With one-fifth of farming households dependent on palm oil production, policy considerations that look after the environment, lives, and livelihoods were essential.

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

Oil palm has brought significant benefits and prosperity to Liberia. The export of crude palm oil is a major source of foreign exchange earnings for the government. The palm oil crop covers more than 1 million hectares, hundreds of thousands are employed in the palm oil sector, and at least 21 percent of the farming households produce palm oil.

Opportunities for the country’s palm oil and other palm products in the international markets are considerable—creating a temptation to prioritize development over environmental concerns.

In 2020, policymakers in the Inter-Ministerial Commission on Palm Oil Concessions in Liberia faced a significant challenge: developing a policy path that pursued quick short-term profits and faced long-term negative consequences to the environment, lives, and livelihoods—or a beneficial approach for people and planet.

Forests Belong to Humanity

“When decisions are too short-term, narrow, and short-sighted, we do not take into account the long-term impact of our action. We need to recognize that some goods are common goods or public goods, such as forests. They do not belong to one person or one company; they belong to humanity as a whole,” says Francisco Alpizar, Wageningen University and Research.

This was the case for Liberia’s palm oil sector, whose key stakeholders include government, the private sector, NGOs, business associations, smallholder associations, and households that directly or indirectly rely on it as their lifeline.

“From an economic perspective, the prices of goods and commodities should reflect the true cost to societies, not just the immediate cost of producing them but also the environmental impact the production of those goods and services carries for societies,” Alpizar says.

The Liberian National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) was facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership. Here policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

Targeted Analysis Scenario Benefits All

As they developed the National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership, policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Scenario Analysis (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

UNDP developed the TSA to respond to the growing demand from decision-makers and stakeholders for more policy-relevant sustainable development analysis to support national SDG implementation facing diverse policy, management, and investment choices.

As an innovative analytical approach, the TSA captures and presents the value of ecosystem services within decision-making to help make the business case for sustainable policy and investment choices. By doing so, the TSA allows policymakers to calculate these costs and make decisions that harmonize with the environment.

In Liberia, policymakers needed economic data that compared the outcomes of continuing with conventional palm production with the results of taking a different route to make sound, informed decisions leading to sustainable palm concessions.

At the time, the situation in the West African country was characterized by contradictory forest management and concessions policies. The Commission had to balance the eagerness of communities and smallholder producers to engage in palm oil concessions because they brought employment and socioeconomic benefits and concerns in the global market about the environmental risks of palm oil production.

UNDP’s TSA provided an answer, enabling the Commission in Liberia to include all the relevant social, environmental, and economic impacts. TSA offered a systematic approach covering all aspects of the sector.

The TSA improves the decision-making process by capturing and presenting the value of ecosystem services and sectoral production to make policy decision-making more holistic. The tool applies to any sector, scenario, context, or country.

“TSA can, for instance, be applied for decision-making at the national level, when taking a national perspective, regional, company or even household level. For each and every one of those decisions, we need a careful analysis of what the current situation looks like and how it will look in the future and, what would be the alternative situation,” Alpizar explains.

Business-as-Usual Versus Sustainable Ecosystem Management

One is considered a business-as-usual scenario, and the other a sustainable ecosystem management scenario.

“When you compare one against the other, with a long-term perspective and focusing on the relevant indicators for the decision makers or the things that the decision maker cares for, then you can provide a better picture of the decision that is in front of us, and that is what targeted scenario analysis is.”

He says targeted scenario construction of business-as-usual versus sustainable ecosystem management outcomes is presented to the decision maker. When this is done, in principle, the decision maker will have a powerful decision-making tool to make informed decisions based on evidence.

“If we put ourselves in the feet of a decision maker, that is, for example, deciding whether to implement a series of policies to make the agricultural sector more sustainable, the business-as-usual scenario means you continue with the current practices. A sustainable ecosystem management scenario would be one in which you change a series of practices or actions, and with that, in principle, you achieve a different outcome,” Alpizar explains.

He gives an example of producing pineapples under a business-as-usual scenario with an impact on surrounding lands, agrochemicals, deforestation, land use change, competing diseases, or diseases that spread to the surrounding area, which might be viable but over a short period of time. The alternative scenario is to create and implement a more long-term, sustainable approach.

“Through UNDP’s application of TSA methodology, you can carefully construct the two scenarios by first asking this question: As the decision maker, what do you really care about? Is it employment, taxes, production, or reducing social unrest? Based on the answer, the analyst can construct a targeted scenario,” Alpizar says.

Returning to Liberia, the TSA was able to show that Smallholder Production (SPO) scenario and environmental sustainability were in the best interests of the concessionaire and the Liberian economy – with substantially greater benefits compared with the business-as-usual scenario (USD 333 million versus USD 188 million over 20 years).

When these results were discussed with the multistakeholder National Oil Palm Platform of Liberia, it was accepted and paved the way toward sustainable palm oil development in Liberia.

Across the world, TSAs have been conducted to assess the economic value of ecosystem services for various strategic economic sectors such as hydropower, agriculture, and tourism under the business-as-usual and sustainable ecosystem management scenarios to create a sustainable development path where humanity is in harmony with the environment.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Lahai J. Samboma
LONDON, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

When former footballer George Weah became president of Liberia in 2018, media practitioners felt they had in him a democrat who would champion media freedoms. “But we were mistaken,” journalist Henry Costa told IPS.

Any objective assessment of the relationship between West Africa governments and media organisations will conclude that, but for a few exceptions, the outlook for press freedom in the sub-region is a bleak one.

From Cameroon and Ghana, to Nigeria, Liberia and Senegal, journalists and media organisations are being attacked for simply doing their jobs. The fact that these attacks emanate from mostly state actors, who as a rule remain unpunished, points to a culture of impunity.

Liberia is a case in point.
“The president does not like criticism,” said Costa, owner of Roots FM and host of the station’s popular Costa Show. “And because we are critical of some policies, our offices have been attacked on two occasions by armed men and our equipment damaged and some stolen.”

Some would say Costa was lucky, for the corpse of another journalist, Tyron Brown, was dumped outside his home last year by a mysterious black jeep. A man has confessed to killing the journalist in self-defence but his colleagues are not convinced. They believe the murder was a message – mind your words or you could be next.

This climate of fear was heightened when Weah accused a BBC correspondent being against his government. Then Front Page Africa, a newspaper that has been critical of successive governments, was fined 1.8 million dollars in a civil defamation lawsuit brought by a friend of the president.

Mae Azango, a senior Front Page Africa reporter, said the government’s new tactic was to “strangulate the free press” by refusing to pay tens of thousands owed for media advertisements. “One minister said since the media does not write anything good about the government, it won’t pay debt owed, which will compel some media outlets to shut down,” she said. “Some media houses have not paid staff for up to eight months.”

In Ghana, once Africa’s top-ranked media-friendly country, things have deteriorated to the level where a sitting politician openly called on supporters to attack a journalist whose documentary on corruption in Ghanaian football exposed him. Ahmed Divela was subsequently shot dead last January. In 2015 another journalist, George Abanga, was also shot dead on assignment.

In March 2018 Latif Iddrisu, a young reporter, was covering a story when he was dragged into the Accra headquarters of the police and given a merciless beating which left him with a fractured skull.
Iddrisu told IPS by phone: “Journalists are being threatened with assault and death by politicians and people in power because they feel threatened by our exposés.” He doubts whether the passage of freedom of information (FOI) legislation will improve matters.

This position is borne out in Nigeria where the passing of FOI laws has not deterred officials from denying journalists access to information they need to carry out their jobs. According to Dapo Olorunyomi, the Central Bank and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (the NNPC) are the “most opaque institutions” in the country. Olorunyomi, editor-in-chief of Premium Times Newspaper, added: “So you are allowed to write what you want, but if you get it wrong you suffer the consequences.” He and journalists working for him have been arrested on several occasions to get them to reveal their sources.

The case of Jones Abiri is instructive. The journalist was incarcerated for two years without trial. And physical attacks on reporters have increased four-fold in recent times. Figures show that attacks on journalists and the press quadrupled in 2015-2019, compared to the preceding five year period.

Media academic Dr Chinenye Nwabueze maintains that the violence heightens during elections. “In the ‘season’ of elections, a journalist operates like a car parked – at owner’s risk,” he told IPS. “You could end up in the crossfire between opposing parties or thugs.”

The same story of violence and intimidation against journalists is replicated in francophone countries like Cameroon, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali. The most serious of them is Cameroon, where the government continues to prosecute media critics in military or special courts. As Angela Quintal, Africa Program Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS, “Cameroon is the second-worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, and the second in the world for jailing journalists on false news charges.”

Sierra Leone and the Gambia are the two countries that emerge relatively blemish-free in our survey of the landscape of press freedom in West Africa. Both have relatively new governments that have promised repeal criminal libel laws that their predecessors had used to clamp down on the media. From Sierra Leone, reporter Amadu Lamrana Bah of AYV Media told IPS: “The president says he is committed to repealing [criminal libel laws] and the process is on.”

His statement echoes that of Sheriff Bojang Jr, president of the Gambia Press Union, who said: “We no longer work in a fearful or repressive environment, but our major problem is the lack of information coming out of government, the total lack of transparency. But the government have promised to make changes.”

This is a reference to the absence of FOI legislation in the country, which the government has promised to “deal with in due course”. But the Gambians only have to look to similarly “blemish-free” Sierra Leone, to realise that FOI will count for nought if the authorities are not prepared to honour its provisions – as this reporter discovered while researching a story on sexual violence against Sierra Leonean women and another on diamond mining.

The Ministries of Justice, Mines, and Information in Freetown refused to provide the information we requested, even though they had initially promised they would. That recent experience came to mind when, during his interview for this piece, Liberian reporter Henry Costa said the Weah government “were pretending to be tolerant” but “would go to their old tricks” when economic hardships trigger anti-government protests and the media begin to report on them.

Since Sierra Leone and the Gambia are currently implementing International Monetary Fund policies, it is only a matter of time before those policies begin to bite the people. If the “Costa equation” is correct, then it is likewise only a matter of time before we find out whether the “blemish-free” authorities in Freetown and Banjul are as toxic to press freedom as their counterparts in Cameroon and Ghana, or indeed, their immediate predecessors.

“Journalists do essential work to keep the public informed, often in difficult circumstances in West and Central Africa,” Sadibou Marong, the Regional Media Manager for Amnesty’s West and Central Africa Office, told IPS.  “They must be protected to do their work freely, and without fear of attacks or threats. Governments in the region should promote media freedom and protect media workers and organisations.”

By Roberto Azevêdo
NAIROBI, Dec 23 2015 (IPS)

World Trade Organization (WTO) members concluded the Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi on 19 December by securing an historic agreement on a series of trade initiatives. The “Nairobi Package” pays fitting tribute to the Conference host, Kenya, by delivering commitments that will benefit in particular the organization’s poorest members.

Roberto Azevêdo

The elimination of agricultural export subsidies is particularly significant.

WTO members, ¬especially developing countries,¬ have consistently demanded action on this issue due to the enormous distorting potential of these subsidies for domestic production and trade. In fact, this task has been outstanding since export subsidies were banned for industrial goods more than 50 years ago.

WTO members’ decision tackles the issue once and for all. It removes the distortions that these subsidies cause in agriculture markets, thereby helping to level the playing field for the benefit of farmers and exporters in developing and least-developed countries.

This decision will also help to limit similar distorting effects associated with export credits and state trading enterprises.

And it will provide a better framework for international food aid ¬ maintaining this essential lifeline, while ensuring that it doesn’t displace domestic producers.

There are also important steps to improve food security, through decisions on public stockholding and towards a special safeguard mechanism, as well as a package of specific decisions for Least Developing Countries (LDCs).

This contains measures to enhance preferential rules of origin for LDCs and preferential treatment for LDC services providers.

And it contains a number of steps on cotton, such as eliminating export subsidies, and providing duty-free-quota-free market access for a range of LDC cotton products immediately.

In addition, we have approved the WTO membership of Liberia and Afghanistan, and we now have 164 member countries.
And I think we are all committed to supporting these two LDCs to boost their growth and development.

We also saw continued commitment to help build the trading capacity of LDCs through the excellent support shown at the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) pledging conference.

And, finally, a large group of members agreed on the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). Again, this is an historic breakthrough. It will eliminate tariffs on 10 per cent of global trade ¬ making it our first major tariff cutting deal since 1996.

While we celebrate these outcomes, we have to be clear-sighted about the situation we are in today.

Success was achieved here despite members’ persistent and fundamental divisions on our negotiating agenda – ¬ not because those divisions have been solved.

We have to face up to this problem.

The Ministerial Declaration acknowledges the differing opinions. And it instructs us to find ways to advance negotiations in Geneva.

Members must decide, the world must decide, about the future of this organization.

The world must decide what path this organization should take.

Inaction would itself be a decision. And I believe the price of inaction is too high.

It would harm the prospects of all those who rely on trade today ¬ and it would disadvantage all those who would benefit from a reformed, modernized global trading system in the future ¬ particularly in the poorest countries.

So we have a very serious task ahead of us in 2016.

We came to Nairobi determined to deliver for all those we represent ¬ and particularly for the one billion citizens of Africa.

At the outset, I warned that we were not looking at a perfect outcome. And what we have delivered is not perfect. There are still so many vital issues which we must tackle.

But we have delivered a huge amount. The decisions taken in Nairobi this week will help to improve the lives and prospects of many people ¬ around the world and in Africa.

When we left Geneva, the international media had already written their headlines:

-‘WTO talks break down’

-‘Another failure at the WTO’

That’s exactly how it was in the Ninth Ministerial Conference in Bali two years ago. And we saw it again this year.

Well, we’re getting used to proving those catastrophic headlines wrong.

In the past, all too often, WTO negotiations had a habit of ending in failure.

But, despite adversity ¬ despite real challenges ¬ we are creating a new habit at the WTO: success.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Matthias Yeanay and Roland Harris
MONROVIA, Oct 22 2015 (IPS)

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recently affirmed her commitment to the land rights of Liberia’s local communities, who rely on the forests for their livelihoods and have cared for them for generations.

“Any successful paradigm shift for forest management in Liberia must have local communities at its centre,” Edward McClain, Minster of State for Presidential Affairs, said in a speech delivered on the President’s behalf. A draft Land Rights Act would make this possible, but the current session of Parliament ended without the Act’s adoption.

The land by Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County, Liberia has been leased by the government to Equatorial Palm Oil for 50 years. Credit: Wade C.L. Williams/IPS

Such developments benefit large corporations but fail to deliver on the promise of shared economic development. Over half of Liberia’s territory has been sold to logging companies by the government, threatening the life-line of the communities that rightfully own Liberia’s forests.

These conflicts are not unique to Liberia. Around the world, contested lands fuel violence and threaten the commitments made by governments and companies. New research shows that out of eight fragile states in Africa, the governments of six claim ownership of nearly 100 per cent of the land in each country. Weak community rights also contribute to mass deforestation, as communities are generally better equipped than governments to care for their forests.

Despite growing attention around the world to these issues, the gap between how much land governments recognize as belonging to communities and the amount of land that communities govern in practice remains substantial.

As Ebola recedes, unsustainable demand for timber has returned to Liberia’s forests, but President Sirleaf’s comments give us hope that the government will side with local communities moving forward.

The President signed an agreement with Norway, which has promised up to $150 million over six years to help Liberia keep its forests standing. This agreement could provide much-needed funds for Liberia to provide basic services to its people, and stem the tide of mass deforestation.

Liberia’s leaders are turning towards conserving the forests rather than selling them off, and they recognize that the key to successful forest management is putting local communities in charge of their own forests. It only makes sense that the people who have managed the lands and forests all their lives, and whose communities have managed them for generations, are best-equipped to care for them. Research shows that when Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure land rights, forest are more likely to stay standing.

The draft Land Rights Act would operationalise many of the commitments Liberia’s government has made. It would recognize Liberia’s local communities as the rightful owners of the country’s forests without requiring them to present an official deed, a significant development given that these communities inhabit a large percentage of Liberia’s land.

By extension, the legislation would protect the forests that communities have been the guardians of for generations. President Sirleaf has expressed her strong support for it, and it is now up to Parliament to take action. We expect them to take this important step towards securing Liberia a future of peace and prosperity.

But recognizing land rights is not enough. Communities already have legal title to over 30 per cent of Liberia’s land area, one of the highest percentages of community ownership in West and Central Africa, but a lack of technical capacity, government coordination and due process has led to legally titled communities losing their land to make way for concessions or conservation areas. Most were never compensated for their losses.

The reality is that local communities want to be the architects of their own development and manage their own forests, but they need more logistical and technical support to ensure that they will not be trampled by big business.

Negotiation of community forest management agreements should be done by the communities themselves with technical support from Liberia’s Forest Development Authority, civil society and other institutions with interest in the forestry sector. This will enable the communities to adequately harness benefits, including sustainable management of the forest as well as economic, social and infrastructure development at the local level.

We hope the new law will make it easier for communities to make fair agreements with corporations. They want the power to require companies operating on their lands to employ community members in key decision-making roles, and to ask companies that violate their wishes for them to leave. But faced with the prospect of negotiating commercial contracts on their land, many communities find themselves on the losing end.

Liberia is poised to clarify land rights at the local level, a move that could make history and make the country a leader in land reform in Africa. For this move to be successful, the government’s policies must not forget the vital role played by the local communities. It is the rightful owners who have kept Liberia’s forests standing.

This new vision for Liberia’s forests may be threatened from many sides, but with the power of the people and the power of President Ellen Sirleaf, how can it fail?

(End)

Excerpt:

A nurse at Redemption Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia explains the facility's options for family planning. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Kitty Stapp
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 30 2015 (IPS)

Liberia’s Ebola epidemic may have subsided but its after-effects are still being felt, with tens of thousands of infants going unregistered at birth, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF says.

Liberia had ranked second after Somalia among countries with the lowest levels of birth registration. But just before the Ebola outbreak, progress had been made in reversing this problem, which leaves children at risk of exploitation and raises hurdles to entering the school system.

In July 2010, a decentralised birth registration system was launched by the government, with support from UNICEF, PLAN Liberia, Crisis Management Initiative and other development partners.

In 2013, the births of 79,000 children were registered, representing about a quarter of all new births and a dramatic increase from the four percent in previous years.

But by 2014, when many health facilities had closed or had reduced services due to the Ebola response, the number of registrations fell to 48,000 – a 39 per cent decrease.

And just 700 children are reported to have had their births registered between January and May 2015.

“Children who have not been registered at birth officially don’t exist,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s Representative in Liberia. “Without citizenship, children in Liberia, who have already experienced terrible suffering because of Ebola, risk marginalization because they may be unable to access basic health and social services, obtain identity documents, and will be in danger of being trafficked or illegally adopted.”

The neighbouring countries of Guinea and Sierra Leone were also hit by the deadly virus, which weakened already fragile health systems. But in Sierra Leone, approximately 250,000 children were registered during a recent five-day birth registration and polio vaccination campaign.

UNICEF is now working to register nearly 70,000 Liberian children who weren’t registered during the outbreak.

The agency is supporting the revamp of the registration systems, and will assist with training, logistics, and outreach efforts prior to a planned nationwide campaign later this year, with the aim of reaching all children not registered in 2014 and 2015.

“No child should suffer the indignity, or not have protection from a state or other entities, and be unable to access basic services that are every child’s right just because of a lack of a registered identity,” says Yett. “We cannot, and should never let that happen.”

Altogether, more than 4,800 people died during Liberia’s Ebola outbreak, nearly half of all diagnosed cases. The country was still recovering from a devastating civil war that ended in 2003, and the virus proved especially deadly for health care workers.

According to the World Health Organization, they were 20-30 times more likely to contract the disease than the general public, given the number of patients they saw and treated.  More than 800 contracted Ebola, and more than 400 died, with the outcome of almost one quarter of the cases unknown – this in a country with just 50 doctors.

“Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone entered the Ebola epidemic with severely underfunded health systems,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “After a year of handling far too many severely ill patients, the surviving staff need support, better protection, compensation, and reinforcements. The existing facilities need a complete overhaul, and many new structures need to be built. If another outbreak strikes, the toll would be far worse.”

Edited by Thalif Deen

“The threat is never over until we rebuild,” Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma stressed at an Ebola Recovery Conference Friday in New York.

On May 9, the west African country of Liberia was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) after 14 long months battling against the disease. However, two months later,  in only one week ending Jul. 5,  there were 30 confirmed Ebola cases reported in West Africa, three in Liberia, nine in Sierra Leone, and 18 in Guinea, according to the United Nations.

Koroma said that Ebola is a “stubborn enemy” which tends to keep showing its face.

“The battle now is to get the few cases down to zero, and getting our countries and the whole world to stay at zero,” Koroma asserted.

During the one-day high-level conference, the presidents of these three west African countries came together at the U.N. headquarters in New York along with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Zimbabwe’s President and Chair of the African Union, Robert Mugabe, as well as many other key actors to focus international attention, share recovery plans and raise funds.

In the sub-regional recovery plan there is a strong focus on rebuilding the health institutions, which were already fragile before the epidemic, according to the World Bank’s latest reports, with 4,022 more maternal related deaths of women per year predicted  in West Africa because of the  loss of health workers due to Ebola.

President Mugabe said that “we cannot afford to be complacent” because the underlying causes of the diseases’ exacerbation still exist.

Although there is emphasis on health, the recovery plans are comprehensive, focusing on  issues from water, and sanitation, to gender, youth and social protection; and even information and communication technology.

President of Liberia Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf  speaking on behalf of the Mono River Union (MRU), the intergovernmental institution comprising the three countries  — Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia —  stated that the plan is fully aligned with development plans, with a focus on “empowering our communities who were determined to protect their lives and their livelihoods”, cash transfers to local communities being a central part of the plan.

Sirleaf stated that 4 billion dollars was the amount needed for the next two years to implement the sub-regional plans, however over 5 billion dollars was promised during the pledging segment of the conference.

Both Mugabe and Sirleaf  called on the international community for a debt cancellation of 3.16 billion for the three countries, and Mugabe called on the private sector, especially those involved in extracting natural resources, to be socially responsible and engage in building economic resilience in their countries.

Two health care workers clean their feet in a bucket of water containing bleach after they leave an Ebola isolation facility during an Ebola simulation at Biankouma Hospital in Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 2015 (IPS)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, addressing delegates in a run-up to an international Ebola recovery conference, said last month that “all of the investments, all of the sacrifices and all of the risks by relief workers” would be squandered if an outbreak of the disease recurs.

And it did – in Liberia, a country which had been declared free of the Ebola virus."The existing facilities need a complete overhaul, and many new structures need to be built. If another outbreak strikes, the toll would be far worse." -- Dr. Matshidiso Moeti

The World Health Organisation (WHO), which made that declaration on May 9, confirmed that a 17-year-old Liberian who died of Ebola last week had been in contact with nearly 200 people possibly triggering the spread of the infection.

As of last week, more than 27,100 people were affected by the highly contagious disease, which killed over 11,100, mostly in three African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Against this backdrop, the United Nations is hosting a high-level international Ebola Recovery Conference July 10, primarily to provide a platform for the three countries to share their recovery plans and, more importantly, to raise funds to continue the fight against the disease and also strengthen health care systems in the region.

Nicolas Douillet of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) in Africa told IPS the conference aims to mobilise the international community in support of the three countries.

The total needs identified by the three countries, and regionally, by the Mano River Union, he said, amount to 7.2 billion dollars for the next 24 months – 3.2 billion for the three countries and 4.0 billion for the Mano River Union, an Intergovernmental Institution comprising Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire.

The total requested, however, is 9.0 billion dollars, of which 1.8 billion is already committed, leaving a financing gap of 7.2 billion dollars.

Speaking of the need for strong health care systems, former U.S. President Bill Clinton told a U.N. meeting last May that severely limited resources were a “staggering burden” – and countries in West Africa were requesting funds to build better and stronger health systems through multi-year plans.

Before the Ebola outbreak, he said, Liberia had just one physician for every 71,000 people. He said Ebola had been in many fundamental ways a “man-made disaster.”

“Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone entered the Ebola epidemic with severely underfunded health systems,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

“After a year of handling far too many severely ill patients, the surviving staff need support, better protection, compensation, and reinforcements. The existing facilities need a complete overhaul, and many new structures need to be built. If another outbreak strikes, the toll would be far worse,” he warned.

Sarah Edwards, head of Policy & Campaigns at Health Poverty Action, told IPS: “Yes, there certainly needs to be a focus on the longer term need for health systems strengthening at this conference and across the wider Ebola response, and specifically this needs to consider how health systems in Ebola-affected countries can be funded sustainably.”

She said this should include measures to support affected countries to explore the potential for increased tax revenues to fund HSS; take action to stop illicit capital flight; and pay compensation for any health workers trained in affected countries who are now working in the UK.

After a visit to the region last October, Magdy Martínez-Solimán, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General and Director of UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, said: “This devastating health crisis is destroying lives and communities. It is also impairing national economies, wiping out livelihoods and basic services, and could undo years of efforts to stabilize West Africa.”

“As we work together to end the outbreak, now is the time to ensure these countries can also continue to function and swiftly get back on their feet,” he added.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, already suffering from some of the lowest levels of human development in the world, had emerged from years of civil conflict and political instability and were starting to make encouraging progress, according to UNDP.

Last September, the United Nations established the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), a single structure that will aim to stop the spread of the disease and prevent it from appearing in unaffected countries, as well as treat and care for the infected.

The UNDP said gross domestic product (GDP) in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia has shrunk by two to three percentage points. The countries are now projected to lose a total of 13 billion dollars as a result of Ebola. People’s livelihoods are shrinking from lost wages and decreased productivity.

The participants in Friday’s conference at the United Nations include: President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Chair of the African Union (AU), Alpha Condé, President of Guinea; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia and Ernest Bai Koroma, President of Sierra Leone.

The meeting is in partnership with the AU, the European Union (EU), the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

The AU will hold its own “International Conference on Africa’s Fight Against Ebola” July 20-21 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

Meanwhile the Washington-based ONE campaign said keeping track of pledges and monitoring their disbursement, has proved difficult and – at times – impossible “because of inconsistent, inefficient, and often opaque reporting processes and standards.”

In a white paper released Tuesday, it said: “One of the most fundamental questions asked during a humanitarian crisis is, ‘how much have donors promised to this effort?’

“But in the case of the Ebola outbreak, this question has been incredibly difficult to answer — and that’s a huge problem,” ONE’s Global Health Policy Director Erin Hohlfelder said.

“If we don’t know what has really been pledged and delivered, no one can adequately match promised resources to the needs on the ground. That means gaps cannot be easily identified and we risk losing time, resources, and lives.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

G7-based companies and investors cheated Africa out of an estimated six billion dollars in a year through just one form of tax dodging, according to a new Oxfam report ‘Money talks: Africa at the G7’, released Jun. 2.

This is equivalent to three times the amount needed to plug the healthcare funding gap in the Ebola-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and at-risk Guinea Bissau.

According to an Oxfam briefing paper release in April this year, an estimated 1.7 billion dollars is required to close the healthcare funding gap to improve dangerously inadequate health systems in these countries. This figure is based on raising spending to the recommendation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that 86 dollars per capita is required to achieve the minimum package of essential services.“Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school” – Nick Brye, Oxfam’s Head of U.K. Campaigns

The new Oxfam report comes as G7 leaders prepare to meet their African counterparts at the annual summit in Bavaria, Germany from Jun. 8 to 9. African leaders from Ethiopia (Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn), Liberia (President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf), Nigeria (President Muhammadu Buhari) and Senegal (President Macky Sall) are scheduled to join an outreach session on Jun. 8.

Oxfam is calling for the leaders of the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States – to include action for ambitious tax reform in discussions about how the group can support economic growth and sustainable development on the continent.

In the United Kingdom, Oxfam is part of a coalition that has been calling on the recently elected new British government to show leadership by introducing a Tax Dodging Bill, which would make it harder for U.K. companies to avoid paying tax in the countries in which they operate – practices which currently cost some of the world’s poorest countries billions each year.

The coalition, which includes ActionAid and Christian Aid in addition to Oxfam, is currently running a Tax Dodging Bill campaign.

According to Oxfam, a well-crafted Tax Dodging Bill would also make it harder for big companies to avoid paying tax in the United Kingdom, and could bring in at least 3.6 billion pounds (5.4 billion dollars) a year to the U.K. Treasury, the equivalent of 600 pounds (910 dollars) for every household living below the poverty line.

“Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school,” said Nick Brye, Oxfam’s Head of U.K. Campaigns.

“To fund the fight against poverty and to tackle worsening extreme inequality, we need action to ensure big companies pay their fair share, here and in the world’s poorest nations.”

Oxfam also notes that existing international efforts to tackle corporate tax dodging, such as the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) process, led by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD) for the G20 group of the world’s major economies, will leave gaping tax loopholes.

It warns that these loopholes can continue to be exploited by multinational companies across the developing world and that many African nations have been shut out of discussions on BEPS reform and will not benefit from them as a result.

Oxfam is also calling for British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne to attend July’s Financing for Development Conference in Ethiopia which will play host to heads of states and finance ministers from around the world.

The talks, which will focus on how the international community will fund development over the next two decades, are an opportunity for governments to work together to start shaping a more democratic and fairer global tax system.

In 2010, the last year for which data are available, Oxfam says that companies and investors based in G7 countries avoided paying tax on 20 billion dollars of income through a practice called trade mispricing – where a company artificially sets the prices for goods or services sold among its subsidiaries to avoid taxation.

With corporate tax rates in Africa averaging 28 percent, this equates to nearly six billion dollars in lost revenues. In addition, developing countries as a whole lose around 100 billion dollars a year through tax avoidance schemes involving tax havens, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“Reforming global corporate tax rules so that African governments can claim the money owed to them is vital to tackle extreme poverty and inequality and boost economic growth, said Brye. “That’s why Oxfam has been calling for a U.K. Tax Dodging Bill that would ensure U.K. companies do their bit to help poor families at home and in developing countries.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

With no new infections in 42 days, Liberia has been declared free and clear of Ebola by the World Health Organization.

The announcement was made in the emergency command center in Monrovia, a room packed with reporters, aid agencies and dignitaries, including the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah R. Malac. Responses ranged from applause to tears followed by a moment of silence called by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

“At this symbolic juncture, I ask the whole world to remember the 4,608 Liberians who lost their lives, and the many thousands more who endured the horror of fighting the disease,” Johnson-Sirleaf said.

“Let us celebrate, but stay mindful and vigilant,” she said. “Clearly, the events of the last year must never be forgotten.

Then, in an action of physical closeness not seen in many months, she went around the room shaking hands.

It was just over a year – in March 2014 – that the outbreak was confirmed in Liberia. It had traveled swiftly south, from Guinea to Sierra Leone and then Liberia, frightening health officials and world health agencies with its deadly ferocity. In Liberia more than 3,000 Ebola cases were confirmed and more than 4,700 cases were fatal.

But alarm bells had hardly been sounded before the virus reached foreign shores. In July 2014, a Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, collapsed and died in Nigeria, leaving 19 people infected and eight dead. Four months later, Thomas Eric Duncan flew into Texas where his symptoms exploded. Sent home with antibiotics, he survived only a short time after re-entering Texas Presbyterian Hospital, where he passed away on Oct. 8.

Less than a year has passed and Liberians have successfully prevented any new infections since the last case was reported on March 20th.

Still, outbreaks persist in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, creating a risk that infected people may cross into Liberia over the region’s exceptionally porous borders.

Meanwhile, writing in FrontpageAfricaonline, Liberians gave thanks to God, the Liberian President, U.S. President Obama and the American people, the European Union, Cuba, China, support from Nigeria and Ghana, the United Nations and other NGOs.

“Liberian people at home and abroad, thanks,” wrote Boima Gbelly, described as self-employed. “If we fought this unknown enemy, certainly we can fight other challenges. Let’s unite and help build a prosperous Liberia in a civil manner.”

“Lord, with you, all things are possible,” wrote Daa Onenokay, of the Liberian diaspora. “We want to extend thanks and sincere appreciation to our international partners for all the help and support which brought relief to Liberia… We hope that the entire Mano River Basin will be Ebola-free soon.”

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

A baby cries in his mother’s lap while being inoculated against measles by Vaccinator Joseph Kamara, at Tagweh Town Community Clinic in Bomi County, Liberia. Credit: UNICEF

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
DAKAR, May 4 2015 (IPS)

As Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia work to end Ebola, critical healthcare services damaged by the epidemic are beginning to be revitalised.

Supported by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the three countries worst-hit by the disease have begun a campaign to immunise three million children against preventable illnesses like measles and polio.“UNICEF trained a former Ebola sensitisation team to go door-to-door explaining to parents that the vaccinations for measles were safe, essential, and not related to Ebola in any way." -- Tim Irwin

The launch of the campaign coincided with World Immunization Week, which ran Apr. 24 to 30. In Guinea, the World Bank has provided funding, whilst in Sierra Leone, funding has come from the Canadian International Development Agency, the European Union and the United States Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

Speaking to IPS about the relevance of the campaign, UNICEF West Africa spokesperson Tim Irwin said, “The focus is still very much on getting to zero cases of Ebola, but the reduction in the number of cases has allowed for the resumption of some interventions.

“Immunisations have restarted and UNICEF and partners have supported the governments in the reopening of schools.”

At the end of March, the World Health Organisation said “in light of the decline in Ebola cases, it is urgent to focus efforts on restarting and intensifying immunization activities.”

Currently, the risk of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks outweighs the risk of increased Ebola virus transmission.

In Liberia, a campaign to provide measles and polio vaccinations to over 700,000 children under five years old is planned for May 8-14. There, measles vaccination rates were adversely affected due to the impact of Ebola on the country’s healthcare infrastructure.

Little more than half of children aged under one year received measles vaccines in 2014. Before the epidemic in 2013, measles coverage was 89 percent, while in 2014 it fell to 58 percent.

Meanwhile, Ebola had a significant impact on Sierra Leone’s vaccination regime, with routine vaccinations decreasing by 17 percent during the epidemic. Since the start of 2015, 21 laboratory confirmed cases of measles have been reported. In May, an immunisation drive for 1.5 million children under five will cover measles and polio.

In Guinea, where a measles outbreak was declared in early 2014 – prior to Ebola – the number of confirmed measles cases increased almost fourfold, from 59 between January and December 2013 to 215 for the same period in 2014, according to WHO. There are currently some 1265 suspected cases of measles in Guinea.

Irwin told IPS that in Guinea, one significant challenge is communicating the safety and importance of vaccines to sections of the population which remain sceptical, and in some cases concerned that vaccinations could be connected with Ebola.

“The second phase of measles vaccination campaign was launched in Forest Region which is still recovering from the psychological trauma of the Ebola outbreak,” Irwin said.

“While there hasn’t been a case that region for months, the UNICEF team and partners took the initiative to conduct a social mobilisation campaign ahead of the vaccinations to ensure that the turnout would be as high as possible.”

Health professionals remain vigilant for cases of Ebola, and are required to wear gloves when vaccinating – a practice not routinely required for administering injectable vaccinations in normal conditions.

As part of the community-sensitisation campaign in Guinea, UNICEF has been conducting door-to-door visits to discuss vaccinations with parents.

“UNICEF trained a former Ebola sensitisation team to go door-to-door explaining to parents that the vaccinations for measles were safe, essential, and not related to Ebola in any way,” said Irwin.

UNICEF health specialist Dr. Rene Ehounou Ekpini told IPS that Ebola had highlighted serious problems in Guinea’s health system. “Firstly, it’s a problem of poor distribution, with most health workers in the capital. At the second level, it’s an infrastructure issue.

“It’s important to restore confidence in the health system,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Quick now, can you name a famous African sculptor from the 1800s or even the early 20^th century?

Anyone able to answer positively is part of a select minority – most museum-goers have become used to seeing traditional African carvings without knowing the name of the artist.

Artwork by Kuakudili on display at the ‘Masters of Sculpture from Ivory Coast’ exhibition, currently running at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, where visitors can see the forms that inspired Western artists such as Picasso, Braque and other adherents of Cubism. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

But some experts are taking steps to change this, with the most extensive exhibition devoted to identifying Africa’s expert sculptors now on in Paris at the Quai Branly Museum – a venue devoted to the indigenous art of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas that is sometimes criticised for having “colonial undertones”.

The exhibition, titled ‘Masters of Sculpture from Ivory Coast’, features nearly 330 historical and contemporary works and artefacts, and runs until Jul. 26. It comes at a time when the market for traditional African art is at its highest in decades, with pieces fetching record prices, amid debate about whether these objects should be “returned” to Africa.

The show pays tribute to the remarkable artistry of the sculptors, who were often given the title of “master” in their homeland; and the timeless splendour of some of the objects will help to explain the current collecting craze. But the exhibition may also add fuel to the discussion about who should own works that reflect a region’s cultural heritage.

“Art really has no fatherland,” says the exhibition’s co-curator Eberhard Fischer, an ethnologist and Director Emeritus of the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, Switzerland.

“The interest of the artist might not be the same as the interest of the nation. Museums are responsible to the artist, and should honour them in the right way,” he added. “African art, European art, Indian art should be seen all over the world. We’re in the 21^st century.”

He told IPS that what was “special” about the exhibition is the attempt to reveal the creators “behind the masterpieces”, in contrast to the objects being presented in a general context as tribal art created by anonymous makers.“Too often considered in the West as an artisanal production only involved in ritual activities, African art – just like Western art – is produced by individual artists whose works display great artistic and personal skill” – Notes to the ‘Masters of Sculpture from Ivory Coast’ exhibition

“My aim is to put these masters on a pedestal and to say ‘these were great men’,” Fischer said. “They were never given the same status as Western artists, and it’s time their individual skills were highlighted.”

In the notes to the exhibition, Fischer and co-curator Lorenz Homburger state that “African sculpture has a central place in the history of art”, and they indicate that the identification of traditional artists contributes to the recognition of this role.

“Too often considered in the West as an artisanal production only involved in ritual activities, African art – just like Western art – is produced by individual artists whose works display great artistic and personal skill,” the curators stress.

The Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) was one of the most important regions for African art production, and the exhibition “invites” visitors to discover the different “masters” of the various ethnic groups – artists who were held in “high esteem” by their communities. Some sculptors are designated only by their region, but many others do have names that are now becoming known.

Museum-goers will learn about Sra (“the creator”) who was born circa 1880 and died in 1955. He was the most famous sculptor of western Ivory Coast, according to the curators, creating “prestige objects and masks for many Dan and Mano chieftains in Liberia and for important members of the Dan and We community in Ivory Coast.”

Sra was renowned for his female figures, and visitors can admire these objects as well as his striking mother-and-child depictions. One of his contemporaries, Uopié, came from a different area but was also part of the Dan culture – in north-western Ivory Coast – and produced “bewitchingly beautiful” smiling masks, of the kind known as déanglé.

Putting a face and name to unsung African artists – photo of Kuakudili, an Ivory Coast artist who carved sacred masks both for masquerade dancers in neighbouring villages as well as for his own people. Cubism. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

Alongside the objects, the curators give verbal snapshots of the artists whom they have been able to name: Tompieme was a “small, rather athletic, cheerful man” who was a successful farmer as well as singer and musician; Si was a hunter and youth instructor who, for many decades “circumcised boys and led the initiation camp … where he showed his initiates the art of carving.”

Then there is Tame (circa 1900 to 1965), a “handsome young man, a successful wrestler and the lover of many women.” He was the nephew of Uopié, who taught him to carve.  While there is no picture to allow visitors to judge Tame’s purported good looks for themselves, the exhibition does provide a photo of Kuakudili, the first Ivory Coast artist to have his “own face” in the show.

A picture of this sculptor is available thanks to Hans Himmelheber, a German anthropologist, art collector and Fischer’s step-father, who met the artist in 1933. The photo shows Kuakudili as a thin, serious man. He carved sacred masks both for masquerade dancers in neighbouring villages as well as for his own people, and in his work, visitors can see the forms that inspired Western artists such as Picasso, Braque and other adherents of Cubism.

Away from the exhibition, masks such as these and other objects from “African masters” are currently in great demand on the international art market, especially in Paris, New York and Brussels.

Jean Fritts, director for African and Oceanic Art at the Sotheby’s auction house, says that the median price for African art has doubled over the past decade.

“There has been tremendous growth since 1999,” she told IPS. “Part of this is related to a broader appreciation of African art.”

It is also related to some of the first collectors dying, and their heirs selling the objects, dealers have said. Many pieces have come from former colonialists in Belgium, for instance, and museums as well as private collectors are snapping up the objects that they believe were acquired by “honest” means.

Fritts said that 25 percent of the art on the market is being bought by collectors in the Middle East, with some of the works destined for the Louvre Abu Dhabi as well as the National Museum of Qatar, set to open in 2016.

In Africa, businesspeople such as Congolese entrepreneur Sindika Dokolo have also been buying on the market, with the aim of bringing some of Africa’s art back home. Dokolo had a representative at a recent Sotheby’s auction in Paris, where a coveted mask fetched 3.5 million euros (it went to another bidder).

Regarding the identity of the artists, Fritts and other dealers acknowledged that there is an “issue” because historically there has not been “much data collected about the carver”.

Given that provenance and exhibition history are important for art collectors (along with artistic quality and “rarity”), the Quai Branly show may help to add value to objects identified as being carved by a particular “master”. Fischer, the curator, sees no problem with that.

“A lot of these art pieces are sold as antiques and this is a wrong concept,” he says. “The market wants to keep them in some cloud of anonymity, but why shouldn’t African art fetch the same high prices that collectors pay for Western art? These artists have not been honoured enough.”

He sees the exhibition as the first step for these artists to have a place in prestigious museums such as the Louvre in Paris. Perhaps one day, Sra will be as internationally known as Picasso.

Edited by Phil Harris   

‘Joginis’, otherwise known as India’s ‘temple slaves’, dance outside a temple during a religious festival. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
NEW YORK, Mar 6 2015 (IPS)

Media coverage of maternal, sexual and reproductive health rights is crucial to achieving international development goals, yet journalists covering these issues often face significant challenges.

“When I was a baby, I got sick and some of my family members decided that I should die because I was not a boy. Decades later, I’m inspired by the courage of my mother - and countless other women – to expose and end gender-based violence and inequality.” -- IPS correspondent Stella Paul
Recognising the contributions these journalists make to advancing women and girls’ rights, international advocacy organisation Women Deliver have named 15 journalists for their dedication to gender issues ahead of International Women’s Day 2015.

Among the journalists Women Deliver recognised for their work is IPS correspondent Stella Paul from India.

Paul was honoured for her reporting on women’s rights abuses through articles on such issues as India’s ‘temple slaves’ and bonded labourers.

Paul’s dedication to women’s rights is not only shown through her journalism. When she interviews communities, she also teaches them how to report abuses to the authorities and hold them accountable for breaking the cycle of violence.

Paul is herself a survivor of infanticide.

She told Women Deliver, “When I was a baby, I got sick and some of my family members decided that I should die because I was not a boy.

“Decades later, I’m inspired by the courage of my mother – and countless other women – to expose and end gender-based violence and inequality.”

Among others, Paul’s story on bonded labour in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad has had a tangible impact on the lives of those she interviewed.

In July she blogged about how one woman featured in the article ‘No Choice but to Work Without Pay‘, Sri Lakshmi, was released from bonded labour by her employer after a local citizen read the article on IPS and took action.

Lakshmi’s daughter Amlu, who once performed domestic labour while her parents went off to work, is now enrolled in a local elementary school.

Women’s issues aren’t ‘soft news’

Another journalist honoured was Mae Azango from Liberia.

Women Deliver CEO Katja Iversen told IPS, “Mae Azango deserves a Pulitzer. She went undercover to investigate female genital mutilation in Liberia.

“After her story was published she received death threats and [she] and her daughter were forced into hiding. Mae’s bravery paid off though, as her story garnered international attention and encouraged the Liberian government to ban the licensing of institutions where this horrific practice is performed,” Iversen added.

Azango told Women Deliver, “Speaking the truth about female genital cutting in my country has long been a dangerous thing to do. But I thought it was worth risking my life because cutting has claimed the lives of so many women and girls, some as young as two.”

Iversen said that many of the honourees had shown incredible dedication, through their work.

“For some of our journalists, simply covering topics deemed culturally taboo – like reproductive rights, domestic violence or sexual assault – can be enough to put them in danger,” she said.

However despite their dedication, journalists still also face obstacles in the newsroom.

“One of the questions we asked the journalists was: what will it take to move girls’ and women’s health issues to the front pages?” Iversen said.

“Almost all of them said: we need more female journalists in leadership and decision-making positions in our newsrooms. Journalism, like many other industries, remains a male dominated field, which can be a major obstacle to publishing stories on women’s health and rights.”

But the issue also runs deeper. There is also a lack of recognition that women and girls’ health rights abuses and neglect are also abuses of human rights, and combatting these issues is essential to achieving development for everyone, not just women and girls.

This means that women’s health is often seen as ‘soft news’ not political or economic news worthy of a front-page headline.

“Unfortunately women’s health and wellbeing is still, for the most part, treated as ‘soft’ news, despite the fact that when women struggle to survive, so do their families, communities and nations,” Iversen said.

“Every day, an estimated 800 women die in pregnancy or childbirth, 31 million girls are not enrolled in primary school and early marriage remains a pervasive problem in many countries. These are not just women’s issues, these are everyone’s issues – and our honorees are helping readers understand this link.”

As journalist Catherine Mwesigwa from Uganda told Women Deliver, “Women’s health issues will make it to the front pages when political leaders and the media make the connection between girls’ and women’s health and socio-economic development and productivity, children’s education outcomes and nations’ political stability.”

Male journalists also have a role to play and two of the fifteen journalists honoured for their contribution to raising awareness on these crucial rights were men.

Besides India and Liberia, other honorees hailed from Argentina, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and the United States.

Online Vote

Readers have the opportunity to vote for their favourite journalists from the fifteen journalists selected by Women Deliver.

The three winners will receive scholarships to attend Women Deliver’s 2016 conference, which will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Voting is open until 20 March 2015.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

“There is Strength in Unity” – public service message for the ‘Africa United’ campaign to prevent the spread of Ebola in West Africa. Credit: African Press Organization (APO)

By Kwame Buist
MALABO, Equatorial Guinea, Dec 3 2014 (IPS)

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has joined a number of football stars, celebrities, international health organisations and corporations in the ‘Africa United’ global health communications campaign aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola in West Africa.

The campaign, which was launched on Dec. 3, is supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation and driven creatively by actor Idris Elba, is designed to recognise the vital role of front-line healthcare workers, as well as to provide critical education and resources for the people of West Africa.

Educational messages will be delivered on local and national radio and TV, billboards and by SMS to audiences in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and neighbouring countries.“Imagine having to sit down and tell your family that you were going to fight this disease. That conversation is happening across West Africa and around the world every day. I am in awe of the bravery of these health workers, who put their lives at risk day in and out to stop the spread of this terrible disease” – actor Idris Elba

In ”West Africa vs Ebola”, a video which has been prepared for the campaign, Elba stars as a soccer coach giving a rousing and educational team talk to a West Africa team in preparation for its “life or death” game against Ebola. Elba explains the symptoms of Ebola and tactics for how to beat the virus, which includes spreading the word and working as a team.

“I wanted to support this campaign for so many reasons. I could not sit back without doing something to help fight Ebola,” said Yaya Touré, Ivorian professional football (soccer) player. “It is important we don’t treat this as something we just discuss with work colleagues or simply follow on the news for updates – instead our focus should be to do something.”

“I also wanted to get involved with this campaign as it pays tribute to the many, many African heroes who are in the villages, towns and cities using their skills, resourcefulness and intelligence to battle Ebola. Those people on the front line are often forgotten. African mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters are doing everything they can to fight Ebola – we have to support them.”

In a TV spot titled ”We’ve Got Your Back”, Elba and a group of football players committed to the fight against Ebola in West Africa, including Yaya Touré, Carlton Cole, Kei Kamara, Patrick Vieira, Fabrice Muamba and Andros Townsend, voice their solidarity with the healthcare workers who are risking their lives every day to fight Ebola.

In the video, the players acknowledge that, although fans regard them as heroes, healthcare workers tackling Ebola are the true heroes. Each player wears the name of a healthcare worker on his back as a symbol of respect for “the world’s most important team.”

“For me the battle against Ebola is a personal one,” said Elba, actor and the creative force behind the development of the campaign public service announcements. “To see those amazing countries in West Africa where my father grew up and my parents married being ravaged by this disease is painful and horrific.”

“Imagine having to sit down and tell your family that you were going to fight this disease. That conversation is happening across West Africa and around the world every day. I am in awe of the bravery of these health workers, who put their lives at risk day in and out to stop the spread of this terrible disease.”

“My hope,” Elba added, “is that, in some small way, through the development of these public service announcements and the creation of the Africa United campaign, we can ensure that these workers get the support they need and that health messages are delivered to people on the ground to help them in their fight.”

The video spots and other multimedia educational materials are being made available on the campaign website in English, French, Krio and additional local languages.

The educational materials are designed to be adapted and distributed by Africa United partners such as ministries of health, health clinics, government and non-governmental organisations, media and sports organisations.

These include the CDC Foundation and current partners Africa 24, SuperSport, ONE, UNICEF and Voice of America. CDC staff working in the affected countries contributed to the development and distribution of the health messages, and Africa United will continue to develop and provide messages to CDC and partners in real time based on changing needs.

The 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest in history, infecting nearly 16,000 people with more than 5,600 deaths to date. While the spread of Ebola is a threat to people, health systems and economies around the globe, West African communities in particular are being crippled by the disease as a result of already-strained healthcare systems, mistrust of healthcare workers and fear and stigmatisation of those infected.

“Private and public partnerships like Africa United are critical to aligning organisations fighting Ebola and to ensuring quick, effective responses to changing circumstances and needs,” said Charles Stokes, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation.

“The CDC Foundation remains committed to advancing response efforts in West Africa through public education and resources for use on the front lines of the Ebola battle.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Anthony Banbury, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), visits a safe burial site for Ebola victims in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Credit: UN Photo/Ari Gaitanis

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 2014 (IPS)

The United Nations, which is working on an emergency footing to battle the outbreak of Ebola, is worried about the potential for further isolation of the hardest-hit nations in West Africa.

“It’s a psychological fear,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told IPS. “And there has been a chain reaction.”

He cautioned there should be no action which is not based on science or medical evidence.

Ban said the fight against Ebola is a “top priority” of the United Nations and admitted he was conscious of the fact the disease has had a “heavy impact on all spectrum of our lives.”

The secretary-general’s warning resonated in North Africa last week when Morocco postponed hosting the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations because of its own fears over the possible spread of the Ebola virus.

Morocco’s Sports Minister Mohamed Ouzzine was quoted as saying: “This decision is motivated mainly by the medical risks that this virus would put on the health of our fellow Africans.”

The New York Times said “fear of the spread of Ebola has now thrown Africa’s most important soccer tournament into disarray.”

As a result, the Confederation of African Football last week removed Morocco as host of the biennial soccer championship, with Equatorial Guinea stepping in to take over as host of the 16-team games early next year.

The three West African countries most affected by Ebola are Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Geographically, Morocco is a North African country.

Last July, Seychelles forfeited a match after it refused to permit a team from Sierra Leone into the country because of concerns over Ebola.

Meanwhile, there were unconfirmed reports that Philippine peacekeepers who returned home from Liberia recently were to be temporarily settled either on an island off Luzon or put on board a ship.

Asked for a response, U.N. Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters that once peacekeepers have completed their missions, these soldiers come under the authority of their respective governments.

Ban told IPS he was thankful for the countries that have pledged “massive resources” to fight Ebola.

These include the United States, UK, China, Japan, France and several other European countries.

He singled out the United States for providing over 4,000 soldiers and Cuba for providing hundreds of medical personnel in the fight against Ebola.

Last week U.S. President Barack Obama asked Congress to approve over six billion dollars in emergency funding to fight the spread of the disease and also protect U.S. nationals.

“I hope the lame duck Congress will approve it,” Ban said.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the overall financial requirements are estimated at about 988 million dollars, of which 60 percent has been funded.

Additionally, there is also a Trust Fund, with 58.7 million dollars as pledges.

Anthony Banbury, head of the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), told the 193-member General Assembly last week that “Ebola is a fearsome enemy and we will not win the battle by chasing it.”

The death toll has exceeded “a grim milestone” of 5,000, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, “with the real number likely to be much higher,” he added.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has reported over 13,000 Ebola cases in eight countries: the three most affected nations in West Africa, plus the United States, Spain, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal.

As the crisis continues, about 3,300 children have become Ebola orphans while food prices have been rising in the three affected countries, schools have closed and traders have refused to bring their products to the market.

At the just-ended summit of G20 world leaders from both developed and developing nations, the secretary-general said, “The rate of new cases is showing signs of slowing in some of the hardest-hit parts of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. But as rates decline in one area, they are rising in others.”

And transmission continues to outpace the response, he added at the conclusion of the summit Sunday in Brisbane, which was hosted by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

He urged the G20 to step up “so that we can meet the 70/70 goal: isolating and treating 70 per cent of all Ebola cases and providing safe and dignified burials to 70 per cent of those who have died.”

He said the international community must also address the secondary impacts on healthcare, education and soaring food prices caused by a disruption in farming that could provoke a major food crisis affecting one million people across the region.

“It is important we do not further isolate these three countries by imposing travel restrictions. This will not impede the spread of the virus: it will simply hamper our efforts to mobilise support,” he argued.

According to the WHO, there is some evidence that case incidence is no longer increasing nationally in Guinea and Liberia, but steep increases persist in Sierra Leone.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

An Ebola treatment centre in Kenema, Sierra Leone, on the day of a visit from Anthony Banbury, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER). Credit: UN Photo/Ari Gaitanis

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 13 2014 (IPS)

The United States proposed Tuesday that the international community write off 100 million dollars in debt owed by West African countries hit hardest by the current Ebola outbreak. The money would be re-invested in health and other public programming.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will be detailing the proposal later this week to a summit of finance ministers from the Group of 20 (G20) industrialised countries. If the idea gains traction among G20 states, that support should be enough to approve the measure through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where the United States is the largest voting member."The plan is for that money to be re-invested in social infrastructure, including hospitals and schools … to deal with the short-term problem of Ebola but also the long-term failure of the health systems that allowed for this outbreak.” -- Jubilee USA’s executive director Eric LeCompte

“The International Monetary Fund has already played a critical role as a first responder, providing economic support to countries hardest hit by Ebola,” Lew said in a statement to IPS.

“Today we are asking the IMF to expand that support by providing debt relief for Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. IMF debt relief will promote economic sustainability in the worst hit countries by freeing up resources for both immediate needs and longer-term recovery efforts.”

These three countries together owe the IMF some 370 million dollars, according to the U.S. Treasury, with 55 million dollars due in the coming two years. Yet there are already widespread fears over the devastating financial ramifications of Ebola on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, in addition to the epidemic’s horrendous social impact.

Last month, the World Health Organisation warned that the virus now threatens “potential state failure” in these countries. The World Bank, meanwhile, estimates that the virus, which has already killed more than 5,000 people and infected more than 14,000, could cost West African countries some 33 billion dollars in gross domestic product.

Of course, much of the multilateral machinery is often too cumbersome to respond to a fast-moving viral outbreak. Yet there is reason to believe that the U.S. plan could have both immediate and long-term impacts.

That’s because the plan would see the IMF tap a unique fund set up in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which facilitated the cancellation of nearly 270 million dollars of Haitian debt to the IMF. Called the Post-Catastrophe Debt Relief (PCDR) Trust, it is aimed specifically at responding to major natural disasters in the world’s poorest countries.

Originally, the PCDR Trust was capitalised with more than 420 million dollars. Today, a U.S. Treasury spokesperson told IPS, the trust has some 150 million dollars in it – money that would be available almost immediately.

“Our proposal is for the IMF to provide debt relief for these Ebola-affected nations from this trust,” the spokesperson said. “The U.S. would like to see around 100 million dollars put toward this effort, however the precise amount will need to be determined in consultations with the IMF and its membership.”

The IMF, meanwhile, says it is preparing to consider the proposal. In September the Washington-based agency made available 130 million dollars in immediate support to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“We are very glad that some donors have expressed an interest in increasing support for the Ebola-affected countries. We are reaching out to all donors to see how we might be able to take this forward … using all the tools available to us,” an IMF spokesperson told IPS.

“[Debt relief] decisions are made according to the merits of the particular case and this would be approached in the same way. We would expect the Board to be briefed soon on this topic.”

Ebola’s “natural disaster”

For development and anti-poverty advocates, debt obligations on the part of poor countries constitute a key obstacle to a government’s ability to respond to critical social needs, both in the short and long term.

In the West African epicentre of the current Ebola outbreak, many analysts have held chronic low national health spending directly responsible for allowing the epidemic to spiral out of control. And when looking at feeble public sector spending, it is impossible not to take into account often crushing debt burdens.

For instance, Guinea spent a little more than 100 million dollars on public health in 2012 but paid nearly 150 million dollars that same year on internationally held debt, according to World Bank figures provided by Jubilee USA, an anti-debt advocacy network that has spearheaded the push for the United States to make the current proposal.

“As bad as Ebola has been, some of these countries have far greater challenges with deaths from malaria than from Ebola,” Eric LeCompte, Jubilee USA’s executive director, told IPS.

“The amount is incredibly important because it cancels a significant portion of the debt completely. And the plan is for that money to be re-invested in social infrastructure, including hospitals and schools … to deal with the short-term problem of Ebola but also the long-term failure of the health systems that allowed for this outbreak.”

LeCompte was also involved in the creation of the Post-Catastrophe Debt Relief Trust, in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. His office has advocated for the fund’s monies to be used since then – for instance, to react to flooding in Pakistan and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

But he says these and other proposals have been rejected by the IMF’s membership, on the rationale that these countries were developed enough to be able to mobilise financing in other ways. (The IMF says PCDR funds are for response to “the most catastrophic of natural disasters” in “low-income countries”, when a third of a country’s population has been affected and a quarter of its production capacity destroyed.)

Not only are Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone among the poorest countries in the world, but the Ebola outbreak there has a potentially direct impact on the rest of the globe.

“This is a very clear opportunity to point to the 150 million dollars left in that fund and to note that Ebola is every bit the same as the Haitian earthquake in terms of being a regional calamity,” LeCompte says.

“The difference is that this is also a long-term investment in the very problems that allow Ebola to spread. So we’d be not only addressing the current issue, but also the next disease outbreak in that region.”

It is unclear whether there is a mechanism in place to top up the PCDR Trust in the future. The IMF states that “Replenishment of the Trust will rely on donor contributions, as necessary.”

But for his part, LeCompte says the fund has the potential to fill a significant gap: offering a pot of money, immediately available, that could be quickly mobilised to deal with true crises afflicting the world’s poorest countries, from hurricanes to major financial defaults.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

Concern is being raised by civil society and the public about how Sierra Leone’s government is handling the Ebola pandemic. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, Nov 6 2014 (IPS)

The fight against the deadly Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa seems to be hanging in the balance as Sierra Leone’s Minister of Health and Sanitation Dr Abubakar Fofana told IPS that the government is overwhelmed by the outbreak.

“We were not prepared for this Ebola scourge. It took us by surprise and with our weak health system, we can only rely on support given to us by our international partners,” he told IPS.

According to a report published last week by British charity Save the Children, five people are infected every hour here and the situation is worrisome.

The government has, however, downplayed this, claiming the report is hugely exaggerated and that the situation is getting better in some parts of the country.

However, concern is being raised by civil society and the public about how the government is handling the outbreak.

Bernard Conteh, the director of the rights advocacy group Anti-Violence Movement, told IPS: “The authorities should be more pro-active. They should pay health workers, who are the frontline soldiers in this fight, reasonably well and ensure they are supplied adequate Personal Protective Equipments. This is not happening. Even the enforcement of the quarantine of Ebola suspects is not effectively done.”

On just one day, Nov. 2, 61 new cases were reported across the country bringing the nationwide toll to 4,059 people infected by the virus. This surpasses neighbouring Liberia which, until a month ago, was the worst-hit country. Liberia has recorded 2,515 cases while Guinea, where the epidemic first started, has 1,409 recorded cases of Ebola.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic in April, Sierra Leone has lost five medical doctors, more than 60 nurses and auxiliary health workers to Ebola. And the figure keeps going up.

The African Governance Initiative has also painted a grim picture of the outbreak here, saying that it is spreading nine times faster than it did two months ago. Of the 12 districts in the country and the capital Freetown, only Koinadugu in the north was Ebola-free — until recently. It now has at least six confirmed cases. Now, no part of Sierra Leone is unaffected but the virus.

The government has, however, been assisted by the international community. The United Kingdom has sent medical equipment and health workers, and has built test and treatment centres in parts of the capital. China has also sent medical aid, while Cuba has deployed dozens of medics on the ground.

But, there are still many challenges to be addressed. According to the medical charity MSF or Doctors Without Borders, the outbreak is far from over and more help is desperately needed.

“There is a huge gap in all aspects of the response, including medical care, training of health staff, infection control, contact tracing, epidemiological surveillance, alert and referral systems, community education and mobilisation,” MSF says.

As the fight against the killer epidemic continues to prove difficult with the virus spreading fast, the government in Freetown has just implemented a year-long state of emergency. This comes just two days after an earlier 90-day state of emergency, implemented in July in response to the outbreak, ended.

Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Frank Kargbo told IPS the extension of the emergency period was necessary to help control the spread of the virus.

“No one knows when the Ebola epidemic will end. We believe that within this period and with our hard work, we will be able to contain the disease.”

Many attribute the rapid spread of the Ebola virus to people’s attitudes and, as MSF says, a lack of sufficient community education and mobilisation. Cultural practices and traditional beliefs are also greatly hampering the fight against Ebola.

“Our people still continue to touch, wash and bury their dead. This is an easy way to get infected, even though they have been told repeatedly not to do so,” the chairman of the National Ebola Response Committee, Alfred Palor Conteh, told IPS.

People also refuse to report to hospitals when they fall ill because of the fear of stigmatisation by their families and communities. Many believe that Ebola is fatal and that going to treatment centres will not help. Ebola survivors and discharged patients also face stigmatisation.

However, Health Health and Sanitation Minister Fofana said he was hopeful the situation would be brought under control soon with international help.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Health workers in an Ebola screening unit in Kenema government hospital, Sierra Leone. Health systems are not just a means for the technical delivery of goods and services; they are part of the core social fabric of societies. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/Demotix

By Alicia Ely Yamin
CAMBRIDGE, Massachussetts, Oct 27 2014 (IPS)

The catastrophic Ebola crisis unfolding in West Africa offers many lessons, not least for global anti-poverty efforts. These will culminate in a set of targets, to be agreed by the United Nations in 2015, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

First of all, the crisis should lead to a re-think of the triumphalism that has marked some of the global health debate in recent years, with some projecting a “grand convergence within a generation” between North and South, rich and poor countries, based upon the “end of preventable mortality, including from infectious diseases”.It is not a coincidence that, in addition to the legacy of colonial exploitation, and pillaging by their own corrupt and unaccountable governments in recent history, Liberia and Sierra Leone are two countries that have been ravaged by brutal civil wars.

Second, neither universal health insurance, without real access to public health as well as effective care, nor cash transfers, without connections to functioning systems, would have thwarted Ebola or the social devastation it is wreaking. Yet both are highly touted solutions to global poverty, and likely to be part of the SDG agenda.

Nor would “pay for performance”, whereby health workers are supposedly incentivised to be more productive by having compensation linked to quotas and outcomes.

All of which brings us to a third lesson from the crisis: silver-bullet solutions that focus on short-term outcomes, and often produce so-called ‘vertical’ interventions (that is, those de-linked from the broader context), actually do not work in the long term, or in the face of crises.

Human rights advocates have argued that there is a need to shift power relations to promote greater equity, to invest in strengthening institutions, to open spaces for meaningful participation by the people who are affected by health and development policies, and to construct effective and accessible accountability mechanisms.

Though often dismissed as airy-fairy, unmeasurable and utopian in mainstream public health and development circles, the Ebola catastrophe illustrates exactly why these investments are crucial.

Health systems are not just a means for the technical delivery of goods and services; they are part of the core social fabric of societies. They can either give expression to norms of solidarity and equality, or they can exacerbate social exclusion.

In the three most affected countries in West Africa, the health systems were all dysfunctional before Ebola hit, and were often a place where people – especially women and children – experienced their poverty and marginalisation.

The inadequate, and now decimated, health systems, and the rippling effects of the crisis on education, housing, and food, all raise issues of access to – and the enjoyment of – fundamental economic and social rights. These are just as important as the violations of civil rights, including unwarranted restrictions on movement, which might stem from the Ebola epidemic.

But it is equally important to realise how massive violations of human rights – civil and political, as well as economic and social – drive epidemics such as Ebola.

The unimaginable suffering we are witnessing is in no way simply an inevitable result of the “natural” pathophysiology or epidemiology of the disease.

It is not a coincidence that, in addition to the legacy of colonial exploitation, and pillaging by their own corrupt and unaccountable governments in recent history, Liberia and Sierra Leone are two countries that have been ravaged by brutal civil wars. These conflicts were fuelled by the rapacious global demand for precious minerals, and destroyed communities, dissolved family units, and disrupted farming, livelihoods and migration patterns.

Nor is it a coincidence that more than half the population in each heavily affected country lives in abject poverty (53 percent in Sierra Leone, 55 percent in Guinea, and 64 percent in Liberia). And, as noted above, women and children disproportionately suffer from the mass deprivation of economic and social rights that those numbers reflect.

I was in Sierra Leone when the evidence of the horrific atrocities during that civil war were everywhere to be seen: roadblocks which had previously been strung with human intestines, and beggars at street corners missing hands that had been cut off by the insurgents.

I was also there after the end of hostilities, when the humanitarian aid groups had mostly pulled out, leaving among other things a health system incapable of dealing with even the most basic health needs. Government facilities were missing essential supplies and medicines; health care workers often had no sutures or gloves, nor running water nor soap, and were using cell phones to provide light during surgical procedures.

The World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 23 healthcare workers per 10,000 people, but there is still a desperate shortage of health care workers in the affected countries; in Sierra Leone, there were just 0.2 physicians and 1.7 nurse/midwives per 10,000 people at the outset of this crisis.

When I visited in 2009, close to 50 percent of primary health care providers in Sierra Leone were receiving no salary. To survive they charged illicit fees, and for drugs, or sold bed nets on the private market.

We must learn lessons from the Ebola crisis: not just to build temporary structures staffed by foreigners, which will disappear like sand castles when the crisis is eventually contained, or other horrors on our television screens draw our attention away.

This time, let’s make sure we do not accept the status quo ante as ‘normal’, and instead make long-term commitments to strengthening health systems, including public health measures. These will create not just more productivity and healthy years of life expectancy, but also promote people’s own voice and agency and the possibility of living lives in dignity.

And let’s take the time in finalising the SDGs to consider how best to tackle the rules of the global economic order, including the unfair terms for global trade, that drive the structural inequalities between countries. These limit the possibility of people enjoying their human rights even in the best of times, and can help set the stage for these horrific social calamities.

Ebola has shown vividly that we live in an invariably globalised world. We owe it to those with whom we share this planet, and to future generations, to establish a Sustainable Development Agenda that, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, promotes a “social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth [in that Declaration] can be fully realized” by everyone.

This article originally appeared on openGlobalRights

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Children in the town of Gueckedou, the epicentre of the ebola outbreak in Guinea. Credit: ©afreecom/Idrissa Soumaré

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2014 (IPS)

President Barack Obama is under significant pressure to impose a range of restrictions on travellers coming to the United States from West African countries affected by the current Ebola outbreak.

Yet public health experts and development advocates warn that such restrictions would harm the already reeling economies of Ebola-hit countries in the region, and squeeze the international community’s ability to get health workers and goods into these countries.“If we get this wrong and just hunker down and hide, we will make this problem worse both in West Africa and in the United States.” -- Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development

“An accelerated mobilisation of personnel and resources is necessary to control the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and care for patients, through the establishment of new Ebola management centres,” Tim Shenk, a press officer with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the humanitarian group that has been at the core of the international response to the epidemic, told IPS.

“For this reason, it is crucial that airlines continue flying to the affected region.”

Calls for halting flights and imposing visa restrictions have been floating around Washington since the virus’s spread caught the world’s attention over the summer. Yet these have strengthened substantially in recent days, following the confirmation of three cases of Ebola in the United States.

The first of those was unknowingly carried by a man from Liberia. He died last week after infecting two of the health workers attending to him, and the case has prompted an intense and at times vitriolic response.

“A temporary ban on travel to the United States from countries afflicted with the virus is something that the president should absolutely consider,” John Boehner, the leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and one of the most powerful figures in Washington, said Wednesday.

In fact there are no direct air connections between the United States and any of the three countries most affected by the current outbreak. Further, it would be extremely complex to impose such a ban in tertiary transit countries.

On the other hand, it would be possible to create additional hurdles for those applying for U.S. visas in West Africa. But this would do nothing to deal with, for instance, the many U.S. passport holders living in these countries, and would likewise be logistically complex.

Nonetheless, Boehner was echoing a clear tide of U.S. support for the imposition of travel restrictions. According to a poll released Tuesday, two-thirds of people in the United States would support “restricting entry” of incoming travellers from Ebola-afflicted countries.

The federal government’s response to Ebola has suddenly become a defining issue in the U.S. midterm elections, slated for next month.

Dangerous isolation

The current Ebola outbreak has now killed more than 4,000 people, almost all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. On Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the international community to make available a billion dollars to allow those combating the disease to meet a target of reducing the virus’s transmission rates by the beginning of December.

In the United States, meanwhile, the public support for travel restrictions has risen by six percentage points since just last week. And lawmakers, many of whom are currently in the last stages of political campaigns, are responding.

Though Congress is currently on recess, lawmakers held a rare hearing on Ebola Thursday. By Thursday evening, members of Congress who supported some sort of travel restrictions outnumbered those who didn’t by 56 to 13, according to a list compiled by a Washington newspaper.

While those who do not support a travel ban were all Democratic, the support for such restrictions stretches across both parties.

“I’ve been struck by just how intense this political pressure has become, and the pressure is bipartisan,” J. Stephen Morrison, the director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“While the arguments made against travel bans have been solid, they don’t win the day with the public. Further, if the base population carrying the virus continues to grow, the threat won’t ease and neither will this pressure.”

Even as lawmakers increasingly funnel – and perhaps fuel – concern over Ebola in this country, the Obama administration remains adamant that it is not considering any travel restrictions beyond health scans and interviews at international airports.

“Shutting down travel to that area of the world would prevent the expeditious flow of personnel and equipment into the region,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told journalists Wednesday. “And the only way for us to stop this outbreak and to eliminate any risk from Ebola to the American public is to stop this outbreak at the source.”

Earnest did not reject the possibility completely, however, noting that a travel ban is “not on the table at this point.”

Yet many of those closest to the Ebola response warn that travel restrictions would be not only unfeasible but outright dangerous, exacerbating the outbreak.

“You don’t want to do something that inadvertently accelerates the economic collapse of these countries or impedes the flow of health workers and critically needed commodities,” CSIS’s Morrison says. “Our ability to get ahead of this crisis necessitates the flow, back and forth, of thousands of health-care workers and commodities.”

Indeed, such concerns have already been borne out. African Union aid workers, for instance, were recently delayed for a week getting into Liberia due to travel restrictions imposed in a number of African countries.

“It has been quite challenging over the last several months, because there have been a reduction in commercial flights … a reduction in shipping that comes into the country,” Debra Malac, the U.S. ambassador to Liberia, told journalists Thursday. “[That’s made it] very difficult to get things like food as well as supplies in that are critically needed in order to help address this epidemic.”

Devastating economies

U.S. travel restrictions could also pose significant economic risks, both to Ebola-hit countries and Africa as a whole.

“There’s a lot of air traffic between Africa and the U.S. that’s very important for trade and investment, the tourism industry, for the diaspora,” CSIS’s Morrison says. “All of that is reliant on air links, so how do you make sure you’re not kicking the pins out of those economic processes?”

Already there are widespread fears over the financial impacts of Ebola on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Earlier this week, the World Health Organisation warned that the virus now threatens “potential state failure” in these countries. Last week, the World Bank estimated that the epidemic could cost West African countries some 33 billion dollars in gross domestic product.

“If we get this wrong and just hunker down and hide, we will make this problem worse both in West Africa and in the United States,” Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank here, told IPS.

“Imposing any kind of travel ban would tank the economy of these three countries, and that will have knock-on effects on dealing with the disease – increasing the suffering and the number of people with the disease.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

First shipment of the ramped-up U.S. military response to Ebola arriving in Liberia. Credit: US Army Africa/CC-BY-2.0

By Joeva Rock
WASHINGTON, Sep 28 2014 (IPS)

Six months into West Africa’s Ebola crisis, the international community is finally heeding calls for substantial intervention in the region.

On Sep. 16, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a multimillion-dollar U.S. response to the spreading contagion. The crisis, which began in March 2014, has killed over 2,600 people, an alarming figure that experts say will rise quickly if the disease is not contained.

Obama’s announcement comes on the heels of growing international impatience with what critics have called the U.S. government’s “infuriatingly” slow response to the outbreak.

Assistance efforts have already stoked controversy, with a noticeable privilege of care being afforded to foreign healthcare workers over Africans.

The U.S. operation in Liberia warrants many questions. Will military contractors be used in the construction of facilities and execution of programmes? [...] Will the treatment centers double as research labs? [...] And perhaps most significantly for the long term, will the Liberian operation base serve as a staging ground for non-Ebola related military operations?
After two infected American missionaries were administered Zmapp, a life-saving experimental drug, controversy exploded when reports emerged that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) had previously decided not to administer it to the Sierra Leonean doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who succumbed to Ebola after helping to lead the country’s fight against the disease.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) similarly refused to evacuate the prominent Sierra Leonean doctor Olivet Buck, who later died of the disease as well. The Pentagon provoked its own controversy when it announced plans to deploy a 22-million-dollar, 25-bed U.S. military field hospital—reportedly for foreign health workers only.

One particular component of the latest assistance package promises to be controversial as well: namely, the deployment of 3,000 U.S. troops to Liberia, where the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) will establish a joint command operations base to serve as a logistics and training center for medical responders.

According to the prominent political blog ‘Think Progress’, this number represents “nearly two-thirds of AFRICOM’s 4,800 assigned personnel” who will coordinate with civilian organisations to distribute supplies and construct up to 17 treatment centres.

It’s unclear whether any U.S. healthcare personnel will actually treat patients, but according to the White House, “the U.S. Government will help recruit and organise medical personnel to staff” the centres and “establish a site to train up to 500 health care providers per week.”

The latter begs the question of practicality: where would these would-be health workers be recruited from?

According to the Obama administration, the package was requested directly by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. (Notably, Liberia was the only African nation to offer to host AFRICOM’s headquarters in 2008, an offer AFRICOM declined and decided to set up in Germany instead).

But in a country still recovering from decades of civil war, this move was not welcomed by all. “Every Liberian I speak with is having acute anxiety attacks,” said Liberian writer Stephanie C. Horton. “We knew this was coming but the sense of mounting doom is emotional devastation.”

Few would oppose a robust U.S. response to the Ebola crisis, but the militarised nature of the White House plan comes in the context of a broader U.S.-led militarisation of the region.

The soldiers in Liberia, after all, will not be the only American troops on the African continent. In the six years of AFRICOM’s existence, the U.S. military has steadily and quietly been building its presence on the continent through drone bases and partnerships with local militaries.

This is what’s known as the “new normal”: drone strikes, partnerships to train and equip African troops (including those with troubled human rights records), reconnaissance missions, and multinational training operations.

To build PR for its military exercises, AFRICOM relies on soft-power tactics: vibrant social media pages, academic symposia, and humanitarian programming. But such militarised humanitarianism—such as building schools and hospitals and responding to disease outbreaks—also plays more strategic, practical purpose: it allows military personnel to train in new environments, gather local experience and tactical data, and build diplomatic relations with host countries and communities.

TomDispatch’s Nick Turse, one of the foremost reporters on the militarisation of Africa, noted that a recent report from the U.S. Department of Defense “found failures in planning, executing, tracking, and documenting such projects,” leaving big questions about their efficacy.

Perhaps more importantly, experts have warned that the provision of humanitarian assistance by uniformed soldiers could have dangerous, destabilising effects, especially in countries with long histories of civil conflict, such as Liberia and Sierra Leone.

At the outset of the crisis, for example, efforts by Liberian troops to forcefully quarantine the residents of West Point, a community in the capital of Monrovia, led to deadly clashes. Some public health advocates worry that the presence of armed troops could provoke similar incidents.

The U.S. operation in Liberia warrants many questions. Will military contractors be used in the construction of facilities and execution of programmes? Will the U.S.-built treatment centers be temporary or permanent? Will the treatment centers double as research labs? What is the timeline for exiting the country? And perhaps most significantly for the long term, will the Liberian operation base serve as a staging ground for non-Ebola related military operations?

The use of the U.S. military in this operation should raise red flags for the American public as well. After all, if the military truly is the governmental institution best equipped to handle this outbreak, it speaks worlds about the neglect of civilian programmes at home as well as abroad.

This article first appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus. You can read the original version here.

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:

Sierra Leone and Liberia alone could have a total of more than 20,000 new cases of Ebola within six weeks and as many as 1.4 million by Jan. 20, 2015, if the virus continues spreading at its current rate. Credit: European Commission DG ECHO/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

Despite mounting pledges of assistance, the continuing spread of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa is outpacing regional and international efforts to stop it, according to world leaders and global health experts.

“We are not moving fast enough. We are not doing enough,” declared U.S. President Barack Obama at a special meeting on the Ebola crisis at the United Nations in New York Thursday. He warned that “hundreds of thousands” of people could be killed by the epidemic in the coming months unless the international community provided the necessary resources.

He was joined by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim who announced his institution would nearly double its financing to 400 million dollars to help the worst-affected countries – Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – cope with the crisis.

“We can – we must – all move more swiftly to contain the spread of Ebola and help these countries and their people,” according to Kim, much of whose professional career has been devoted to improving health services for people around the world.

“Generous pledges of aid and unprecedented U.N. resolutions are very welcome. But they will mean little, unless they are translated into immediate action. The reality on the ground today is this: the promised surge has not yet delivered." -- Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
“Too many lives have been lost already, and the fate of thousands of others depends upon a response that can contain and then stop this epidemic,” he said.

Indeed, concern about the spread of the epidemic has increased sharply here in recent days, particularly in light of projections released earlier this week by the Atlanta-based U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has sent scores of experts to the region. It found that Sierra Leone and Liberia alone could have a total of more than 20,000 new cases of Ebola within six weeks and as many as 1.4 million by Jan. 20, 2015, if the virus continues spreading at its current rate.

Moreover, global health officials have revised upwards – from 55 percent to 70 percent – the mortality rate of those infected with the virus whose latest outbreak appears to have begun in a remote village in Guinea before spreading southwards into two nations that have only relatively recently begun to recover from devastating civil wars.

Officially, almost 3,000 people have died from the latest outbreak, which began last spring. But most experts believe the official figures are far too conservative, because many cases have not been reported to the authorities, especially in remote regions of the three affected countries.

“Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is overseeing the global effort to combat the virus’s spread.

In addition to the staggering human costs, the economic toll is also proving dire, if not catastrophic, as the fear of contagion and the resort by governments to a variety of quarantine measures have seriously disrupted normal transport, trade, and commerce.

In a study released last week, the World Bank found that inflation and prices of basic staples that had been contained during the last few months are now rising rapidly upwards in response to shortages, panic buying, and speculation.

The study, which did not factor in the latest CDC estimates, projected potential economic losses for all three countries in 2014 at 359 million dollars – or an average of about a three-percent decline in what their economic output would otherwise have been.

The impact for 2015 could reach more than 800 million dollars, with the Liberian economy likely to be hardest hit among the three, which were already among the world’s poorest nations.

“This is a humanitarian catastrophe, first and foremost,” Kim said Thursday. “But the economic ramifications are very broad and could be long lasting. Our assessment shows a much more severe economic impact on affected countries than was previously estimated.”

Moreover, security analysts have warned that the epidemic could also provoke political crises and upheaval in any or all of the affected countries, effectively unravelling years of efforts to stabilise the region.

In a statement released Tuesday, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that the hardest hit countries already “face widespread chaos and, potentially, collapse,” in part due to the distrust between citizens and their governments, as shown by the sometimes violent resistance to often military-enforced quarantine and other official efforts to halt the virus’s spread. Food shortages could also provoke popular uprisings against local authorities.

“In all three countries, past civil conflicts fuelled by local and regional antagonisms could resurface,” according to the ICG statement which warned that the virus could also spread to Guinea-Bissau and Gambia, both of which, like the three core nations, lack health systems that can cope with the challenge.

Obama, who Friday will host 44 countries that have enlisted in his administration’s Global Health Security Agenda, himself echoed some of these concerns, stressing that containing Ebola “is as important a national security priority for my team as anything else that’s out there.”

Earlier this month, WHO estimated that it will cost a minimum of 600 million dollars – now generally considered too low a figure –to halt the disease’s spread of which somewhat more than 300 million dollars has materialised to date.

The U.S. has so far pledged more than 500 million dollars and 3,000 troops who are being deployed to the region, along with the CDC specialists. Even that contribution has been criticised as too little by some regional and health experts.

“…[T]he number of new Ebola cases each week far exceeds the number of hospital beds in Sierra Leone and Liberia,” according to John Campbell, a West Africa specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who cited a recent article in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’.

“It is hard to see how President Obama’s promise to send 3,000 military personnel to Liberia to build hospitals with a total of 1,700 beds can be transformative,” he wrote on the CFR website. “The assistance by the United Kingdom to Sierra Leone and France to Guinea is even smaller,” he noted.

A number of foundations have also pledged help. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent billions of dollars to improve health conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, has committed 50 million dollars, while Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s foundation has pledged 65 million dollars to the cause. The California-based William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced Thursday it had committed five million dollars to be channelled through half a dozen non-governmental organisations.

But whether such contributions will be sufficient remains doubtful, particularly given the dearth of trained staff and adequate facilities in the most-affected countries and the speed at which the pledged support is being delivered – a message that was underlined here Thursday by Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has been deeply engaged in the battle against Ebola.

“Generous pledges of aid and unprecedented U.N. resolutions are very welcome,” she said. “But they will mean little, unless they are translated into immediate action. The reality on the ground today is this: the promised surge has not yet delivered,” she added.

“Our 150-bed facility in Monrovia opens for just thirty minutes each morning. Only a few people are admitted – to fill beds made empty by those who died overnight,” she said. “The sick continue to be turned away, only to return home and spread the virus among loved ones and neighbours.”

“Don’t cut corners. Massive, direct action is the only way,” she declared.

Obama himself repeatedly stressed the urgency, comparing the challenge to “a marathon, but you have to run it like a sprint.”

“And that’s only possible if everybody chips in, if every nation and every organisation takes this seriously. Everybody here has to do more,” he said.

To meet the challenge of feeding the world’s 805 million hungry people, this year’s State of Food Insecurity report calls for the creation of an ‘enabling environment’. Credit: FAO/Giulio Napolitano

By Phil Harris
ROME, Sep 17 2014 (IPS)

The number of hungry people in the world has declined by over 100 million in the last decade and over 200 million since 1990-92, but 805 million people around the world still go hungry every day, according to the latest UN estimates.

Presenting their annual joint report on the State of Food Insecurity in the World, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), international Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Food Programme (WFP) said that while the latest hunger figures indicate that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of undernourished people by 2015 is within reach, this will only be possible “if appropriate and immediate efforts are stepped up.”

These efforts include the necessary “political commitment … well informed by sound understanding of national challenges, relevant policy options, broad participation and lessons from other experiences.”"We cannot celebrate yet because we must still reach 805 million people without enough food for a healthy and productive life" – WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin

Introducing this year’s report, FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said that the figures indicate that a “world without hunger is possible in our lifetime.”

The three Rome-based UN agencies noted that while there has been significant progress overall, some regions are still lagging behind: sub-Saharan Africa, where more than one in four people remain chronically undernourished, and Asia, where the majority of the world’s hungry – 520 million people – live.

In Oceania there has been a modest improvement in percentage terms (down 1.7 percent from 14 percent two years ago) but an increase in the number of hungry people. Latin America and the Caribbean have made most progress in increasing food security.

However, WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin warned that “we cannot celebrate yet because we must still reach 805 million people without enough food for a healthy and productive life.”

Calling for what they called an ‘enabling environment’, the agencies stressed that “food insecurity and malnutrition are complex problems that cannot be solved by one sector or stakeholder alone, but need to be tackled in a coordinated way.” In this regard, they called on governments to work closely with the private sector and civil society.

According to the report, the ‘enabling environment’ should be based on an integrated approach that includes public and private investments to increase agricultural productivity; access to land, services, technologies and markets; and measures to promote rural development and social protection for the most vulnerable, including strengthening their resilience to conflicts and natural disasters.

Speaking at the presentation of the report, the WFP Executive Director referred in particular to the current outbreak of Ebola in the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea which, she said, “is an unprecedented health emergency which is rapidly becoming a major food crisis.”

“You cannot isolate people without addressing the food and nutrition challenges of those who need assistance,” she added, noting that the populations in these countries are not harvesting or planting according to their regular seasonal requirements while the crisis rages.

“This is rapidly becoming a food crisis that is potentially affecting 1.3 million people today, with an unknown number of how many will be affected in the future.”

“We cannot let the unprecedented level of humanitarian crisis undermine our efforts to progress even further, to reach our planet’s most vulnerable people and to end hunger in our lifetimes.”

The State of Food Insecurity report will be part of discussions at the Second International Conference on Nutrition to be held in Rome from 19-21 November, jointly organised by FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO).

This high-level intergovernmental meeting will seek a renewed political commitment at global level to combat malnutrition with the overall goal of improving diets and raising nutrition levels.

An Ebola victim is carried by health workers for burial on May 13, 2014. Credit: ©EC/ECHO/Jean-Louis Mosser

By Antonio Vigilante
MONROVIA, Sep 11 2014 (IPS)

As the Ebola crisis continues to take a toll on people’s lives and livelihoods in West Africa, the focus is increasingly not just on the health aspects of the crisis, but also on its social and economic consequences.

Sure, the human and medical aspects of the crisis are still on the front burner, as they should be. Losing a spouse, a child or another close relative is devastating. The health sector is under tremendous pressure to cope with the sick, and even to protect its own workers from contagion.Fear and isolation can in the end take more lives than the Ebola virus itself if businesses are not operating, livelihoods disappear and public services are not delivered.

There are also health ramifications for those not affected by Ebola: access to regular health care is reduced due to closures of hospitals and clinics, loss of nurses and doctors and increased fees by private health care providers.

Vaccination coverage, for instance, had already declined by 50 percent by July. Women in labour struggle to obtain skilled maternity care — in some cases they are turned away from the few institutions still in operation.

People with HIV who are on antiretroviral drugs and people with chronic diseases on prolonged care have had their treatment interrupted as a result of the closure of health facilities. The public health care system has all but collapsed in parts of the areas hardest hit by Ebola.

Before the current crisis, Liberia’s economy experienced impressive growth rates of up to 8.7 per cent (2013). GDP growth was already projected to decline to 5.9 per cent this year, as mining production levelled off temporarily, coupled with the fall in international prices for rubber and iron ore, before rising to 6.8 per cent in 2015 and 7.2 per cent in 2016. Future growth figures will now have to be revised, as economic activities have slowed down dramatically in most sectors.

But there is also an underlying issue at hand: The impressive recent growth in Liberia has not been equitable or inclusive. About 57 per cent of the country’s approximately four million inhabitants live below the poverty line and 48 per cent live in conditions of extreme poverty.

The lack of equitable, inclusive development means that more than half of the country’s population—especially women and children–is particularly vulnerable to shocks and crises, ultimately making the whole country less robust and less able to handle a crisis of any magnitude.

Part of the challenge in restoring livelihoods is psychological in nature. Fear and isolation can in the end take more lives than the Ebola virus itself if businesses are not operating, livelihoods disappear and public services are not delivered.

Reduced tax revenues go hand in hand with a decrease in the government’s ability to respond to the crisis. A decline in revenues is expected as Ebola continues to claim the lives of Liberians and the government continues to enforce travel restrictions as part of the state of emergency.

Soon, this is likely to impact salary payments for public employees and could paralyze the country further. Trust in the government is also on the line as it becomes increasingly unable to protect its citizens and deliver the services they desperately need.

At the same time, prices of locally grown and imported foods are increasing as the state of emergency, military road blocks and restricted travel slow down trade. The trend is amplified by a vicious cycle of falling consumer demand and shrinking levels of income.

In this scenario, it is crucial to put in place adequate social protection mechanisms, as the fall in disposable income make families unable to afford food and health services. This would not only contribute to improving social stability and security, but would also make Liberian society as a whole more robust and resilient.

Indeed, a large portion of the population is in need of public assistance. The latest data indicate that about 78 percent of the labour force is in a situation of vulnerable employment. By contrast, formally paid employees (about 195,000 people) make up only about 5 per cent of the population.

About 13 percent of households do not have access to sufficient food and 28 per cent are vulnerable to food insecurity. If the poorest segments of the population get access to some form of social protection mechanism, it will enable them to better withstand the current crisis, as well as future ones.

In the remote parts of the country, far from the hustle and bustle of its capital, Monrovia, it is also necessary to strengthen local authorities’ ability to handle the crisis, for instance by improving monitoring mechanisms and making protection equipment available for those who are in direct contact with Ebola patients and corpses.

The resurgence of the Ebola crisis since July and its gradual escalation into a national emergency in Liberia has diverted the focus and resources available to the authorities to the containment of the virus. In this phase of the crisis, it is necessary to act on all fronts to meet the devastating health, social and economic challenges before Liberia and other affected countries see all their hard-won development gains dwindle to nothing.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

As one of the Ebola epicentres, the district of Kailahun, in eastern Sierra Leone bordering Guinea, was put under quarantine at the beginning of August. Credit: ©EC/ECHO/Cyprien Fabre

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Sep 8 2014 (IPS)

The U.S. military over the weekend formally began to support the international response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Advocates of the move, including prominent voices in global health, are lauding the Pentagon’s particularly robust logistical capacities, which nearly all observers say are desperately needed as the epidemic expands at an increasing rate.On Monday, the United Nations warned of an “exponential increase” in cases in coming weeks.

Yet already multiple concerns have arisen over the scope of the mission – including whether it is strong enough at the outset as well as whether it could become too broad in future.

President Barack Obama made the first public announcement on the issue on Sunday, contextualising the outbreak as a danger to U.S. national security.

“We’re going to have to get U.S. military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there to provide security for public health workers surging from around the world,” the president said during a televised interview. “If we don’t make that effort now … it could be a serious danger to the United States.”

While the United States has spent more than 20 million dollars in West Africa this year to combat the disease, Washington has come under increased criticism in recent months for not doing enough. Obama is now expected to request additional funding from Congress later this month.

The military’s response, however, has already begun – albeit apparently on a very small scale for now, and in just a single Ebola-hit country.

A Defence Department spokesperson told IPS that, over the weekend, Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel approved the deployment of a “25-bed deployable hospital facility, equipment, and the support necessary to establish the facility” in Liberia. For now, this is the extent of the approved response.

The spokesperson was quick to note that additional planning is underway, but emphasised that the Pentagon is responding only to requests made by other federal agencies and taking no lead role. Further, its commitment to the hospital in Liberia, the country most affected by the outbreak, is limited.

The Department of Defence “will not have a permanent presence at the facility and will not provide direct patient care, but will ensure that supplies are maintained at the hospital and provide periodic support required to keep the hospital facility functioning for up to 180 days,” the spokesperson said.

“This approach provides for the establishment of the hospital facility in the shortest possible period of time … Once the deployable hospital facility is established, it will be transferred to the Government of Liberia.”

On Monday, Liberia’s defence minister, Brownie Samukai, said his government was “extremely pleased” by the announcement.

“We had discussions at the Department of Defence on the issues of utilising and requesting the full skill of United States capabilities, both on the soft side and on the side of providing logistics and technical expertise,” Samukai, who is currently here in Washington, told the media. “We look forward to that cooperation as expeditiously as we can.”

No security needed

The current Ebola outbreak has now killed some 2,100 people and infected more than 3,500 in five countries. On Monday, the United Nations warned of an “exponential increase” in cases in coming weeks.

Yet thus far the epidemic has resulted in an international response that is almost universally seen as dangerously inadequate. Obama’s statement Sunday nonetheless raised questions even among those supportive of the announcement.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the French humanitarian group, remains the single most important international organisation in physically responding to the outbreak. While MSF has long opposed the use of military personnel in response to disease outbreaks, last week it broke with that tradition.

Warning that the global community is “failing” to address the epidemic, the group told a special U.N. briefing that countries with “civilian and military medical capability … must immediately dispatch assets and personnel to West Africa”.

Yet while MSF has welcomed Obama’s announcement, the group is also expressing strong concerns over the president’s reference to the U.S. military providing “security for public health workers”.

MSF “reiterates the need for this support to be of medical nature only,” Tim Shenk, a press officer with the group, told IPS. “Aid workers do not need additional security support in the affected region.”

Last week, MSF urged that any military personnel deployed to West Africa not be used for “quarantine, containment or crowd control measures”.

The Defence Department spokesperson told IPS that the U.S. military had not yet received a request to provide security for health workers.

Few guidelines

The United States is not the only country now turning to its military to bolster the flagging humanitarian response in West Africa.

The British government in recent days announced even more significant plans, aiming to set up 68 beds for Ebola patients at a centre, in Sierra Leone, that will be jointly operated by humanitarians and military personnel. The Canadian government had reportedly been contemplating a military plan as well, although this now appears to have been shelved.

Yet the concerns expressed by MSF over how the military deployment should go forward underscore the fact that there exists little formal guidance on the involvement of foreign military personnel in international health-related response.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), for instance, has no broad stance on the issue, a spokesperson told IPS. As the WHO is an intergovernmental agency, it is up to affected countries to make related decisions and request.

“Each country handles its own security situation,” Daniel Epstein, a WHO spokesperson, told IPS. “So if governments agree to military involvement from other countries, that’s their business.”

Another spokesperson with the agency, Margaret Harris, told IPS that the WHO appreciates “the skills that well-trained, disciplined and highly organised groups like the US military can bring to the campaign to end Ebola.”

Yet there is already concern that the U.S. military response could be shaping up to be far less robust than necessary.

MSF’s Shenk noted that any plan from the U.S. military would need to include both the construction and operation of Ebola centres. Thus far, the Pentagon says it will not be doing any operating.

While around 570 Ebola beds are currently available in West Africa, MSF estimates that at least 1,000 hospital spaces, capable of providing full isolation, are needed in the region.

In a series of tweets on Monday, Laurie Garrett, a prominent global health scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank, expressed alarm that the Defence Department’s Ebola response was shaping up to be “tiny” in comparison to what is needed.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

Two health care workers clean their feet in a bucket of water containing bleach after they leave an Ebola isolation facility during an Ebola simulation at Biankouman Hospital in Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
KANDOPLEU/ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 26 2014 (IPS)

The nurse carefully packs the body into a plastic bag and then leaves the isolation tent, rinsing his feet in a bucket of water that contains bleach. Then he carefully takes off his safety glasses, gloves and mask and burns them in a jerry can.

Behind a cordon, hundreds of people are watching, including Ivorian Health Minister Raymonde Goudou Coffie and several local media.

They face no risks even if the deadly virus kills up to 90 percent of the infected persons: there is no Ebola outbreak in Côte d’Ivoire. And the corpse is a mannequin. This is an Ebola simulation at the district hospital in Biankouma.

“We want to test our medical teams. And see what we can do to improve our reaction,” explains the health minister, a pharmacist by training who does not hesitate to provide her in-sights.

Schoolteacher Edinie Veh Gale is in the crowd watching the exercise. “It is not translated in Yacuba, the local language. So people around do not understand. But it is good though. At least, it piqued people’s curiosity and they will search for information,” she tells IPS in French.

While the attention on the epidemic that has now been declared “out-of-control” is focused on the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria, unaffected countries in the region, like Côte d’Ivoire, are struggling to understand what to do keep the disease away.

While strict epidemiological-control measures have been applied, including closing borders and banning people travelling into  Côte d’Ivoire from countries where the disease is prevalent, the current outbreak has highlighted huge gaps in prevention methods.

Especially since some citizens refuse to submit to restrictive measures.

Until now, the previous Ebola outbreaks were contained in villages in Central Africa where distance and isolation were important factors in stopping the disease.

But the current wave that resulted in over 1,135 deaths — making it the worst Ebola outbreak ever — has spread to several urban centres. In the cities restrictive measures have been met with reduced success.

Susan Shepler, an associate professor at American University and a specialist in education and conflict, is back from six weeks of research in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Despite several measures adopted by authorities, she noticed that while there have been some developments in the population’s awareness, most people in those countries have a deep mistrust for government assistance.

“It is not simply a mistrust of the state. It is a mistrust of the system. People don’t see the boundaries of the state,“ Shepler tells IPS. She explains that citizens believe politicians enter government to enrich themselves, and they therefore do not think that the state could help them.

She says that trust has yet to be built as many people, especially those who reside in opposition strongholds, see Ebola as a government plot or a religious curse.

In Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, government services and trained medical workers are barely available in regions infected by Ebola.

So when heavily-equipped medical teams, often backed by foreign experts, go to affected areas, it has been difficult for those local communities to instantly trust them.

“Western media tends to present the crisis with a focus on frontline work and chaotic scenes. But what is missing, [that needs to be] understood, is everyday life. There is a rationale for citizens’ actions,” says Shepler.

Building trust beforehand

It is difficult to discern what are good practices to fight Ebola.

Côte d’Ivoire may not have any cases, but it is uncertain if this is because the country took the right approach to the disease or if it was simply a matter of luck.

But what is clear is that Côte d’Ivoire fears being the next site of the outbreak.

Around the country, the government has multiplied preventative measures.

Last March, it banned bush meat. And since then the government has adopted several measures to contain the epidemic, including implementing screening for the disease at borders and banning direct flights to affected areas.

Now, the government has recommended that people stop hugging and shaking hands, insisting that they comply with strict hygiene rules.

The government has made also several efforts to build the trust of its people by getting local authorities and medical staff that are know to local communities involved in education campaigns.

And citizen’s initiatives are also multiplying.

In a bank in Abidjan’s commercial district, a security guard gives a shot of hand sanitiser to any client using the banking machine. “It’s for your own health,” he says.

In front of the same bank, street hawkers who help drivers park their cars refuse to shake hands.

Social media has exploded with various initiatives, notably the #MousserpourEbola (#FoamingAgainstEbola) challenge, which is used to raise money and public awareness about Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Launched by a young blogger, Edith Brou, videos of Ivorians throwing a bucket of soap water on themselves have became viral. When one is nominated for the challenge, you are required to throw a bucket of soap water on yourself and distribute three bottles of hand sanitiser. They you don’t agree to the soap shower, then you have to distribute nine bottles of hand sanitiser.

“Ivorians play down everything through humour. In spite of the funny aspect of it, the message is forwarded and listened to. There are many actions like mine. We cannot only stand by. We are responsible for our lives,” she tells IPS.

In the village of Pekanhouebli, in the west of the country and close the the Liberian border, there is no electricity and no internet access. But in this village that strongly supports the opposition, a citizen’s committee has been created to mobilise the community against Ebola.

“We did not believe that Ebola was true. We thought it was a white man’s disease from cities when authorities came to us,”senior resident Serge Tian tells IPS. “But when we heard it on the radio, we realised it was true. And we started listening to the nurse who would visit the village.”

Tian does not shake hands with IPS as we leave — it’s because he now understands a bit more about how the disease is spread. And he knows why he should comply to these restrictive measures.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

A medical centre at the Bandama checkpoint in Kenema to test people in transit for symptoms of Ebola. Credit: Mohamed Fofanah/IPS

By Mohamed Fofanah
KENEMA, Sierra Leone, Jul 12 2014 (IPS)

Adikali Kamara is a 36-year-old student nurse working in the government hospital in Kenema, a sprawling town on the fringe of the Sierra Leone’s Gola tropical rain forest.

On June 19, he began feeling unwell, complaining of fever and a headache, and went to a chemist near where he lived to buy anti-malaria drugs and antibiotics to treat typhoid fever. “I thought that my symptoms indicated either malaria or typhoid because these are the most common ailments suffered by everybody here,” said Kamara.

However his condition did not change and two days later he decided to seek proper treatment at the hospital. That was when the doctors discovered he was suffering from Ebola, a disease that causes fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea and kills up to 90 percent of those infected.

Kamara was admitted immediately and just seven days later he was discharged after receiving supportive treatment.“People are vehemently denying that Ebola exists despite the massive awareness raising that is going on, and those that do believe the illness exists are so afraid that they do not come to the hospital or bring their relatives when they are sick. That is how Ebola spreads in the community” – Michael Vandi, Public Health Education Officer for Sierra Leone’s Eastern Province

Kamara is one the fortunate 51 persons in Sierra Leone who have survived the current Ebola scourge that is also ravaging two other West African neighbours – Guinea and Liberia. So far, 99 have died in Sierra Leone and a further 315 men, women and children have tested positive.

The Public Health Education Officer for Sierra Leone’s Eastern Province, Michael Vandi, who is based in the Kenema hospital which houses the country’s only Supportive Treatment Centre and testing laboratory for Ebola, said that the country is far from winning the fight against the disease, blaming people’s fear and denial of the disease.

Vandi said that “people are vehemently denying that Ebola exists despite the massive awareness raising that is going on, and those that do believe the illness exists are so afraid that they do not come to the hospital or bring their relatives when they are sick. That is how Ebola spreads in the community before we are aware of cases.”

According to Vandi, people are accusing doctors of administering lethal injections to the Ebola patients or removing vital organs for sale in European markets. He said that some even claim that people are being deliberately infected with the virus to reduce the population.

As a result, doctors and nurses in the hospitals have been attacked and many nurses are not wearing their uniforms on the way to work for fear of being attacked in the streets.

“Patients who were admitted – both male and female – are abandoning the hospitals,” said Vandi. “They are now going to pharmacies or being treated by quack doctors or nurses in their homes. This is worrisome because the signs and symptoms of Ebola mimic the prevalent malaria and typhoid fever in the country and, before they know what they are dealing with, it will be too late.”

The Senior Human Rights Officer who heads the Human Rights Commission’s Office in the Eastern Province, Hassan Yarjah, blames the government’s Ebola awareness raising strategy for fanning mistrust and disbelief among people.

He pointed out that the eastern part of the country, in which almost all cases of Ebola have so far been identified, is an opposition stronghold. “What the central government is doing, which I think is wrong, is sending people to these communities that the people cannot identify with; they are parliamentarians, they are ministers, they are executives from the ruling All People’s Congress party and this is a country where everything is polarised,” he said.

According to Yarjah, people in the country’s Eastern Province are saying that “because a census is scheduled for September, the politicians want to scare people away from this part of the country so that their number will dwindle; then, when they delimit the boundaries for constituency seats, this will mean less representatives for the opposition in parliament in the next election.”

“I think government should use the local structures, like the paramount chiefs, the medical personnel on the ground, and the local councils,” Yarjah told IPS.

Meanwhile, the government has announced a ban on regular trade fairs in Kailahun, one of the districts in Eastern Province worst hit by Ebola. There has also been an executive order for placing medical personnel at a number of checkpoints on roads from the Eastern Province to check people for Ebola-related symptoms.

“This has affected our agriculture,” complained Lamin Musa, a farmer from Kailahun. “We cannot sell our produce now at the trade fairs and this had heaped more hardship on our poor people. Even bush meat, which had been a lucrative trade for us, has been banned. It is difficult for us to understand all the suffering we have to undergo because of Ebola.”

Whatever the misgivings, misconceptions and accusations, the virus is thriving, in part due to dysfunctional medical systems and weak disaster management structures in Sierra Leone and its neighbours.

At the beginning of July, the World Health Organization (WHO) held an emergency meeting in Accra, Ghana, with health ministers from 12 West African countries to discuss and propose suggestions to combat the outbreak of Ebola virus that has hit the three West African countries.

The ministers adopted a common inter-country strategy calling for accelerated response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The strategy stressed the need for regional, sub-regional and national leadership, coordinated actions by all stakeholders, enhanced cross border collaboration and the involvement of communities.

For his part, Kamara is optimistic. “I was able to beat this disease and any of you out there can,” he said. “You have to believe that Ebola is real, set aside prejudice and go to the hospital early if you experience the symptoms.”

The problem is that while Ebola may be a killer, a potentially greater threat to Sierra Leoneans and West Africans in general lies in less spectacular diseases. During the current outbreak of Ebola, other diseases are quietly taking their toll. Malaria is still rampant, and there is concern that cholera, which usually attacks during this period of the rains, will resurface to claim more lives.

Residents of West Point, Liberia, hope that one day they will be relocated from the beach as the continuous environmental degradation has resulted in most of the land eroding into the Atlantic Ocean. Credit: Wade C. L. Williams/IPS

By Wade C. L. Williams
MONROVIA, Jun 25 2014 (IPS)

Mary B owned a shop in West Point, Monrovia’s densely-populated slum community, where she sold liquor just a few yards away from the sea. But last month, the ocean left her homeless and without a business because the devastating erosion of the coastline has resulted in most of the land eroding into the Atlantic Ocean with thousands of homes being washed away by the encroaching sea.

“While a human being or your landlord will tell you ‘I give you notice at a particular time’ then you will pack your things and look for another place, the sea can’t give you notice,” the young woman who preferred to be called Mary B told IPS.

Situated between the Mesurado and St. Paul Rivers on a peninsula projecting out of the Atlantic Ocean, the township of West Point is home to about 75,000 people living in shacks that are predominantly made out of zinc.

Mary B said she had bought the piece of land from the commissioner of the township for 11,500 Liberian dollars, about 130 U.S. dollars, and built her shop on it.

According to the Township Commissioner’s office, residents in the area are primarily squatters, with no legal rights to the land, though it is possible to obtain a Squatters Permit from the administrative office, which grants a certain level of legitimacy to the dwellers.

But for sometime now, residents of West Point have been hoping that one day they will be relocated because of the continuous environmental degradation on the shoreline here.

A report on the threat to the environment in Liberia released by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2008 states that erosion in this West African country is causing the shoreline to recede in some cities, including Buchanan, Greenville, Harper and Robertsport. Beach mining is also said to be the main contributing factor.

Mohamed Carew Alias Kaddafi, 43, is physically challenged and a father of six. A carpenter by trade, he ran a small grocery shop in West Point, which was washed away in the storm.

“We were in the shop, the water came with force and blasted the whole place,” he told IPS, adding that this is not the first time he has lost his business to the sea.

“It happened before in 2007 and I lost my house.”

He may be eager to move elsewhere, but the government has not committed to a relocation plan.

West Point is home to many of Monrovia’s disadvantaged people and many cannot afford the city’s huge rents, which are fixed in U.S. dollars — 150 for a modest two bedroom apartment. To make matters worse the government does not have public housing available.

People in the area have always talked about plans by the government to relocate them, but the Public Works Ministry says the government has no such plans to move over 75,000 people.

However, the government agency responsible for monitoring environmental conditions, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), says the erosion in West Point and other communities is something the government is concerned about.

“In Liberia, climate change is causing serious coastal erosion and degrading of coastal environment,” Stephen Neufville, acting head of the EPA, told IPS.

West Point and other coastal communities in Monrovia are expected to benefit from the second phase of the Coastal Defence Project otherwise known as Enhancing Resilience of Vulnerable Coastal Areas to Climate Change Risks in Liberia.

But the EPA says that the start of the next phase of the project, which includes Monrovia, where West Point is situated, “depends on when we get the next funding.” The previous funding, they say, was used for the first phase that is currently ongoing in Buchanan.

This project, launched by the United Nations Development Programme and the government of Liberia, is set to help coastal communities in three counties develop defensive mechanism against the effects of climate change that cause sea erosion. The Coastal Defence Project involves building breakwaters to stop waves from eating up the coastline.

But many residents fear that this may be happening too slowly and if nothing is done to relocate them from the area, the sea will continue to cause destruction to their lives and properties.

“For us in West Point, we call the sea the original landlord,” Mary B said.

Hundreds of Liberians have filed a complaint accusing a U.S. government agency of failure to carry out due diligence or ensure that safeguards were followed for investments made to a failed biomass project in Liberia.

From 2009 to 2011, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) made three loans to a Dutch-registered company, Buchanan Renewables, that aimed to replant a mature rubber plantation in Liberia and use the old trees to run a new biomass-fired power plant, which the company also wanted to build. The OPIC loans, totalling around 217 million dollars, constituted 70 percent of the project’s total costs.“This so-called development project destroyed livelihoods and drove communities deeper into extreme poverty.” -- Francis Colee

The scheme, which has since failed, was initially described as a climate-friendly, pro-poor attempt to resuscitate Liberia’s rubber industry while powering its economy. Yet according to the new complaint, filed Wednesday, the project was rife with abuses.

Further, the complainants say the company’s sudden withdrawal has resulted in hundreds of local community members being unable to support themselves or their families. OPIC investigations, they say, should have flagged these and other potential problems, and they are now calling on the agency to offer reparations.

“Because of OPIC’s role in this project, people in Liberia are actively suffering from hunger and environmental damage that has been catastrophic to their livelihoods,” Natalie Bridgeman Fields, the executive director of Accountability Counsel, a watchdog group representing some of the Liberians party to the complaint, told IPS.

According to the complaint, OPIC oversight should have realised that the Buchanan Renewables plan would prevent local farmers and charcoal producers from making an independent living once the project got underway. While locals did sign contracts to tend to the new rubber trees and do related work, this set-up also made them entirely dependent on the company.

“OPIC, in violation of its social and environmental rules, failed to require an appropriate level of due diligence regarding [Buchanan Renewables’] operations in Liberia,” the complaint, addressed to OPIC President Elizabeth Littlefield, states, “and did not take adequate action to stop or remedy the harm experienced” as a result of the company’s activities.

OPIC has adopted a series of social and environmental safeguards, created by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector arm, that should protect against such situations. Yet rights groups say the system appears to have broken down.

“This so-called development project destroyed livelihoods and drove communities deeper into extreme poverty,” Francis Colee, of Green Advocates International, a Liberian group representing those party to the new complaint, said Wednesday. Another Green Advocates representative, Alfred Brownell, noted the project “left behind a legacy of abuse”.

No contingency

The Buchanan Renewables biomass project in Liberia revolved around an old rubber plantation previously owned by Firestone, the global tire manufacturer. While the plantation’s trees were considered past their prime, locals continued to tap the trees or convert them into charcoal, a critical energy source for the country.

The Buchanan plan, which also had some backing from the Swedish government and investors, entailed cutting down and replanting these trees, with the old wood made into chips to be burned and converted to electricity. However, the company moved to cut down the trees before the Liberian government decided whether to permit the construction of the new power plant.

Eventually the government decided not to allow the permit and, faced with a collapsed business plan, by the beginning of 2013 Buchanan Renewables suddenly pulled out completely (a full report was released in March 2013 by the Dutch watchdog group SOMO). The company, previously owned by the Geneva-based McCall MacBain Foundation, was subsequently dissolved.

In retrospect, there appears to have been no contingency planning by the company in case the power plant construction wasn’t allowed. And evidently, OPIC didn’t enforce such a requirement, either.

“We see it as OPIC’s job now to fix this situation,” Accountability Counsel’s Fields says. “But we’ve been talking to the agency for a year and they’ve only delayed, showing very little interest in what they’ve done wrong.”

In an accompanying report released Wednesday, Accountability Counsel says that OPIC did express some interest in exploring some form of reparations in November. But the groups said it decided to go forward with the complaint after “numerous attempts to engage” since November “did not result in a commitment from OPIC to engage in a process for discussing remedy”.

The complaint outlines two types of problems, those that took place during the Buchanan project and the ongoing impacts of the company’s sudden withdrawal. The complainants outline flagrant labour violations, including allegations of systemic sexual abuse against female workers.

“We were forced to work under terrible conditions without safe drinking water or proper safety equipment, leading to illness and serious injuries,” Sam Yeadieh, a representative for the former workers, said in a statement. “We were not paid what we had earned, and women were abused on the job.”

Since the company’s departure, rights groups say the young rubber trees have died, the woodchips have poisoned local water supplies, and livelihoods have been ruined. The charcoal producers, meanwhile, have been forced to start cutting into the surrounding forests for fresh product – a process that both negates the project’s intended climate impacts and may have led to a significant national price spike in charcoal prices.

Limited liability

OPIC says that is aware of the “unconfirmed allegations” around the Buchanan Renewables project and is currently working to determine what “additional steps it may take”.

“One of OPIC’s driving principles is positive development impact, and we regularly monitor OPIC-supported projects to ensure that all appropriate protections are in place to support this principle,” Charles Stadtlander, a press representative for OPIC, told IPS.

“While Liberia is a post-conflict country with a challenging social and economic operating environment, the Buchanan project was subject to these same protections. OPIC’s support of this project ended in January 2013 after its loan was repaid and the contract concluded.”

Accountability Counsel’s Fields says that OPIC’s accountability rules are limited, with the agency seeing the repayment of loans as essentially ending its liability. Yet she also notes that OPIC’s role is set to increase significantly around a spate of new U.S.-led electrification projects in Africa, and that the Liberia experience thus offers important lessons.

“This really calls into question whether OPIC can be trusted at all for investments on development and positive climate impacts,” she says. “Faced with a project that should have been an obvious alert, they dropped the ball. There’s no reason they should now be trusted with any project without additional oversight.”

At the Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur, advocates shared strategies for breaking religious taboos on reproductive rights. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
KUALA LUMPUR, May 31 2013 (IPS)

Liberian journalist Mae Azango says she spent a year living “like a bat, going from tree to tree” with her daughter in order to escape religious fanatics who were threatening to kill her for exposing the practice of female genital mutilation in her home country last year.

A senior reporter at the local FrontPage Africa publication, Azango told IPS that although the Liberian government signed a treaty in 2012 promising its citizens the right to information, it continues to hold back data on sexual and reproductive health and rights from journalists.

“With every story that I write, I take a great risk,” she says, adding that she is entirely dependent on “secret sources” within the government to gather information, since very little is shared in the public domain.

Her woes found echo among hundreds of women and health experts gathered in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur for the third annual Women Deliver global forum that ended Thursday.

Hailing from different corners of the globe, participants at the conference had no trouble identifying common goals: breaking taboos surrounding sex education and creating a safe climate for advocates, health professionals and educators to spread awareness on safe sex and family planning.

In Morocco, a country of 32 million people, schools are banned from offering sex education to young people because parliamentarians believe it to be an “evil concept, designed to promote promiscuity,” sexual and reproductive advocate Amina Lemrini told IPS.

She says progress on improving sexual health services in her country has been particularly slow due to taboos introduced by religious leaders.

With a government unwilling to challenge clerics, the job of providing crucial health services falls entirely on the shoulders of civil society, who are then threatened for their efforts.

Lemrini says she does not know a single reproductive rights activist who has not been threatened, yet the government offers them no protection.

Their distress has been recognised by leading experts in the field, including the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Babatunde Osotimehin, who told IPS that religious fundamentalism is a “indeed a worry” when it comes to progress on sexual health.

Still, he urged activists to continue their work, adding, “Fundamentalism exists in all societies and all religions – what matters is how we communicate our message.”

He believes that if more people are made aware of their rights and choices, they will not hesitate to defy archaic laws and so-called “cultural taboos.”

“The average person on the street does not want a situation where death comes calling every day for reasons that can be prevented,” he stressed.

Indeed, even a cursory glance at global statistics is enough to make a strong case for the need for better communication: according to the UNFPA, nearly 800 women die every single day as a result of pregnancy-related complications; in a year, that number is closer to 350,000 deaths, of which 99 percent occur in developing countries.

Sex-selective abortions and neglect of newborn baby girls have resulted in an estimated 134 million “missing” women worldwide.

Doing a wide sweep of global data, the UNFPA estimates that “millions of girls” practice unsafe sex and lack information on contraceptives. Osotimehin recently wrote that an “unmet need for family planning exists among 33 percent of girls between 15 and 19 years old…in Ethiopia, 38 percent in Bolivia, 42 percent in Nepal, 52 percent in Haiti and 62 percent in Ghana.”

Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, head of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), told IPS that giving up on communication about sexual and reproductive health and rights was not an option.

“We need an operative environment for those who are discussing this issue,” she said. “We need to protect the media — this isn’t a choice. Governments must scale up the level of cooperation with the media and provide supportive legal backup where it is not yet available.”

Gumbonzvanda thinks that citizen journalism could be an effective way to mitigate the risk posed by fundamentalists, not only by amplifying the voices of those who often go unheard, but also by empowering common citizens to take action.

Nowhere was the power of citizen journalism more evident than during the revolution in Egypt in 2011, where blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts replaced TV channels, newspapers and radio stations in reaching millions of people.

Today, as Egyptians struggle against the conservative policies of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, that network of citizen journalists has turned its attention to reproductive health and safe sex, topics that are frowned upon by Islamists.

Ahmed Awadalla, sexual and gender-based violence officer for Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA), told IPS that anyone discussing the issue risks detention, arrest, harassment and imprisonment.

As a result, the number of bloggers increases every day, as citizens and advocates flee to cyberspace in search of safe forums to share information and ideas.

“When I blog about the sexual rights of women I break two rules,” Awadalla said. “First, by speaking about a forbidden issue and secondly by speaking as a man, who is not supposed to take the side of women.” Though he faces harsh repercussions, nothing will persuade him to give up his advocacy.

But even while citizens innovate new ideas to get around the deadly threats of engaging in sex education, experts say governments must not be let off the hook for failing to provide these basic services.

Governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America must be held accountable by foreign funders, says Agnes Callamard, executive director of the London-based ‘Article 19’, an organisation dedicated to freedom of expression.

“Every government has committed to spending a certain amount of the funding they receive (on sexual health),” she said, so tracking aid flows could pressure governments to improve their track records on information sharing.

In fact, when the Mexico-based Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida (GIRE) started to track aid supposed to be allocated to providing information on sexual and reproductive health in 2011, “we found that nearly a million dollars were missing,” said GIRE Information Rights Advocate Alma Luz Beltrán y Puga. “We sued the government over that.  If the same tracking is done the world over, it can lead to greater accountability.”

According to a study done by the World Health Organisation (WHO), developed countries donated nearly 6.4 billion dollars to help provide access and information on reproductive health in developing countries. It is now up to civil society to ensure that money is responsibly allocated.

The land by Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County, Liberia has been leased by the government to Equatorial Palm Oil for 50 years. Credit: Wade C.L. Williams/IPS

By Wade C. L. Williams
BOEGBOR, Liberia, May 29 2013 (IPS)

Sackie Qwemie works for Equatorial Palm Oil, the company that took his land in northwestern Liberia.

He has been working on the EPO plantation for three years because the land that he once farmed was given away in a lease to the concession company based in Grand Bassa County, one of this West African country’s 15 political subdivisions.

His job is not a pleasant one, there is a taste of bitterness, but working for the company that has his land is the only way for him to survive.“The people came, they destroyed our bush, our living. Even the creek, the water we drink – they damaged it.” -- Joe Bah, chief of Boegbor.

The farmer, in his early 50s, is among the many villagers and community dwellers who have seen their land taken over by the company, and their crops bulldozed under.

“In the place I used to make my garden they came and cleared my whole bitterballs (a small species of round eggplant), my whole pepper, cassava, everything was destroyed,” Qwemie tells IPS as he sits under a palava hut in Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County.

“I had the biggest farm here; I came from the hospital and heard the news that the machine had cleared my farm. Since then I’ve not been on my own farm.” Qwemie, however, does not know how much land he has lost.

The farmer looks weary and angry as he lays out his case, accusing the Liberian government of giving up the land to the company and ignoring the interests of the people it serves. He says this move has created serious hardship for them, as the money paid by EPO is small and cannot meet their families’ needs.

“Now before I eat pepper, I have to buy it. I don’t know what to say, I can’t fight this company because they say the government gave the land to the company,” says Qwemie.

EPO took over the Palm Bay concession area, clearing 34,398 hectares of land for the development of oil palms. The 50-year concession was negotiated and enacted into law in 2011 with the planting of the first new oil palms. It began expansion into district four in Grand Bassa County not so long ago.

This expansion has further upset the local community here, with many resisting any attempt at further expansion.

“The people came, they destroyed our bush, our living. Even the creek, the water we drink – they damaged it,” says an angry Joe Bah, chief of Boegbor.

Bah and his kinsmen maintain that they were not consulted in the leasing of their land to EPO. He says the company used bulldozers to clear the land, including ancestral land and sacred sites, without any remorse or respect for their local culture.

“All this bush here – that was our cassava farm … the people have destroyed it, even our rubber trees. There is no place here for us to make a farm, (to grow food) for us to eat,” he tells IPS.

Local people also accused the government of using the head of the National Traditional Council, chief Zanzan Kawar, the country’s most revered traditional elder, to scare them off from claiming their rights over the land.

“When Kawar is present in any community, all the Zoe people in Grand Bassa County and elsewhere in all the other counties can be present,” says Isaac Gartaryon, president of the youth in the district. The Zoes are traditional high priests who are believed to have supernatural powers and are feared by locals. People dare not speak against them for fear of the consequences.

“So they use that heavy influence … so nobody could talk,” he tells IPS.

Citizens of the land who have vehemently opposed the expansion of the company have come under strong criticism from community elders who hold positions in government and are close associates of company officials, alleges Gartaryon.

“The young people, the women and chiefs were not consulted (about the expansion), so we resisted. But the National Traditional Council still maintains its position and says that as far as they are concerned, the President of the Republic of Liberia has given this land to (EPO) … and anybody (who speaks out against it) will be arrested,” he says.

But EPO maintains that the land it currently occupies is the land that it was leased in negotiations with the government in 2008. The company says it is currently only operating on 13,000 hectares of the land, and has not even occupied the full territory because of the resistance by the local community.

With regard to allegations that the community was not consulted, Thomas Borshua Jr., senior accountant and administrator at EPO, said “I wouldn’t say that is true. We’ve had numerous meetings with the town chiefs, the surrounding villages and we’ve talked to them.

“We are not interacting with people on an individual basis; they have their leaders that were presented to the company to speak on their behalf and those are the people the company dealt with,” he explains to IPS.

Despite Borshua’s assertions that the company only occupies a portion of the land, tractors can be seen moving around the concession, and the sight of newly-felled trees in areas that villagers allege are not part of the company’s 34,000 hectares of land is commonplace. The local residents have vowed to fight on.

“We will resist them in the bushes and we are very serious about that,” says an angry Gartaryon.

Speaking in conversation with Reuters Insider on May 17, in the United States, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said the government was taking steps to address the current land crisis.

“There’s no doubt about it, that once we say the communities have rights to what’s on their land. Even if we decide to negotiate concessions because they don’t have the resources to put the land to use, that in effect will benefit them with housing and jobs and social benefits but they will be full participants,” she had said.

Rights organisations here, such as the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) Liberia, which works to raise awareness and increase public participation in natural resources sectors, believe the government should go beyond mere words and do the right thing.

“The issue of land in Liberia is more than just a legal issue; it is matter of livelihood especially for communities living in rural parts of the country,” Nora Bowier of SDI tells IPS.

“If the government is taking vast amounts of land from rural people and granting them to multinationals without ensuring or providing better livelihood alternatives, it is like taking away these people’s rights to live and increasing their poverty conditions.”

Malawi President Joyce Banda (left) and Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at a women's rights event held at the Liberia Ministry of Gender and Development. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Wade C. L. Williams
Jan 31 2013 (IPS)

Fatou Nernee is scavenging through the debris of her home, which was razed to the ground by bulldozers belonging to the Monrovia City Corporation in Liberia. She is looking for something to keep as a treasured memory of a place she called home for over 20 years.

Nernee and many others have been left homeless because of a current cleanup drive by the government ahead of the United Nations High Level Panel (HLP) meeting on the Post-2015 Development Agenda this week.

“They broke my house down yesterday. The police arrested my brother and took him to the station,” Nernee told IPS.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon named Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as co-chairs of a high-level panel to advise him on the global development agenda after 2015, the expiry date for the millennium development goals.

The Monrovia meeting is the third of four HLP meetings, the first of which was held in New York in September 2012. The HLP will be finding ways to build and sustain broad political consensus on the post-2015 development agenda around three themes – economic growth, social equality and environmental sustainability.

The demolition of these homes comes as Sirleaf appointed the five-star, privately-owned Royal Grand hotel –which belongs to Lebanese businessman Ezzat Eid– as the venue for the meeting.

Mayor of Monrovia Mary Broh defended the demolitions.

“We want to make this city the greenest and cleanest city in West Africa,” she said during a press conference.

But Nernee and other residents of the over a dozen demolished buildings and businesses on 24^th Street, which is about 10 blocks away from the Royal Grand hotel, say the government has destroyed their homes and made their lives more difficult.

“It is not easy to find a place to rent in this city. This has made plenty people homeless. Our stuff was in the house when they demolished the buildings,” she said.

Those who are frustrated with the slow pace of progress in LIberia held public protests as President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf gave her state of the nation address. Courtesy: Wade C. L. Williams

The HLP meeting is taking place in a country that is the embodiment of global developmental challenges. Liberia’s infrastructure and political institutions were broken down during the country’s two civil wars, which occurred from 1989 to 1996 and 1999 to 2003 and were considered among the bloodiest in Africa.

This West African nation is in the early stages of rebuilding and a lack of electricity and access to cheap energy continues to be a problem. As many as 85 percent of the country’s estimated 4.2 million people are said to be unemployed, according to the U.N. Development Programme.

The government Bureau of Statistics, however, puts Liberia’s current vulnerable employment rate at 77.9 percent. Vulnerable employment is an indicator that is defined as people who are self-employed and holding unsustainable jobs, mostly menial labor.

Sirleaf argues that her government has made considerable progress since she took over in 2006.

While the government continues to announce progress in healthcare delivery, challenges still remain.

The U.N. has reported that the number of women dying of pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications has almost halved in 20 years, yet Liberia continues to have one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world with a maternal death rate of 994 per 100,000 live births.

“Liberia is once again considered a true friend to many, a good neighbour in our region, a reliable contributor to international peace and security, and an improving destination for investors. Today, our republic is safer, stronger and better,” Sirleaf told lawmakers on Monday, Jan. 28, the day of her state of the nation address.

Those who are frustrated with the slow pace of progress here held public protests as Sirleaf gave her state of the nation address.

“We have come to inform the visiting guests that everything is not fine in Liberia. This government has been able to make many of our people homeless and jobless,” said Julius T. Dweh Jessen III, one of the protesters.

Ma Mary Frederick, a 74-year-old widow whose husband was killed during the civil war, stood under the burning sun with a placard she could not read, protesting for the payout of her late husband’s military benefits.

“I have seen the first vote, second vote and I can’t get anything from the government,” she said referring to the country’s two democratic elections since Sirleaf became the country’s first post-war president in 2006. “All day we stand in the sun and the police beat us. I have nothing; my grandchildren can’t go to school,” she said.

“We are sitting down at home with nothing good to eat and they made matters worse by breaking down the house I used to live in. Now we are sleeping outside.”

The two contrasting images of a meeting of world leaders at a five-star hotel in downtown Monrovia as blocks away locals decry the demolition of their homes raises questions about the purpose and substance of the meeting and the implications it will have for this post-war country, student activist Janjay Gbarkpe told IPS.

Though not everyone agrees.

Liberian economist Sam Jackson told IPS that the HLP meeting gave Liberia an opportunity to highlight the progress made after the war and a chance to carve out a development agenda.

“Liberia is a post-war country and being a post-war country, the developmental challenges are huge,” he told IPS.

“Therefore it is important for the issues of peace and security to be part of the new global agenda and with Liberia you can see after 10 years of peace and security, what can be accomplished. We are looking at peace and security to be the foundation of economic transformation for the world.”

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 2013 (IPS)

Journalists can play a crucial role in helping to shift traditional attitudes within societies where the cruel practice of female genital mutilation is an everyday reality.

Mae Azango. Credit: Glenna Gordon for New Narratives

Mae Azango, a reporter for the news site FrontPage Africa, took on this taboo subject in her home country of Liberia, where as many as two out of three girls are affected and the topic itself has been neglected by politicians at the highest level for years.

Her coverage forced her and her young daughter into hiding for weeks, but it also gained international attention and put pressure on the government.

Azango, who just won the International Press Freedom Award 2012, spoke with U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis about how media can make a difference and the situation of the few female journalists in the country.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Looking back on your work, you said: “I knew if we started to talk about it (FGM), and they knew the truth, many parents would choose a different path” for their daughters. Did they?

A: No, parents haven’t chosen a different path for their daughters yet because they still feel it’s the clean and just thing to do. As an ancient tradition, it isn’t going to be changed overnight. We know that. As I’m talking to you, the practice is still going on in secret, even though the government has suspended the activities.

But what we have done is start a conversation at a national level that will allow this practice to be debated for the first time ever in our country. I’m very pleased about that.

More and more political leaders and victims have felt confident to come forward and say, “This practice is outdated. It is wrong.” Many parents will hear that debate for the first time and think twice about cutting their daughters.

It’s not the end but it’s the beginning of the end and many little girls will be spared. But in the long run it will take the sort of long-term, intensive awareness campaign that the government has promised to really stamp it out.

Q: Why is FGM such a taboo subject and how difficult is it to cover as a journalist?

A: It’s a taboo subject in Liberia and Sierra Leone because it is a ritual practiced by traditional secret societies in those two countries. Girls as young as two spend months in the bush learning how to be wives and at the end there is a ceremony where they are cut. There is also a school for boys.

The people who run these schools make a lot of money from them and they want to protect that income.

People know that if you are initiated into the societies you must never speak about what goes on there. If you do, they will kill you, mostly by magic. So people are very afraid to speak about it.

But affected women, who went through this ritual of cutting, are often very bitter and resentful. I was able to persuade a woman to speak to me but she was extremely anxious about it. We had to hide in her hut and use a false name. She was still traumatised from the experience when she was held down by four women when she was 13 and was cut by a fifth with a blade that had been used on 25 other girls. She has lived with the trauma and the medical consequences ever since.

She has faced a lot of attacks since the story came out, but she says she is glad to
have done it because she hopes it will spare other girls what she went through. She is very brave.

Q: What is the situation of female journalists in Liberia and what do they need?

A: There are not many female journalists in Liberia, but the few that are there are trying to make a difference.

Many male journalists feel we are only good enough to go after soft news stories. I’m very lucky to work for FrontPage Africa – a paper that sees women reporters as assets. I’m also part of a U.S. project called New Narratives (NN) that is supporting women reporters in Liberia.

My fellow NN reporters and I have won nine national reporting awards in the last two years and have written for media around the world. We have forced the government and other leaders to act on a range of issues, including police abuse of rape victims, child prostitution and teen pregnancy.

We are proving the men wrong because we are really making waves in Liberia and having the sort of impact they want to have.

We are also proving that not all news has to be politics and scandal. There are so many issues that are plaguing women and children in particular in Liberia and we are proving they are valid news stories that people want to know about.

Q: Why do you think your reporting resulted in political action when other articles and messages never brought any change?

A: What was different about this reporting was that it was told in a very compelling way.

It was on the front page of the major newspaper in Liberia on International Women’s Day, when other media was doing light pieces about women’s advancement.

It had graphic photos that showed young girls were being initiated even though the societies claimed girls had to be marriageable age when they went to the schools. It also told the story through the eyes of a victim. People were able to really relate to her story because everyone had been through the same thing or knew someone who had suffered like that woman.

It’s so rare that reporters actually use real people to tell their stories in Liberia. Usually it’s just a rewritten press release or the words of a single leader being reproduced. There is no reporting. Readers really responded to this, because the overall presentation was so compelling. It got everyone’s attention and it was discussed for months on talk radio.

Excerpt: