. GrowNYC works with 6,000 kids a year through tours, providing materials for teachers to use in their classrooms. Its sister program Grow to Learn manages all of the school gardens in NYC. It also runs a “Mini-grant program” and technical assistance and training for teachers to run the gardens.

As a specific case of development, the South Bronx, ranked the poorest of 435 congressional districts in the U.S.A. in 2010.  Home to 52,000 low-income New Yorkers, with nearly half (42%) below the poverty line, this NYC district has been called a “food desert”.

When GrowNYC went into one section in the Bronx, a police officer warned them: “You don’t want to come here, it’s just not safe,” Hurwitz remembers. “But within two months, a tough corner had become a corner of great, wonderful activity and it was because there were young people from the neighbourhood selling food to their neighbours.”

For years, GrowNYC’s “Learn it, Grow it, Eat it” Program has been working with schools in the South Bronx, helping people become environmental leaders, Hurwitz says. That program operated one of GrowNYC’s youth-run farm stands, training youth in entrepreneurial, business and agriculture to run their own farm stands.

“We’ve seen kids who started in our youth market go on to be managers within the program,” Hurwitz said.

In New York, it’s not just about producing a standardized bulk amount of food for communities in need, but reflecting the diverse cultures. “We have farmers in our program that are growing $150, 000 worth of food on an acre and a half in Staten Island,” according to Hurwitz. On this farm, Mexican growers are growing Mexican-specialty crops, to feed to the Mexican community in Staten Island who otherwise would not have access to traditional foods that they are accustomed to.

The big greenhouse operators are now moving in and have become all the rage. But growing a limited variety of high-end greens is not going to feed the urban population alone. “I would rather see the $2 million being spent preserving rural farms with the goal of feeding the urban population. That can play a crucial role in getting food into cities, ensuring everybody has access to that food, and making sure that farmland remains viable and affordable”, Hurwitz contends.

The number of people living in cities is expected to double in the next thirty years according to the Atlas of Urban Expansion.

The Habitat III, the UN’s conference on cities this October will be the first time in 20 years that the international community has collectively paid attention to the impacts of urbanization, and will form a new global urbanization strategy — the “New Urban Agenda.”.

“Food security is one of the big issues that is going to be dealt with in Habitat III in relation to urbanization” said Juan Close, director of UN Habitat said here last week.

By Hazel Henderson
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, Jun 20 2015 (IPS)

Challenges to advertisers and marketers arose in the past century. Critics deplored the role of cigarette marketers who exploited the aspirations of women by associating smoking with liberation. 

Such manipulations were explored by Vance Packard in The Hidden Persuaders (1957), along with Marshal McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message (1967) and Stuart Ewen’s Captains of Consciousness (1974).  The use of subliminal advertising (rapid flashing of product images faster than human cognition) was challenged and the public discussion led to its disuse.

Hazel Henderson

By the 1980s, Ian Mitroff and Warren Bennis described the “deliberate manufacturing of falsehood” in The Unreality Industry (1989), followed by William Schrader’s Media Blight and the Dehumanizing of America (1992), Naomi Klein’s No Logo (1999) and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (2005).

Fast forward to today’s ethical challenges.

Political advertising of candidates was likened to selling toothpaste as it emerged in the 1970s and summarized by Charles Lewis in The Buying of the President (1996) and James Fallows in Breaking the News (1996). Today, the gutting of restrictions on money in U.S. elections has led to the well-financed blizzard of attack ads that lead millions of voters to turn off their TV sets in disgust. Media corporations and their TV channels have come to rely on such financial bonanzas during elections.

What this confirms is that advertising influences media owners and the content of programmes and often distorts news coverage, leading to subtle commercial censorship rarely recognised as a threat to free speech in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

Civic groups’ limited funding precludes challenging false and misleading advertising and the “greenwashing” of many companies’ poor environmental records. “Civic groups’ limited funding precludes challenging false and misleading advertising and the “greenwashing” of many companies’ poor environmental records”

I summarised these issues a few years ago in an interview in Forbes magazine on why I founded the EthicMark Awards for “advertising that uplifts the human spirit and society”.

These Awards recognise that advertising, a global 500 billion dollars a year  industry, can be a powerful force for good beyond consumerism, in educating, inspiring and showcasing the best innovations for growing more inclusive, greener, knowledge-rich and sustainable societies.

The newest challenge to advertisers comes from Silicon Valley with the many apps that allow users to skip and block ads, including AdBlockPlus (downloaded 400 million times), as well as add-ons to Chrome and Firefox browsers.  Ad block users have grown to 200 million a month, according to PageFair and The Economist.

Advertisers could redeem their reputations and business models via Truth in Advertising Assurance Set Aside (TIAASA) which would disallow their tax exempt funds on false advertising and then award these funds to civic challengers to hire ad agencies to prepare counter-advertising campaigns.

All this highlights the growing vulnerability of media business models in the United States, other industrial societies and worldwide.

Many new media business models which no longer rely on advertising are debated in The Death and Life of American Journalism (2010) by Robert McChesney and John Nichols who compare media access policies in many countries which subsidise investigative journalism, such as Britain’s BBC.

In the United States, foundations support news organisations such as the National Geographic, the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica, and media outlets such as the Columbia Journalism Review. The American Prospect and The Nation are largely funded by subscribers as well as PBS and NPR in broadcasting, along with many internet-based media such as The Real News Network.

Google banned ad-blocking apps in 2013, yet alternative web-browsers such as UC Browser already claims 500 million users, mostly in China and India, and Eyeo launched its ad-blocking browser available for mobile devices running Google’s Android.  These battles will rage on until legal systems – always lagging behind technology – catch up.

Two reports from the Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program led by Charles Firestone – “Navigating Continual Disruption” and “The Atomic Age of Data” – discuss the digitisation of ever more sectors of industrial societies and the internet of things (IOT).

In the United States, the monopolising of internet access by Comcast, AT&T and Verizon has restricted broadband access to millions in less affluent, rural communities and prevented small towns from competing with public broadband systems, as reported by the Center for Public Integrity and Susan Crawford in Captive Audience (2013).

The good news follows the analysis and proposals of Kunda Dixit in DatelineEarth: Journalism as if the Planet Mattered (IPS, 1997) and includes Dan Gillmore’s We the Media (2004) on grassroots journalism; David Bollier’s In Search of the Public Interest in the New Media (2002); Democratizing Global Media (2005); Making the Net Work: Sustainable Development in a Digital Society (2003) from Britain’s Forum for the Future; and Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future? (2013). (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

With kidnappings and violent attacks almost a daily occurrence in Nigeria, the disappearance of an American missionary appears to have stirred a new wave of outrage among the international community at the worsening conditions in the West African country, once considered a rising star and the largest economy on the continent.

Phyllis Sortor, a reverend with the Free Methodist Church USA, was taken from Hope Academy in Kogi state, central Nigeria, where she had been working since 2005.

The kidnapping was probably not the work of Boko Haram, said Philip Obaji Jr., a freelancer and founder of 1 GAME, an advocacy group that fights for the right to education for disadvantaged children in northeastern Nigeria.

Kogi state police commissioner Adeyemi Ogunjemilusi announced that a ransom of around 300,000 dollars had been demanded by Tuesday afternoon, barely 24 hours after the kidnapping, which is not typical for Boko Haram.

“Kidnapping is big business here in Kogi. Most of the times, ransoms are paid to secure the release of abductees,” Ahmed, a local journalist, said in an interview. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a ransom is paid to secure Ms. Sortor’s release.”

On the same day as Sortor’s kidnapping, a Chinese construction worker was abducted from his work site by armed men. All of southern Nigeria is prone to kidnappings, and public officials, their relatives, and foreign workers are regularly abducted for ransom. An estimated 1,500 kidnapping cases are reported every year.

Meanwhile, it has been nearly one year since over 270 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants in Chibok, Nigeria.

Local activists have been stepping up their demands that the government make the disappearance of the Chibok girls the top priority. “Our rallies are the reason why [the government] remembers,” organizer Funmi Adesanya told TIME magazine, “but I don’t think they are really doing anything about it.

While President Goodluck Jonathan and his national security advisor promised to end the Boko Haram threat before elections now scheduled for March 28, the new multinational force of Cameroon, Chad and Niger appears to be drawing new and dangerous fire from the insurgents.

On Saturday, some 5,000 Cameroonians marched in their capital, Yaounde, and denounced the violence caused by Boko Haram.

“It was important to tell Cameroonians that we are at war and a part of the country is suffering,” newspaper editor Gubai Gatama told Al Jazeera. “About 150,000 people have been displaced by the conflict, some 200,000 Nigerians are in refugee camps and 170 schools in Cameroon have been closed,” he said. “I am sure Boko Haram has got the message that the people are united against them.” Two hundred Cameroonian soldiers have been killed in the cross-border skirmishes so far.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jan 22 2015 (IPS)

Every day we receive striking data on major issues which should create tumult and action, but life goes on as if those data had nothing to do with people’s lives.

A good example concerns climate change. We know well that we are running out of time. It is nothing less than our planet that is at stake … but a few large energy companies are able to get away with their practices surrounded by the deafening silence of humankind.

Roberto Savio

Another example comes from the world of finance. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2009, banks have paid the staggering amount of 178 billion dollars in fines – U.S. banks have paid 115 billion, while European banks 63 billion. But, as analyst Sital Patel of Market Watch writes, these fines are now seen as a cost of doing business. In fact, no banker has yet been incriminated in a personal capacity.

Now we have other astonishing data from Oxfam – if nothing is done, in two years’ time the richest one percent of the world´s population will have a greater share of its wealth than the remaining 99 percent.

The richest are becoming richer at an unprecedented rate, and the poorest poorer. In just one year, the one percent went from possessing 44 percent of the world´s wealth to 48 percent last year. In 2016, therefore, it is estimated that this one percent will possess more than all the other 99 percent combined.

The top 89 billionaires have seen their wealth increase by 600 billion dollars in the last four years – a rise of five percent and equal to the combined budgets of 11 countries of the world with a population of 2.3 billion people.

In 2010, that figure was owned by 388 billionaires, and this striking and rapid concentration of wealth has, of course, a global impact. The so-called middle class is shrinking fast and in a number of countries youth unemployment stands at 40 percent, meaning that the destiny of today’s young people is clearly much worse than that of their parents.“In a world where the value of solidarity has disappeared (Europe’s debate on austerity is a good example), apathy and atomisation have become the reality. We are going back to the times of Queen Victoria, substituting a rich aristocracy with money coming from trade and finance, not production”

It will probably take some time before those figures become part of general awareness but it is a safe bet that they will not lead to any action, as with climate change. U.S. President Barack Obama is the only leader who has announced a tax increase on the rich, although he stands little chance of succeeding with his Republican-dominated Congress.

In a world where the value of solidarity has disappeared (Europe’s debate on austerity is a good example), apathy and atomisation have become the reality. We are going back to the times of Queen Victoria, substituting a rich aristocracy with money coming from trade and finance, not production. But up to a point: 34 percent of today’s billionaires inherited all or part of their wealth, and – interestingly – “inheritance tax is the most avoidable of levies”, as James Moore noted Jan. 20 in The Independent.

The “father of modern times”, late U.S. President Ronald Reagan, saw it clearly when he said that the rich produce richness, the poor produce poverty. So let the rich pay less taxes.

Well, in a just-released report, the U.S. Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy notes that in 2015 the poorest one-fifth of Americans will pay on average 10.9 percent of their income in taxes, the middle one-fifth 9.4 percent, and the top one percent just 5.4 percent.

Now, 20 percent of the richest billionaires are linked to the financial sector and it is worth recalling that this sector has grown more than the real economy, and has regulations only at national level. At global level, finance is the only activity which has international body of some kind of governance, as do labour, trade and communications, to name just a few.

Finance is no longer at the service of the economy and citizens. It has its own life. Financial transactions are now worth 40 trillion dollars a day, compared with the world’s economic output of one trillion.

At national level, there are now attempts half-hearted attempts to regulate finance. But let us look what is happening in United States. The new bland regulation is the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly known as the Dodd-Frank, and it does not go as far as restoring the division between deposit banks, which was where citizens put their money and which could not be used for speculation, and investments banks, which speculate … and how!

This separation was abolished during the U.S. presidency of Bill Clinton, and is considered the end of banks at the service of the real economy. In any case, the lobbyists on Wall Street are intent on having the Dodd-Frank chipped away at, little by little.

There is some schizophrenia when we look at the relations between capital and politics. The U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated any limit to contributions from companies to political elections, declaring that the companies have the same rights as individuals. Of course, there are not many individuals who can shell out the same figures as a company, unless you’re one of the 89 billionaires!

Meanwhile, banks are not only responsible for the corruption of the political system, and for the illegal activities which have earned them billions of dollars, they are also responsible for funding only big investors, and leaving everybody else out from easy credit. The efforts of the Chairman of the European Central Bank,  Mario Draghi, to have banks give credit to small companies and individuals has gone largely nowhere.

But a new and imaginative initiative comes from the very stern Dutch bankers. All 90,000 bankers in the Netherlands are now required to take an oath: “I swear that I will endeavour to maintain and promote confidence in the financial sector. So help me God”.

This is not so much oriented towards the customer, and it is very self-serving; and it brings God in as the regulator of the Dutch banking system. Perhaps the Dutch bankers have been paying heed to the words of Goldman Sach’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein who said at the time of the financial crisis in 2009 that bankers were “doing God’s work”.

Well God will have to be actively involved. All the three biggest Dutch banks – Rabobank, ABN Amro and ING Groep – have been involved in scandals that have hurt consumers, or were nationalised during the financial crisis, costing taxpayers more than 140 billion dollars. In one case, Rabobank was fined one billion dollars.

New York’s Wall Street and London’s City are said to be open to the idea of introducing a similar oath.

It is probably only that kind of Higher Power which could turn the tide in this world of growing inequality and lack of ethics. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

The author can be contacted at utopie@ips.org

Excerpt:

Capital flight from developing countries of the South. Credit: Tax Justice Network

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 4 2014 (IPS)

The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is unlikely to contribute much to combating persistent tax evasion in Latin America, which will require more national and multilateral instruments, experts say.

FATCA, as it is better known, was approved in March 2010 and finally came into force on Jul. 1 after a number of delays. It is a reciprocal agreement, which means that other countries may learn which of their citizens have accounts in the United States.

The law requires governments and financial institutions worldwide to report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) financial information about U.S. citizens who are resident or have assets abroad.

“The limiting factor for developing countries is that it is bilateral. Mexico, for example, would benefit from receiving information about its residents who have accounts in the United States, but these residents may also have accounts in other jurisdictions,” analyst Andrés Knobel of the London-based Tax Justice Network told IPS.

Knobel and other experts consulted by IPS say that tax evasion and avoidance have reached such proportions that firm national policies and multilateral instruments will be needed to combat them. FATCA could coexist with and support these.

Knobel also complained that, although there is reciprocity between the U.S and its partners, the exchange is unequal.

The U.S.  “demands more information from its partners but gives less. The information is supposed to be for tax purposes, but the authorities decide what they use it for,” he said.

Under FATCA, banks, investments funds and other financial institutions must identify U.S. citizens’ accounts abroad and notify the IRS of their account numbers, balances, names, addresses and U.S. identification numbers.

The law covers investments greater than 50,000 dollars. Institutions that fail to comply risk the withholding of 30 percent of any payments originating in or passing through U.S. territory.

The IRS has registered over 77,000 institutions worldwide out of a total of between 200,000 and 400,000 that should adhere to FATCA. In Latin America 3,800 institutions have come to an agreement with the IRS so far, while 800 have not.

The U.S. has signed bilateral agreements with over 70 countries, in two categories.

The first requires financial institutions to report information about U.S. citizens to their national tax authority, which is to advise the IRS. The second calls for the financial agency to report the information directly to the IRS.

“FATCA has potential for preventing tax evasion, but better mechanisms are needed to process the information quickly and take action as a result,” academic Benito Rivera, of the Faculty of Higher Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told IPS.

“Agreements have been signed, but fiscal paradises have not been touched, although some transactions have been identified,” he said.

In its report on Tax Administration 2013, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said that in Chile, taxpayers’ fiscal debt had increased continuously between 2005 and 2011.

Average growth during this period was 13 percent. The country has a tax burden of nearly 20 percent of GDP.

Mexico, with a tax burden of 18 percent, had similar growth figures, although data since 2010 are lacking. This is also the case with Brazil, which has a tax burden of 32 percent, and Colombia, with 17 percent.

In Argentina the tax burden has fallen by 48 percent, although the level of tax debt is still high. Its present tax burden is 33 percent.

The OECD estimates that at least 500,000 individuals in Latin America have a combined fortune of seven trillion dollars, with no certainty that they are paying appropriate taxes.

The Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC) puts income tax evasion at nearly 50 percent in Argentina, 47 percent in Chile, 64 percent in Ecuador and 42 percent in Mexico.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also warned of tax avoidance and evasion by means of “financial engineering.”

In the document “Spillovers in International Corporate Taxation,” published in May, the IMF indicates that foreign direct investment (FDI) that leaves Brazil turns up in known fiscal paradises like the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, the Netherlands and Luxemburg.

In another example, it says that FDI arriving in El Salvador comes from countries like Panama and the Cayman Islands.

“With FATCA, more information will be available, but there will be loopholes for rich companies and individuals to avoid the exchange of their information,” Knobel said.

He recalled that “for a long time, organisations have been asking for automatic information exchange. We asked for public registers of final beneficiaries, the real owners of any financial activity that takes place.”

The U.S.-Mexico FATCA agreement, signed in November 2012, shows the disparity in the information provided. Mexico is required to report the total amount of interest, dividends and other income generated and paid by the account assets, as well as total income from sales of possessions that are recorded in the account.

But the U.S. will only inform Mexico of the total amount of interest paid on a deposit account, dividends or any other source of income.

In the case of Chile, the national tax authority must ask U.S. account holders for their tax identification number and written consent. It must report annually to the IRS the number and balance of non-consenting accounts.

Under the agreement, the U.S. “shall cooperate with Chile to respond to requests to collect and exchange information on accounts held in U.S. financial institutions by residents of Chile.”

There are at least 60 tax havens in the world, including U.S. territories like the northeastern state of Delaware, which has big tax discounts. For this reason, Washington has negotiated favourable bilateral agreements.

The Tax Justice Network’s 2013 Financial Secrecy Index ranks the U.S. in sixth position, behind Switzerland, Luxemburg and Hong Kong, among others. In Latin America, only Panama is placed among the top 20.

In February, the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs criticised the FATCA in its report “Offshore Tax Evasion: The Effort to Collect Unpaid Taxes on Billions in Hidden Offshore Accounts.”

The report criticised the thresholds for reporting accounts, the failure to aggregate data from different institutions and potential tax evasion through offshore shell companies.

The law will not solve the problem of reporting information; its regulations have created a number of loopholes, the report says.

“It will take a few years for it to meet its goals. It would be desirable for the competent authorities to meet regularly to analyse procedures and speed of action,” Rivera said.

African countries are coming under strong pressure from the United States and the European Union to reverse the decision adopted by their trade ministers to implement the World Trade Organization’s trade facilitation agreement on a “provisional” basis.

At last week’s summit of African Union leaders in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, “there was unprecedented [U.S. and European Union] pressure and bulldozing to change the decision reached by the African trade ministers on April 27 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to implement the trade facilitation (TF) agreement on a provisional basis under paragraph 47 of the Doha Declaration,” Ambassador Nelson Ndirangu, director for economics and external trade in the Kenyan Foreign Ministry, told IPS.

“This pressure comes only when the issues and interests of rich countries are involved but not when the concerns of the poorest countries are to be addressed,” Ambassador Ndirangu said.“This pressure [on African countries] comes only when the issues and interests of rich countries are involved but not when the concerns of the poorest countries are to be addressed … Clearly, there are double-standards” – Ambassador Nelson Ndirangu, director for economics and external trade in the Kenyan Foreign Ministry

“Clearly, there are double-standards,” the senior Kenyan trade official added, lamenting the pressure and arm-twisting that was applied on African countries for definitive implementation of the agreement.

The TF agreement was concluded at the WTO’s ninth ministerial conference in Bali, Indonesia, last year.  It was taken out of the Doha Development Agenda as a low-hanging fruit ready for consummation.  More importantly, the agreement was a payment to the United States and the European Union to return to the Doha negotiating table.

The ambitious TF agreement is aimed at harmonising customs rules and regulations as followed in the industrialised countries. It ensures unimpeded market access for companies such as Apple, General Electric, Caterpillar, Pfizer, Samsung, Sony, Ericsson, Nokia, Hyundai, Toyota and Lenovo in developing and poor countries.

Former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has suggested that the TF agreement would reduce tariffs by 10 percent in the poorest countries.

In return for the agreement, developing and least-developed countries were promised several best endeavour outcomes in the Bali package on agriculture and development. They include general services (such as land rehabilitation, soil conservation and resource management, drought management and flood control), public stockholding for food security, an understanding on tariff rate quota administration, export subsidies, and phasing out of trade-distorting cotton subsidies (provided largely by the United States) in agriculture.

The non-binding developmental outcomes include preferential rules of origin for the export of industrial goods by the poorest countries, a special waiver to help services suppliers in the poorest countries, duty-free and quota-free market access for least developed countries (LDCs), and a monitoring mechanism for special and differential treatment flexibilities.

African countries were unhappy with the Bali package because they said it lacked balance and was tilted heavily in favour of the TF agreement forced by the industrialised countries on the poor nations.

The Bali outcomes, said African Union Trade Commissioner Fatima Acyl, “were not the most optimal decisions in terms of African interests … We have to reflect and learn from the lessons of Bali on how we can ensure that our interests and priorities are adequately addressed in the post-Bali negotiations.”

The African ministers in Malabo directed their negotiators to propose language on the Protocol of Amendment – the legal instrument that will bring the TF agreement into force at the WTO – that the TF agreement will be provisionally implemented and in completion of the entire Doha Round of negotiation.

African countries justify their proposal on the basis of paragraph 47 of the Doha Declaration which enables WTO members to implement agreement either on a provisional or definitive basis.

The African position on the TF agreement was not acceptable to the rich countries. In a furious response, the industrialised countries adopted a belligerent approach involving threats to terminate preferential access. The United States, for example, threatened African countries that it would terminate the preferential access provided under the Africa Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA) programme if they did not reverse their decision on the TF, said a senior African trade official from Southern Africa.

The WTO has also joined the wave of protests launched by the industrialised countries against the African decision for deciding to implement the TF on a provisional basis. “I am aware that there are concerns about actions on the part of some delegations [African countries] which could compromise what was negotiated in Bali last December,” WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo said, at a meeting of the informal trade negotiations committee on June 25.

The African decision, according to Azevedo, “would not only compromise the Trade Facilitation Agreement – including the technical assistance element. All of the Bali decisions – every single one of them – would be compromised,” he said.

The United States agreed with Azevedo’s assessment of the potential danger of unravelling the TF agreement, and the European Union’s trade envoy to the WTO, Ambassador Angelos Pangratis, said that “the credibility of the negotiating function of this organisation is once again at stake” because of the African decision.

The United States and the European Union stepped up their pressure by sending security officials to Malabo to oversee the debate, said another African official.  He called it an “unprecedented power game rarely witnessed at an African heads of nations meeting.”

In the face of the strong-arm tactics, several African countries such as Nigeria and Mauritius refused to join the ministerial consensus to implement the TF agreement on a provisional basis.  Several other African countries subsequently retracted their support for the declaration agreed to in April.

In a nutshell, African Union leaders were forced to change their course by adopting a new decision which “reaffirms commitment to the Doha Development Agenda and to its rapid completion in accordance with its development objectives.”

The African Union “also reaffirms its commitment to all the decisions the Ministers took in Bali which are an important stepping stone towards the conclusion of the Doha Round …  To this end, leaders acknowledge that the Trade Facilitation Agreement is an integral part of the process.”

Regarding capacity-building assistance to developing countries to help them implement the binding TF commitments, African Union countries still want to see up-front delivery of assistance.  The new decision states that African Union leaders “reiterate in this regard that assistance and support for capacity-building should be provided as envisaged in the Trade Facilitation Agreement in a predictable manner so as to enable African economies to acquire the necessary capacity for the implementation of the agreement.”

The decision taken by the African leaders is clearly aimed at implementing the TF decision, but there is no clarity yet on how to implement the decision, said Ndirangu. “We never said we will not implement the TF agreement but we don’t know how to implement this agreement,” he added.

In an attempt to ensure that the rich countries do not walk away with their prized jewel in the Doha crown by not addressing the remaining developmental issues,  several countries – South Africa, India, Uganda, Tanzania, Solomon Islands and Zimbabwe – demanded Wednesday that there has to be a clear linkage between the implementation of the TF agreement and the rest of the Doha Development Agenda on the basis of the Single Undertaking, which stipulates that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed!

More than 180 days after the Bali meeting, there is no measurable progress on the issues raised by the poor countries. But the TF agreement is on course for final implementation by the end of 2015.

Even though the U.S. economy is now expected to grow – albeit sluggishly – over the coming two years, inequality will not improve without policy reforms, a major grouping of rich countries is warning.

President Barack Obama has named income inequality the “defining challenge of our time”, and has tried to make the issue a central focus for the remainder of his time in office. That concern is now being backed up by two new reports from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international body of 34 developed countries.“It’s no longer just about inequality but about inequalities – inequality leads to greater polarisation in education and health outcomes.” -- OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria

“Americans have increased working hours by 20 percent but incomes have still fallen. It’s no longer just about inequality but about inequalities – inequality leads to greater polarisation in education and health outcomes,” OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said at a Washington panel discussion on Jun. 12.

“Inequality was a direct cause of the [2007-08] financial crisis … but contrary to popular thought, there doesn’t need to be a trade-off between growth and inclusivity.”

Gurria in recent months has become a powerful voice on the issue of inequality. During his time in Washington, he also affirmed the gravity of income inequality for the U.S. compared to other developed countries.

The OECD has now released two new reports, Tackling High Inequalities in the U.S. and the OECD’s Economic Survey of the United States. The reports warn that, while there doesn’t necessarily need to be a trade-off between growth an inclusivity, the latter also does not inevitably follow the former.

“Real [gross domestic product] is about six percent above its pre-crisis level, the housing sector is beginning to recover, banks have returned to health,” the reports note, “corporate profitability is high and equity prices have reached new peaks.”

Yet despite these strengthening indicators, income inequality in the U.S. has continued to worsen, with wages for most workers having been slow to bounce back following the economic crisis.

Out of the 34 OECD countries, the U.S. has the fourth-highest inequality, behind Chile, Mexico and Turkey. It is also in third place in terms of the gap between the society’s richest and poorest 10 percent.

While the recession hurt all OECD countries, equality in the U.S has suffered more than in the others.

Between 2000 and 2012, the average disposable income of the bottom 10 percent in the U.S. dropped by some 14 percent. Yet in Canada, the United Kingdom and Switzerland this figure dropped by only half that figure, and by even less in New Zealand and France.

Some observers say the technology and the housing crisis could be two possible reasons that share of income is today more among the rich in the U.S.

“Innovation and the returns to those innovations are concentrated in the U.S. and among people at the top,” Aparna Mathur, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank here, told IPS. “Also, the recent recession may have made the situation much worse at the bottom in the U.S., where the housing crisis affected many more low-income people who were highly indebted.”

Global models

During his talk in Washington, the OECD’s Gurria offered four recommendations for bolstering inclusive growth in the United States: investing more in human capital, promoting inclusive employment, improving the tax and benefits system, and providing more efficient public services.

Improving education and health services is certainly widely recognised as one way to improve inclusion, but the U.S. experience with related reforms has seen mixed results, particularly given the highly polarised politics that continue to stymie legislative progress in Washington. Obama focused much of his first administration with improving human capital through education legislation, attempts to increase the minimum wage and the highly controversial Affordable Care Act.

Meanwhile, the U.S. spends 25 percent less than OECD countries on policies to connect unemployed citizens to jobs, Gurria noted. Many other rich countries have invested significantly in “activating” their unemployed, or helping match them with jobs that match their skills.

Indeed, certain models do exist across the globe that appear to be able to garner bipartisan support here.

“There are some lessons that we can learn from other countries, such as the use of work-sharing arrangements in Germany that allowed workers to keep their jobs while reducing their hours,” AEI’s Mathur says. “Germany and many other European countries have also done a better job of matching youths to apprenticeship programmes and training programmes.”

In addition to job matching, the U.S. needs more job creation. While the U.S. Senate proudly reports that 9.4 million private sector jobs have been created in the country over the past four-plus years, the OECD and other critics say these include too many low-wage positions.

Of course, not even full employment would fully solve inequality. The OECD credits globalisation, technological change and policy reforms such as lower wage ratios (between the median and minimum) for driving up the wages of the most skilled, especially in information technology or financial sector. Yet these have also left behind low- and middle-skilled workers.

Other countries have offset this difference through redistribution measures like social transfers and lower, progressive tax burdens. In the United States, redistribution measures have reportedly offset two-thirds of the fall in household income brought on by the financial crisis, but this still lags far behind other OECD countries.

“Taxes and transfers readjust inequality by one third in France, but only one fifth in the U.S.,” said Gurria. Yet he also cautions against putting too much faith in tax reforms, warning that “Taxing the rich is an easy way out, but there’s no quick fix.”

AEI’s Mathur agrees that policies must be holistic, targeting not just income inequality but also economic mobility.

“At AEI, we have been doing work looking at consumption inequality, and we find that consumption inequality is much narrower than income inequality,” she says. “This suggests that transfer programmes have to some extent been successful in improving material standards-of-living at the bottom of the income distribution.”

Mathur recently co-authored a study on economic mobility that suggests policies such as expanding school choice to help low-income students graduate high school and helping single mothers by expanding child-care subsidies, among other recommendations.

Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the United States has developed from a super power into a hyper power, says Subrata Ghoshroy, researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This development has far reaching negative consequences in terms of global security – continual promotion of the international arms race as well as persistent devaluation of diplomacy and international law.

As one of the key speakers at a symposium on ‘Science between War and Peace’ held in Berlin from May 16 to 18 one hundred years after the outbreak of the First World War, Ghoshroy highlighted the militarisation and utilisation of research for war purposes in the United States. The Berlin symposium was organised by ‘Network 1914-2014’, an alliance of peace groups including the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

Subrata Ghoshroy. Credit: Karina Boeckmann/IPS

In an interview with IPS, Ghoshroy, an engineer of Indian descent, describes how sophisticated weapon systems are being used as dominant instruments of U.S. foreign policy. Ghoshroy himself had worked in the field of high-energy laser before he turned defence analyst and whistleblower against faked ‘Star Wars’ missile defence tests by U.S. government contractors. At MIT, a private research university in the U.S. city of Cambridge, he directs a project to promote nuclear stability in South Asia.

IPS: We are experiencing ongoing militarisation and the use of research for military purposes. Are peace scientists like you an endangered species?

Ghoshroy: Yes, and very much so, unfortunately. The term ‘peace scientist’ really doesn’t exist in the United States. It’s more in a German context that you have these terms such as ‘Friedensforschung’. There are individual scientists who are opposed to war. They express themselves. But there is really no discipline.

So, individuals do things their own way. And of course there are scientists all over the United States with the heritage of the Manhattan Project, the U.S.-led research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs in the 1940s. All these scientists from top universities worked there, they came back and became very much against the bomb. And there is some legacy of them still lingering in U.S. departments, particularly in physics departments where more people have become more anti-war and openly speak if not write about the problems of military research – but very few.“The collapse of one super power, the Soviet Union, marked the beginning of the United States as a hyper power. Blind faith in technology fuelled unilateralism” – Subrata Ghoshroy

IPS: How much of U.S. academic research is sponsored by the Defence Department and how much is being invested annually?

Ghoshroy: In the United States, the Defence Department spends together about three billion dollars annually in universities. In certain disciplines – in physical sciences, in engineering, materials engineering, aerospace, mechanical engineering, physics, chemistry and computer science – the support from the military is absolutely crucial and dominating. So, if you look at numbers in electro-engineering, 72 percent of all research at U.S. universities is funded by the military, and in mechanical engineering maybe 60 percent and in computer science maybe 55 percent.

IPS: There is a long history of using academic research for military purposes. How has it developed since the end of the Cold War and 9/11 (the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States)?

Ghoshroy: The real collaboration between science and the military started with the Manhattan Project (a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during the Second World War II. That was the beginning. And then, after the war ended in 1945, this military had already established laboratories in different universities like MIT and other schools. So, they wanted to see how they could continue this relationship after the war and they came up with this plan that the military would invest massively and it would be very easy politically to support spending on science if it was done through the military.

Public support for the military was very strong after the defeat of fascism. The Second World War was a tremendous thing for the Americans. So they wanted to keep doing it and found a way for all science to be done through the military and then they would get support in Congress for this.

As the Cold War developed, the new rationale was science and technology to give the United States the upper hand against the Soviet Union. I believe that this paradigm that started after the end of the Second World War and continued throughout the Cold War has been maintained in all the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But there is no big enemy, no enemy that we need so much money for our military to defeat. Russia spends so little money compared with the United States or China, also although it’s coming up. But regardless, all this spending on weapons is primarily coming from the United States. The universities, the military and its contractors, they all act together to promote science and science for weapons.

IPS: And since the beginning of the so called war against terrorism?

Ghoshroy: After 9/11, the public was completely terrified, so it gave the government tremendous power to do anything and, yes, it gave the military and universities money for everyone who wanted to go into research to support the so-called war on terrorism. I would not say that the money has increased so much for research. Money has increased for other things like homeland security. But it certainly has given them another opportunity to support and boost science to fight this new enemy.

IPS: You have said that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States super power has turned into a hyper power. What have been the consequences?

A: Well, first of all, they are really blinded by this position that they have now. Nobody can do any check and balance on their actions. When I was in Congress, when we discussed foreign policy in meetings of the staff in Congress to advise members, there were no counter arguments against what they were doing. They would say “we will prevail, eventually; there are some people making noises, but that doesn’t matter, we will prevail.”

This is very dangerous. This vision of America – being a force for and doing good in the world – is really believed by the people and policy makers. But in many instances, or actually most instances, they are certainly doing the opposite. They don’t understand different cultures, the peculiarities of different societies and civilisations, so they see everything in this American way. “Our democracy, our form of democracy, is the right one” even though there are other civilisations that have lived for thousands of years.

The collapse of one super power, the Soviet Union, marked the beginning of the United States as a hyper power. Blind faith in technology fuelled unilateralism, variously termed as humanitarian, pre-emptive and regime change interventions. This hyper power is totally defying the United Nations, it is totally against everything. That has led to lawlessness in and out the country. “We don’t like the government in Iraq. So let’s go change it.”  But, I am optimistic that the post-Cold War order may be coming to an end.

IPS: Are we experiencing a devaluation of diplomacy?

Ghoshroy: Definitely. U.S. foreign policy always talks about diplomacy. But American diplomacy means that you speak softly but carry a big stick. This is how they operate. So the big stick is always there.

Diplomacy is about give and take. U.S. policy is not diplomacy in that way. Yes, they have their diplomats who sit down across the table with the people of Iran or wherever. But the moment that their plan is not accepted, diplomacy is over. They will bomb. So they don’t care about diplomacy in the original sense of the term where you negotiate for a peaceful solution of give and take. Either, it’s my way or the highway.

IPS: Is the economic downturn a chance to counter the trend of militarisation and reduce military expenditure?

Ghoshroy: It does offer an opportunity, but it’s a very hard uphill battle. Cutting a military budget is very difficult in the United States because military contractors are very tied to politicians, no matter whether they are Republicans or Democrats. All these people and their election campaigns receive funds from the military contractors like Lockheed and Boeing and the others all have strong lobbyists in Washington. All sides are benefitting.

IPS: What are the chances of winning the war against wars?

Ghoshroy: It’s a slow process. In the United State there is a lack of political consciousness. The country is isolated. And in the media you read what is being propagated by the establishment.

In Viet Nam, the public reacted against the war when thousands of their beloved ones came back in body bags. In wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan the number of victims is relatively low. Further, journalists were not allowed to photograph the returning dead. And there is another big difference. The people being killed are not middle class people who can influence the system.

Yet, People are turning against these wars, although it is not moral but economic reasons that are the decisive factors.

IPS: European members of NATO rarely criticise the United States for its unilateral warfare. Do you have any advice for them?

Ghoshroy: I have been saying in many meetings that it would be so fantastic if European countries like Germany that suffered and inflicted so much pain on other countries in the world were to be the ones to take the initiative to stand up against the United States in terms of what they want to do with NATO.

First of all, we need its dissolution. It should have been dissolved when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. It has no mission. And I think stopping warmongering in Europe would be a further important first step for world peace. It’s unfortunate that despite people’s actual strong support for non-intervention, even the so-called parties of the Left in Europe, like the French Socialists or the Greens in Germany, support strengthening NATO. This is not helpful in terms of building peace.

Members of the Malaga Association of Friendship with the Saharawi People in the storehouse where they collected food to be sent with the Caravan for Peace to the Saharawi camps at Tindouf, in the Algerian desert. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MALAGA, Spain, Feb 19 2014 (IPS)

Volunteers are hard at work in an industrial warehouse in the Spanish city of Malaga, organising thousands of kilos of rice, sugar, lentils and oil to be shipped this February to Saharawi refugee camps in Tindouf, in the west of Algeria.

“We hope to send some 60,000 kilos of basic foods,” said Isabel González, the president of the Malaga Association of Friendship with the Saharawi People (AMAPS), as she showed IPS the boxes piled on wooden pallets in the storehouse outside Malaga.

This is a common sight here and in other Andalusian cities this month.“The problem is not food. A long-term solution is needed, and it involves a political solution to the conflict.” -- Saharawi, Ahmed Sid Ahmed

On Saturday Feb. 15, in Malaga and other Andalusian cities, trucks were being loaded to form part of the Caravan for Peace, which will leave the eastern city of Alicante for Oran in Algeria on Feb. 22, and then continue into the desert.

After Spain abandoned Western Sahara, formerly under its dominion, in 1975, thousands of Saharawis fled the Moroccan troops who occupied the territory. Now the refugees are living in the Tindouf camps.

In addition to the solidarity practised by citizens, Spain must make “a political commitment” that will repay its historical “debt” to the Sahara, González said.

The desert in Tindouf “is no place to live. There is nothing there,” she said.

Every year, Saharawi children aged seven to 12 travel to Spain to spend the hot summer months of July and August with volunteer families all over the country.

The Vacations in Peace programme was initiated in 1993, after the ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the leading group of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, also known as Western Sahara.

Participants in these holidays can brush up on Spanish, their second language, “live in a different reality and bring a message of peace,” González said.

During their first week in Spain the Saharawi children are given medical checks and receive any necessary treatment, thanks to an agreement with the Spanish health services.

Since the inception of the programme, 30,000 Saharawi boys and girls have been welcomed into Spanish homes, according to the Andalusian Federation of Associations in Solidarity with the Sahara (FANDAS), which covers the eight Andalusian provinces.

“Children are the best ambassadors for their people’s cause,” said González. She highlighted the goals of awareness raising and denunciation in her association, which belongs to FANDAS.

In 2013, 81 Saharawi children came to Malaga, 1,400 to Andalusia as a whole and about 4,000 to the whole of Spain, González said. The economic crisis in this country has undermined support for the programmes, which are carried out in coordination with the Saharawi Red Crescent.

Antonia Silva, a nursing aide from Malaga, has been an AMAPS volunteer since 2005 because “it’s a human rights issue” of which “the public must be made aware,” she told IPS.

She hosted the same girl for four consecutive summers, but can do so no longer. At the age of 14, the teenager died of a liver tumour.

Rafael Gálvez, also from Malaga, founded a humanitarian association named MRABIH in honour of a Sahariwan friend who died. It set up an emergency healthcare school in the camps to train Sahariwa volunteers in first aid.

Gálvez also organises talks in Spanish schools, as well as sponsored runs and other activities to raise awareness and collect funds for food, medicines and clothes for the Caravan for Peace.

The caravan is a nationwide effort, but the regions organise their consignments on a rotation basis so that they reach Tindouf at regular intervals. Now it is Andalusia’s turn.

There are some 200 organisations working in solidarity with the Saharawi people. They come under the umbrella of the State Coordinating Committee for Associations in Solidarity with the Sahara (CEAS), which has delegates in every autonomous region and in Madrid.

“It is the largest solidarity movement in Spain,” Abdalahe Jalil, the Saharawi delegate for the cities of Malaga and Granada, told IPS.

The aid effort has a humanitarian and a political side. On the political side, the associations and Saharawi delegates lobby political parties, unions and national and international bodies, putting pressure on them to hold a referendum for the self-determination of the Saharawi people.

According to repeated United Nations resolutions, when decolonising a territory the colonial power must hold a prior referendum on self-determination in the colony.

Saharawi activists complain of the neglect of the refugees in the Algerian desert camps, but also of imprisonment and torture of those who demand a self-determination ballot in the parts of Western Sahara occupied by Morocco.

“The voice of Saharawis in the occupied zone is not heard anywhere,” said Jalil, speaking from the warehouse where the food is stored.

“We disseminate what is happening: the injustice faced by political prisoners, the lack of freedom of expression and the violations of human rights,” he said.

Another Saharawi, Ahmed Sid Ahmed, who was a teacher of Spanish in refugee camp schools between 1989 and 2003, told IPS that food aid is basic for the survival of the refugees.

But “the problem is not food. A long-term solution is needed, and it involves a political solution to the conflict,” he said.

Ahmed, who has lived in Malaga since 2003 with his wife and three sons, aged 16, 12 and one, said many Spanish families who host Saharawi children visit the camps.

“Once a father took his 11- or 12-year-old son along so that he could see the situation that other children have to live in,” said Ahmed, who studied in Cuba and whose parents and siblings live in the camps.

Over the years the Malaga association has sent four ambulances, a water supply truck, furniture for 16 primary school classrooms and 1,200 solar panels for single family homes.

While the refugees barely survive in the Algerian desert, and are dependent on food aid, a fishing agreement adopted in 2006 by the European Union and Morocco allows European boats to fish in Western Sahara’s territorial waters. It is an agreement that Saharawi activists say represents the exploitation of their people’s natural resources.

The U.N. does not recogise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

“Western Sahara is a magnificent example of how political and strategic interests can hamper the realisation of the principles and values enshrined in law,” the Spanish Society for International Human Rights Law concluded in its 2012 publication “Peace, migrations and the free determination of peoples”.

Women carry heavy loads on foot across the border from Spanish enclaves to Morocco. Courtesy: Cortesía de José Palazón/Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de la Infancia

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain, Jan 28 2014 (IPS)

Before sunrise, a Moroccan woman waits her turn at the pedestrian border control separating her country from the Spanish city of Melilla. Hours later she crosses over, takes up an 80-kilo bundle of merchandise and carries it back to her country, for a payment of less than six dollars.

Every day thousands of women like her cross the border posts between Morocco and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves in the north of Africa, to pick up heavy loads of goods and carry them across the border on foot, a trade worth millions of euros that is profitable to business on both sides.“Humiliating treatment is meted out to the women, who are mistreated by the police on both sides of the border. You only have to be there for five minutes to realise this.” -- Amin Souissi

The business community in Melilla “lives off this contraband trade,” made possible by thousands of women porters who work “to survive and feed their children,” José Palazón, the founder of the Asociación Pro Derechos de la Infancia (Children’s Rights Association), who has lived in the city for 14 years, told IPS.

“They are single mothers, widows, abused women, with disabled husbands, women excluded by society, who turn to contraband in order to make ends meet,” union leader Abdelkader El-Founti of the Melilla General Workers’ Confederation (CGT) told IPS.

When the Barrio Chino border post in Melilla opens at 9:00 a.m., the woman porter shows her passport and walks to an esplanade where several vans have left bundles ready for carriage early in the day.

She ties the huge bundle to her back with ropes and walks back for over 200 metres, weaving through the crowds in the narrow pathway. She delivers her load on the Moroccan side and returns to carry more bundles across until the border post closes at 1:00 p.m.

In Ceuta and Melilla this activity is known as “atypical trade”, and Moroccans live with it as tolerated contraband.

White signs bearing black silhouettes of men and women porters hang high on the iron railings of the narrow passage in Barrio Chino to indicate the entrance.

The women are paid when they deliver their loads on the Moroccan side, where men with wheelbarrows or vans wait to collect them. The amount depends on the weight carried. “The maximum is 10 euros [13 dollars] a day. For each load they are paid three to five euros [four to six dollars] according to weight,” El-Founti said.

In addition to the physical exertion, the women must put up with “all kinds of abuse from the Spanish and Moroccan police,” he said.

“Humiliating treatment is meted out to the women, who are mistreated by the police on both sides of the border. You only have to be there for five minutes to realise this,” Amin Souissi, a Moroccan national belonging to the Andalusia Human Rights Association (Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía) in the southern Spanish city of Cadiz, told IPS.

Souissi recalled the death in September 2013 of a young porter from the Moroccan city of Tetouan who, “tired of so much humiliation,” set himself alight at the border post of El Tarajal in Ceuta, after his country’s authorities confiscated the goods he was carrying.

“We don’t want them to lose their livelihood, but we do want the human rights of these persons on the borders of Ceuta and Melilla to be respected,” said Souissi, who has seen police push women porters around with their truncheons.

Souissi complained about corruption among the Moroccan authorities, who take bribes, as well as the arbitrary way in which border crossings are handled, as permission “depends on the official on duty.”

The enormous loads contain all sorts of goods, such as blankets, used car tires, food and diapers. The vast majority of porters are women, but some are men, especially young men with limited resources.

Many women cross the border with smaller packages. Others work as domestic employees in homes in Melilla and Ceuta and go home to Morocco at the end of the day.

About 40,000 people cross daily between the Moroccan town of Beni Ansar and Melilla, but only 10 percent of them have visas, said El-Founti. Porters have to show their passports, and the rest have special permits, under an agreement between the Spanish and Moroccan governments, to work in Melilla during the day and return home at night.

“They are construction labourers, domestic employees and hotel workers who work a 10- or 12-hour day for less than 200 euros [270 dollars] a month, without any labour rights,” he said.

El-Founti complained that business owners in Melilla take advantage of the fears of “cross-border employees” of losing their jobs, and of their poverty. “Many Moroccan women who work as domestics in Melilla are illiterate and ignorant of their labour rights,” he said.

The traffic in goods carried by the porters “moves a great deal of money both sides of the border,” said Palazón, who believes it will be “very difficult” to stamp out this situation; however, he called for greater dignity for the workers and improved border facilities for their daily crossings.

“There is not even one drinking water tap,” said Souissi about the El Tarajal border crossing in Ceuta, which “is more like a cage than a pedestrian border crossing,” with narrow passages that the porters can barely squeeze through.

The border trade is worth 1.4 billion euros (1.8 billion dollars) a year to both sides of the frontier, and contributes one-third of the economy of Ceuta and Melilla, the two autonomous Spanish cities.

Some 45,000 people depend directly for their livelihoods on this activity, and 400,000 are indirectly employed, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Casablanca, Morocco, quoted in the Declaration of Tetouan signed by almost 30 organisations in April 2012.

The declaration states that “an important quantity of money” is paid as bribes, totalling 90 million euros (121 million dollars) a year, according to the independent Moroccan weekly Al Ayam.

Conditions at the border crossings, where thousands of people crowd together, have already caused fatalities. In November 2008, Zafia Azizi was trampled to death in Melilla and on May 25, 2009, Busrha and Zhora, two Moroccan women, died in a human avalanche at the Ceutan border post of Biutz.

Activists consulted by IPS said the European Union (EU) is not paying proper attention to the human rights violations suffered by the Moroccan women porters.

Ceuta and Melilla enjoy a special fiscal regime with substantial tax rebates and are not part of the EU’s Customs Union. Both cities can import goods at lower tariffs than the rest of the EU and sell those products to Moroccan citizens, who send them to Morocco through the irregular cross-border transit system for re-sale.

Patented drugs limit patients’ access to public health care. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 8 2013 (IPS)

The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the negotiation of which is set to conclude this year, could drive research into new drugs and improve access to medicines. Except – it won’t.

“The current health system is reaching its limit,” Judit Rius, manager of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders Access Campaign in the United States, told IPS. “It is failing patients with rare diseases, for example.”

“That’s why the TPP could be a tool for promoting health and improving innovation and access, instead of fostering failed, costly systems based on monopolistic patents,” she added.

The TPP free trade accord went into force between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore in January 2006. Eight other countries are now negotiating their incorporation: Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the United States and Vietnam.
Of the 29 chapters under negotiation, the ones on intellectual property, investment and government procurement contain proposals, especially from the United States, to limit research and development of generic medicines, which are sold with the name of the active ingredient and can be produced once the patent for the original brand-name drug has expired.

Because they are less expensive, generic drugs are essential in the fight against disease, especially in poor developing countries.

The TPP talks have been shrouded in secrecy. But Rius said the aspects of the TPP that have been leaked to the press would hinder R&D in generic medicines, hurting the reduction of prices that has been achieved in recent years.

“Most affected by this would be patients, organisations that supply medicines, health and economy ministries, developing countries, and companies that produce generic medicines,” she said.

These laboratories are worried.

“The TPP could lead to the extension of patents and could hamper access to medicines,” José Luis Cárdenas, a lawyer who is an adviser to the board of Chile’s Industrial Association of Pharmaceutical Laboratories (ASILFA), told IPS.

“It is not realistic to think that developing countries are going to invest in R&D to produce new molecules,” given the investment capacity of multinational corporations, he said.

The 19th round of negotiations for the TPP took place in Brunei Aug. 23-30. Since then, the talks are no longer general but thematic. There are 21 working groups negotiating the 29 chapters, which include issues like agriculture, intellectual property, environment, services, telecommunications and investment.

Pharmaceutical patents give 20 years of protection, according to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) adopted in 1994 during the creation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

But the WTO’s 2001 Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health reaffirmed the flexibility of TRIPS member states in circumventing patent rights for better access to essential medicines. Under this declaration, governments may issue compulsory licenses on patents for medicines, or take other steps to protect public health.

Compulsory licensing is when a government allows someone else to produce a patented product without consent from the patent owner.

Washington wants the TPP to extend the length of chemical drug patent monopolies by five years and of biologics – products that includes a number of lifesaving drugs used to treat conditions such as cancer, diabetes and hepatitis C – by 12 years.

It is also pushing for data exclusivity, which gives companies monopoly rights over drugs by restricting the use of clinical trial data by drug regulators when approving generic or bioequivalent versions of drugs. This would keep the laboratories that make generic drugs from putting their products on the market as soon as patents expire.

In addition, it is pushing for the controversial practice of “evergreening” – the name given to the industry practice of seeking new patents after making small modifications to existing drugs.

Other measures on the table are patents for diagnostic, therapeutic and clinical procedures and the creation of a supranational mechanism to settle disputes between states and corporations.

These initiatives “affect access to medicine by the most disadvantaged segments of Mexican society due to the implications for the quality, safety and effectiveness of pharmaceutical products,” Gustavo Alcaraz, of Mexico’s National Association of Drug Manufacturers (ANAFAM), told IPS.

Alcaraz forms part of the Cuarto de Junto, a group of business delegates allowed by the economy ministry to monitor the negotiations without taking notes, after they sign a confidentiality agreement.

The secrecy surrounding the talks has kept civil society, academia, or health consumers from expressing their viewpoints on what is being negotiated.

Médecins Sans Frontières has called on the participating governments not to sign any agreement that undermines public health.

In 2011, non-governmental organisations and academics urged United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health Anand Grover to issue an urgent appeal to the governments involved in the TPP talks, on the grounds that the trade deal would severely impact the public health of the poor in developing nations.

In response, Grover sent a letter to the national authorities. But only Australia, Chile and New Zealand answered, defending the secrecy around the talks and voicing assurances that the right to health would be respected.

The effects of overzealous protection of intellectual property in health have been studied.

An article published in 2009 by the Health Affairs journal states that “Our study suggests that CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement)’s intellectual property rules on data exclusivity and patents are responsible for the removal of several lower-cost generic drugs from the market in Guatemala and for the denial of entry to a number of others.”

And as a result of the U.S.-Jordan free trade treaty, “Medicine prices in Jordan have increased 20 percent since 2001,” according to a report published by Oxfam in 2007.

“Higher medicine prices are now threatening the financial sustainability of government public health programmes,” added the report.

The details of the agreement are on the table at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum Summit, taking place Oct. 7-8 in Bali.

After a TPP meeting on intellectual property in Mexico City Sept. 23-Oct. 2, the United States and Japan are now considering proposing that the extension of patent terms only apply to developed countries, allowing shorter periods in developing nations like Malaysia and Vietnam.

The United States plans to sell eight Apache attack helicopters to Indonesia, but rights groups fear they could be used to oppress civilians. Credit: The U.S. Army/CC by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 26 2013 (IPS)

U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel announced Monday that Washington is going forward with a controversial sale of eight attack helicopters to the Indonesian government, despite concerns that the gunships will be used for internal repression.

The deal, worth some 500 million dollars, would be the largest-ever military sale between the two countries. In addition to the eight Apache AH-64E helicopters – the latest of this type of aircraft, built by U.S.-based Boeing – the agreement would include pilot training and radar technologies.

“Providing Indonesia these world-class helicopters is an example of our commitment to help build Indonesia’s military capability,” Hagel said in Jakarta, where he is on an eight-day trip to Southeast Asia.

“Helping ensure the region’s security and prosperity is a goal the United States strongly shares. The strong and enduring security partnership that has been built between the United States and Indonesia is a relationship the United States greatly values.”"Given the history of the Indonesian military [the Apaches] are more likely to be used for internal repression than for external defence." -- John Miller

A U.S. defence official, speaking anonymously, told reporters separately that the Apache gunships would strengthen the Indonesian government’s anti-piracy operations and broader “maritime awareness”.

Yet rights groups say it will be largely impossible for the United States to dictate the Indonesian military’s use of the new hardware once the sale has gone through.

“The problem is that these are offensive-only weapons, and given the history of the Indonesian military they’re more likely to be used for internal repression than for external defence,” John Miller, U.S. national coordinator for the East Timor & Indonesia Action Network (ETAN), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“The military will use these helicopters as they want. These are weapons of war, weapons of counter-insurgency, so it would be foolish to expect that the Indonesians wouldn’t use them that way.”

Early last year, when the Apache sale was first publicly discussed, ETAN and about 90 other civil society organisations wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress, warning, “These aircraft will substantially augment the [Indonesian military’s] capacity to prosecute its ‘sweep operations’ in West Papua [province], and thereby almost certainly lead to increased suffering among the civilian populations long victimised by such operations.”

While Congress must be formally notified of any major military sales to foreign governments (that notification took place in September), Miller says lawmakers raised little objection over the issue.

“There is really only rhetorical help coming from Washington, if that,” he says. “History has shown that military leverage was used quite successfully in the case of East Timor, when these types of sales were specifically withheld or conditioned on easily demonstrated reforms. But today’s members of Congress either don’t know their history or they’ve forgotten this lesson.”

Marked upsurge

Both Hagel’s trip and the gunships sale are being seen in the context of the United States’ broader attempt to give new priority to Washington’s bilateral relationships with countries throughout Asia. Indonesia could be central to this strategy – Obama is slated to make a trip there in October – and U.S. officials are keen to nurture an ongoing, though contested, reforms process.

Yet in recent years, national and international rights groups have warned that these reforms are not progressing at the rate Jakarta officials or some Western governments have suggested. Meanwhile, a military that for years stood accused of heinous rights violations today remains involved in battles against several internal rebellions.

West Papua, for instance, is a resource-rich province that became part of Indonesia under highly contentious circumstances in the 1960s. Armed separatist groups subsequently began fighting the state, resulting in up to 100,000 deaths by the following decade alone.

That violence continues to this day, with the province one of the world’s most militarised areas.

Last year, during Indonesia’s Universal Periodic Review – the United Nations’ regular look at countries’ human rights records – more than a dozen countries urged Jakarta to take steps to resolve ongoing problems in the region, including impunity for military abuses. Yet the Indonesian government rebuffed each of these recommendations.

Last year also saw a “marked upsurge in violence as Indonesian security forces apparently sought to crack down on Papuan activists,” Human Rights Watch stated in its most recent reporting on the region.

It listed impunity for security forces as “a serious concern”. It also noted, “Much of U.S. policy towards Indonesia has focused on cementing military ties, including with Indonesian special forces, which have long been implicated in serious abuses.”

Unrepentant and unreformed

For decades the United States was barred by law from selling military hardware to Indonesia specifically because of the military’s rights record. But following the 1998 downfall of Indonesian autocrat Suharto after more than three decades in power, President George W. Bush began to roll back these restrictions.

Claiming further progress on pro-democracy reforms and strengthened oversight within the Indonesian government and military, President Barack Obama essentially dismantled the remaining legal restrictions in 2010.

At the time, some U.S. lawmakers warned that such a step was premature.

Indonesian special forces have “a long history of abuses and remains unrepentant, essentially unreformed and unaccountable,” Senator Patrick Leahy stated in Jul. 2010.

“I deeply regret that before starting down the road of reengagement, our country did not obtain and [the special forces] did not accept the necessary reforms we have long sought,” he said. “It is notable that this is a small step and [then-Secretary of Defence Robert Gates] made clear that future cooperation, to be consistent with U.S. law, hinges on future reforms.”

While important reforms have indeed gone forward since Suharto’s fall in 1998, ETAN’s Miller warns that many of these processes have now stalled.

“Issues like fully removing the Indonesian military from its internal role, holding the military accountable for past and ongoing human rights violations – at best, that’s happening only in fits and starts,” he says.

“Yet the perception in Washington is that Indonesia is now needed as a central ally in the ‘war against terrorism’ and as a bulwark against China, and that the country has undergone a complete democratic transformation, with the military now fully under democratic control.”

“That’s just not true,” he concludes. “There’s no reason to sacrifice the people of West Papua and other parts of the country for this belief.”