LONDON, Jan 31 2020 (IPS) – There was only one topic on everyone’s lips at Davos this year – climate change. The headlines focused on the cold war between Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump, but there was much greater consensus among those gathered for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The Forum itself updated its manifesto for responsible business – with climate right at its core.
Among those calling for urgent action was WaterAid’s own president, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. It’s more than 30 years since he last attended Davos and, as he reminded the audience, 50 years since he made his first speech on the environment.
The mood is slowly shifting towards the scale of action needed, given that climate change will affect every part of the economy. This cannot be truer than for water – the WEF has ranked water crises in its top five global risks in terms of likelihood or impact every year since 2012.
Infographic showing the top 10 risks over the next 10 years, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 report. Credit: World Economic Forum
The climate crisis is a water crisis, and a threat multiplier
Throughout the forum I had one consistent message: for the world’s poorest, the climate crisis is a water crisis. Yes, it has long-term implications for your businesses and economies. But, first and foremost, it is a question of survival, dignity and justice, with climate change already having devastating impacts on the lives of the people who did least to cause it.
Flooding, storms and droughts, which all impact on how and if people can get clean water, are becoming more frequent and extreme, and these trends are predicted to rise as the climate continues to change. This will undermine the already precarious access to water for billions around the world.
Climate change acts as a huge threat multiplier, worsening existing barriers to these services and rolling back progress already made.
As people living in climate-vulnerable areas experience changing weather patterns, less predictable rainfall, salt water intrusion and increased exposure to disease, water and sanitation become a critical line of defence.
If your water supply comes from a shallow aquifer that fills with sea water, then you can no longer drink it. But if the person designing your water supply has thought of this threat and factored it in, perhaps by drawing on deeper aquifers, then you can carry on living in your neighbourhood.
If your toilets and sanitation systems are constructed to withstand flooding, then your community does not suffer the same level of contamination after flooding as if human waste had been spread by the high waters.
The water and sanitation sector could become a leader in climate adaptation
But we currently lack the level of public and private sector investment and innovation required to deliver the sustainable water services that would benefit poverty reduction, industry and economic development.
Rather than lagging behind, the water and sanitation sector could become a leader in delivering the kind of green infrastructure, services and jobs urgently required to enable adaptation to the worst impacts of climate change.
Tim Wainwright, Chief Executive of WaterAid UK, speaking with Hassan Nasir Jamy, Secretary Ministry of Climate Change, at Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change in Islamabad, Pakistan. Credit: WaterAid/ Sibtain Haider
Water, sanitation and hygiene are core to a sustainable future
Leaving Davos last year, I was frustrated. I felt that too few understood or discussed the impact climate change would have on the already grave state of the world’s water and sanitation, and the devastating consequences for education, health, productivity and development.
This year, I sensed a greater understanding of the interlinked challenges we face, and with that an air of urgency and proactivity. Businesses are looking for solutions – not just raising concerns.
That is why WaterAid will be one of the organisations working closely with HRH the Prince of Wales as part of his 2020 year of action.
In March, in London, we will bring together the public, private and philanthropic sectors for a high-level summit that will position water, sanitation and hygiene at the forefront of the fight against climate, and work on the solutions that will ensure a sustainable future for all.
And we will continue that work across the WaterAid federation throughout the year, including at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali in June, and at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP 26, in Glasgow in November, to help build momentum for decisive action.
In this way we hope WaterAid can play its part in shifting the global trajectory in the coming decade, resulting in a fairer world for the poorest and most marginalised people.
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2020 (IPS) – The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has described the much-ballyhooed US Middle East peace plan as “more like Swiss cheese– with the cheese being offered to the Israelis and the holes to the Palestinians”.
“There are many ways to end the occupation, but the only legitimate options are those based on equality and human rights for all,” said the Jerusalem-based B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
“This is why the current plan which legitimizes, entrenches and even expands the scope of Israel’s human rights abuses, perpetuated now for over 52 years, is utterly unacceptable”, it said.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, based in Johannesburg, drew a parallel between Israel and apartheid South Africa of a bygone era.
“We concur with our Israeli comrades, and we painfully recall how Apartheid South Africa tried to impose its own plan during the 1980s where white people would own South Africa and the indigenous Black South Africans needed to be happy with small enclaves called Bantustans.”
“We rejected this then in Apartheid South Africa, and we, today, join those in rejecting it in Palestine-Israel,” said BDS in a statement released here.
Mouin Rabbani, co-editor Jadaliyya, an ezine focusing on the Middle East and produced by the Arab Studies Institute (ASI), told IPS the Trump Plan is not a peace initiative, that seeks to lay the basis for meaningful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to resolve the core issues of the conflict.
Rather, it seeks to unilaterally implement a permanent status reality that is tantamount to the extreme reaches of the Israeli political spectrum, with the imprimatur of US recognition and legitimacy, he said.
Any analyst with even a passing acquaintance of this conflict can immediately recognize that it cannot possibly serve as a basis of negotiations, let alone a negotiated settlement, because it prejudges virtually every Palestinian right, claim, and interest, Rabbani argued.
“This is deliberate — the references to negotiations are no more than a diplomatic fig leaf to enable Israeli to proceed unilaterally with acts of territorial annexation, the liquidation of the refugee question, the transfer of Arab citizens of Israel to Palestinian jurisdiction (thus removing there status as Israeli citizens), and the like,” he added.
Credit: PalestineUN.Org
Ramzy Baroud, a syndicated columnist, editor of The Palestine Chronicle and a senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs in Istanbul, told IPS the Deal of the Century is a complete American acquiescence to the right-wing mentality that has ruled Israel for more than a decade.
This is certainly not an American peace overture, he pointed out, but an egregious act of bullying.
However, it is hardly a deviation from previous rounds of “peace-making,” where Washington always took Israel’s side, blamed Palestinians and failed to hold Tel Aviv accountable to its violations of previously signed treaties and international law, he noted.
“In truth, the Deal of the Century is not a ‘peace plan’, nor was it ever intended to be, despite what its chief architect and White House adviser Jared Kushner has been claiming”.
As expected, said Baroud, Trump has handed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu everything that he and Israel ever wanted.
He also pointed out that the Middle East Plan does not demand the uprooting of a single illegal Jewish settlement and recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘undivided’ capital.
But Palestinians definitely don’t see it that way. The plan caters to nearly every major Israeli demand, including the annexation of its settlements in the contested West Bank region, said CNN.
“A future Palestinian state, meanwhile, would get a capital in eastern Jerusalem, physically separated from the rest of the city. The plan doesn’t lay out what would happen to Palestinian refugees displaced by ongoing conflict”.
In a brutally frank comment, Robert Malley, president of the International Crisis Group, was quoted as saying: “The message to the Palestinians, boiled down to its essence, is: You’ve lost, get over it.”
Rabbani said the peace plan is also not a framework for a two-state settlement.
“The potential Palestinian entity presented in the initiative, assuming it comes to pass, does not have any – I repeat, any – of the attributes of statehood as commonly understood.”
He said its objective is not the establishment of a Palestinian state but rather the permanent expansion of the Israeli state into occupied territory, less those areas heavily populated by Palestinians that Israel does not intend to annex.
The Palestinian entity, or rather the patchwork of Palestinian-populated regions within Israel according to this plan, are held together by some 15 bridges and tunnels, he noted.
“The purpose here is not Palestinian statehood, but rather achieving Israel’s long-term objective of maximum territory with minimum Arabs – an objective additionally furthered by the proposed transfer of Palestinian population centers within Israel to the jurisdiction of this entity”.
The broader purpose of this initiative, he argued, is to utilize the weakness, fragmentation, and polarisation of the Palestinians, and the Arab world more generally, to ram through a unilateral settlement of this conflict while the opportunity presents itself.
A second objective is to facilitate the formalisation of Israeli-Arab normalisation, though given the contours of this plan that is unlikely to be achieved.
In a word, the formalisation of Palestinian capitulation to not only Israel but a particularly extremist Israeli agenda, he declared.
More broadly, said Rabbani, it seeks to replace international law and the international consensus with the principle that might makes right and thus the law of the jungle in which power is the sole principle for the resolution of international disputes.
From the Trump administration’s perspective this therefore has much broader application than only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he declared.
Baroud said the so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ has confirmed what many have argued for years: a just and peaceful future in Palestine and Israel cannot be achieved with Washington at the helm.
“So obviously only Israel benefits from the plan, as the Zionist discourse, predicated on maximum territorial gains with minimal Palestinian presence, has finally prevailed.”
He said every Israeli request has been met, to the last one. Meanwhile, Palestinians get nothing, aside from the promise of chasing another mirage of a Palestinian state that has no territorial continuity and no true sovereignty.
Not only will Trump’s plan fail to resolve the conflict, he argued, it will exasperate it as well; it will divide the region into blocs, with some Arabs normalization with Israel and others refusing to do so, especially while Palestinians continue to live in perpetual suffering.
As for the economic component of Trump’s plan, history has proven that there can be no economic prosperity under military occupation. Netanyahu and others before him tried such dubious methods, of ‘economic peace’ and such, and all have miserably failed.
“Time and again, the UN has made it clear that it follows a different political trajectory than that followed by Washington, and that all US decisions regarding the status of Jerusalem, the illegal settlements and the Golan Heights, are null and void; only international law matters, and none of Trump’s actions in recent years have succeeded in significantly altering international consensus on the rights of Palestinians”.
As for the status of and Palestinian rights in their occupied city, said Baroud, East Jerusalem, renaming a few neighborhoods – Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis – as al-Quds, or East Jerusalem is an old Israeli plan that failed in the past.
The late Yasser Arafat rejected it, and neither Mahmoud Abbas or any other Palestinian official would dare compromise on the historic and legal Palestinian rights in the city.
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 29 2020 (IPS) – Growing up in New York City in the 1970s, Edward Glaeser saw a great metropolis in decline. Crime was soaring. Garbage piled up on sidewalks as striking sanitation workers walked off the job. The city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.
By the mid-1980s, it was clear that New York would bounce back. But it could still be a scary place; there was a triple homicide across the street from his school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Glaeser was nevertheless captivated by New York’s bustling street life and spent hours roaming its neighborhoods.
“It was both wonderful and terrifying, and it was hard not to be obsessed by it,” Glaeser recalls in an interview at his office at Harvard University.
Today, that sense of wonder still permeates Glaeser’s work as an urban economist. He deploys the economist’s theoretical tool kit to explore questions inspired by his youth in New York.
Why do some cities fail while others flourish? What accounts for sky-high housing costs in San Francisco? How does the growth of cities differ in rich and poor countries?
“I have always thought of myself as fundamentally a curious child,” Glaeser, 52, says. Rather than “pushing well-established literature forward,” he seeks to comprehend “something that I really don’t understand when I start out.”
While still a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Glaeser made his mark as a theorist of the benefits of agglomeration—the idea that dense and diverse cities are hothouses of innovation, energy, and creativity that fuel economic growth.
In the years since, his work has ranged across a breathtaking variety of subjects, from rent control and real estate bubbles to property rights, civil disobedience, and carbon emissions.
“For a couple decades now, Ed has been the leading thinker about the economics of place,” says Lawrence Summers, a Harvard professor who served as director of the National Economic Council under US President Barack Obama. “And the economics of urban areas are increasingly being seen as central to broad economic concerns.”
Glaeser and Summers are collaborating on a study of the hardening divide between well-educated, affluent coastal regions of the United States and islands of economic stagnation in what they call the “eastern heartland,” the interior states east of the Mississippi River.
There, in cities like Flint, Michigan, the proportion of prime-age men who aren’t working has been rising—along with rates of opioid addiction, disability, and mortality.
How can policy help? Traditionally, economists have been skeptical of the value of place-based policies like enterprise zones that offer tax breaks to investors, saying it is better to help people, not places.
People, they assumed, would move to where the jobs were. But labor mobility has declined in recent decades, partly because of high housing costs, partly because demand for relatively unskilled factory work has diminished.
Breaking with economic orthodoxy, Glaeser and Summers say that the federal government should tailor pro-employment measures, such as reducing the payroll tax or increasing tax credits to low earners, to fit the needs of economically distressed areas such as West Virginia. They also make the case for boosting investment in education.
As a Chicago-trained economist, Glaeser is a strong believer in the magic of free markets and opposes measures that distort incentives. “I have always been against spatial redistribution, taking from rich areas and giving to poor areas,” he says. “That doesn’t mean that you want the same policies everywhere.”
Urban economics seemed like a natural pursuit for Glaeser. His German-born father, Ludwig, was an architect who taught him how the built environment shapes people’s lives. His mother, Elizabeth, was an asset manager who introduced him to economics. Glaeser recalls how she used the example of competing cobblers to explain marginal cost pricing.
“I remember thinking what an amazing and fascinating thing it is to think about the impact of competition,” he says. He was 10 years old.
In high school, Glaeser excelled at history and mathematics. As a Princeton University undergraduate, he considered majoring in political science before choosing economics, seeing it as a path to Wall Street.
But dreams of a career in finance ended with the stock market crash of 1987, just as he started job interviews. So he opted for graduate school, because “it didn’t seem like I was cutting off many options,” he says.
“Then I got to Chicago, and that was when I really fell in love with economics.”
Glaeser keeps a framed photograph of himself with Gary Becker, the Chicago economist and Nobel prize laureate. Becker taught him that the discipline’s conceptual tools could be used to explore topics that had once been the domain of fields like sociology or anthropology—topics like racial discrimination, fertility, and the family.
“It was that sense of the creative side of economics that could work on a virtually unlimited canvas and try to make sense of any problem that you thought was important—that was the part that was so exciting to me,” Glaeser says.
At the time, Chicago economists Robert Lucas and Paul Romer were developing the so-called endogenous growth theory, which focused on the role of innovation and the exchange of ideas in economic development.
As Glaeser recalls it, Lucas pointed to cities as places where knowledge spillovers occur—meaning people can benefit from other people’s ideas without paying for them. Think of a city like Detroit early last century, where Henry Ford used his experience as chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company to start his automobile business.
That concept inspired a groundbreaking 1992 paper, “Growth in Cities.” Glaeser and three co-authors set out to use cities as a laboratory in which to test the new growth theories. Using 30 years of data covering 170 US cities, they found that local competition and diversity, rather than specialization, are the prime motors of urban growth.
The paper instantly made Glaeser a star and earned him a job offer from Harvard.
Glaeser “showed that urban variety, not specialization in one particular thing, was a big driver of employment growth,” says Joseph Gyourko, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a longtime collaborator. “It was Ed’s first really well-cited article, so it did start him on his path.”
Gyourko and Glaeser started working together in the early 2000s, when Glaeser took a year’s sabbatical at Penn. They wondered why some cities, such as Detroit, declined so slowly, and why so many people stayed instead of moving elsewhere. They hit upon a simple answer: housing is durable, and as cities slump, it becomes cheaper to live there.
That insight prompted a related question: Why is housing so much more expensive than the cost of construction in cities like New York and Boston? The answer: land-use restrictions limit density, curbing the supply of housing and driving up prices. It was basic economics, yet until then, urban economists hadn’t focused on the role of regulation.
Glaeser argues that excessive regulation is destructive of the very essence of urban life—density. Cities thrive on the creativity that occurs when people living cheek by jowl exchange ideas and know-how. Sunbelt cities like Houston have grown because an easy regulatory environment keeps housing inexpensive.
To economists like Glaeser, building and zoning regulations are a tax on development. Some level of tax makes economic sense, because construction imposes costs on residents in the form of noise, congestion, and pollution.
But overly stringent regulation, often pushed by residents who want to keep out newcomers and protect their property values, can make housing unaffordable for most people.
Glaeser is similarly skeptical of historic preservation rules, to the dismay of followers of Jane Jacobs, the legendary critic of urban-renewal projects who celebrated the lively street life of New York’s old ethnic neighborhoods.
Glaeser is a big Jacobs fan—he owns an autographed copy of her 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities—but argues that her efforts to oppose development in Greenwich Village were at odds with her support for low-income housing.
“I believe that many of our oldest buildings are treasures,” he says. “But don’t simultaneously pretend that that’s a route toward affordability. Affordability is created by mass-produced cheap housing or mass-produced cheap commercial space. And you might not like it aesthetically, but that is the affordable route.”
In 2000, Glaeser published “Consumer City,” a paper he wrote with Jed Kolko and Albert Saiz. In it, he took the concept of agglomeration a step further, arguing that people are drawn not only to the opportunities that cities offer, but also to amenities such as theaters, museums, and restaurants.
“We know that cities can attract the disproportionately young and innovative,” says Richard Florida, a professor of urban studies at the University of Toronto. “Ed was identifying the factors driving that, this whole idea that cities are not only places of production, but places of consumption.”
Glaeser laments policies such as the mortgage interest deduction, which encourages people to buy homes rather than rent apartments; highway subsidies, which make it easier to drive to the suburbs; and a school system that disadvantages inner-city students.
Such policies, he argues, not only are antiurban but also contribute to climate change, because city dwellers, who live in smaller homes and use mass transit, consume less electricity and gasoline than their suburban counterparts.
Surprisingly, he and his wife, Nancy, who have three children, decided to move to the suburbs of Boston several years ago. To Glaeser, it was a perfectly rational decision: the suburbs offer more living space, better schools, and a reasonably fast commute.
Already well known in academia, Glaeser started to reach a broader audience with the publication in 2011 of his bestselling book, Triumph of the City, a lively study of urbanization from ancient Baghdad to modern Bangalore.
His eloquence and enthusiasm make him a sought-after speaker at academic forums and TED Talks. Invariably, he is impeccably attired in well-pressed suits and preaches the gospel of urbanization in crisp, rapid-fire sentences.
Despite his celebrity, he takes teaching seriously. Rebecca Diamond, who attended his advising sessions as a graduate student, said he was generous with his time. “He taught me perspective and not to get too stuck in the weeds,” says Diamond, who now teaches at Stanford University and stays in touch with Glaeser.
Developing-world cities are his latest passion. True to form, he sees them as relatively uncharted territory, neglected both by urban economists, who focus on advanced-economy cities, and development economists, who concentrate on rural areas. They are also growing fast, and their physical and institutional infrastructure are works in progress, so economists’ policy advice can have an impact.
“The ability of economists to make a difference by getting engaged is just very large,” he says. “So, I think it is the new frontier.”
It also takes him to interesting places. His latest research project, with Nava Ashraf and Alexia Delfino of the London School of Economics, took him to the markets of Lusaka, Zambia, to study barriers to female entrepreneurship.
They found women are more likely to go into business if the rule of law is strong enough to help overcome inherently unequal relations with men.
Like Jane Jacobs, Glaeser is big believer in observing what he sees around him. “You don’t really understand a city until you’ve actually walked in the streets,” Glaeser says.
“That’s what makes Ed a first rate applied theorist,” says Gyourko. “You’ve got to get your hands messy in the data. Sometimes data is just walking around.”
While researching Triumph of the City, Glaeser explored places like Mumbai’s Dharavi quarter, which was a “completely magical experience.” Among the world’s most densely populated places, Dharavi hums with entrepreneurial energy, with potters, tailors, and other craftsmen working side by side in cramped, ill-lit quarters.
At the same time, unpaved streets, polluted air, and open sewers are reminders of the downsides of density. But Glaeser doesn’t bemoan the poverty of such places; on the contrary, he says cities attract the poor precisely because they offer opportunity. For the developing world, urbanization is the best path to prosperity.
“For all of their problems, amazing things are happening in India and sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America,” Glaeser says. “And things obviously don’t always go the right direction, but cities have been working miracles of collaboration for thousands of years, and whenever I go to a developing-world city, it is obvious to me that the age of miracles is not over.”
Opinions expressed in articles and other materials are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.
Data by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), shows that only 35 percent of students studying STEM in higher education globally are women. At primary and lower secondary levels, less than half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have no electricity, computers or even access to the internet. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
DJIBOUTI CITY, Jan 28 2020 (IPS) – Dr. Anne-Maria Brennan loved science as a young girl. But instead of encouraging her, those around her made attempts to steer her in the “right direction”. “The right direction was in nursing, teaching and secretarial courses. I was told that girls do not study physics,” she tells IPS.
“These voices were so loud that I seriously considered becoming a music teacher. But then someone sensibly told me that I could become a scientist and an amateur musician, but there was nothing like an amateur scientist who was also a professional musician,” she says.
Brennan previously served as an associate professor in Bioscience and Forensic Biology, at the School of Applied Science, London South Bank University.
“It turns out that girls could in fact study physics, or mathematics, science, technology and engineering,” she quips.
It has been five decades since Brennan swam against the tide, pursuing a career in science. But data by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), shows that globally only 35 percent of students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – or STEM – in higher education are women. Further confirming that girls are still being steered towards domestic and caring career paths.
“Gender balance in enrolment as well as inclusivity in both participation and achievements in STEM education remains a global south challenge,” Professor Kalu Mosto Onuoha, President of the Nigerian Academy of Science, tells IPS.
“Education systems will never be balanced and inclusive when half of the population is not participating at per with their counterparts in STEM education,” he adds.
Similar sentiments were shared by other delegates participating in the 3rd International Summit on Balanced and Inclusive Education currently being held in Djibouti City, Djibouti. Organised by the Education Relief Foundation (ERF), over 200 delegates and government representatives from over 35 countries are currently in the Horn of Africa nation where state leaders are expected to sign a Universal Declaration on universal inclusive education.
Unfortunately, low female representation in STEM education is a narrative that knows no boundaries. According to UNESCO, Sweden has the highest share of women graduates from STEM programmes among Nordic countries, but STEM attainment among female students in Sweden stands at 16 percent, compared to male students at 47 percent.
Brennan affirms that the numbers are similarly low in the United Kingdom but notes some improvements in the fields of general practice and dentistry, where women have taken a lead.
She says there are few women in surgery and even fewer in engineering because men in these fields are considered unfriendly and the sectors too involved and dirty.
“These wide gender gaps in developing countries are purely out of choice. Students in these countries are making the choice to pursue other interests. In developing countries the choice is made for our students by a patriarchal culture and through socialisation,” says Onuoha.
He says that these inequalities are first rooted in the exclusion and marginalisation of girls in education enrolment.
“Girls who eventually made it to school were encouraged to undertake feminine subjects like teaching. They were socialised to believe that they could only be good mothers if they took on lighter subjects,” Onuoha expounds.
But the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020 indicates that these inequalities are not limited to the lagging behind of girls at the enrolment level.
In countries such as the Southern Africa nation of Namibia where girls outpace boys in school enrolment at all levels, the gap widens in STEM education. Here, about eight percent of female students have attained STEM education, compared to 21 percent of male students.
Nonetheless, the report shines a spotlight on countries with impressive levels of STEM education uptake among their female students.
In Mauritania, for instance, attainment in STEM is at 29 percent among female students, and 31 percent among male students. In the South Asian nation of Myanmar, female students outpace male students in attainment of STEM education.
A few other countries such as the Arab country of Oman are slowly and surely closing the gender gap in STEM uptake, with 41 percent of female students and 55 percent of male students.
“In developing countries there are many concerted efforts to address the first part ofthe problem, even though painfully slowly, we are slowly closing gender gaps in education enrolment, retention and in some cases, achievements,” Professor Mahouton Norbert Hounkonnou, from the Benin National Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, tells IPS.
Hounkonnou is a full professor of mathematics and physics, and called for the demystification of sciences. “STEM education is taught as if only a few people are meant to understand but science and math is for all of us. Everybody does math on a daily basis without even knowing it.”
Hounkonnou says that balanced and inclusive education systems call for an overhaul in what is taught in STEMs, who teaches it and how it is taught. “Learners love to be engaged. Our classrooms must become more interactive. We also need a gender component, currently lacking, in many of our educational interventions,” he adds.
He called for investment in infrastructure and learning materials to improve the environment in which STEM education is provided.
U.N. research shows that countries in the sub-Sahara Africa face the biggest challenges. At the primary and lower secondary levels, less than half of schools have access to electricity, computers and internet.
“This forum provides an opportunity for us to define the shape a balanced and inclusive STEM education system should take, and make concerted efforts to build that system. It will take financial and technical resources, including the training of teachers to better interact with female learners,” says Hounkonnou.
Pupils at the Elangata Enterit boarding primary school in Kenya’s Narok County. Experts say that a balanced education includes enabling girls to participate at the same level as boys. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
DJIBOUTI CITY, Jan 27 2020 (IPS) – Fihima Mohamed’s mother never attended school and until two years ago she could not read or write. Mohamed’s mother had been born in neighbouring Somalia but was sent to Djibouti as a young girl to live with her aunt. The expectation had been that she would have a better life by escaping the ongoing conflict in her home country at the time.
Instead, Mohamed’s mother became a domestic servant to her aunt — a circumstance that showed her that her own daughter’s future would be just as difficult if she too did not go to school.
Born and raised in the Republic of Djibouti, Mohamed told IPS that most of her childhood was spent in school or studying.
Between the ages of six and 16 years, she was driven by the vivid pictures her mother painted of the life that awaited her if she did not stay in school and perform well — one of domestic abuse. “I was told that as a woman, education would give me freedom,” she said, remembering how her mother was not able to make major household decisions and did not have the freedom to determine what direction her life took.
But her mother did make a decision that determined the course of Mohamed’s life. She opted not to buy the fish her children enjoyed so much for their meals and instead spent the money on private tuition classes for her daughter to supplement her schooling.
“I attended public school during the day, and at night, two hours of private school tuition. My mother sacrificed a lot to raise 25 dollars per month to pay for these night classes,” she said, explaining that she went to those classes not for her own sake but also so that she could help her three younger siblings with their homework.
The sacrifice paid off and Mohamed was placed among the country’s top-five students for her high school final exam. She received a scholarship to study in France for four years.
Fast track to 2020, Mohamed holds a bachelor’s degree in law and political science, and a Master’s degree in refugee studies. She is a social entrepreneur, a gender and environment activist and the founder of the Women Initiative, a local social movement for the empowerment of women and girls.
She said that Djibouti is among a growing list of developing countries were education attainment levels have significantly narrowed between boys and girls. United Nations statistics indicate that the gross primary school enrolment rates for girls have risen to nearly 61 percent.
Organised by the Education Relief Foundation (ERF), over 200 delegates and government representatives from over 35 countries rallied behind an education pathway that leaves no one behind.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, there is an increasing number of countries in the global south where, on average, educational attainment gaps are now relatively small.
These countries include Cambodia, Kenya, Cuba, Myanmar and Ethiopia.
In Myanmar, for instance, primary school enrolment rates stand at 88 percent for girls, and 90 percent for boys.
Additionally, in secondary level, enrolment rate for girls is at 62 percent and 57 percent for boys.
Even at tertiary level, enrolment rates for girls stand at 19 percent, compared to 13 percent for boys.
Countries struggling with gender parity in education include Togo, Burkina Faso and Burundi.
Togolese Prime Minister Komi Selom, Klassou confirmed that alarming gender inequalities exist, despite the existence of innovative strategies towards an inclusive education system.
“We have school canteens to provide school free meals, free medical cover for school-going children and the newly approved year-on-year budgetary increase to the education sector,” he said during the summit.
The Global Gender Gap Report indicates that in Togo, enrolment in primary school is at 88 percent among girls, and 94 percent for boys.
Secondary school enrolment for girls is at 34 percent for girls and 49 percent for boys.
At tertiary level, 10 percent of girls enrol vis-à-vis 19 percent of boys.
“Efforts to narrow this gap include a new government commitment to allocate at least 25 percent of its national budget to the education sector,” he said.
Fahima Mohamed says Djibouti is among a growing list of developing countries were education attainment levels have significantly narrowed between boys and girls. She called for more investments to ensure that girls participate at the same level as boys. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
Mohamed told IPS that ongoing consultations on education will bring the global south a step closer towards “building fairer and more inclusive economies by transforming our education systems to ensure that every child has access to quality education”.
She explained that ultimately the idea was to embrace an education system that reflects the reality of children in the global south. This also included improving educational infrastructure and content so that the latter could be more diverse to reflect the multiple-cultural narrative of the global south.
Nonetheless, Sheikh Manssour Bin Mussallam, President of ERF, emphasised that balanced and inclusive education systems are not solely about having more children in classrooms, but the “construction of systems that makes exclusion impossible”.
“Our education systems should guarantee that marginalised groups participate under balanced and equitable conditions. The transformative power of education is only true if education itself is transformed and driven by forces that uphold equality and equity,” he said during the opening day of the summit.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 21 percent of girls are much more likely to be out of school at primary school age compared to 16 percent of boys.
Globally, UNESCO statistics indicate that sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have the worst rates of education exclusion. One in four children in South Asia, and one in five children in sub-Saharan Africa will never enter school.
Equally alarming, World Bank statistics show that children with a disability are more likely to never enrol in school at all. Overall, only one in four children with disabilities complete secondary school.
Additionally, primary school completion rates are 10 percentage points lower for girls with disabilities compared to girls without disabilities.
“In Sri Lanka where girls are consistently outpacing boys in both education access and achievement, our main challenge is lack of financial and technical resources to address the [requirements] of special needs children,” P.C.K. Pirisyala, director of education at the Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service, told IPS.
“Developing countries are grappling with a lack of teachers to provide adequate training and material to provide disability-inclusive education,” she said.
She further said that a lack of resources (both technical and financial) and a lack of schools equipped to accommodate special needs children has made it difficult for these children in the global south to access education and participate with their peers.
“This forum will provide the global south with a roadmap that reflects these realities, and bring us closer to the dream of balanced and inclusive education for all by 2030. This is all in line with the [U.N.] sustainable development goal four on education for all,” she concluded.
Laurence Fox has apologised to the Sikh community after he sparked a race row by claiming the inclusion of a turban-wearing soldier in Sam Mendes film 1917 was ‘incongruous’ – but in a follow up tweet said ‘I stand by everything else I said’.
The outspoken actor made the comment about the critically-acclaimed film in a podcast on Saturday while being interviewed by James Delingpole.
When asked about his remarks by GMB hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid the next day about whether the inclusion of the character was historically out-of-place, he replied: ‘I’m not a historian I don’t know.’
Sikh historian Peter Singh Bance told MailOnline that Fox should ‘check his facts’, saying: ‘Laurence Fox is incorrect with his facts as Sikhs did fight with British forces, not just with their own regiments.’
Last night, the Lewis star posted on his Twitter account and apologised for the ‘clumsy way’ he expressed himself.
When asked about his remarks by GMB hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid the next day, he told the hosts ‘I’m no historian’ and admitted he didn’t know Sikh soldiers fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the British in World War One
Laurence Fox apologised to the Sikh community after his outburst about the Sam Mendes
The outspoken actor’s apology only extended to the Sikh community for his comments about 1917
Fox is pictured arriving at the Good Morning Britain studios in central London yesterday where he told the programme ‘I’m not a historian’
He said: ‘Fellow humans who are #Sikhs. I am as moved by the sacrifices your relatives made as I am by the loss of all those who die in war, whatever creed or colour.
‘Please accept my apology for being clumsy in the way I have expressed myself over this matter in recent days.’
But in a follow up tweet soon after, he said: ‘I stand by everything else I said and will continue to do so. Sleep well.’
The epic film follows two young British soldiers tasked with traversing no-man’s land with a message as the Germans pull back from the Western Front.
The Lewis star said that ‘forcing diversity on people’ is ‘institutionally racist’ after saying that the inclusion of Nabhaan Rizwan portraying Sepoy Jondalar was not in keeping with the film’s surroundings.
Speaking on podcast, The Delingpod, Mr Fox said: ‘It’s very heightened awareness of the colour of someone’s skin because of the oddness in the casting. Even in 1917 they’ve done it with a Sikh soldier.
‘Which is great, it’s brilliant, but you’re suddenly aware there were Sikhs fighting in this war. And you’re like ‘ok’. You’re now diverting me away from what the story is.’
Pictured: Ranvir Singh, Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid with Laurence Fox Good Morning Britain today
Asked if he would be offered ‘more, better roles’ if he espoused ‘different views’, Fox agrees that is the case, but adds: ‘What’s the point? You don’t want to go into a work environment and have someone thought-police you’. He is pictured speaking on Question Time
This time he’s taking aim not at an ethnicity lecturer from a provincial university, but Oscar-winner Sir Sam Mendes and, in particular, the film director’s World War I epic, 1917. Director Sam Mendes is pictured above on set
The 41-year-old actor questioned the credibility of the storyline and said the casting of Mr Rizwan caused ‘a very heightened awareness of the colour of someone’s skin’ because of ‘the oddness of the casting’.
He praised the performance of Mr Rizwan himself, saying it was ‘great’, adding that the inclusion of a Sikh soldier in the ranks ‘didn’t bother me particularly’.
But he added that the inclusion ‘did sort of flick me out of what is essentially a one-shot film [because] it’s just incongruous with the story’.
Sikh soldiers were present at some of the conflict’s bloodiest battles, including Ypres and the Somme.
Mr Fox was a guest panellist on Question Time last week when an audience member called him a ‘white, privileged male’ and he called her description of him racist.
The actor has also previously said that ‘woke’ people are ‘fundamentally racist’.
Laurence Fox (pictured, left, with interviewer Julie Hartley-Brewer on Monday) hit back at Lily Allen (right, crying at a migrant camp in Calais) after she told him to stick to acting despite her regular interventions on political issues
He also spoke about his dispute with singer Lily Allen who she was ‘sick to death’ of ‘luvvies’ like Fox who are guilty of ‘forcing their opinions on everybody else’.
She added: ‘He’ll never have to deal with what normal people have to deal with in his gated community.’
She concluded the rant by saying that he should ‘stick to acting mate, instead of ranting about things you don’t know about’.
Fox mocked her statement, saying that she had a ‘privileged’ upbringing herself and pointing out he doesn’t live in a gated community.
He said sarcastically on Talk Radio: ‘She’s had a pretty privileged upbringing but she speaks for the common man doesn’t she.’
Mr Fox also slammed ‘woke’ culture, a term that originally was used to positively convey an alertness to oppression but is now also used derisively as a term for those who argue that white privilege stops people like Fox being able to see racism.
Fox also said that it was the woke who are actually guilty of racism against the white people they accuse.
‘What they are accusing you of is what they are,’ he said. ‘They are everything they accuse you of. The wokist are fundamentally racist.’ He added: ‘Identity politics is extremely racist.’
The truth behind 1917’s Sikh soldier: Troops from the Empire DID fight in same regiments as the British in WWI as top historian slams Laurence Fox over claim Sam Mendes’ blockbuster was ‘racist’ for including Indian recruits
By Mark Duell and Shekhar Bhatia for MailOnline
Soldiers from foreign countries served shoulder-to-shoulder alongside British forces in the same regiments during the First World War, military experts said today.
More than three million soldiers and labourers from across the British Empire joined the British Army in their own regiments during the conflict from 1914 to 1918.
But other foreign soldiers also fought within British regiments, it emerged after actor Laurence Fox criticised the ‘incongruous’ inclusion of a Sikh soldier in the film 1917.
Sikh historian Peter Singh Bance said Sikhs and other Indians fought with the British Army corps, such as the 1st Manchesters and the 47th Sikhs fighting as one.
Sikh soldiers from the Indian Service Corps with British Army soldiers on the Western Front in the war in 1916. ISC members were from all over India and also performed labouring tasks
George MacKay plays Lance Corporal Schofield (centre) in 1917, alongside Nabhaan Rizwan, who plays Sikh soldier Sepoy Jondalar. They are pictured trying to push a truck out of mud
Mr Bance today told Fox to ‘check his facts’, saying: ‘Laurence Fox is incorrect with his facts as Sikhs did fight with British forces, not just with their own regiments.’
He told MailOnline: ‘There were definitely Sikhs and other Indian soldiers who fought among the British Army corps, and they wore the same uniform.’
The details come after Fox questioned the storyline of 1917 over Sikh soldier Sepoy Jondalar, played by Nabhaan Rizwan, being in the ranks of British forces.
Fox, 41, told writer James Delingpole’s podcast that it causes ‘a very heightened awareness of the colour of someone’s skin’ because of ‘the oddness of the casting’.
Around 1.5million men were recruited from India, while Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland gave a further 1.3million soldiers.
A Sikh soldier lines up with three British comrades on the Western Front during the war in 1917
1917 director Sir Sam Mendes speaks to Nabhaan Rizwan on set during the film’s production
Some men from the West Indies served in regular British Army units, but most of the 15,000 involved were in their own regiments and served in France, Italy and Africa.
Indian troops fought against the Ottoman Turks in Palestine; African troops helped contain the Germans in East Africa; and Newfoundlanders fought at the Somme.
Estimated deaths by British Empire country
Australia – 62,000
Canada – 65,000
India – 74,000
New Zealand – 18,000
Newfoundland – 1,000
South Africa – 9,000
West Indies – 1,000
United Kingdom – 885,000
Figures rounded to the nearest 1,000 after being compiled by the Centre Européen Robert Schuman in France
Mr Bance said of Fox’s comments: ‘This has nothing to do with diversity, history is history and we can’t distort it for a film. Over 1.5million Indians fought in World War One, over 80,000 Indians died.
‘Sam Mendes should be commended as finally World War One films are becoming historically accurate, as earlier films totally ignored the presence of Sikh and other colonial soldiers who fought for the Empire alongside the British
‘Laurence’s comments are totally out of context as the presence of one Sikh is not to distract the audience but to give historical accuracy which most World War One films lack.
‘When over 1.5 million Indian soldiers fought in this campaign, how can showing one Sikh soldier be distracting?’
Mr Bance added: ‘There were definitely Sikhs and other Indian soldiers who fought among the British Army corps, and they wore the same uniform.
A patrol of Indian lancers near Amiens in France soon after the outbreak of war in autumn 1914. The I Indian Corps of 3rd (Lahore) and 7th (Meerut) were part of Indian Expeditionary Force A
Indian cavalry after a charge at the Somme during the First World War on July 14, 1916
‘For example The 1st Manchesters were fighting with members of the 47th Sikhs brigade as one.
‘And the 7th Ferozepur Brigade consisted of 47th Sikhs and the London Brigade.
‘Sikhs not only fought from within their own Sikh regiments but they were also in the Punjabi Regiments, cavalry, sappers and miners regiments as well.
‘There was also Sikhs and other Indian soldiers who were present in British Army service corps working as labourers too.’
MailOnline has approached Sir Sam Mendes’s representatives for a comment.
Britain started the war with 700,000 trained soldiers, before thousands of untrained volunteers also signed up in 1914 and conscription was introduced two years later.
A Sikh regiment marching in France in 1914, where Indian soldiers made a huge contribution
Two Senegalese soldiers serving in the French Army as infantrymen, in June 1917. They were part of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais and from the Bambara, a Mandé ethnic group in West Africa
But the size of the military was also significantly bolstered by forces from across the Empire – which later became the Commonwealth – all of which had backed Britain after it declared war against Germany.
Laurence Fox (pictured on the BBC’s Question Time last Thursday) questioned the Sikh soldier’s appearance in the film 1917
The Indian sub-continent of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh had sent two infantry and two cavalry divisions to the Western Front by the end of 1914.
In 1915, Indian troops fought against the Ottoman Turks in Palestine and Mesopotamia (now Iraq), and alongside British, Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli.
Some 1.27million Indians voluntarily served as combatants and labourers, also helping Allied forces occupy former enemy territory in East Africa and the Balkans.
Dr Simon Walker, a military historian at the University of Strathclyde, said: ‘The remarks by Fox are very much ill informed.’
He said more than 74,000 Indian soldiers died in service in the First World War, and claimed they were of ‘paramount importance’ at key battles including Ypres in 1914, Neuve Chappelle and Gallipoli.
The expert said soldiers from different races were mainly separate at the start of the war, but this changed as huge losses meant men were transferred around the various battle grounds.
Indian troops march through France in August 1914. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh had already sent two infantry and two cavalry divisions to the Western Front by the end of 1914
Dr Walker added: ‘Therefore by the middle of the war it would not be unusual for sikh soldiers to serve side by side with their British comrades, as was necessitated by the demands of the war and losses.
‘This was visible in Britain, as burial practices were briefly changed to allow open air cremation for such soldiers.’
Sikh historian Peter Singh Bance (pictured) told Laurence Fox to ‘check his facts’
African troops were also involved in containing the Germans in East Africa and defeating them in West Africa – in an area where Europeans had struggled in the hot climate.
By the end of the war, the ‘British Army’ in East Africa was mainly soldiers from Nigeria, Gold Coast (Ghana), Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda and Nyasaland (Malawi).
Some 60,000 labourers came from South Africa, but black South Africans were only allowed a logistical role because the country’s government feared arming them.
White South African units were sent to the Western Front and 3,153 were involved in a battle at Delville Wood on the Somme in July 1916, with only 750 left unharmed.
Around 15,000 men from the Caribbean enlisted, with a few serving in regular British Army units – although most were in the West India Regiment and the British West Indies Regiment.
African-American soldiers return home from Europe after the First World War in 1918
They served in France, Italy, Africa and the Middle East.
Canada also made a huge contribution to the war, with the Canadian Expeditionary Force fighting in most of the major battles on the Western Front from 1915.
Descendant of Sikh WWI soldier praises contribution of troops
Dr Tejpal Singh Ralmill, 40, whose Sikh great-great-grandfather fought alongside British servicemen in the First World War, spoke today about the contribution of Sikhs to the military.
Dr Tejpal Singh Ralmill with a photo of his great-great grandfather Major Bawa Singh at a Royal Albert Hall Remembrance event
He told MailOnline: ‘A lot has been done over the last five years to raise awareness of the fact that many thousands of Sikh soldiers fought bravely alongside Western troops.
‘My great-great grandfather Bawa Singh was with the 23rd Sikh Pioneers and spent six years fighting in Aden, Egypt and Palestine.
‘He told my grandfather of the loneliness of being so far away from home and from his family. There were also language problems with unfamiliar people in unfamiliar surroundings.
‘The British and other western troops could go home on leave every three months, but the Indian soldiers carried on as they were a long way from home and that continued abroad even after Armistice Day.’
They were at the Somme, Passchendaele and in the Hundred Days offensives of 1918. Nearly 10 per cent of the 620,000 Canadians who enlisted were killed in the war.
Newfoundland, which only became part of Canada in 1949, fought at Gallipoli in 1915, but was almost wiped out at Beaumont Hamel on the Somme the next year.
And more than 410,000 Australians served in the war, suffering about 200,000 casualties in campaigns at Gallipoli, on the Western Front and in the Middle East.
New Zealand forces helped Australia capture Germany’s colonies in the Pacific and fought on the Western Front, with 5 per cent of the country’s men aged 15-49 killed.
The Sikh Network, a collective of Sikh activists and professionals in Britain, also hit out at Fox – saying his remarks were ‘offensive’ and needed retraction.
Manvir Bhogal from the organisation told MailOnline: ‘Thousands of Sikhs saw battle at the front line and many died. It is highly offensive and inappropriate for Laurence Fox to term the inclusion of a single Sikh soldier in Sam Mendes’ production in order to at least represent the extent of war with a microcosm of diversity of historic fact as ‘incongruous’ .
‘It is outrageous and of deep hurt to Sikhs not just in the UK but throughout the world and to the rest of those whose communities were forcibly sent to war.
‘His comments should be retracted with an apology immediately.’
‘Where this doesn’t take place, it marginalizes entire communities that, in this case, made a huge sacrifice and contribution to the welfare and protection of freedoms for all mankind despite the oppression being faced due to European imperialism itself back home.’
Earlier this week, Fox told Mr Delingpole’s podcast that the Sikh character distracted from what the story was about.
He questioned the credibility of the storyline and said the casting of Rizwan caused ‘a very heightened awareness of the colour of someone’s skin’ because of ‘the oddness of the casting’.
He praised the performance of Rizwan himself, saying it was ‘great’, adding that the inclusion of a Sikh soldier in the ranks ‘didn’t bother me particularly’.
But he added that the inclusion ‘did sort of flick me out of what is essentially a one-shot film [because] it’s just incongruous with the story’.
Sir Sam Mendes with actors Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay on the set of 1917
