Fortunata Palomino is an experienced community organizer from Carabayllo and general coordinator of the Network of Soup Kitchens of Metropolitan Lima, which includes 2,247 soup kitchens. She is critical of the neglect by the authorities and hopes that women will be trained, certified and incorporated into the labor market with respect for their rights. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Jan 24 2022 (IPS)

It’s nine o’clock in the morning and Mauricia Rodríguez is already peeling garlic to season the day’s lunch at the Network of Organized Women of Villa Torreblanca, one of more than 2,400 solidarity-based soup kitchens that have emerged in the Peruvian capital in response to the worsening poverty caused by the partial or total halt of economic activities in the country due to COVID-19.

Up to Mar. 16, 2020 – when the government of then President Martin Vizcarra declared a state of national emergency in an attempt to curb the pandemic – Mauricia made a living selling snacks and meals at a school, while her husband drove a rented motorcycle cab, with which he provided local transportation services. But from one day to the next, they were left without their livelihood.

They were not alone. In this Andean country of 33 million people with solid macroeconomic fundamentals, the pandemic exposed structural flaws that cause deep inequality gaps. For example, seven out of 10 workers were working in the informal sector as of 2019, lacking pensions, health insurance and other labor rights, and with no possibility of saving money, like Mauricia and her husband.

As a result of the health emergency measures and the pandemic more than six million people became unemployed in 2020, most of them in the informal sector in the areas of commerce and services, where women play a predominant role. In Latin America, 34 million jobs were lost that year, according to the International Labor Organization.

In addition, according to a report by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), poverty had climbed 10 percentage points to 30 percent, pushing another 3.33 million people into a precarious situation, who could no longer afford the basic basket of goods, estimated at 360 soles (92 dollars) a month.

Families in impoverished neighborhoods in the capital were among the hardest hit.

“The already existing poverty was aggravated by the pandemic. We saw people getting desperate, they had nothing to eat,” Esther Alvarez, a lawyer in charge of advocacy at the non-governmental CENCA Urban Development Institute, which has been working for more than 40 years in poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Lima, such as those in the San Juan de Lurigancho district, told IPS by telephone.

Soup kitchens spontaneously emerged thanks to food donations and community organization based on solidarity, reciprocity and a humanitarian and rights-based approach, combining efforts with the local parishes, to address the growing hunger in areas invisible to the authorities, in the country’s capital itself.

In Lima, where a third of the national population is concentrated -almost 10 million inhabitants- poverty climbed from 14.2 percent to 27.5 percent, and it is estimated that with the crisis another 250,000 people have fallen into extreme poverty, unable to afford a basic food basket of 196 soles (49 dollars) a month.

Alvarez explained that in alliance with other civil society institutions, they organized the soup kitchens that emerged in different districts of Lima, creating a permanent online communication space, which continues to this day, while promoting the formation of the Network of Soup Kitchens of Metropolitan Lima.

The network and online communication space enable interaction between the organizers of the soup kitchens, mainly women, who have emerged as leaders in the fight against hunger and for the right to food, issues that should be addressed by the authorities.

Three women community organizers whose solidarity and efforts contribute to the food security of impoverished families in the area stand outside their local soup kitchen. From left to right, Mauricia Rodríguez, Fortunata Palomino and Elizabeth Huachilla. During the visit by IPS, the menu, cooked with firewood because of the lack of cooking gas, consisted of rice with panamito beans and fried bonito, a fish rich in Omega 3. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Solidarity-based community efforts for a better life

The Network of Organized Women of Villa Torreblanca soup kitchen emerged in the upper part of the district of Carabayllo, located on the slopes of hills in the northern part of the capital. A few days after the national pandemic emergency was declared, it began to operate in the wooden house of Elizabeth Huachillo.

A native of Ayabaca in the northern highlands of Peru, she came to Lima at the age of 15 to find work and today, 40 years old and the mother of Lizbeth, 17, and Tracy, seven, she is the driving force behind the soup kitchen.

Huachillo drove a motorcycle taxi to support her family, but as a result of the lockdown she was unable to work and they were going hungry. “We had nothing to eat and I began to investigate how to create a soup kitchen. I looked up Señora Fortunata, who is a well-known and respected leader in the district, and together with her we launched it on Mar. 23,” 2020, she says while showing IPS the fish that will be served in today’s lunch.

Fortunata Palomino is 57 years old. From her native Ayacucho – a central Andean region devastated by the 1980-2000 internal armed conflict – she was sent to the capital by her parents when she was still a child. She went through many difficult situations to get ahead and put a roof over her head. She has four daughters who have managed to become professionals and she is proud she was able to make it possible for them to have an education.

While she and her husband ran their household, she became involved in different organizations to promote the rights of local people, including nutrition and a life free of violence for women and children.

She is familiar with the district and the plight of its people, especially in the shantytowns built on the hillsides where the houses are made of wood, families have no drinking water or sanitation and the roads are unpaved. “The authorites are absent here,” she complained.

She feels like a survivor when she thinks back to March 2020 and the terrible uncertainty, anxiety and fear that swept through the poorest families in her neighborhood.

“We were the first to start up a soup kitchen in Carabayllo, and many more followed suit, until there were 137,” she said.

In order to coordinate and strengthen their activities, they formed the Network of Soup Kitchens of Metropolitan Lima, of which she was elected general coordinator. As of November 2021, a total of 2,468 soup kitchens were registered there, feeding 257,000 people a day.

“Here in our soup kitchen we served 250 lunches a day at the peak of the crisis. Now we make 120 because some people have managed to return to their jobs as collectors, drivers or street vendors,” said Elizabeth Huachillo.

The solidarity price is two soles (51 cents). But nothing is charged in special cases, such as the elderly or people with tuberculosis. When the women find out someone has COVID, they leave the meals in plastic containers on their doorstep. And children orphaned by the death of their parents due to COVID-19 also receive free meals.

According to the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations, in 2021, there were 98,000 minors orphaned by the pandemic.

“We are doing what the authorities should be doing because we could not remain indifferent to such desperation. Despite our efforts, it has been a struggle to achieve legal recognition of the soup kitchens so they can access budget funds; the law was passed last year and now it is time for it to be implemented,” Huachillo said.

With the political instability that Peru has experienced in recent years, four governments have already managed the pandemic, and each one has made some achievements in coordination with civil society organizations and the Food Security Board of the Municipality of Lima, a multisectoral body that brings together social organizations, non-governmental institutions and the State.

Esther Álvarez of CENCA said the challenges for this year include achieving the implementation of the food emergency law and the allocation of a budget for the soup kitchens to address the food emergency, and to get the government to approve a regulatory framework that incorporates them into a Zero Hunger Program.

For her part, Fortunata Palomino is thinking about the post-pandemic world and suggests that the government should train and certify the women currently running the soup kitchens in various activities so that they can join the formal labor market in the future. “We need our own incomes with jobs that respect our rights,” she said.

By Hazel Henderson
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, Dec 2 2015 (IPS)

Civil society organizations, known as NGOs, have for decades used their non-government status to prod officials, politicians and business on climate issues. Veteran campaigners Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Kenya’s tree planters, India’s Chipko tree-hugging protectors and indigenous movements worldwide first raised the issues of protecting the Earth and its atmosphere.

Hazel Henderson

Social change rarely comes from elites since those in power are insulated from the hunger, desperation, pollution and resource depletion their populations experience. Change comes from societies’ periphery, those marginalized, excluded, voiceless in policy discussions of governments and business.

Thus civic and voluntary associations, movements and protests become the vanguards of social change – often positive, but negative if ignored or suppressed. These ancient forces in human societies are rooted in our earliest experiences of dangers and risks and our responses to our fears: competing with other groups for territory, accumulating and hoarding resources – or more positive responses of bonding, sharing and cooperating as Charles Darwin saw as our evolutionary success.

Elites in Britain hijacked Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection and saw it as the “survival of the fittest” recast in The Economist by Herbert Spencer. The magazine apologized for its focus on competition and “this poisonous phrase” in December 2005 as I described in Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006).

The NGOs leading the climate debate for decades include the Carbon Disclosure Project, now CDP, Rocky Mountain Institute, Natural Capital Solutions, Carbon Tracker and the Club of Rome of concientized and superannuated elites. Drivers are social and environmental justice groups, worldwide indigenous networks of ecovillages, local currencies, monetary reformers, ethical investors and, more recently, religious groups led by Pope Francis, followed by many others, including the movement Our Voices.

The official climate debates in the UN summits focused around the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, unfortunately captured by the economics profession into ineffective carbon markets and trading of pollution permits, offsets too easily gamed by financial players. While many reaped money rewards, these “markets” failed to reduce or even slow carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions.

The UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009 saw officials naming, blaming and shaming between Tier I countries which had achieved development on fossil fuels and their emissions and Tier II countries still seeking their own development. The stalemate was largely influenced by this Kyoto Protocol. The major possibility for agreement was left on the table: accelerating the global transition of all countries to low-carbon, renewable resource economies – beyond the fossil-fuel era to the next Solar Age.

Fast forward to Paris and COP 21, the NGOs are still leading the way with their many approaches to this transition to 100 percent renewable resource economies and the equally necessary inclusion of all in the coming green prosperity. They drove the agenda at Rio +20 in 2012 with Brazilian groups, the Rainforest Alliance, the Committee on Sustainability Assessment, World Resources Institute, Biomimicry Institute, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and many others.

The historic deadly duo: resource depletion and inequality are at last being addressed as the single issue for human survival and evolution. This deadly duo is central in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ratified by the 193 member countries at the UN in New York, September 2015. This new inclusive development model supersedes the obsolete economic model measured by gross domestic product (GDP), its subsidies to fossil fuels and all pollution and social harm it treats as “externalities” omitted from business and government accounts. Even mainstream Wall Streeters are critiquing inequality in corporations. Hedge fund philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones, founder of JUSTCapital, is launching a JUST 100 Index of the fairest corporations. While 66 per cent of corporations now accept climate science, 95 per cent of them still belong to trade associations obstructing progress, according to InfluenceMap. At last, these past subsidies which caused global warming are being phased out.

Solar, wind, wave power, geothermal and energy efficiency are revealed as cheaper than unsubsidized fossil fuels and nuclear power. Full-spectrum accounting by SASB and IIRC drives the new NGOs promoting all these Solar Age technologies. Our Green Transition Scoreboard launched in 2009 now tracks private investment in green sectors worldwide at $6.22 trillion.

Helio International’s HIFI tool for investors will help steer them to those countries most hospitable to Solar Age investments, mostly in developing countries.

These societies are not trapped in obsolete infrastructure and can “leapfrog” directly to green technologies: beyond vulnerable national electric grids to decentralized local power from community-owned local solar and wind generation. Asset owners, pension funds are driving shifts of investments and portfolios to fossil-free, green sectors, including CERES, 2° Investing, Grantham Foundation, Climate Bonds Initiative, Sonen Capital, Green Alpha Advisors and others.

NGOs can continue driving the debates at COP21 with their new allies and accelerate the great global transition now underway to the next economy, equality-based and powered by the daily free photons from our Sun.

(End)

Excerpt:

Demonstrators protesting at the Business & Climate Summit in Paris, May 20. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, May 21 2015 (IPS)

When it comes to climate change, business as usual is simply “not an option”.

That was the view of Eldar Saetre, CEO of Norwegian multinational Statoil, as international industry leaders met in Paris for a two-day Business & Climate Summit, six months ahead of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21 ) that will also be held in the French capital.

Subtitled “Working together to build a better economy”, the May 20-21 summit brought together some 2,000 representatives of some of the world’s largest retail and energy concerns, including  companies that NGOs have criticized as being among the worst environmental offenders.

At the end, business leaders proclaimed that they wanted “a global climate deal that achieves net zero emissions” and that they wanted to see this happen at COP 21.

Throughout the conference, participants stressed that businesses will have to change, not only to protect the environment, but for their own survival. “Taking climate action simply makes good business sense. However, business solutions on climate are not being scaled up fast enough,” declared the summit organizers.

They pledged to lead the “global transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient economy.”

Saetre, for example, said his company wanted to achieve “low-carbon oil and gas production” and that it had embarked on renewables in the form of offshore wind energy. But he said that fossil fuels would still be needed in the future, alongside the various forms of renewable energy.

Acknowledging the widespread scepticism about multinational companies’ commitment, business leaders said that they could not “go it alone”, and called for support from governments as well as consumers.

Mike Barry, Director of Sustainable Business at British retailer Marks & Spencer, told IPS in an interview that global commitment was important in the drive to transform industry to have more environmentally friendly practices.

“Collective action can bring about real change,” he said. “We’re here today because we believe that climate change is happening and it’s going to have a significant impact on our business in the future and our success.

“Our customers would expect us to take the lead on this, and we want governments to take this seriously as well in the run-up to COP 21 [the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11].”

He said that Marks & Spencer and other companies in a network called the Consumer Goods Forum wanted to “stand shoulder to shoulder with government to say ‘this matters and we’re here to help’.”

But government consensus on how to address climate change has proved difficult, and even French President Francois Hollande, who opened the summit, conceded that it would require a miracle for a real agreement to be reached at COP 21.

“We must have a consensus. It’s already not easy in our own countries, so with 196 countries, a miracle is needed,” he said at the Business & Climate Summit, expressing the conviction, however, that agreement will be reached through negotiation and “responsibility”.

Hollande and other officials said the involvement of businesses was essential, and France, with its huge oil and electricity companies, evidently has a big role to play.

However, demonstrators outside the summit, held at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), slammed big business.

“These multinationals (and the banks that finance their activities) are in fact directly at the origin of climate change,” read a statement from organisations including Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth, France) and the civil disobedience group J.E.D.I. for Climate.

Saying that it was ironic to have fossil-fuel companies represented at the summit, the groups asked: “Can one imagine for a second that the tobacco industry would be associated with policies to combat smoking aimed at ending the production of cigarettes? No, that would be the best way to ensure that the world continued to chain-smoke.”

The protesters added that if Hollande and his ministers wanted to show a real commitment to the environment, they should make it clear that “the climate is not a business”.

“The fight against climate change is not the business of fossil-fuel multinationals: they belong to our past,” the groups said in a joint release, handed out on the street.

At the summit, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that businesses should not be “demonised” and she called for collaboration rather than confrontation.

“We all start with a carbon footprint,” she said. “It is not a question of demonising anyone but realizing that we’re all here … This is not about confrontation. This is about collaboration. If you’re thinking about confrontation, forget it. Because we’re not going to get there.”

The summit – co-hosted by Entreprises Pour l’Environnement, an association of some 40 French and large international companies, and UN Global Compact France, a policy initiative for businesses – also addressed the vulnerability of island states in the face of climate change.

Tony de Brum, the Marshall Islands’ Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that island states in the Pacific and elsewhere had an interest in keeping pressure on carbon emitters because their populations’ survival was at stake.

Angel Gurría, Secretary General of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), also highlighted the threat to vulnerable countries, saying that for them, climate change is not about protecting the environment for future generations, but “it’s about how long the water will take to overcome the land.”

Gurría said that greater reductions in carbon emissions were required than has so far been proposed by states, and he stressed that countries over time needed to “develop a pathway to net zero emissions globally” by the second half of the century.

“Governments at COP 21 need to send a clear directional signal that will drive action for decades to come,” he said. “We are on a collision course with nature, and unless we seize this opportunity, we face an increasing risk of severe, pervasive and irreversible climate impact.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

A wide view of the conference room as Vladimir Drobnjak (shown on screens), Permanent Representative of Croatia to the UN and Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), addresses the 2015 ECOSOC Youth Forum on the theme, “Youth Engagement in the Transition from the Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals: What will it take?” Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 2015 (IPS)

The NGO Branch of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations is calling on non-governmental organisations to apply for Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) consultative status in order to be considered by the 2016 NGO Committee.

The deadline for the application is Jun. 1, 2015.

ECOSOC consultative status relates to ECOSOC resolution 1996/31 – based on article 71 of the Charter of the United Nations, which regulates the relationship between the U.N. and NGOs.

Resolution 1996/31 sets the rules NGOs should abide to – rights and obligations – in order to participate in international conferences convened by the U.N., and it develops strategies to improve the work on the Committee on NGOs and the NGOs Section of the Secretariat.

Consultative status is granted by ECOSOC upon recommendation of the ECOSOC Committee on NGOs – made up of 19 Member States.

According to NGO Branch, any international, regional, sub-regional and national non-governmental organisation can be eligible for ECOSOC consultative status, as long as it follows the subsequent criteria:

“An NGO must have been in existence (officially registered with the appropriate government authorities as an NGO/non-profit) for at least two years, must have an established headquarters, a democratically adopted constitution, authority to speak for its members, a representative structure, appropriate mechanisms of accountability and democratic and transparent decision-making processes. The basic resources of the organization must be derived mainly from contributions of the national affiliates or other components or from individual members.”

On the NGO Branch website, it says that NGOs which are granted consultative status by ECOSOC are able to attend official meetings, submit written statements prior to sessions, make oral statements, meet official government delegations and other NGOs representatives.

NGOs with consultative status can also benefit from organising and attending parallel events aside from main sessions, and participating in debates and interactive dialogues, such as panel discussions and informal meetings.

In 1945, when the U.N. was created in the aftermath of World War II, 41 NGOs were granted consultative status by the council, and in 1992 more than 700 NGOs received  consultative status. According to the 2014 list of the non-governmental organisations in consultative status with ECOSOC the number has increased to about 3,900 organisations.

To apply for ECOSOC consultative status, follow this link to the NGO Branch website.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

There is rising anger among trade unionists, environmentalists and civil society groups in Gabon after a wood company, Rain Forest Management (RFM), sacked 38 fixed-term workers last month in Mbomao, Ogooué-Ivindo province.

RFM, a Gabonese wood processing company with Malaysian investment, is one of several exploiting the rich natural forests in Gabon. The forestry sector is the country’s second source of foreign exchange after oil.

RFM and the woodworkers had been locked in a lengthy dispute over working conditions, lack of contacts and legal working hours, among other complaints.

According to the Entente Syndicale des Travailleurs du Gabon (ENSYTG) union, RFM refused to negotiate with them and workers who were planning to take part in trade union meetings were threatened and intimidated.“Although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity” – Forests Monitor

After numerous threats and charges of intimidation, on Feb. 17, as the employees were returning to work, RFM called on police to evict them from their company-supplied dormitories, claiming that the workers had violated company rules.

The dismissals were linked to worker protests over poor working conditions, unsanitary housing infested with rats, cockroaches and snakes, demands for legal working hours and payment of wages on time.

Léon Mébiame Evoung, president of ENSYTG, told IPS that the workers were simply calling on the company to respect basic rights and provide a pharmacy and an infirmary that should be managed by competent Gabonese health professionals.

RFM failed to meet any of these demands, said the union official. Instead, it decided to execute its earlier threat by firing all protesting workers.

The action has provoked the ire of civil society groups and syndicates, including Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWINT), which is circulating an online petition to help the strikers’ return to their jobs.

Marc Ona Essangui, founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon, a network of NGOs, told IPS in an online interview that he could not accept such “gross suppression” of workers’ rights. “I have signed up to the call to protect the workers,” he said.

“I strongly protest against the dismissal of these workers, which is clearly linked to their strike action,” he insisted. Such anti-union activities, he added, violate International Labour Office (ILO) conventions 87 and 98 (on freedom of association and the right to organise and bargain collectively, respectively).

Along with other environmentalists in the region, Essangui – who once received a suspended sentence for accusing a presidential ally of exploiting timber, palm oil and rubber in Gabon’s “favourable agri-climate” – is troubled by risks to the region’s natural forests due to development activities.

The Gabonese government and international donors, however, regard the exploitation of timber as central to the country’s macroeconomic development.

According to Forests Monitor, an NGO that supports forest-dependent people, “although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity.”

The NGO notes that “production levels are already considerably above the official sustainable production estimates and are set to continue rising”, meaning that “the contribution which forestry sector revenues make to the country’s population as a whole and to people living in the locality of forestry operations is questionable.”

On its website, the World Resources Institute (WRI) notes that “nowhere is the pressure (on resources) more intense than in Gabon, a nation with 80 percent of its territory covered by dense tropical forest. With resource use demands spiralling in recent years, Gabon urgently needs better forest management planning if the government is to achieve its goal of becoming an emerging economy while preserving the country’s natural resources.”

RFM’s woodworking factory lies at the centre of three national parks – Lope, Crystal Mountain, and Ivindo – and to the east of Libreville. The park area is a small fraction of the land marked for development on a WRI map. The wood used by RFM is locally sourced.

Established in 2008, RFM produces windows and doors for the Gabonese domestic market. It exports semi-finished products to Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The company employs more than 700 workers, with a Gabonese majority.

Since November 2009, when log exports were banned, the formal economy production of processed wood has increased significantly.

According to a WRI report titled ‘A First Look at Logging in Gabon’, compiled by seven Gabonese environmental organisations, “Gabon has vast forest resources, but rapid growth of logging activity may threaten those resources. If managed properly, Gabon’s forests could offer long-term revenues without compromising the ecosystems’ natural functions.”

However, the authors continued, “(we) found information about forest development unreliable, inconsistent, and very difficult to obtain. We believe that more public information will promote accountability and transparency and favour the implementation of commitments made to manage and protect the world’s forests, which would significantly slow forest degradation around the world.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

Surviving in Africa, especially when you are a premature baby who requires special care, is not always a certainty. Credit: Casia Ciechanowska/Doctors with Africa CUAMM

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 2015 (IPS)

20 years on from Beijing, gender inequality is still a priority at United Nations.

On the first day of the 59th Commission on the Status of Women(CSW)  in New York, the Permanent Missions of Italy and United Republic of Tanzania to the U.N. opened the photographic exhibition ‘A waiting room- Mothers and children first’.

The pictures were taken by Polish photographer Kasia Ciechanowska, who focused on the conditions of Tanzanian women, highlighting the risks pregnant women go through in poor healthcare conditions.

The exhibition was showcased by the Italian NGO Doctors with Africa CUAMM which the Ambassador for the Permanent Mission of Italy, Sebastiano Cardi, described as the “largest Italian organisation involved in the promotion and protection of health in Africa.”

A spokesperson for Doctors with Africa CUAMM, Andrea Atzori, noted that the exhibition was showcasing the work of a maternal health program of the same name launched in 2012.

“’Women and children first’ (aims to) overcome all the barriers -financial, cultural and geographical- to assess basic health service, particularly pregnant service… Activities will be done within communities in hospital, health centres and government, in order to provide basic policies to reduce maternal and infant mortality in Tanzania,” said Atzori.

The Ambassador of the Tanzanian Mission, Tuvako Manongi, said that this  photographic exhibition brings Tanzania to the U.N. and should be an example for other countries to follow.

“Here at the U.N. we are engaged in the post-2015 development agenda. One of the core issues for… Africa, and for my country, is pursuing a health agenda in partnership with governments, civil society and CUAMM. Doctors with Africa has shown us that this partnership can win,” he added.

The images tell the story of Eliza, a young woman who is waiting in a camp near the hospital of Tosamaganga in Tanzania, while her daughter is giving birth to a premature baby. A close look at Eliza’s day shows the challenges and hopes for patients and their families in healthcare centres.

Through these pictures, said the Italian Ambassador at the launch of the exhibition, visitors can learn about the connection between medical and family care, as part of the same path towards health, as well as the central role that African women and girls hold in society.

Manongi said: “the waiting room facilities and the health service can make the difference between life and death….Doctors with Africa’ s work on creating safer health conditions, has given the opportunity to women and their children to live.”

Atzori told IPS that this showcase is a way to bring to a higher level CUAMM’s action on the field. “Our challenge is to bring the voices from the field. The voice of a grandmother, a mother, or a child who need access to adequate healthcare structures.”

Follow Valentina Ieri on Twitter @Valeieri

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Irina was 21 when she first started using drugs. More than 30 years later, having lost her husband, her home and her business to drugs, she is still battling her addiction.

But, like almost all female drug addicts in this former Soviet state, she has faced a desperate struggle not only with her drug problem, but with accessing help in the face of institutionalised and systematic discrimination because of her gender.

“Georgia’s society is very male-dominated,” she told IPS. “And this is reflected in the attitudes to drugs. It’s as if it’s OK for men to use drugs but not women. For women, the stigma of drug use is massive. There are many women who do not join programmes helping them as they would rather not be seen there.”

Women make up 10 per cent of the estimated 40,000 drug users in Georgia, according to research by local NGOs working with drug users.“Georgia’s society is very male-dominated and this is reflected in the attitudes to drugs. It’s as if it’s OK for men to use drugs but not women. For women, the stigma of drug use is massive. There are many women who do not join programmes helping them as they would rather not be seen there” – Irina, now in her 50s, who has been taking drugs for 30 years

However, because of very strong gender stereotyping, women users have very low access to harm reduction services – only 4 percent of needle exchange programme clients are women and the figure is even less for methadone treatment.

Local activists say this startling discrepancy is down to the massive social stigma faced by women drug users.

Dasha Ocheret, Deputy Director for Advocacy at the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network (EHRN) told IPS: “In traditional societies, like Georgia’s, there is a much stronger negative attitude to women who use drugs than to men who use drugs. Women are supposed to be wives and mothers, not drug users.”

Many female addicts are scared to access needle exchanges or other harm reduction services because they fear their addiction will become known to their families or the police. Many have found themselves the victims of violence as their own families try to exert control over them once their drug use has been revealed. Others fear their drug use will be reported to the authorities by health workers.

Registered women drug users can have their children taken away while they routinely face violence – over 80 percent of women who use drugs in Georgia experience violence, according to the Georgian Harm Reduction Network– and extortion at the hands of police helping to enforce some of the world’s harshest drug laws. Possession of cannabis, for example, can result in an 11-year jail sentence.

Irina, who admits that she arranges anonymous attendance at an opioid substitution therapy (OST) programme so that as few people as possible can see her there, told IPS that she had herself been assaulted by a police officer and that police automatically viewed all female drug users as “criminals”.

But those who do want to access such services face further barriers because of their gender.

Free methadone substitution programmes in the country are extremely limited and because levels of financial autonomy among women in Georgia are low, other similar programmes are too expensive for many female addicts.

Discrimination is not uncommon among health service workers. Although some say that they have been treated by very sympathetic doctors, other female drug users have complained of abuse and denigration by medical staff and in some cases being denied health care because of their drug use.

Pregnant women are discouraged from accessing OST, despite it being shown to be safe in pregnancy and resulting in better health outcomes for both mother and child.

Eka Iakobishvili, EHRN’s Human Rights Programme Manager, told IPS: “Pregnant women don’t have access to certain services – they are strongly advised by doctors and health care workers to abort a baby rather than get methadone substitution treatment because they are told the treatment will harm the baby.”

While some may then undergo abortions, others will not, instead continuing dangerous drug use and the potential risk of contracting HIV/AIDS which could then be passed on to their child.

Meanwhile, those harm reduction services accessible by women are not gender-sensitive, according to campaigners, who say that female drug users need access to centres and programmes run and attended only by women.

Irina told IPS: “On some [harm reduction] programmes, the male drug users there will abuse the women drug users for taking drugs. This puts a lot of women off attending these programmes.”

She said that she had asked for a women-only service to be set up at the OST centre she attends but that it had been rejected on the grounds that only a few women were enrolled in it.

Together, these factors mean that many women are unable to access health services and continue dangerous drug-taking behaviour, sharing needles and injecting home-made drug cocktails made up of anything, including disinfectants and petrol mixed with over the counter medicines.

But there is hope that the situation may be about to change, at least to some degree, as local and international groups press to have the problem addressed.

At the end of July, CEDAW (UN Commission on Elimination of Discrimination against Women) released a set of recommendations for the Georgian government to ensure that women obtain proper access to harm reduction services after local NGOs submitted reports on the levels of discrimination they face.

These include, among others, specific calls for the government to carry out nationwide studies to establish the exact number of women who use drugs, including while pregnant, to help draw up a strategic plan to tackle the problem, and to provide gender-sensitive and evidence-based harm reduction services for women who use drugs.

The government has yet to react publicly to the recommendations but local campaigners have said they are speaking to government departments about them and are preparing to follow up with them on the recommendations.

Tea Kordzadze, Project Manager at the Georgian Harm Reduction Network in Tibilisi, told IPS: “We are hoping that at least some of the recommendations will be implemented.”

The Georgian government has been keen to show the country is ready to embrace Western values and bring its legislation and standards into line with European nations in recent years as it looks to create closer ties to the European Union. Rights activists say that this could come into play when the government considers the recommendations.

Iakobishvili said: “These are of course just recommendations and the government is not obliged at all to accept or implement any of them. But, having said that, Georgia does care what other countries and big international rights organisations like Amnesty International and so on say about the country.”

Irina told IPS that only outside pressure would bring any real change. “The European Union, the Council of Europe and other international bodies need to put pressure on the Georgian government to make sure that the recommendations don’t remain on paper only.”

But, she added, “in any case, the recommendations alone won’t be enough. The whole attitude in society to women drug users is very negative. It has to be changed.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Amid escalating conflicts and rampant violations of human rights all over the world, spreading “human rights education” is not an easy task. But a non-governmental organisation from Japan is beginning to make an impact through its “global citizenship education” approach.

At the current annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which began on Sep. 8, two side events marked the beginning of what promises to be a sustained campaign to spread human rights education (HRE).

Alongside the first, the launch of the web resource “The Right to Human Rights Education” by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a special workshop was also convened on HRE for media professionals and journalists.

The workshop was an initiative of the NGO Working Group on HRE chaired by Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a prominent NGO from Japan fighting for the abolition of nuclear weapons, sustainable development and human rights education.“It is important to raise awareness of human rights education among media professionals and journalists who are invariably caught in the crossfire of conflicts” – Kazunari Fujii, Soka Gakkai International

“This is the first time that the NGO Working Group on Human Rights Education and Learning and a group of seven countries representing the Platform for Human Rights Education and Training have organised a workshop on human rights education for media professionals and journalists,” said Kazunari Fujii, SGI’s Geneva representative.

Fujii has been working among human rights pressure groups in Geneva to mobilise support for intensifying HRE campaigning. “Through the promotion of human rights education, SGI wants to foster a culture of human rights that prevents violations from occurring in the first place,“ Fujii told IPS after the workshop on Tuesday (Sep. 16).

“While protection of human rights is the core objective of the U.N. Charter, it is equally important to prevent the occurrence of human rights abuses,” he argued.

Citing SGI President Daisaku Ikeda’s central message to foster a “culture of human rights”, Fujii said his mission in Geneva is to bring about solidarity among NGOs for achieving SGI’s major goals on human rights, nuclear disarmament and sustainable development.

The current session of the Human Rights Council, which will end on Sep. 26, is grappling with a range of festering conflicts in different parts of the world. “From a human rights perspective, it is clear that the immediate and urgent priority of the international community should be to halt the increasingly conjoined conflicts in Iraq and Syria,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the new U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“In particular, dedicated efforts are urgently needed to protect religious and ethnic groups, children – who are at risk of forcible recruitment and sexual violence – and women, who have been the targets of severe restrictions,” Al Hussein said in his maiden speech to the Council.

“The second step, as my predecessor [Navanetham Pillay] consistently stressed, must be to ensure accountability for gross violations of human rights and international crimes,” he continued, arguing that “impunity can only lead to further conflicts and abuses, as revenge festers and the wrong lessons are learned.”

Al Hussein, who comes from the Jordanian royal family, wants the Council to address the underlying factors of crises, particularly the “corrupt and discriminatory political systems that disenfranchised large parts of the population and leaders who oppressed or violently attacked independent actors of civil society”.

Among others, he stressed the need to end “persistent discrimination and impunity” underlying the Israel-Palestine conflict – in which 2131 Palestinians were killed during the latest crisis in Gaza, including 1,473 civilians, 501 of them children, and 71 Israelis.

The current session of the Human Rights Council is also scheduled to discuss issues such as basic economic and livelihood rights, which are going to be addressed through the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the worsening plight of migrants around the world, and the detention of asylum seekers and migrants, including children in the United States.

“Clearly, a number of human rights violations and the worsening plight of indigenous people are major issues that need to be tackled on a sustained basis,” said Fujii. “But it is important to raise the awareness of human rights education among media professionals and journalists who are invariably caught in the crossfire of conflicts.”

During open discussion at the media professionals and journalists workshop, several reporters not only shared their personal experiences but also sought clarity on how reporters can safeguard human rights in conflicts where they are embedded with occupying forces in Iraq or other countries.

“This is a major issue that needs to be addressed because it is difficult for journalists to respect human rights when they are embedded with forces,” Oliver Rizzi Carlson, a representative of the United Network of Young Peacebuilders, told IPS.

Commenting on the work that remains to be done in spreading global citizenship education, Fujii noted that tangible progress has been made by bringing several human rights pressure groups together in intensifying the campaign for human rights education.

“Solidarity within civil society and increasing recognition for our work from member states is bringing about tangible results,” said Fujii. “The formation of an NGO coalition – HR 2020 – comprising 14 NGOs such as Amnesty International and SGI last year is a significant development in the intensification of our campaign.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

With the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda currently under discussion, civil society actors in Europe are calling for a firmer stance on human rights and gender equality, including control of assets by women.

“The SDGs are a unique opportunity for us. The eradication of extreme poverty is within our grasp. But we still face very major challenges. Business as usual is not an option,” Seamus Jeffreson, Director of Concord, the European platform for non-governmental development organisations, told at a meeting in Brussels with the European Parliament Committee on Development on September 3.

An Open Working Group has been set up by the United Nations to come up with a set of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to replace the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by the target date of 2015.“We need to address women's control over assets. The majority of farmers in the world are women but they do not own the land. There is legislation that prevents women from inheriting property" – Seamus Jeffreson, Director, Concord

Development organisations in Europe say a rights-based approach need to be strengthened in the proposed new SDGs or there is a risk these could be traded off in negotiations with major powers that are less committed to human rights.

“We do not see the spirit of a human rights-based approach infusing the other goals. It should underpin the SDGs. The connection is not made that people have rights to resources. We cannot have a development agenda without people’s rights being respected,” Jeffreson said.

Jeffreson’s complaint was echoed by Thomas Mayr-Harting, European Union Ambassador to the United Nations. “From our point of view, a rights-based approach and governance and rule of law need to be better represented in the SDGs.”

While Concord welcomes a specific goal on gender equality within the SDGs, “more details are needed for this to be a goal and not just a slogan,” Jeffreson told IPS. “We need to address women’s control over assets. The majority of farmers in the world are women but they do not own the land. There is legislation that prevents women from inheriting property.”

The European Union will produce a common position before inter-governmental negotiations start. Further input will come from a High-level Panel set up in July 2012 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to advise on the global development framework beyond 2015.

“We now look to Ban Ki-moon to play a core role in bringing this process together,” said Mayr-Harting, adding that Sam Kutesa, Ugandan foreign minister, who will chair the UN General Assembly from mid-September, will play also an important role.

Ajay Kumar Bramdeo, ambassador of the African Union to the European Union, who also attended the meeting in Brussels, said that more than 90 percent of the priorities in the common African position have been included in the proposed new set of development goals, including its position on climate change.

“The negative impact of climate change is already being felt in countries in Africa. The European Union has been an important historical, political, economic and social partner for Africa and would also feel the impact of climate change on Africa,” he added.

Kumar Bramdeo emphasised the need to mobilise financing from the developed countries through the Green Climate Fund of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), transfer new clean technologies, and enhance disaster risk management and climate adaptation initiatives.

Ole Lund Hansen, representing the UN Global Compact at the meeting, stressed that the SDGs would not be achieved without the active participation of the world’s business sector. “Some figures say we need 2.5 billion dollars per year in additional investments to achieve the SDGs. We clearly need to tap into the vast resources of the private sector.”

The proposed new SDGs, which will make amends for the shortcomings of the MDGs, will be an integral part of the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda which, among others, seeks to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger from the face of the earth by 2030.

There are currently 17 new goals on the drafting board, including proposals to end poverty, eliminate hunger, attain healthy lives, provide quality education, attain gender equality and reduce inequalities.

The list also includes the sustainable use of water and sanitation, energy for all, productive employment, industrialisation, protection of terrestrial ecosystems and strengthening the global partnership for sustainable development.

The final set of goals is to be approved by world leaders in September 2015.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Pakistani NGOs fear that a new law will restrict civil society freedom. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS.

By Irfan Ahmed
LAHORE, Pakistan, Dec 31 2013 (IPS)

A new policy by the Pakistani government to regulate foreign-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has come in for sharp criticism from the social sector, with many saying it could stifle rights-based groups and affect crucial services provided to the needy.

The government says it wants to ensure transparency in the working of NGOs that receive foreign contributions, but few are willing to buy that line.

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Awami Workers Party (AWP), minces no words. He alleges that whenever the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) comes to power, it tries to control social organisations through coercive measures.“Civil society on the whole supports transparency, but it cannot compromise on its freedom and autonomy.”

The PML-N sees rights-based social organisations as irritants and does not tolerate independent criticism, Tariq says, pointing out that in the past one of its ministers had called NGOs foreign agents.

He condemned the government for trying to establish its hegemony over politics as well as the social sector. “They are trying to imitate the way Sri Lanka’s Mahinda Rajapaksa government controls NGOs,” he alleges.

The new policy will be applicable to national NGOs that receive foreign contributions as well as international NGOs. It calls among other things for prior agreements between the government and these NGOs, disclosure of sources of funding, details of proposed projects, areas of work, and details of the geographic location of the projects.

The policy was approved by the economic coordination committee of the federal cabinet last month and will remain in force till the bill, the Regulation of Foreign Contributions Act 2013, becomes law.

Some see it as a move to check spying activities carried out by foreign agencies in the name of social work, especially in the wake of the Shakil Afridi episode.

A doctor by profession, Afridi was allegedly used by the U.S. intelligence agency CIA to run a fake polio vaccination campaign in Abbottabad in 2011 to track down Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. U.S. forces killed bin Laden the same year.

The allegation that an employee of the global charity, Save the Children, facilitated Afridi’s meeting with the CIA raised suspicion about NGO activities in Pakistan.

PML-N Senator Tariq Azeem, who worked on the draft bill, says there is no ulterior motive behind the regulation of NGOs.

International donors have raised similar concerns, he says. Azeem says USAID has for example asked people to inform it about any corruption complaints regarding its projects.

Imtiaz Alam, secretary general of the NGO South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), believes the new regulations would significantly increase bureaucratic hurdles for NGOs.

He thinks there should be no need for NGOs to share too many details if they get their accounts audited by firms of international repute. “Civil society on the whole supports transparency, but it cannot compromise on its freedom and autonomy.”

According to a 2001 United Nations Development Programme publication (the last year for which figures were available), the number of registered NGOs in Pakistan was around 16,000. If unregistered NGOs were to be included, the figure could be around 35,000. Most of them are involved in areas like health, education and poverty reduction.

NGOs play a crucial role in Pakistan, where the unemployment rate is 11.2 percent, 60 percent of the population is poor, the maternal mortality rate is 276 per 100,000 live births and more than 350,000 children die before their fifth birthday. Pakistan ranks 180th out of 221 countries in its literacy rate.

NGOs fear that the new policy will affect their supply of funds in the new year.

The draft bill proposes a maximum limit of 20 percent on the use of foreign funds for administrative purposes, confiscation of funds in case of non-compliance, and a five-year ban on receiving foreign contributions for those convicted twice.

Salman Abid, Punjab head of the human rights organisation Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), fears that the bill once passed can be used to intimidate NGOs.

The proposed law prohibits NGOs from executing projects that harm the sovereignty, integrity and security as well as strategic, scientific and economic interests of the state, he points out. “The question here is who will decide what is against national interest and what is not.”

He thinks the bill should have been introduced after a consultative process that includes all stakeholders, especially NGOs. “Unfortunately they were not consulted.”

Salman Abid believes the state’s concern about spying activities carried out in the garb of development work may be genuine, but says it is not right to rein in the entire social sector under this pretext.

The government should use its security apparatus to identify unwanted personnel instead of making things tough for NGOs, he says.

Many also believe that by asking NGOs to declare the geographic location of their operation, the state wants to keep them out of sensitive areas. Others say there may be a more reasonable explanation for this stipulation.

Abid Suleri, executive director of the think tank Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), says it could help NGOs avoid duplication of effort.

Quite often different NGOs carry out similar work for the same set of people. The government will be able to guide them where they are most needed, he says.

Abid Suleri thinks the government, which is reeling under a funds crunch, may gain from these measures as many international donors may now want to partner with the state directly to avoid cumbersome procedures.

He hopes the government will also look into the accounts of religious organisations and their militant wings that allegedly receive foreign aid.

But he too feels that such a law could be used to curb a vibrant and dynamic civil society.

NGOs, he says, have fought for restoration of democracy and the judiciary, recovery of missing people, and an end to human rights violations by the state machinery, among other things. “What will happen if the government declares all these activities anti-state?”

President Barack Obama’s administration and several major rights groups are reacting with frustration to the decision of an Egyptian court, announced Tuesday night, to convict 43 civil society organisations and 16 U.S. employees of illegal use of foreign funds.

Reactions by both the administration and members of the U.S. Congress are implying that the U.S. government may withhold an annual allotment of some 1.3 billion dollars in military aid to Egypt unless the U.S. accused are pardoned.“We were in the process of seeking registration at the time of the original raid – we were trying to comply with Egyptian law." -- Charles Dunne of Freedom House

“This decision runs contrary to the universal principle of freedom of association and is incompatible with the transition to democracy,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday. “I urge the government of Egypt to work with civic groups as they respond to the Egyptian people’s aspirations for democracy as guaranteed in Egypt’s new constitution.”

The decision was followed by an order to close the Egyptian offices of five U.S.-based NGOs, including Freedom House, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and the International Center for Journalists. Some from these groups are criticising the U.S. response for being too weak.

Kerry’s statement “could have certainly been stronger,” Charles Dunne, the director of Middle East and North African programmes at Freedom House, told IPS. “It called on the Egyptian government to work with civil society organisations in the midst of a campaign to destroy civil society, which is not the right tone to be striking.”

Tuesday’s verdicts originated from the December 2011 crackdown on NGOs as issued by Egypt’s transitional military government. According to some analysts, holdovers from longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime held civil society groups responsible for helping to start the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak.

During the crackdown, NGO offices were raided and criminal charges were brought against personnel.

More recently, President Mohamed Morsi has proposed a new law for regulating NGOs that would require the registration of foreign-funded groups with a committee that includes a government-appointed majority. Dunne condemned the law, calling it the “the most oppressive out there right now”.

Others have expressed similar concerns.

“If this bill passes, all of Egypt’s NGOs would essentially work under the government,” Hafez Abu Seada, chairman of the non-profit Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, told IPS. “We would operate not as independents but as agents for the state.”

The proposed law received criticism from Egyptian NGOs, who say it would be stronger than Mubarak’s requirements, as well as from international groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Both groups say the law contradicts the terms of international treaties Egypt has ratified.

Quasi-government endowment

All but one of the U.S. defendants in the court case decided Tuesday, Robert Becker, a former employee of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), left Egypt before the trial was held, after posting bail. According to media reports, Becker was fired by the NDI after his decision to stay in Egypt.

“Personally, I will once again ignore my lawyer’s advice and will be in Egypt,” Becker wrote on his blog. “I was told it would be best for me to go home, so that is exactly where I will be … home, in Cairo.”

Eleven hours after the verdict was announced, Becker again wrote via Twitter that he had “unwillingly and angrily gone into exile until appeals get sorted out.”

If one looks at the history of several of the groups indicted under the new court decision, it is perhaps unsurprising that today’s Egyptian government would be sceptical of these groups’ goals. Four are connected with a quasi-government programme called the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

During the Cold War, U.S intelligence agents set up several fake foundations through which they gave money to anti-communist or at least non-communist groups. During the 1980s, the government set up the National Endowment for Democracy to take the place of these various groups.

Over the years, several countries, including, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica and Czechoslovakia, have complained about interference in national elections by the National Endowment for Democracy. In 2012, Congress gave the group around 118 million dollars.

The International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) make up the endowment’s core constituents, while Freedom House and the International Center for Journalists received funding from the endowment.

According to CQ Roll Call, a Washington newspaper, the IRI has been accused of attempting to choose winners and losers in elections in Haiti and several countries in South America, though the organisation has denied this.

Though several of these NGOs have denied any wrongdoing, defendants received anywhere from one and five years in prison. Egyptian lawyer Khaled Abo Bakr, not involved in this case, said those defendants who did not receive suspended sentences would have to go to prison before they could appeal, and defendants returning to Egypt would be arrested upon arrival.

According to Freedom House’s Dunne, the court decision was political, and not the result of a legitimate judicial proceeding.

“We were in the process of seeking registration at the time of the original raid – we were trying to comply with Egyptian law,” he said. “This has to be resolved politically, and that’s going to require involvement at the highest level of U.S. government.”

Critics of a proposed law say it could harm women's rights and other groups' ability to operate (file photo). Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, May 27 2013 (IPS)

A controversial bill backed by Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood and submitted to the Islamist-dominated legislature surpasses previous laws used to repress Egyptian civil society, rights watchdogs say.

The legislation would allow the government to intervene in the internal governance and activities of civil society organisations and to control all funding.

If enacted, some critics say, Egypt’s 41,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) would become part of the state apparatus.

“If this bill passes, all of Egypt’s NGOs would essentially work under the government,” Hafez Abu Seada, chairman of the non-profit Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), told IPS. “We would operate not as independents, but as agents for the state.”

State interference in NGO affairs is nothing new, Abu Seada added. The authoritarian regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak used broad and repressive legislation to discourage civil society organisations from exposing electoral fraud, rights abuses and torture."If this bill passes, all of Egypt's NGOs would essentially work under the government."
-- Hafez Abu Seada,

In 2002, the government issued Law 84, which has been the target of continual criticism for the control it gives the state over NGO establishment and activity.

The National Salvation Front (NSF), Egypt’s main opposition bloc, has accused the Islamist government of President Mohamed Morsi of attempting to impose even tighter restrictions on civil society in a bid to silence those who would hold it accountable.

The bill “seeks to reproduce a police state by putting into law the role of security bodies in overseeing the work of civil society groups”, the NSF said in a statement. “[Its] main goal is to stop human rights organisations from pursuing officials for human rights abuses under President Morsi and his security apparatuses.”

Mokhtar El-Ashry, head of the legal committee of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, has accused opposition forces of failing to read or understand the NGO draft law. He said the bill aims to facilitate the work of civil society groups and “frees them of restrictions”.

El-Ashry’s argument is a tough sell. Critics say the draft treats NGOs as state institutions and their directors and staff as civil servants. The bill mandates that the Egyptian government intervene in nearly every detail of NGO affairs, from the composition and election of board members to their competencies and the organisation’s choice of affiliation, funding and activities.

“This is completely contrary to what an NGO is supposed to be,” one programme manager of a non-profit organisation that works in the education sector told IPS on condition of anonymity. “If it passes, we might as well ask Mr. Morsi how he would like us to implement his policies.”

More alarming, say rights groups, is that the law stipulates bimonthly administrative and financial inspections of civil society organisations and opens visitor logs and details of private meetings to the scrutiny of security agencies. The groups see this as an imminent threat to the confidentiality of political dissidents, victims of abuse, and whistleblowers.

One bright spot, Abu Seada conceded, is that the bill provides a process for registering NGOs.

Under Mubarak, NGOs faced significant hurdles in registering their organisations, and many operated in Egypt without licenses – a situation the government tolerated, as the threat of closure kept them wary of crossing red lines.

The draft law would establish a nine-member steering committee to approve the registration of civil society groups. The interagency panel is authorised to reject the registration of any NGO it deems inconsistent with the “needs” of Egyptian society – a vague term that critics say could be used, for example, to exclude groups that investigate torture or advocate women’s rights.

The steering committee will have absolute power to approve or reject any foreign or domestic funding for local NGOs.

Closing the spigot of foreign funding is one technique successive governments have used to pressure NGOs that stray into sensitive areas, explained the director of a Cairo-based development organisation, who did not want his name used.

“Charities have local sources of funding, but NGOs that engage in democracy building or human rights must rely almost entirely on foreign funding and without it must scale back their activities or shut down,” the director said.

Nearly all foreign funding has been shut off since 2011, when government officials under the military junta launched a crackdown on civil society organisations.

“Every funding request in the last year and a half has been refused,” says EOHR’s Abu Seada. “We’ve had to reduce our staff from 30 to 12 and close many of our projects. Most of the other NGOs in Egypt are facing similar problems.”

Negad El-Borai, an attorney for democracy and human rights activists, said the draft law’s articles are a minefield of obstacles and pretexts to deny funding.

NGOs that attempt to engage in activities that diverge from state policies or expose government abuses would quickly find themselves bogged down in bureaucracy and court cases, he added.

“They can deny funding or [close] NGOs for any number of reasons,” El-Borai told IPS. “And if it goes to court…we must stop all activities until we get a verdict, and that will take at least one or two years.”

The final draft of the Brotherhood-backed law has been submitted to the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament that currently holds legislative powers. Local and international rights groups fear the Islamist-stacked legislative body will rubber-stamp it into law.

“That would be a disaster [for civil society],” said El-Borai. “We managed to lobby hard for changes, but it is still far short of international standards.”

As European Commission leaders make calls for EU countries to raise their spending on development aid for the world’s poor, groups working in underdeveloped states have warned that without more effective aid policies and networks, extra financing may be wasted.

Speaking as the European Report on Development (ERD) – an independent report prepared by NGOs and commissioned by EU member states – was launched Tuesday, European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs told journalists: “I was shocked and disappointed when it became apparent that there had been a trend of developing nations reducing their aid spending in recent years.

“This trend must be reversed, we must do more and raise our development aid financing.”

But assembled speakers at the launch event in Brussels were quick to point out that rich nations must look very carefully at the wider development agenda if they are to get “value for money” from their aid contributions.

Dr Debapriya Battacharya, Chair of Southern Voice on Post-MDG International Development Goals – a network of more than 40 think tanks from South Asia, Africa and Latin America, told IPS: “Just giving money to poorer countries and telling them to meet some arbitrary targets is a ‘lose-lose’ situation for all involved.

“The donor states’ taxpayers do not get value for money if nothing is changed and it is no good for the developing countries if they get money but can’t use it to their own requirements.”

The report, among other things, outlines a role for the EU in a future global development aid framework post 2015 when a replacement for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals is hoped to be introduced.

A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed spending of official development assistance in its member states had fallen by 4 percent last year in real terms, following a 2 percent drop in 2011.

In some individual EU states the falls have been dramatic. In Spain, overseas aid funding is at its lowest level in 22 years.

There has been widespread criticism of the fall, and European Commission (EC) officials speaking at the launch of the ERD made constant references to the need to reverse the trend.

NGOs which have been critical of governments cutting back on development aid to meet domestic austerity targets agreed that rich countries needed to up their aid spending.

But they said that simply increasing aid financing would not be enough.

Gerard Vives, European coordinator for the European NGO CONCORD’s ‘Beyond2015’ campaign, told IPS: “The European Union must champion a global framework that places people at its centre. This means focusing on human rights and accountability. The framework must be accompanied by robust accountability mechanisms at all appropriate levels so that people can hold their governments to account for commitments made.

“Emerging consensus on a framework that tackles poverty and sustainability together is important as these issues are inextricably linked.”

But leaders and NGOs from some of the world’s least developed countries say that rich countries’ approach to development aid, while ostensibly well-intentioned, can often be flawed.

They complain that there is a lack of understanding about the development needs of individual countries and that setting arbitrary targets or goals internationally is not always useful at a local level.

Battacharya told IPS: “Any global development aid framework must be aligned to national needs, although how that is to be done is a great challenge and something for which there is no easy answer.”

And there is a feeling among some groups that richer countries, including those in the EU, do not listen carefully enough to the voices of those in poorer nations about aid.

Battacharya told IPS: “This whole post-2015 debate is about a balance of power and there is a definite asymmetry of power in favour of the North, notably in terms of knowledge. There is an elaborate process of consultation going on but it does not necessarily produce critical knowledge.

“We need to make sure that voices are brought in from the South where we know from experience what has worked and what has not from the MDGs.”

However, the ERD does address some of these issues directly, making clear that any aid will be misspent unless it is used to help create ‘sustainable and inclusive’ development, including, among others, creating long-term job opportunities, addressing climate change and global financial transparency, inequality, lack of social inclusion and justice.

But some experts are unconvinced that this is the right approach to take and that it could in fact make it harder to raise development around the globe.

Jan Vandemoortele, a co-architect of the MDGs and now an independent author and lecturer, told IPS: “There is a misconception that the MDGs mismatched with national targets. But if you go to individual countries, you see that they have adapted the MDGs to their own targets, sometimes higher than the global targets, and sometimes lower, depending on their individual income.

“Not every country has to hit MDG targets for the world to fulfil the global target. If we all do our bit the global target is met.”

He added: “Now, everyone around the table wants their issue included in the new replacement for the MDGs. That cannot work. Someone has to make a decision to leave something out. You have to ask is the new framework about a means to a development end or about the ultimate end itself? I think it has to be about the ultimate end itself and issues like trade and finance are a means, not an end, and they should be left out.

“I am not confident that a new global framework will be found. It has become very politicised with so many governments using it to push national or regional agendas.”

Hard times have hit Zimbabweans and forced disadvantaged children to earn a living as vendors in downtown Harare. This 16-year-old boy sells sweets and popcorn to earn a living. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE , Apr 5 2013 (IPS)

Susan Sithole* is 14 and should be in grade nine or Form Two, according to Zimbabwe’s education system, learning her lessons in Mathematics, English and other subjects.

But instead, you can find her at the corner of Leopold Takawira Avenue and Robert Mugabe Street in downtown Harare, selling cigarettes, sweets and cellphone recharge cards, learning the harsh lessons of commerce and survival.

Sithole, who lives in Harare’s Machipisa low-income suburb, told IPS that the 25 dollars she earns weekly is not enough to pay for her upkeep and still have enough left over to send back to her poor parents in Chipinge, a district over 500 kilometres east of Harare.

“My parents posted me to relatives here to find something to do after they failed to raise school fees for me,” Sithole told IPS. So instead of continuing in school to grade nine, she was forced to drop out in the middle of grade four and come to Zimbabwe’s capital city.

Even if she could afford to return to school, she said that at her age she feels shy to return to her studies in a class of children who will be at least five years younger than her.

According to statistics released in January by the Coalition Against Corruption, Sithole is only one of about 63,000 children under the age of 15 nationwide who are forced to work at vendors, mostly in Zimbabwe’s border towns. This was a marked increase from the 42,000 child vendors reported in 2010 in this country of nearly 13 million people.

Some say that the Zimbabwean government’s ban of non-governmental organisations last February may have increased the number of child vendors in this southern African nation as many of these organisations once paid the school fees of disadvantaged children here, especially those in rural areas.

“The government banned local NGOs here that used to pay school fees for disadvantaged children, as they suspected that the organisations harboured political motives. It left many children with no option except to turn to vending,” an official at the government’s Manicaland Provincial Social Welfare Offices in Mutare, the country’s third-largest city, told IPS.

President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front banned 29 organisations in April 2012, claiming that they had been working towards regime change.

Officials from the National Association of Non-governmental Organisations (NANGO), who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told IPS that since the NGO ban, disadvantaged school children have been unable to pay their school fees of between 30 to 35 dollars per term for primary school.

Over 850,000 underprivileged school children had been supported by NGOs prior to their banning last year, NANGO officials told IPS.

And 30 dollars is considered a huge sum in a country where, according to figures from a 2010 United Nations Children Fund report titled “Child-Sensitive Social Protection in Zimbabwe”, almost half of the population lives below the country’s poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day. In addition, the unemployment rate was 94 percent in 2009, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. A great majority now work in the informal sector.

“The situation is really pathetic for the children we used to support,” an official from Action Aid International Zimbabwe told IPS on the condition of anonymity. “Right now, as I speak to you, our organisation has received reports that over 10,000 pupils have since dropped out of school after failing to pay their school fess. It is a situation bound to plunge poor pupils further into destitution.”

Social worker Givemore Zinyoro told IPS that children selling goods and wares by the side of the road amounted to child labour and accused the government of being lax in addressing rising cases in the country.

“When children venture into vending, that certainly amounts to child labour, which by international statutes is unlawful,” Zinyoro stressed.

Philip Bohwasi, chairperson of the Council of Social Workers in Zimbabwe, said the increase in the number of children selling goods to earn a living pointed to a deepening economic and social crisis.

“It is a reflection of the current state of society, where our country continues to fall deeper into economic and social crisis. More than 84 percent of the population is jobless – it is not only about child vendors.

“Most families are finding it hard to put food on the table and everybody, including underage children, wakes up every morning to eke out a living doing something,” Bohwasi told IPS.

Zimbabwe is still recovering from an economic crisis. Between 2003 and 2009, the country had one of the worst rates of hyperinflation in the world – its year on year inflation was reported as 231 percent. Prices of goods doubled here everyday and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was forced to issue a 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note.

A top government official with the Ministry of Labour and Social Services, who asked for anonymity, told IPS that the government was not able to combat the crisis facing poor children in this country.

Economist John Robertson, from Robertson Economic Information Services, pointed out that Zimbabwe’s economic crisis had weakened the government’s capacity to combat child labour.

“Without money to finance vital programmes in labour sectors, the government is living from hand-to-mouth amid donor fatigue. There is a need to revive the economy before addressing issues of child labour,” Robertson told IPS.

*Name changed to protect identity of minor.

The atomic bomb detonated by the United States in August 1945 above Hiroshima killed 145,000. Several hundreds of thousands of other inhabitants of the city have suffered severe injuries and chronic disease in the past six decades. Credit: ICAN.

By Jacques N. Couvas
ISTANBUL, Feb 1 2013 (IPS)

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has adopted a new strategy to involve citizens and politicians more actively to push for a global ban on nuclear weapons.

The strategy was emphasised at an ICAN conference in Istanbul last week.

The new strategy by ICAN, a coalition of 286 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 68 countries which jointly campaign against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and aim to ultimately have them banned, aims to do more to sensitise both public opinion and state authorities to the consequences of a nuclear detonation.

ICAN intends to go beyond rhetoric and propose, with the involvement of states sensitive to the issue, concrete measures to cope with a nuclear disaster event. It will be hosting an international civil society forum in Oslo on March 2-3 this year, which will be followed by an experts conference on military nuclear threats organised by the government of Norway with the support of 16 other nations.

“We are constantly told by nuclear weapons states officials that putting into effect the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is not possible, not conceivable in practical terms,” Arielle Denis, ICAN Europe, Middle East and Africa coordinator told IPS. “Our position is that there is record of international treaties which have led to the prohibition of other lethal weapons. If the international community succeeded in banning land mines and cluster bombs, it can certainly ban the ownership of nuclear arms.”

The coalition of NGOs argues that any country, even a nuclear weapons state, could be the target of a nuclear attack in the new geopolitical environment, which it says encourages the proliferation of rogue states and terrorist organisations. “Although no nuclear weapons have been used since 1945, cyber-terrorism makes today the explosion of an atomic warhead realistic,” said Denis.

Core to this strategy is the humanitarian aspect of a nuclear detonation, even of a single device. ICAN published a report in 2012 which identifies immediate and long-term damage to local populations. Blast shockwaves travelling at hundreds of kilometres an hour, are lethal to all those in the proximity of ground zero of the detonation, who often just vaporise due to the intense pressure and heat. Further away, victims suffer from oxygen shortage and carbon monoxide excess, lung and ear damage, and internal bleeding.

But the consequences due to radiation are felt even at greater distances. This affects most organs of the body with effects lasting decades and with genetic alterations suffered by the victims and their descendants.

Such claims are corroborated by studies by the U.S. government and by research institutions between the 1970s and last decade. In a scenario of a nuclear attack involving three medium power warheads against an intercontinental ballistic missiles base in the “farm belt” of the U.S., which covers primarily the northern mid-west, it was calculated that the number of dead could reach 7.5 to 15 million, with 10 to 20 million being severely injured.

The humanitarian aspect of the surviving population would be practically impossible to manage, as the presence of radioactivity would force 40 million people to relocate as far away as possible. Relocation would take from several weeks to years, it was estimated.

The “farm belt” in the U.S. is a rural area. Europe is three times more densely populated than the U.S., and a nuclear detonation would have a more catastrophic humanitarian impact on European locations.

ICAN, formed in 2007, operates through an international steering group of personalities and experts on nuclear armaments and a small staff in Geneva, which coordinates international campaigns and events. Member NGOs provide support to regional activities.

ICAN’s main argument for its activism is based on the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), signed on July 1, 1968 in New York and gradually ratified by 189 states, excluding India, Pakistan and Israel. Its validity was extended indefinitely in May 1995.

Signatories to the NPT are distinguished between the nuclear weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states. The former group is composed of Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States (U.S.), the same nations which form the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Article VI of the NPT requires signatory states to pursue “negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” and towards a “treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

“Disarmament must be general and complete,” said Denis. “There was in the 1990s some ambiguity about the Treaty text in this respect, but this has been clarified in international law and all nuclear weapon states must begin negotiations for dismantling all their nuclear weapons.”

The U.S. has traditionally interpreted Article VI as having no mandatory effect on the parties. But the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in an advisory opinion, dated Jul. 8, 1996 stated that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

The lack of visible willingness by nuclear weapon states to get around the negotiations table has fuelled the determination of the NGOs which form ICAN to systematically make citizens and politicians around the globe aware of the threats of maintaining an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Although the number of nuclear warheads was drastically reduced after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s from 60,000 to 19,000, ICAN is concerned about the continuing technology updates of such weapons by the nuclear weapon states.

Nuclear weapon spending in the U.S. reached 61.3 billion dollars in 2011, a ten percent increase over the previous year. The nine countries that are known, or suspected, to have nuclear military power increased in the same period their spending by 15 percent to 105 billion dollars. Israel has since 1958 adopted a non-confirmation, non-denial policy in respect to having a nuclear arsenal.

“This level of expenditure is a strong indication that nations which hold nuclear weapons have no intention to get rid of them any time soon,” said Denis. “The governments of such states say that they will dismantle their stocks as soon as the other nuclear weapon states do the same. It is a vicious, endless circle.”

The Haitian government and international agencies are ramping up their efforts to relocate the people still living in camps across Haiti after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake. A worker clears rubble at a construction site in Port-au-Prince on Sep. 7, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Logan Abassi

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and representatives from more than 50 non-governmental organisations, including actor-activist Sean Penn, met in New York on Monday to present a new roadmap for humanitarian aid in the country.

“It is gonna help the NGOs, the serious NGOs, and it is gonna weed out the bad apples,” Lamothe told IPS after the meeting.

“We have a new coordination unit for NGOs that will have guidelines and standards to abide by. So there is a continous effort and push to monitor what the NGOs are doing,” he said.

The event, organised by the U.N. Development Programme, took place during the 67th session of the U.N. General Assembly. The roadmap presented at the meeting is intended to help the Haitian government to supervise the 560 NGOs registered as working in the Caribbean state.

In brief, the roadmap outlines the government’s next steps in coordinating humanitarian, development and charity-based organisations in the country. Two important steps will be the establishment of a national NGO Forum, and the establishment of a consultation process on a new NGO legislation.

The roadmap points out that the responsibility of all prioritisation of efforts shall rest in the hands of national authorities, in order to avoid fragmentation of efforts.

Poverty-stricken Haiti already received international humanitarian aid before the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Jan. 12, 2010. But after the disaster, which left approximately 300,000 dead and 1.5 million people homeless, Haiti has received so much funding aid through foreign NGOs that the country has been nicknamed “a republic of NGOs”.

The aid has not always been helpful. John Chaloner, representing CCO Haiti, a consortium of international NGOs operating in the country, lamented that cooperation problems between NGOs were “common and all too frequent” after the earthquake.

About two-thirds of Haiti’s budget currently comes from foreign assistance.

Rebecca Grynspan, U.N. under-secretary general and associate administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that the international community has to focus more on “backing national institutions” in Haiti. Grynspan called for a “transitioning from humanitarian aid”.

But Grynspan also stressed that NGOs have offered, and are still offering, vital help to Haitians, including health services, shelter, education and food aid.

These groups will continue to play a crucial role as more than two-thirds of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, and the state offers little social security.

Prime Minister Lamothe agreed with her, emphasising that according to the new roadmap, the government will have greater authority to oversee aid projects in Haiti. “It is all a question of organisation,” Lamothe said. “There was a lack of leadership before.”

Lamothe acknowledged that this will not be an easy task for the government, in office since last year. The unemployment rate in Haiti is currently over 70 percent, and over 80 percent of the economy remains informal. “We are not getting enough tax revenue,” Lamothe said, lamenting how the financial difficulties limit the government’s ambitions.

In the long run, Haiti needs to boost its own agricultural production and industry, according to Lamothe. “We do not want to continue to be known as an NGO nation,” he said. “Haiti needs to start producing and stop importing.”

Film star Sean Penn, founder of J/P HRO, an NGO operating in Haiti, said that “NGOs’ primary job is to put themselves out of business.” This is yet not possible in Haiti, he conceded, adding that, “Instead, we must create sustainability.”

Out of the 1.5 million Haitians left homeless by the earthquake, 1.1 million have been relocated. But the remaining 400,000 are still living in tents. Penn expressed special concerns about security in the camps, after numerous incidents of assault and rape.

Penn also said that “serious security issues” throughout the country are discouraging international companies from investing there and slowing down economic progress.

Still, Penn believes the outlook is positive. “Haiti is on the verge of letting us all see the fruit of our work there,” he concluded.

Five months behind schedule, the board of the newest and largest international financing mechanism aimed at dealing with the effects of climate change, the Green Climate Fund, is finally slated to meet this week, just ahead of a late-summer deadline.

On Monday, however, insiders admitted that funding plans for the ambitious initiative – 100 billion dollars a year after 2020, in addition to dealing with a massive shortfall until then – remain unclear.

“We are expecting no serious discussion about the 100 billion dollars at this meeting,” Omar El-Arini, an Egyptian member of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board, told journalists Monday, speaking from Geneva.

“We have had very little time to discuss the architecture of funding.”

Given that the board’s responsibility lies in figuring out how to disburse, not raise, the eventual cash, El-Arini said that the upcoming meet, scheduled for August 23-25 in Geneva, would most likely focus on procedural issues. These would include rules for board meetings, the budget for a secretariat and a host country in which to house it.

When the GCF was proposed, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2009, its aim was to steer money towards the world’s poorest countries to deal with the effects and causes of climate change. At the time, developing countries were asking for 400 billion dollars per year, but eventually settled on a quarter of that.

Still, such a pot of money would dwarf current such efforts. A 2010 report by the United Nations suggested that raising the money would be difficult but doable.

Meanwhile, in the current environment of fiscal austerity, particularly in the United States and the European Union, coupled with a general international erosion in political support for climate-related projects, the question of where the GCF will get enough money to make its mandate realistic remains a pressing one.

Washington has already expressed dissatisfaction over the idea of financing so-called “middle income” countries, such as India and Brazil.

Representation and equity

One issue expected to be decided upon this week – that of the GCF’s host country – could serve as motivation for figuring out the longer-term financing options. Six countries are currently in contention – Germany, Mexico, Namibia, Poland, South Korea and Switzerland – and analysts suggest that the winner would be expected to make the first substantial contribution.

With the GCF made up of just 24 full members (as well as 24 alternates) from across the globe, overarching conversations about representation and equity have reportedly been to blame for the three delays since the board’s scheduled first meeting.

“It is quite unfortunate that we ended up with equal representation for developed and developing countries, meaning that there is place for just 12 developing countries,” Meena Raman, of the Third World Network, an umbrella of international NGOs, said Monday from Geneva, noting that the decision over the host country will be one of the most important facets of this week’s talks.

“If you talk about equitable representation, there should have been more seats for developing countries.”

Indeed, increasing recrimination between developing and developed countries have been considered central to the failure of the UNFCCC process to yield substantive agreement in recent years, a pattern that many involved are eager to avoid early on in the creation of the GCF.

The GCF is now said to be under massive pressure to sort out its ideological issues and financing framework before November, when the next international climate summit is set to begin in Qatar.

Public and private roles

Meanwhile, environmentalists and rights activists are warning that developed countries appear to be steering the GCF towards an overreliance on the private sector while marginalising the input of international civil society.

In this context, the procedural discussions this week in Geneva could do much to shape how the fund ultimately functions. Already, for instance, there are discrepancies over the extent to which input from civil society will play a part in the initial rules creation.

“It’s troubling that we might have to fight for civil society observers to be allowed in the room,” Karen Orenstein, an international policy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, an environment watchdog based here in Washington, said on Monday. “This meeting should be open, broadcast on the Internet, and those broadcasts should be archived.”

The framework that may emerge from this week’s discussions could also have a direct impact on the eventual funding decision by some of the largest donors. According to Orenstein, “The U.S. and the U.K. say they won’t commit substantial funding until they ‘see what the fund looks like’.”

At this point, it is unclear exactly what these countries would like to see in the fund’s final outlines.

“There is no clear idea what’s on their mind, what kind of fund they foresee,” El-Arini says.

Yet, Orenstein notes, “in private conversations, representatives of these countries have placed emphasis on a fund that leverages private finance as much as possible.”

No rubber stamps

A report released Monday, of which Orenstein is a lead author, urges the GCF board to follow through on a UNFCCC request that the fund develop procedures that would require close alignment with a host country’s needs before a project can go forward, particularly carving out a substantial space for civil society.

While similar mechanisms do exist in three exiting related multinational initiatives – the Clean Development Mechanism, the Global Environment Facility and the International Finance Corporation, the latter being the World Bank Group’s private-sector arm – the report suggests that these have often become toothless safeguards reduced to little more than rubber stamps.

It also warns that the role of the private sector in the GCF has shaped up as a new fight between the developed and developing worlds.

“Throughout the development of the Green Climate Fund…developed countries…have insisted that the private sector be given direct access to finances from the GCF…[meaning that] firms would not have to clear their activities with national climate agencies,” the report states.

“Many developing countries, in contrast, have objected to direct access…because it could place the private sector in a position of creating de facto climate policies and programs, thus usurping the rightful role of government.”

Despite pushes from international bodies such as the United Nations (UN) or the European Union (EU) to promote gender equality in Central and Eastern Europe, access to funding for such initiatives remains largely conditional upon national governments’ willingness to embrace this agenda.

Immediately after the fall of communism in 1989, Central and Eastern European (CEE) NGOs working on gender equality got most of their funding from U.S. or Western European private foundations or governmental agencies; following these countries’ entry to the EU, non-EU donors withdrew considering the region well covered by EU funds.

CEE NGOs, however, noted that following EU accession, it has become ironically more difficult to access funding, primarily because EU funds must generally be co-financed from national budgets and also get distributed according to priorities set at the national level. As a consequence, NGOs find themselves limited by their governments’ agendas that are not always progressive.

“Before EU accession it was paradoxically easier to get money for more radical actions and publications,” says Alina Synakiewicz from Polish NGO Feminoteka. “Now, even though money is available, it is given out via governmental intermediation, meaning that the government channels it the way it wants.”

In the best case, NGOs “get creative” and manage to fit their priorities into the governmental agenda; in the worst, they are simply denied funding for themes deemed unacceptable.

The most striking example of such marginalisation of a core gender equality theme as a result of a conservative national agenda concerns reproductive rights in Poland. In 1993, abortion was made illegal in this country and, to date, access to contraceptives and sexual education is limited, and doctors are free to invoke a “conscience clause” to refuse writing prescriptions for birth control. Gender equality activists argue that such limitation of reproductive rights in the country is primarily caused by the strong hold that the Polish Catholic Church has on both the state and society as a whole.

Last year, activists attempted to introduce a reproductive rights bill in the parliament, having as main points the legalisation of abortion, making contraceptives affordable and more accessible, introducing fact-based sexual education in schools, and state support for in-vitro fertilisation.

Their effort to gather the 100,000 signatures needed to bring the civic law proposal into the legislative failed because of a media blackout on the initiative alongside a lack of funds and help for the activists. Even some NGOs working on women’s issues steered away from supporting this effort as they did not trust the initiative can succeed.

“What has unfortunately changed in the last 20 years in Poland is that the whole public space is dominated by the terminology propagated by the Church,” says Elżbieta Korolczuk, one of the activists promoting the initiative. “Not only the general public but quite a big part of our activist circles do not believe it is possible to change the law when it comes to reproductive rights in Poland in the foreseeable future.” Korolczuk, however, says the fight will continue, even in such an unfavorable climate.

And, across CEE, gender equality activists are winning battles every day regardless of resistance or indifference from national authorities.

Some of the most difficult themes to address across the region over the past two decades have been violence against women and domestic violence. Funding from national sources remains scarce for groups working on violence against women which results not only in limited NGO capacity – highly problematic considering that it is NGOs that do most of the work on this issue — but also in an insufficient number of shelters for victims of violence.

Legislation regarding domestic violence has also advanced with fits and starts. Most CEE countries have passed such laws, yet often the texts lacked provisions for imposing restraining orders on the aggressors; arguably, this reluctance has to do with a “sanctification” of private property across the region after 1989 and hence an unwillingness to take men (usually the aggressors) out of their homes (of which often they are the owners).

But this week (Feb. 28), following over two years of intense campaigning by NGOs, the Romanian parliament finally introduced an amendment in the national legislation regulating the use of restraining orders against the perpetrators of domestic violence.

Two years back, Cristina Horia from Sensiblu Foundation, one of the main groups working on domestic violence in Romania and organiser of a strong public campaign on the theme in 2009, was telling IPS that “the involvement of state institutions with the issue of domestic violence is limited, being at most supporters and partners, but not initiating campaigns.”

Over the past two years, Horia says, national and local authorities have improved their attitudes, yet “systematic gaps” continue to prevent a proper engagement with domestic violence.

Among these gaps, Horia lists “the under-financing of the social assistance system, the insufficient number of shelters for battered women, the lack of a national strategy to address domestic violence, the authorities’ failing to assume the role of protecting victims and to implement measures to punish aggressors, insufficient training of the police and public services staff to deal competently with victims and aggressors.”

There is a sense that NGOs active in CEE are operating in quite a different reality than that described by their national authorities in reports to international bodies, full of good intentions and commitments to gender equality.

A possible test of this statement could be to look at how one of the most advanced gender mainstreaming tools proposed by the UN, gender budgeting, fares in the region. Gender budgeting means analysing and transforming national and local budgets in such a way that they allow for the advancement of women or at least that obstacles to gender equality are eliminated. It does not mean giving more money for women, but rather, using existing resources more cleverly.

According to economist Elizabeth Villagomez, who has worked for years with various UN agencies on training and assessing possibilities of introducing this tool in CEE, “gender budgeting is not strong in these countries because the idea and principles of gender equality are still weak there; in former communist countries, the idea of equality as a value in general, including when it comes to gender, is not yet very much welcomed or still misunderstood because of the recent socialist past.”

Gender budgeting has been attempted in several places across the region, from municipalities in Poland (Gdansk) and Albania (Elbasan), to the national level in the Czech Republic, but its implementation remains patchy and has not brought the results seen in the West. Villagomez adds another reason for this lack of success: “using gender budgeting depends on the real capacities of governments to use results-based budget management and also on how the political priorities reflected in the budgets are set.” (END)

In 2008, delegates meeting for the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) agreed that much greater investments in women and gender equality were a critical – and overlooked – aspect of sustainable development.

For example, according to UN Women, while the international community gave 7.5 billion dollars in official development assistance to rural development and the agricultural sector in 2008–2009, a mere three percent was spent on programmes in which gender equality was a principal objective, and only 32 percent to those in which gender equality was a secondary objective.

Four years later, there has been some forward movement in a number of countries, but in many others, progress remains slow and uneven, a situation that is exacerbated by the ongoing global financial crisis.

Rural women continue to face limited access to productive resources, such as agricultural inputs and technology; only five percent of agricultural extension services are provided for women farmers.

As the CSW meets again here from Feb 27 to Mar. 9, panellists from around the world sat down Thursday to evaluate the evolution of financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment in their home countries, and chart a way forward.

“It’s time to promote gender equality and for that purpose we need a change of paradigm, we definitely need to change our way of thinking,” said Maria Almeida, vice finance minister of Ecuador.

Cambodia

Dr. Ing Phavi, minister of women’s affairs in Cambodia, cited a series of measures taken by the Cambodian government that have proved successful in enhancing gender equality across different areas.

“In Cambodia, in the context of a public administration reform, the prime minister has launched a major drive in 2008 to address the gender imbalance in the public administration,” she said.

As a result of extensive promotion across ministries and affirmative action policies, the number of female civil servants increased by 34 percent. At the sub-national level, more women were appointed as deputy governors or heads of government departments.

“In education, gender disparity has been eliminated in the primary and lower secondary education,” she noted. “Remarkably, with the focus on training and deploying female teachers, the female ratio at the primary level reached 46 percent in 2009/2010.”

However, fewer girls than boys continue on to get a higher education.

Asked what more needs to be done, Phavi told IPS, “The most important thing to understand is that gender equality is a government policy and it has to mainstream the poverty reduction strategy.

“Poverty reduction means taking care of growth, trade, agriculture development, well-being in terms of health, education and so on,” she said. “Gender is already inside all sectors so it should be part of the poverty reduction strategy.”

Morocco

Mohammed Chafiki, director of studies and financial forecasts for the ministry of economy and finance in Morocco, spoke about Morocco’s transition to equal rights and liberties for men and women.

In April 2011, the country ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a key instrument often described as an international bill of rights for women.

Morocco also adopted a new constitution in July that included many articles which expressly enshrined gender equality. For example, Article 19 affirms that men and women have equal civil, political, economic, cultural and environmental rights and liberties.

“In Morocco, we now need to continue the institutional reform. We are reforming our financial laws so it integrates gender considerations irreversibly,” Chafiki told IPS.

“But in order to move forward with gender equality, it is not all about the government. Local communities will also have to take concrete actions,” he said.

“To finance gender equality and women empowerment, we also need partnerships. We need partnerships with the private sector, with NGOs, with governments, of course, and we need international cooperation.”

Chafiki cited significant progress in reducing educational disparities as one of the country’s primary achievements.

“In 2010/2011, 96.3 percent of the girls from six to 11 years old are sent to school,” he said.

Austria

Gerhard Steger, director general of budget for the ministry of finance in Austria, explained how the government now integrates gender considerations into budgets.

The concept of gender responsive budgeting (GRB) was included in a comprehensive budget reform package that was unanimously adopted by parliament. It features a medium-term expenditure framework, accrual budgeting and accounting and performance budgeting.

“First of all, we transformed our budget from a traditional steering instrument of resources, asking the question ‘who gets what?’, into a comprehensive instrument for resources and results,” Steger told IPS.

“So we ask two questions: who gets what, and who has to deliver what for public management,” he added.

“We ask each and every ministry to define no more than five top objectives for the ministry, which are part of the budget decision in parliament, and at least one of those objectives has to be a gender objective.

“Gender is directly interpreted into the performance budgeting process in Austria. Therefore every ministry has to contribute – with no exceptions.”

Steger stressed crucial lessons that can be drawn from the Austrian experience.

“To make GRB a success, the design needs to be simple and focused on the most important aspects. If the design is too complex, GRB will very likely be a failure,” he said.

“We also have to make gender relevant and thus integrate it into the budget and to create awareness for gender issues to convince decision makers to support GRB.”

While national governments must take the lead, key agencies like UN Women are also working hard to steer funds into gender-oriented development.

On Thursday, UN Women announced it will give out 10.5 million dollars in grants to organisations working to advance economic and political empowerment of women in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia.

The grants will start at 200,000 dollars for initiatives that “make tangible improvements in the lives of women and girls, from enabling women candidates to run for office, to managing resources to support themselves and their families.”

“At this moment of historic change, we cannot afford to leave women out. These grants will advance women’s efforts to achieve greater economic and political equality during this time of transition,” said Michelle Bachelet, executive director for UN Women.

Since its creation in 2009, the Fund has invested a total of 43 million dollars in 40 countries around the world for projects working for gender equality.

(END)

After weeks of political pressure from the U.S., Egyptian officials announced Wednesday that the remaining employees of two U.S. government-supported organisations facing a criminal investigation would be permitted to leave the country.

Although the indictments remain in effect, the decision casts light on the tenuous nature of non-profit and NGO work in Egypt and future levels of financial support from foreign donors.

The announcement comes on the heels of intense diplomatic maneuvering last week, including a U.S. delegation to Cairo led by Senator John McCain, chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), an employer of several of the U.S. citizens now facing charges surrounding alleged involvement in illegally funded activities deemed harmful to the Egyptian state.

Sam Lahood, son of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Roy Lahood, is one of the 43 that are slated for trial.

Prominent among discussions between U.S. and Egyptian officials was the fate of Egypt’s roughly 1.5 billion dollars in U.S. aid appropriated for fiscal year 2012.

As negotiations between U.S. and Egyptian officials took place, three judges overseeing the indictments recused themselves after an announcement that the court would adjourn until Apr. 26, pending further inquiry. The recusal was an apparent protest by the judges to avoid perceptions of political meddling in the cases.

The charges stem from raids conducted by Egyptian officials in December 2011 that ended in multiple charges and confiscated property from offices of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and IRI – Congressionally-financed organisations officially tasked with “non- partisan” efforts in “democracy promotion”.

Since the 1990s, IRI has been implicated in a number of attempted coups d’etat abroad, including a successful Haitian coup in 1994.

Several lawmakers here greeted the news with a mixed sense of jubilance and foreboding.

“I want to recognise the efforts of the Egyptian interim ruling military government for making the right decision in facilitating the release of these American NGO workers,” Senator James Inhofe, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Foreign Relations, said Thursday.

“The U.S. must continue our strong military-to-military relationship with Egypt… I will continue to monitor the situation in Egypt closely and, should radicals highjack the democratic process, respond accordingly,” Inhofe added.

Earlier this year, U.S. lawmakers voted to make financial aid contingent on continued, verifiable political reform in Egypt.

Elliot Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former member of the Bush administration’s National Security Council, cast the recent announcement as a small concession made by the Egyptian government in what he considers to be a series of egregious crackdowns on U.S. NGOs.

“(T)he government of Egypt has not said that promoting democracy and human rights is welcome, as it should be in any country seeking to build a democratic system, rather than considered to be a criminal offense… In fact, the situation of NGO staff may still be worse in Egypt 2012, ‘after the revolution,’ than it was under the Mubarak dictatorship.”

“If that turns out to be true, the Egyptian government should not be rewarded by a full renewal of our aid program,” Abrams wrote on his blog Thursday.

Some were more critical of the decision to lift travel restrictions.

“Erratic due process is blatantly irreconcilable with independent judiciary and genuine democracy,” Mohammad ElBaradei, former candidate in Egypt’s presidential elections set for May 2012, said in his Twitter feed on Thursday.

Despite the intensifying rhetoric from both U.S. and Egyptian officials about the role of NGOs in Egyptian civil society, thousands of organisations based out of Egypt that work on a spectrum of issues from public health to environmental protection have landed in the middle of a debate about foreign financing, the outcome of which may determine the feasibility of their work in the coming months.

Under current Egyptian law, organisations are barred from receiving foreign funding without official approval in what amounts to one of the world’s most restrictive set of statutes regarding foreign and domestic NGOs. Much is left to the discretion of Egyptian military authorities, particularly the Supreme Council of Armed Forces.

“Today’s action didn’t go far enough. We have been calling for changes in the unfair laws that oversee NGOs that really muzzle civil society. These are the old Mubarak regime rules and this just goes to show that Mubarak’s rules are still in play… The space for NGOs’ activity in Egypt is narrowed,” Geoffrey Mock, an expert on Egypt at Amnesty International, told IPS.

“The state of emergency has to go. If the state of emergency goes, if the associations law gets changed, there are things that can happen that can open Egypt to a new political future and there are still people in Egypt to make that happen,” Mock added.

Questioned on how the indictments will effect the U.S. State Department’s report on political in transition in Egypt – an assessment U.S. lawmakers will use to decide whether or not Egypt receives the Obama administration’s aid requests for this year – State Department Press Secretary Victoria Nuland avoided making a definitive appraisal.

“I am not going to speak to how the decisions will be made, when the time comes… We continue to want to see the NGO situation settled in a manner that allows all NGOs, our own, European NGOs, other international NGOs and Egyptian NGOs to be registered. We think that’s part and parcel of the democratic transition,” Nuland said on Thursday.

“Many Americans believed that Egyptians would welcome American democracy promotion efforts since there has been broad public support in Egypt for both democracy in general and the ouster of the anti- democratic regime of Hosni Mubarak in particular,” Mark Tessler, a professor of International Relations at the University of Michigan, said Thursday.

“But in fact, the survey we conducted in Egypt just this summer showed that a solid majority of the Egyptian public distrusts American foreign policy and this includes American democracy promotion activities in their country…

“However laudable their objectives – and in Egypt at least, however congruent with the goals of the vast majority of ordinary men and women – these groups will be viewed the way U.S. foreign policy is viewed, and in Egypt that view is not favourable,” Tessler added.

(END)

Ten months after the earthquake in Haiti, protestors condemn NGOs and the U.N. for lack of shelter and basic services. The back of the man's red T-shirt says in Creole, "Down with NGO thieves/ We want good houses to live in." Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS

By Judith Scherr
BERKELEY, Feb 28 2012 (IPS)

The world reacted swiftly to Haiti’s catastrophic 7.0 earthquake in 2010. The United States shipped in 20,000 troops, some to perform lifesaving medical procedures, others to protect aid workers from earthquake victims deemed dangerous. Movie stars, criminals and other prospective parents rushed to adopt motherless Haitian babies.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and missionaries tripped over each other to distribute aid, from used shoes and bibles, to food and water. Televangelist Pat Robertson grabbed headlines, blaming the quake on Haiti’s “pact to the devil” – referencing Voodoo, Haiti’s traditional religion.

The only ones absent from media reports, it seemed, were Haitians, except as tragic victims.

A new book, Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake [Kumarian Press, 288 pages], sets the record straight. The compilation of more than 40 articles is edited by Mark Schuller, assistant professor at City University of New York and the State University of Haiti, and Latin American specialist Pablo Morales.

“One of the things we really felt was important was to get Haitian voices out there,” Schuller told IPS in a phone interview from New York. Half of the articles are written by Haitian activists, scholars and journalists, he pointed out.

To tell the story of the temblor that killed more than 300,000 and displaced 1.5 million, Schuller and Morales include information on the history that has left the island-nation particularly vulnerable.

“Understanding the disaster means understanding not only the tectonic fault lines running beneath Haiti, but also the deep economic, political, social, and historical cleavages within and surrounding the country,” the editors write.

A history of intrusion

Haiti has been pummelled by external forces since its birth 200 years ago. Soon after Haitians threw off the yoke of France, the former colonizer led an embargo against the young black republic, forcing Haiti to promise France the equivalent of 21 billion U.S. dollars for the loss of land and slaves. The debt wasn’t paid off until 1947.

Several articles explore international financial institutions’ neoliberal policies that led to overcrowding in Port au Prince and thus the large number of deaths and injuries from the earthquake.

In one, Alex Dupuy, chair of African American studies at Wesleyan University, cites World Bank and International Monetary Fund support for urban assembly factories, which brought peasants to the cities.

The international lenders further damaged the rural economy by imposing tariff reductions on agricultural products. Haiti’s markets had to compete with subsidized U.S. rice, “undercutting local production of the nation’s staple crop and dismantling the rural economy”, writes anthropologist Anthony Olivers-Smith.

A major theme throughout Tectonic Shifts is the negative role of NGOs, present in large numbers even before the earthquake.

In 1994, when President Bill Clinton brought President Jean Bertrand Aristide – Haiti’s first democratically elected president – back to Haiti after a coup d’état, the U.S. Congress bolstered NGOs’ presence. It refused to give aid directly to the Haitian government and instead filtered funds through NGOs, strengthening them and weakening the public sector.

The number of NGOs multiplied after the earthquake and included, according to Yolette Etienne, Oxfam America Haiti program director, “the full range of humanitarians, ranging from the most specialised organizations to amateur groups and even criminals on the lookout to exploit all forms of human misery”.

After the earthquake, the United Nations (U.N.) established “clusters” through which NGOs addressed issues of sanitation, water, food and housing.

But Haitians were largely excluded, as Melinda Miles of Transafrica writes. “By holding nearly all of its meetings within the confines of the [U.N.] base and refusing to offer Creole translation, Haitians… were effectively kept out of the process.”

Haitians are also kept out of relief contracts. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) studied USAID contracts worth 200 million dollars and concluded that just 2.5 percent went to Haitian companies.

Militarisation in Haiti

A number of articles underscore the destructive role of the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH. After the United States flew Aristide into involuntary exile in 2004, Marines policed the country for several months and were replaced by MINUSTAH.

After the earthquake, the U.N. added more than 3,000 troops and police to the force, bringing the total to around 13,000.

U.N. military personnel have been accused of acting like an occupying force, murdering and sexually abusing Haitians and bringing cholera to the country. “To many, MINUSTAH’s primary role is to keep Haiti as a leta restavèk, a child domestic worker serving foreign interests,” write Tectonic Shifts editors.

The U.S. earthquake response was also militarised. Charles Vorbe, political science professor at the State University of Haiti, recalls media images depicting the “degrading nature” of giving aid. “U.S. soldiers perched in an army helicopter in full flight, tossing sacks of food overboard on earthquake victims, who, on the ground, come running from everywhere and fight among themselves to collect whatever they can.”

The military’s preoccupation with security is incompatible with the “respect for the dignity… of the beneficiaries,” Vorbe writes.

Meanwhile, about 600,000 Haitians still live in squalid camps, often lacking water and sanitation. Many face eviction. (The 600,000 doesn’t include evicted survivors living on the streets or in red-tagged houses.)

Legal complications

Mario Joseph, human rights attorney with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, writes that claims to land titles are unclear. “It is uncertain whether the alleged landowners who attempt to evict [Internally Displaced People] …really have legal rights to the land,” he explains.

“Because those purporting to own the land usually come from Haiti’s tiny but powerful elite, their word itself is generally feared among IDPs.”

In a Skype interview from Port au Prince, Joseph told IPS that the debate around land ownership avoids the central issue: international law and U.N. guidelines prohibit eviction of IDPs. “But the U.N. doesn’t apply this in Haiti,” Joseph said.

Still, the problem isn’t just with the U.N.

“The NGOs and the Haitian government, too, don’t… respect the rights of the Haitian people,” Joseph added, contending that because the international community put the president into power, government allegiance is to foreign interests and the wealthy elite, not to the Haitian masses.

To that end, Tectonic Shifts includes several articles about international interference with presidential elections that excluded a dozen political parties including Aristide’s party, Lavalas, the largest and most popular party.

“The international community is complicit with the rich people in Haiti to gut the rights of Haitians,” Joseph said, noting that he’s successfully trained camp leaders to organise others to effectively stand up for their right not to be evicted.

Tectonic Shifts includes hopeful articles about grassroots groups pressuring the government for change, but none address the future of Lavalas or the impact of Aristide’s return to Haiti one year ago. IPS asked Schuller about the omission.

“As a political party, Lavalas is factionalized,” he said, underscoring that, as a foreigner, it was not his place to comment on internal politics. He said the editors attempted to be balanced and non- partisan in the choice of articles.

“Maybe work is being done internally – they’re not out [in demonstrations] in big numbers; they’re not making a political statement,” he added.

Creole and French translations of the book will be published later this year, which means Tectonic Shifts can be used as an educational and organising tool by grassroots activists and human rights workers, Schuller said.

“I see hope in the [grassroots] movements, despite the many challenges.”

Women farmers clearing abandoned farmland in the drought-affected Nachol village in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
ANANTPUR, India/BARIND TRACT, Bangladesh, Feb 25 2012 (IPS)

Agriculture currently provides a livelihood for roughly 1.3 billion smallholder farmers and landless workers, of which nearly half – close to 560 million – are women.

A vast majority of these women are living on a precipice, where small changes in their environment could result in chronic hunger and abject poverty.

Given the unprecedented scale of climate change, which has already caused massive food insecurity this year, rural women are not only extremely vulnerable, but also woefully overlooked by governments and policy makers who define top-down strategies for hunger and poverty eradication.

In response, the United Nations’ 56^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), scheduled to run from Feb. 27-March 9 at U.N. headquarters in New York, listed the empowerment of rural women as one of its priority themes for the year.

“If rural women had equal access to productive resources, agricultural yields could reduce the number of chronically hungry people by between 100 and 150 million,” according to a press release issued Thursday by UN Women.

This year’s CSW promises to examine the “empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, sustainable development and current challenges (and) will agree on urgent actions needed to make a real difference in the lives of millions of rural women.”

But while the U.N. is only just beginning its session on rural women, female farmers around the world are already deep in a struggle to secure their environment against the destablising impacts of climate change by using their traditional role as community leaders and ingenious farmers to sow the seeds of hope for their future.

Resisting drought at the local level

Mosammet Rini-Ara Begum proudly points to a heap of rice stored in a makeshift tin shed in her backyard, located in Bangladesh’s arid, Northwestern Barind Tract region.

The boiled rice grains shimmer in the sunlight as the 34-year-old mother of three opens the bamboo fence of her small grain storehouse, saying, “This is the third time I got such a good harvest of rice despite the drought.”

Women farmers are adapting their production to new climate circumstances. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

For several years now thousands of farmers in the region have abandoned agricultural land and production, especially cash crops like rice and wheat, in the face of unusually hot and arid weather, in the 7500-square-kilometre region.

Advised by agricultural experts on drought-resistant crops, Rini and her husband cultivated a new breed of rice known as BRRI-56, which is highly tolerant of extremely hot and dry conditions.

Unlike other local rice varieties, which require rain soon after planting, BRRI-56 grows without water for weeks. It also survives the Barind heat, which often reaches 50 degrees Celsius between July and November during the rice maturation period.

“We offer all sorts of support to farmers, especially to poor women who often need professional counseling and demonstration of the successes achieved by fellow farmers,” said Mujibor Rahman, a leader of a local farmers’ network known as the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Club in Chapainawabganj district.

Thirty-two year Joynab Banu, a farmer from the Rajshahi district, told IPS, “There are climate related risks in cultivating crops in such extreme weathers. But since we have enough knowledge on climate adaptation we are ready to take any challenges.”

Agriculture provides about 36 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Bangladesh and employs roughly 60 per cent of the labour force. Rice covers about 75 percent of the country’s cultivable land, mostly in the Northwestern front.

With growing awareness of climate-resilient capacity, increased numbers of women, especially landless peasants, widows, divorcees and others facing social isolation in the Northwest, are now using abandoned agricultural land to contribute to crop production and secure the country’s food security.

Women lead the way to “organic”

Anantpur, a region in India’s Southern state of Andhra Pradesh is arid, treeless and made up of poor red soil, with low annual average rainfall of 553 millimetres, making it the second most drought-prone district in India.

Erratic monsoons and a rain shortage, both attributed to changing climate, led to crop failure year after year and by the early 2000s debt-ridden farmers’ suicides had run into the thousands.

Farmers’ desperation and increased contract farming has led to unsustainable reliance on chemical fertilisers, creating soils that demands more and more scarce water, while farming costs have rocketed.

But in Singanamala mandal, an administrative block of Anantapur, women farmers like Ramadevi (41), Lingamma (38) and Katamayya (41) decided to return to organic fertilisers and pesticides and have since experienced enourmous savings.

Nagamanamma (31) shifted to organic farming in 2009, on 2 acres of leased temple land.

“I opted for organic farming for one reason: it asked for family labour and not the kind of investment that chemical farming demands,” she told IPS.

In the first year alone she went from seven bags of groundnut per acre to 15 bags, weighing 42 kilogrammes each, while reducing her expenditure from 40 to 12 dollars.

In this region, red-haired caterpillar pest attacks are common on the watermelon crop, which is grown beside the groundnut.

Previously, women had been forced to pay 40 dollars for an 80-millimetre dose of chemical pesticide-concentrate but with organic materials, the cost is not even a tenth of that.

Neem seeds gathered from the adjoining forests form a pesticide that costs just 10 dollars for a 50-kilogramme bag.

The benefits of going organic have percolated down to the landless too. A group of forest gatherers, smallholder farmers and women’s self-help groups from 10 surrounding villages are operating a unique symbiotic cooperative – the Singanamala Producers’ Cooperative – to produce organic pesticide.

With the help of a local NGO they installed a seed-pulverizing machine. While previously local traders had exploited the women seed gatherers, now they share profits equitably among members.

Women are already leading the way towards a more organic, just future. The question for the international community – including the U.N.’s CSW – is whether or not the world will follow.

*Naimul Haq contributed to this story from the Barind Tract, Bangladesh; Manipadma Jena from Anantpur, India; and Kanya D’Almeida from Washington DC

*This is the first of a two-part series on rural women, climate change and food security.

(END)

While the international community discusses Somalia’s future in London and Brussels, European and Somali non-governmental organisations are calling for a radical shift from a military to a humanitarian approach as the only solution to the country’s war-torn condition.

Somalia has still not recovered from its last humanitarian crisis. Six months after the United Nations declared a famine in the country, more than 325, 000 children are still suffering from acute malnutrition. Though last summer’s response from the international community and civil society did succeed in saving many lives, expulsions of aid agencies and internationally backed military operations still impede humanitarian assistance from reaching those who are most in need.

During the London Somalia Conference last Thursday, world leaders reached an agreement on seven key areas to put an end to Somalia’s precarious situation, including security, piracy, terrorism, humanitarian assistance, local stability, a reinstallment of the political process and international cooperation.

Talks about the country will resume at the European Union Foreign Affairs meeting starting next Monday in Brussels.

Although NGOs applaud the international community’s initiative and effort to help Somalia, the proposed seven key areas were received with mixed feelings.

“What we had hoped for was a recognition that twenty years of internationally imposed solutions have failed. However, what we’ve seen once again were externally driven solutions that haven’t worked, aren’t working and will not work,” Barbara Stocking from Oxfam International said in a press release on Thursday.

Oxfam is demanding that the international community radically shift its approach in order to effectively brighten Somalia’s future. In its new report ‘Putting the Interests of Somali People First’, the organisation states that although responsibility for Somalia’s crisis lies foremost with factions inside the country, international engagement has at times made matters worst.

For many governments involved in Somalia, military action is seen as a means of providing security and stability, but reports from inside tell a different story.

“Setting out a new approach by shifting the emphasis away from anti-piracy and security concerns and taking practical steps towards an inclusive political process must be at the top of Europe’s agenda if it is serious about bringing long-term peace and security to ordinary Somalis and the region,” Natalia Alonso, Head of Oxfam’s EU office in Brussels, stated in a press release on Wednesday.

“For more than twenty years foreign armies have been coming in and going out of Somalia, without any success,” Tidhar Wald, Oxfam’s EU humanitarian policy advisor told IPS. “What we need right now is an inclusive, Somali-led peace process. Somalis themselves should have a say in the solution the international community is outlining. If you look at the conferences that are taking place right now, you can clearly see there are not enough Somali voices taking part in the decision-making.”

Oxfam’s standpoint is reflected on the ground in Somalia itself.

“The last twenty years have seen numerous military interventions in Somalia,” Aydris Daar, CEO of the Wajir South Development Association (WASDA) in Juba, Somalia, told IPS. “Whenever they occurred, they led to an increase of conflicts inside the country. And when conflicts increase, regular people do not have time to attend to ther daily work, children cannot go to school and there is no time or space to do business, which affects the economic situation. Military actions in Somalia have never improved the humanitarian situation,” he said.

According to WASDA, any solution for Somalia’s war-torn condition should be fully grounded in a humanitarian principle.

“International action should not lead to further suffering in Somalia,” Aydris Daar told IPS, “The solution must come from within  but before that can happen, we need support: funding for Somalia must be (long term), so it can go beyond relief into recovery and development. Seventy percent of the people in Somalia are younger than 35; it is their poverty and unemployment that is pushing them to take sides in the conflicts. This is what is fuelling conflicts in Somalia.”

(END)