The Inter Press Service co-founder is part of a vanishing breed
Dr. Roberto Savio is somewhat unique as an eyewitness to history and builder of institutions, a man who turns his visions into reality
ROME, Feb 7 2022 (IPS) – We are sitting in the heart of Rome, Via Panisperna, where Dr. Roberto Savio has had his office for the last 58 years. His energy and activity, both mental and physical, belies his age. At 87, he walks the 7 kilometres from his house to his office building and climbs two flights of stairs to reach his office. When I caution him about the traffic on the roads of Rome as he walks home every evening, he is very relaxed about it. “Look here, Rome is over 2,000 years old, and these roads were meant for pedestrians, not cars.”
I have known Dr. Savio, arguably one of Europe and the Third World’s pre-eminent public intellectuals (he has Italian and Argentine nationality) for the last 35 years. He is probably the only living journalist who was witness to three major summits of the 20th Century: Bandung Afro-Asian Summit 1955; the meeting of Tito, Nasser and Nehru at Brioni, Yugoslavia in 1960, which laid the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement; and the 1978 first-ever North-South Summit at Cancun.
Injustice is supreme, during the Coronavirus pandemic, some people still got a $1 billion dollar bonus, with the 50 richest persons increasing their wealth by 27%, while over 500 million of the poorest, got pushed below the poverty line.
Dr. Roberto Savio
Dr. Savio also cofounded, with Pero Ivačić, the Non-Aligned Press Pool, apart from the first-ever Third World news agency, Inter Press Service (IPS), plus now the aptly named ‘Other News’.
Dr. Savio is somewhat unique as an eyewitness to history and builder of institutions, since he’s not just a man of ideas but also a man of action, a doer who has the will to translate his vision into reality. In 1964, four Western news agencies — Associated Press (AP), and United Press International (UPI), both American; Agence France Presse (AFP) and the British Reuters — jointly controlled 96% of the world’s free information.
It was a near total monopoly of how and what information was disseminated. It was in this context that Dr. Savio, along with an Argentinean journalist, founded the Inter Press Service, the first Third World News agency with its headquarters in Rome.
And IPS, guided by its guru, had the audacity to challenge this monopoly of news and information, which is a subject of a number of studies. Noam Chomsky calls it Manufacturing Consent and Media Control: Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. Edward Said published a landmark study, Covering Islam: How the media and experts determine how we see the rest of the world.
It was thus no accident that major wars were started on the ‘big lie’ peddled by a pliant media by first ‘manufacturing consent’ so that wars would have political backing. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which laid the groundwork for the Vietnam War, or the 2003 lie about Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ as a precursor to war, are both cases in point.
Dr. Savio was a hands-on boss at IPS (I know it because I worked for him at IPS for close to a decade!), personally presiding over editorial meetings at such locations as Manila, Bangkok and Rome, giving ideas and directions but always willing to listen and learn. He led IPS with a crusader’s passion to present a perspective that was different, and, at times, opposed to what the ‘mainstream’ Western media outlets were promoting. That idealism of the 1970s and 1980s has given way to pessimism and disappointment in Dr. Savio as the divisions, class and cultural, deepen amidst an increasingly polarised world.
He is deeply disappointed with two erstwhile democracies, the United States and India. “The America we knew no longer exists,” laments Dr. Savio wistfully. “That America has gone now.” In fact, he feels that political polarisation is so deep in the US, with 60 million evangelicals (the Religious Right) in the US pushing the country rightwards, that he’s convinced Donald Trump will be back with a bang in 2024!
Ever the empirical fact-checker that he is, Dr. Savio cites a PEW public opinion poll to corroborate his assertion. In the 1960s, he says, 8% of Democrats and 12% of Republicans didn’t want their children to get married to someone from the ‘other party’. Today, 88% of Democrats and 93% of Republicans have such beliefs, signifying an almost bridgeable political divide. No wonder, in the 2020 US Presidential elections, Biden won with 80 million popular votes while Trump came a close second with a record 75 million votes, most of whom are still convinced that the 2020 elections were ‘stolen’!
The other country that has disappointed Dr. Savio is India because “Nehru’s India has ceased to exist.” He adds that “Nehru was a very careful statesman, he didn’t want confrontation within India as he understood the diversity of people and the diversity of opinion that exists in India.” Dr. Savio then adds with a note of sorrow similar to his lament about the USA, “that Nehruvian India doesn’t exist any longer. Modi has divided India, Modi has marginalised Muslims.”
Looking at the global media, economic and political landscape, Dr. Savio feels three factors are going to be decisive in transforming the world in the 21st Century.
Considering the global media landscape, Dr. Savio sees the “print media as having a less and less of a role, as most of the print media is neither making money nor posting correspondents abroad, except perhaps El Pais, Le Monde, The Washington Post and the Guardian.
There was a time when Beirut had no less than 75 foreign correspondents.” He dismisses social media as “useless, dividing the world into bubbles, with 7 seconds as the average attention span of a teenager using the social media.” However, Dr. Savio understands how social media can be a ‘weapon of choice’ for some politicians, e.g. Donald Trump who has 86 million Twitter followers.
Dr. Savio adds in such a situation, “why should Trump bother about the American print media whose total daily circulation stands at 60 million, with quality print publications at less than 10 million.” Moreover, “media is now more local, no longer global.”
The second important change, in Dr. Savio’s view, is the crisis of capitalism, citing a quote of Nikita Khrushchev in 1960 that “capitalism cannot solve social problems.”
Dr. Savio adds that most of the capitalist West is also facing other crises, with conspiracy theories galore ranging from the anti-vaccine campaign to strange notions with 60 million Evangelicals in the USA convinced of the second coming of Christ, from QA Non to the ‘Birds Aren’t Real’ madcap conspiracy concoctions, which however have garnered support amongst a large section of Americans.
Despite the rightwing racist campaign against immigrants, Western economies increasingly won’t be able to function without foreign workers. Dr. Savio cites figures: “Germany needs 600,000 new migrant labour, while Canada needs 300,000” for skills and work that locals aren’t willing to do anymore. The core issue is that “society has lost its moral compass, with the culture of greed paramount” in the capitalist West.
Given this context of a ‘greed is good’ culture, Dr. Savio likens talk of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the part of big companies as “locking the stables after the horses have bolted.” Actually, Dr. Savio rightly concludes: “the capitalist system has collapsed.”
However, the third factor is Dr.Savio’s biggest worry: the future of Europe and the looming New Cold War. He is highly critical of NATO since “it’s a structure of war, always searching for new enemies, and pushing Russia closer to China.” Criticising NATO for adding China to its list of “major challenges and threats,”
Dr. Savio questions: “by which stretch of imagination is China part of the North Atlantic? This is an exercise in futility.” Moreover, he is convinced that “Trump will come back in 2024, and one thing is for sure, Trump is not interested in spending American money on war.” Perhaps the only silver lining in an otherwise gloomy scenario. With the exit of Merkel, Europe is leaderless.
Dr. Savio then quotes his late friend, the former UN Secretary General Dr. Boutrus Boutrus Ghali, as telling him “the Americans are lousy allies and terrible enemies,” and the biggest problem is that “the Americans don’t want to be told yes, they want to be told, yes sir!” Thankfully, in a world of multi-polarity requiring multilateralism, there are very few countries in today’s world who will simply acquiesce to US bidding with a nod of “Yes Sir!”
Dr Roberto Savio is actually part of a vanishing breed, the ‘last of the Mohicans,’ idealists who were builders in the quest for a better tomorrow, for whom the good fight is to present the truth, the unvarnished truth, while giving a voice to the voiceless, a task he has admirably performed. More power to his pen!
Senator Mushahid Hussain is an elected Senator from Pakistan’s Federal Capital, Islamabad. He is currently Chairman, Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. He has been Minister for Information, Tourism & Culture, Journalist, university teacher and political analyst. He has a Master’s degree from the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC.
Sri Lankan Buddhist monks at the UN General Assembly session commemorating Vesak. Credit: Sri Lanka’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations
LONDON, Feb 3 2022 (IPS) – Driven by unprecedented hardship to pass round the begging bowl, Sri Lanka has become the centre of a tussle between Asia’s two superpowers.
There was a time in Asia’s predominantly Buddhist countries when saffron-robed monks walked from house to house in the mornings, standing outside in silence as lay people served up freshly cooked food into their ‘alms bowls’. The food was then taken to the temples, where it was shared among the monks.
That religious tradition has now largely given to other ways of serving alms to monks.
Today, governments and their aggrandising acolytes have converted this respected and virtuous tradition into one of begging richer nations to rescue them from economic deprivation, brought on largely by failed promises and disjointed and ill-conceived foreign and national policies.
This ‘begging bowl’ mentality in search of ‘alms’ is more likely to succeed if a nation is strategically-located in an area of big power contestation. Sri Lanka is just that, situated in the Indian Ocean and only a few nautical miles from the vital international sea lanes carrying goods from West to East and vice versa.
The country’s economy has been caught in a real bind. Buffeted by the Covid pandemic on the one hand and, on the other, ego-inflating economic and fiscal policies introduced by the new president Gotabaya Rajapaksa shortly before the country was pounded by the pandemic, Sri Lanka now has to beg or borrow to keep its head above water.
By December, Sri Lanka’s parlous foreign reserves situation had dropped to a perilous $1.2 billion – enough for three weeks of imports. The foreign debt obligation of $500 million that needed to be met last month was only the beginning. Another $1 billion is due in July. The total pay-off in 2022 will amount to some $7 billion.
Meanwhile the pandemic has virtually killed tourism, one of the country’s main foreign exchange earners, driving the hospitality industry into free-fall. If this was not bad enough, the Central Bank’s attempts to put a tight squeeze on incoming foreign currency led the country’s migrant labour remittances to drop drastically as overseas workers turned to the black market to earn real value for their money sent to families at home.
But nothing has had such widespread political repercussions as the government’s ill-advised policy of banning overnight chemical fertilisers last May, ahead of the country’s main agricultural season between October and April.
Its over-ambitious agenda of trying to turn Sri Lanka into the world’s first totally ‘green agriculture’ was laudable enough, but was botched when the sudden ban on chemical fertilisers and other agrochemicals – used by farmers for the last 50 years or so – left rice farming and other cultivations in disarray and farmers inevitably confused.
The government’s agenda of trying to turn Sri Lanka into the world’s first totally ‘green agriculture’ was botched.
While agricultural scientists and other experts warned of an impending food scarcity due to failed harvests and sparsely cultivated fields, the government ignored the warnings, sacking heads of the Agriculture Ministry and removing its qualified agricultural experts for spreading doom and gloom.
Against this backdrop of confused governance, probable food shortages due to poor harvests and slashing of imports and even essential medicines for lack of foreign currency, growing public unrest has seen even farmers take to the streets.
Consequently, a once-buoyant government confident of public popularity, especially among the Sinhala-Buddhist voters and the rural community, began to look beyond its faithful ally and ‘all weather’ friend China for ‘alms’ to pull it out of the morass.
China has already planted a large footprint in Sri Lanka, with massive infrastructure projects such as sea and airports in strategic areas, which allowed a monitoring of international sea lanes to make neighbouring India worry.
A major Chinese presence in Sri Lanka could endanger India’s security at a time when China continues to militarily pressurise India in the Himalayas.
From the early 1950s Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, and China had established close ties. Despite threats of sanctions by the US, Colombo sold natural rubber to China – then involved in the Korean War –in exchange for rice, marking the beginning of the long standing ‘Rubber-Rice Pact’.
As long as China’s immediate concern was the Pacific theatre, where the US and its allies remained dominant, and China faced territorial disputes in the South China sea and elsewhere, India was not overly concerned with China-Sri Lanka bilateral ties.
But as soon as China began to expand into the Indian Ocean, challenging what India considered its sphere of influence, New Delhi’s concerns multiplied considerably, as did its disquiet over China’s growing influence over Colombo.
The 70th anniversary of that Sino-Ceylon agreement, which cemented bilateral relations at a time when the People’s Republic of China was not even a member of the UN, was commemorated last month when China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Colombo in early January during an influence-building visit to Africa, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
This is the third high level visit by a Chinese official in little over a year, beginning with former foreign minister and Politburo member Yang Jiechi in October 2020, and followed last April by Chinese Defence Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe, a visible signal to India and US-led ‘Quad’ countries the importance that China attaches to its relations with Sri Lanka.
But Sri Lanka’s struggle against dwindling reserves, the need for foreign investment and expansion of trade relations at a time of economic hardship has shown the Rajapaksa regime that reliance on China alone will not suffice.
A more balanced foreign policy and an equidistant relationship between Asia’s two superpowers cannot remain at the level of diplomatic rhetoric. It is an imperative, given Sri Lanka’s geographical location in close proximity to India and the historical, cultural and ethnic ties with it huge neighbour.
Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Beijing, Dr Palitha Kohona, said recently that Colombo should not depend on China forever – a valid piece of advice Colombo should seriously consider.
India also cannot ignore that, security-wise, Sri Lanka lies in India’s underbelly, whose vulnerability was exposed during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. So a major Chinese presence in Sri Lanka could endanger India’s own security at a time when China continues to militarily pressurise India in the Himalayas.
Last December Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa’s hurried visit to New Delhi, even as his maiden budget was still being debated in parliament, was indicative of Sri Lanka’s anxiety to seek India’s economic and financial assistance, without depending solely on Beijing.
That visit led to the two countries agreeing on ‘four pillars’ of cooperation in the short term, including emergency support of a $1 billion line of credit for importing food and medicines and a currency swap to bolster Colombo’s dwindling foreign reserves.
Other assistance included investment in an oil tank farm for oil storage in northeastern Trincomalee, close to the vital natural harbour that served the British well during the Second World War.
An Indian company, the Adani Group, has already won a stake in the Colombo port, where it will engage in developing the western terminal while the Chinese build the eastern wing.
Meanwhile, Colombo is having talks with China for a new loan besides the $500 million loan and a $1.5 billion currency swap.
While the two major Indian Ocean powers tussle for supremacy in this vital maritime region, Sri Lanka is beginning to understand that it sometimes pays to dip one’s oars in troubled waters.
Source: Asian Affairs, a current affairs magazine.
Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s deputy high commissioner in London
Muslims at a mosque in Sri Lanka. Credit: Financial Times, Sri Lanka
BRUSSELS, Jan 25 2022 (IPS) – On 28 October, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed the militant Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara to head a presidential task force on legal reforms, shocking many in Sri Lanka and beyond. Gnanasara is the public face of the country’s leading anti-Muslim campaign group, Bodu Bala Sena (Army of Buddhist Power, or BBS). He is widely accused of inciting inter-communal violence, including two deadly anti-Muslim pogroms in June 2014 and March 2018.
Convicted of contempt of court for a separate incident, Gnanasara was sentenced to six years in prison but received a presidential pardon from Rajapaksa’s predecessor, Maithripala Sirisena, in his final months in office. The act of clemency came after intensive lobbying by nationalist monks and an upsurge of anti-Muslim sentiment in the aftermath of the 2019 Easter bombings, a series of attacks on churches and tourist hotels carried out by a small group claiming allegiance to the Islamic State, or ISIS.
Observers across the Sri Lankan political spectrum, including some Buddhist nationalists, expressed dismay – at times, outrage – that the president could name someone whose disrespect for the law and hostility to non-Sinhala Buddhist minorities are a matter of public record to head a commission ostensibly designed to prevent “discrimination” and ensure “humanitarian values”. Critics have called the appointment “irrational” and even “incomprehensible”.
In fact, it is anything but. The Rajapaksa government is deeply unpopular, including among large sections of its core Sinhala Buddhist constituency, and desperate to divert public attention from its economic mismanagement.
There is thus a clear if deeply unfortunate logic for it to bring back to the fore the best-known proponent of a theme that was key to getting the president elected: fear of Muslims as a source of “religious extremism”.
While it was in one sense surprising to see the open affirmation of Rajapaksa’s active support for the controversial monk after many years of distancing himself from Gnanasara, tight links between Sri Lankan government officials and the Buddhist clergy are nothing new. The 1978 constitution gives Buddhism the “foremost place” in the country’s religious landscape and the state the duty to “protect” it.
There is nothing comforting in this history, however. The Sinhala Buddhist majoritarian nature of the Sri Lankan state – ie, the extent to which the state represents and enforces majority interests at the expense of the rights of other communities – has had disastrous effects on the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.
The state’s transition from being structurally discriminatory to openly hostile toward Tamils (who are Hindu or Christian) – a process fed by Sinhala politicians’ warnings about the threat the community allegedly posed – ultimately led to three decades of devastating civil war.
During that period, from 1983 to 2009, terrorist attacks by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam provided some objective grounds for Sinhalese fears, reinforcing the narrative that the majority community was under threat. Now, there is growing reason to fear that this pattern may be repeating itself in the Sri Lankan state’s interactions with its Muslim citizens.
Credit: Sunday Times, Sri Lanka
The Rise of Anti-Muslim Politics
In November 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s successful campaign for Sri Lanka’s presidency made much of the slogan “one country, one law”, which had gained popularity after the 2019 Easter bombings. Its ambiguity was useful: at one level, it could be interpreted as merely asking for uniform treatment of all citizens and resonated with voters angry at the impunity with which politicians and their powerful supporters are able to violate the law.
But its discriminatory implication was also obvious from the start, hinting at a need to “protect” the Buddhist nature of state and society by eliminating the separate rules and treatment that many Sinhalese believe Muslims use to gain economic and political advantages.
Many Sinhalese have for years held the view that Sri Lankan Muslims are more concerned with advancing their own interests than working for the larger national interest. Even during the civil war, when Muslims remained overwhelmingly loyal to the state and played a critical role in fighting the Tamil insurgency, one regularly heard complaints in Sinhalese (as well as Tamil) circles that they were exploiting the conflict for personal and collective economic benefit.
Because Muslim lawmakers held the balance of power in parliament between the two major Sinhala-dominated parties, they were commonly accused of using their “kingmaker” role to gain undue advantages for their co-religionists.
By the early 2000s, many Sinhalese had also begun to express discomfort at the increasing numbers of Muslims, especially women, wearing religious attire and the growing focus among Muslims on practices meant to demonstrate religious piety. Many interpreted this trend as Muslims deliberately distancing themselves from the majority.
With the arrival of BBS ultra-nationalists on the political scene in late 2012 – whose message was amplified by the smaller militant Sinhalese groups Sinhala Ravaya and Ravana Balakaya – the public portrayal of Sri Lankan Muslims rapidly took on more overtly hostile forms. (The decade earlier had seen organised Buddhist activism, at times violent, directed against the growing number of evangelical churches; pressure on Christian evangelicals continues today, though not on the scale of anti-Muslim campaigns.)
At the height of its influence, in 2013 and 2014, BBS dominated news coverage and helped set the political agenda through rallies, speeches and vigilante actions aimed at containing the threat Muslims’ alleged “extremism” posed to Sri Lanka’s Sinhala Buddhist character. The range of allegations promoted by BBS and like-minded organisations, often through online hate speech, was broad and shifting.
They claimed that population growth meant that Muslims would eventually overtake the Sinhalese majority; that Muslim-owned businesses were secretly distributing products to sterilise Sinhalese in order to keep their numbers down; and that the system of halal food labelling was encroaching on the religious rights of others and covertly funding Islamist militants.
More generally, conservative religious practices adopted by increasing numbers of Muslims in a quest for greater piety were read by ultra-nationalists as evidence of growing “extremism” that threatened other communities. These charges were based on either outright falsehoods or malicious misinterpretations of complex social and religious developments among Sri Lankan Muslims.
The anti-Muslim rhetoric helped set off inter-communal violence late in the presidency of Gotabaya’s brother Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005-2015). These years saw a series of attacks on Muslim-owned businesses (with many alleging that Sinhala business rivals were backing the attackers) and disruption of political meetings held by anyone daring to challenge the Buddhist militants, against the backdrop of mass rallies denouncing the alleged threat posed by Muslims’ “extremism”.
In a June 2014 speech in the town of Aluthgama, Gnanasara declared to a large crowd: “This country still has a Sinhala police. A Sinhala army. If a single Sinhalese is touched, that will be the end of them all [Muslims]”. Minutes later, hundreds of his supporters marched through a nearby Muslim neighbourhood, sparking two days of devastation that left three Muslims and one Tamil security guard dead. Sinhala rioters, many of them brought in from outside the area, targeted mosques and Muslim-owned shops and homes for arson and destruction. The police were widely accused of standing by or even assisting the rioters.
Despite government denials, many independent observers told Crisis Group at the time that the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration was actively supporting the BBS and other anti-Muslim campaigns. They suspected the government of executing an electoral strategy designed to consolidate the Sinhala vote behind the government, which projected itself as the defender of Sinhalese Buddhist identity. The appearance of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, then defence secretary, at a BBS event in March 2013, and his known connections with senior monks associated with the group, fuelled the speculation.
More tangible evidence of state backing lay in the fact that police gave BBS and like-minded groups permission to hold rallies at a time when government critics were not allowed to do so. Police took no apparent action, moreover, to prevent or investigate repeated vigilante raids on Muslim-owned shops or violent efforts to silence critics of militant Buddhist organisations.
Nor was anyone prosecuted for any of these crimes. Multiple sources told Crisis Group that Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police Anura Senanayake, who worked closely with Gotabaya at the time, led efforts to persuade victims not to press charges. Following Mahinda’s defeat in the January 2015 election, officials announced they had evidence of close ties between Buddhist militants and military intelligence units, confirming what Muslim community leaders had previously told Crisis Group.
With the 2015 election of President Maithripala Sirisena, representing a united opposition determined to end the Rajapaksas’ rule, the strategy of demonising Muslims for electoral ends seemed to have failed. Sirisena’s yahapaalanaya (good governance) coalition won in part through strong Muslim and Tamil backing based on its promises to end the BBS-led reign of terror.
But while the new administration stopped tacitly encouraging anti-Muslim violence and hate speech, it lacked the political courage – and possibly the necessary support within the police and intelligence agencies – to crack down on Buddhist militant groups.
After a brief lull in anti-Muslim activism, 2016 and 2017 saw a series of small attacks on Muslim businesses by unknown assailants, encouraged by sustained hate speech campaigns in traditional and social media, backed by effective local networks.
In February 2018, Buddhist militants in Ampara damaged a mosque and Muslim-owned shops as the police looked on, following social media rumours that a Muslim-owned restaurant had injected sterilising chemicals into Sinhala customers’ food. The following month, four days of anti-Muslim rioting shook the central hill district of Kandy, sparked by the death of a Sinhala man assaulted weeks earlier by four Muslim men.
Gnanasara visited the victim’s family and later joined other militant leaders to address a crowd of protesters just hours before the riots began. Videos later appeared to show local politicians from the Rajapaksa family’s party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, taking part in the mayhem. Two people were killed, many injured, hundreds of Muslim-owned houses and shops destroyed, and at least a dozen mosques damaged. The violence was severe enough for President Sirisena to declare a state of emergency, during which the army eventually brought things under control.
President Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and senior ministers all condemned the violence and promised tough action in response. But despite hundreds of arrests, including of several prominent Buddhist activists, no one was held accountable for these incidents, which included well-documented attacks on Muslims by security forces, with eyewitnesses telling Crisis Group of numerous cases of complicity between the police and Buddhist rioters.
In August 2018, courts eventually convicted Gnanasara of contempt of court and criminal intimidation of a prominent Sinhala human rights activist. Many hailed his six-year sentence as a landmark, though Gnanasara has faced no jail time for attacks on or other actions against Muslims, and most of the slow-moving criminal cases against him in lower courts have now been dropped.
The partial victory over impunity was, however, short-lived. In 2019, in the aftermath of the horrific Easter Sunday suicide attacks, the Sri Lankan state for the first time adopted policies that directly discriminated against the Muslim minority. With tensions running high, President Sirisena’s government used the post-bombing state of emergency to prohibit the niqab, or full face covering, invoking national security concerns (the ban was rescinded in August 2019 when the emergency was lifted).
It also enacted new rules for government employees that, in effect, barred the full-length abaya, worn by many Muslim women teachers, especially in the Eastern Province (these were later withdrawn after being challenged by Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission). Anxious to salvage his sinking political fortunes as the November 2019 presidential election drew near, Sirisena then pardoned Gnanasara.
The nationalist monk immediately leapt into the political fray, joining his peers in protests demanding the resignation of Muslim ministers Rishad Bathiudeen and Azath Salley, accusing them – to date without convincing evidence – of involvement in the Easter attacks.
For many Sinhalese, especially Christians, as well as some Tamils, the Easter attacks seemed to confirm earlier warnings of a growing threat from “Islamic extremism”. Authorities responded to these fears in the attacks’ aftermath with what appeared to be the criminalisation of Muslims’ everyday practices.
Police arrested more than two thousand Muslims under emergency and terrorism laws, in all but a few cases with no evidence of links to the bombings or any threatening behaviour; they picked up many merely for having a Quran or other religious materials in Arabic script at home.
After the Easter bombings, the previously failed electoral strategy of shoring up Sinhala support through vilification of Muslims gained new traction. Gotabaya announced his candidacy just days after the attacks, promising to eradicate new forms of religiously motivated terrorism just as he had previously destroyed the Tamil Tigers when he was defence secretary.
At the polls, Gotabaya received overwhelming support from Sinhala voters, including many Catholics who had not previously backed him. The new president himself seemed to acknowledge the strategy’s success, declaring in his inaugural speech given in front of a Buddhist shrine: “I knew that I could win with only the votes of the Sinhala majority”.
Growing Tensions
Within months of taking office, Gotabaya deepened the state’s hostility toward Muslims on several fronts. His administration used COVID-19 lockdowns and ad hoc village-level quarantines to harass the community, which pro-government media outlets accused of spreading the virus. More damaging was the government’s decision on 1 April 2020 to ban burial of anyone even suspected of having died of the disease.
Announced the day after the first Muslim victim died, the decision was justified by a claim – quickly rejected by the World Health Organisation and Sri Lankan experts – that the virus could spread from interred remains through the groundwater. The policy, which stayed in place for nearly a year, had a profoundly cruel effect on Muslim families, who were forced to cremate their loved ones’ bodies against their religious convictions.
It was rescinded on 26 February, after a global advocacy campaign that sought to mobilise the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and member states of the UN Human Rights Council, which was due to assess Sri Lanka’s human rights record weeks later. Even after the ban was lifted, however, Sri Lanka has allowed burials in only one remote location, heavily guarded by the military – a limitation that continues to impose hardships on Muslims, as well as the smaller number of Christians and Hindus who choose to bury their dead.
On 12 March, the government also announced new regulations for “deradicalisation” of those “holding violent extremist religious ideology”. Issued under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, the rules allowed the defence ministry to detain anyone accused of causing “acts of violence or religious, racial or communal disharmony or feelings of ill will or hostility between different communities or racial or religious groups” for up to eighteen months, without any judicial process or oversight.
Human rights lawyers and Muslim leaders quickly filed suit in the Supreme Court, which in August put the measures on hold until it decides the case. Even if the court quashes the regulations, however, the government’s clear intention to establish a “deradicalisation” program leads some to believe it may enshrine similar powers in revisions to the counter-terrorism law it is presently preparing.
The regulations were issued without evidence that any significant number of Muslims in Sri Lanka posed a threat to security or would benefit from a program along the contemplated lines. They did, however, offer the government a face-saving way to release some of the hundreds of Muslims arrested after the Easter attacks who are still detained, in some cases without charge, by putting them into a “deradicalisation program”.
Holding large numbers of Muslims in special camps for another year or more, as the proposed deradicalisation program would do, however, would risk contributing to a collective sense of humiliation and anger that could itself push some toward “violent extremist religious ideology”. As Muslim activists regularly warn, the risk is particularly high as long as the government’s approach leaves no room for the possibility that Buddhists could promote their own forms of violent extremism.
Overlapping enquiries into the Easter bombings have, meanwhile, been politicised in ways that appear aimed at keeping alive fears of Muslims as a source of insecurity. As part of its broader attack on the independence of police and courts, Gotabaya’s government replaced the entire team looking into the bombings soon after coming to power, arrested the chief investigator, Shani Abeysekera, on what appear to be trumped-up charges, and demoted other officers. Another key investigator fled the country fearing arrest.
The administration has also refused to act on the key recommendations of a separate commission of enquiry – appointed by President Sirisena – into the bombings. These included, among others, prosecuting Sirisena, who is now a key government ally, and banning BBS, whose anti-Muslim incitement the commission found had contributed to the bombers’ turn to violence in a process of “reciprocal radicalisation”.
In what seems to be an attempt at maligning Muslim leaders, the Gotabaya administration also detained or charged a number of prominent Muslim personalities, seemingly without credible grounds. Ex-minister Bathiudeen faces terrorism and extremism charges – despite having been cleared of links to the Easter bombings by the presidential commission of enquiry.
On 2 December, a court released another Muslim lawmaker, Salley, after he had spent eight months in jail, citing lack of evidence. The prosecution of human rights lawyer and political activist Hejaaz Hizbullah for his supposed links to the Easter terrorist attacks also appears to be groundless, relying in part on coerced testimonies.
The government’s approach has angered Sri Lanka’s Catholic leadership, which has accused it, and the president himself, of covering up the “masterminds” behind the Easter bombings. Church leaders suggest that the government has been protecting Sirisena and refusing to follow up on evidence uncovered by the presidential commission that implies military intelligence officers had contact with some of the bombers before and on the day of the attack.
Backed by Pope Francis, Colombo’s archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has called for an international investigation. Following an October online meeting that aired church criticisms, the police summoned one of the cardinal’s top advisers for three days of questioning.
A Dangerous Slogan
Stung by growing criticism of its handling of the Easter bombings investigation, and facing a grave economic crisis that has badly damaged its popular support, including among Sinhala Buddhists, the Rajapaksa government signalled with Gnanasara’s appointment that it is returning to the “one country, one law” agenda that helped get it elected.
Given the concept’s vagueness, however, and the deep contradiction between it and the explicit privileges that Buddhism enjoys under the constitution, no one is sure what Gnanasara’s task force will actually do. While it can, in principle, look into the practices of all religious and ethnic groups, few observers doubt that it will focus its attention on the Muslim minority.
It is expected to consider reforms to the madrasa education system – Muslim leaders have submitted proposals to the government – as well as government plans to regulate activities in mosques, monitor the import and translation of the Quran and other Arabic texts, ban the niqab and burqa, and outlaw cattle slaughter (an industry dominated by Muslims and often criticised by Buddhist activists).
Gnanasara’s task force also seems certain to weigh in on long-discussed changes to the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act, a new version of which the cabinet approved in August. Over the past years, Muslims and others have bitterly debated possible reforms to the Act, with complicated overlap between human rights and feminist critiques of the legislation as patriarchal and oppressive and Buddhist nationalist criticisms of Muslims having their own marriage and family law.
Sri Lankan law enshrines distinct traditions of family law for Sinhalese in Kandy and Tamils in Jaffna, as well as for Muslims, but this Act has come in for particular criticism on account of allowing polygamy, setting no minimum age for marriage, requiring no explicit consent from the bride and establishing all-male courts to hear divorce cases.
It remains to be seen, however, how far the government will allow or encourage Gnanasara to go. On the one hand, Buddhist nationalists appear to see “one country, one law” as a call for “a single law” that gives pre-eminence to Buddhist institutions while denying those of other religions official recognition.
Some top officials clearly see things the same way: it was particularly revealing that Gnanasara’s appointment was followed three weeks later by a series of large-scale Buddhist religious ceremonies in the sacred city of Anuradhapura, featuring the president, cabinet and top military brass alongside the Mahanayakes, Sri Lanka’s most powerful Buddhist clerics.
The two days of ceremonies were grand displays of the government’s project of more fully integrating state, military and Buddhist clergy on the basis of an overtly Sinhala nationalist political vision. On the other hand, in a December meeting, Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris assured ambassadors from Muslim countries that Sri Lanka would “continue to retain” “personal laws specific to Muslim, Kandyan and Tamil communities”.
Moreover, to date, Colombo has carefully calibrated its anti-Muslim policies so as to keep the backing of its hardline Buddhist nationalist supporters and win a degree of international support for helping “counter violent extremism”, while maintaining good relations with economic and political allies in the Muslim world.
The government may as yet have no precise agenda for the task force, but given Gnanasara’s charisma and theatrical skills, he is a potentially powerful, and dangerous, asset for reframing political debate, deepening divisions between Tamils and Muslims and possibly even provoking a new round of anti-Muslim unrest. He has been central in propagating Buddhist nationalist ideology over the last decade.
There is little that those outside of Sri Lanka, concerned about the rule of law, religious harmony and political stability, can do directly to address these dynamics. Foreign partners of the Sri Lankan state, can, however, be more careful about not inadvertently strengthening them.
Following the Easter bombings, a range of new programming by foreign donors has focused on counter-terrorism, preventing “violent extremism” and building “social cohesion”. In the words of one activist, though, “There is a lot of foreign funding to the government for ‘countering violent extremism’ but it only targets one faith. … No one dares tell the government to ‘rehabilitate’ Gnanasara or other extremist monks”.
Until such programming finds – or creates – the space to name and challenge the violent history, rhetoric and exclusionary political projects of all communities, it is more likely to perpetuate, rather than resist, the anti-Muslim ideology that today poses the greatest risk of destabilising violence in a country that has yet to recover from decades of brutal civil war.
A Somali woman goat-seller in Hargeisa livestock market. Photo: Credit: UNDP / Said Fadhaye
MOGADISHU, Somalia, Jan 18 2022 (IPS) – I arrived in Somalia in September 2019, two decades after having worked here previously. I knew that I was taking up a challenging assignment, but I was also looking forward to seeing Somalia’s progress.
Afflicted by decades of conflict, recurrent climatic shocks, disease outbreaks and poverty, Somalia was often called a ‘failed state.’ The narrative is now changing, and although fragile, Somalia is on a path to stability and the resilience of the Somali people is second to none.
That said, we are not under any illusion: significant challenges remain, and we must work even harder to preserve the gains made to date.
Somalia’s upward trajectory is evident in the construction boom, as one analyst noted — the sound of the hammer is replacing the sound of gunfire in Somalia’s capital.
The UN has been closely supporting the Somali people since the birth of the Republic in 1960. Currently, the UN’s various mandates are implemented through 26 Agencies, Funds and Programmes (both resident and non-resident), one political mission (UNSOM) and one logistical support mission (UNSOS).
The UN’s commitment towards the Somali cause is articulated in detail in the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF 2021-2025), mirroring the priorities of Somalia’s Ninth National Development Plan (NDP-9).
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN marshalled support to help the Somali government respond to the virus outbreak. We continue to support the Somali authorities in seeking to defeat this pandemic and encouraging people to get vaccinated.
Elections are also on-going in Somalia. The UN is supporting the process to ensure that elections are held in a peaceful and transparent manner, while at the same time advocating for 30 per cent women’s quota in the Somali legislature.
While these are encouraging signs of progress, we must not forget Somalia’s long-standing challenges. According to UN’s projections for next year, an estimated 7.7 million Somalis (nearly half of the country’s population) will require humanitarian assistance and protection.
Women and children continue to bear the brunt of Somalia’s complex humanitarian crises, especially among the internally displaced communities. In light of the current serious droughts, the Somali government declared a humanitarian state of emergency on 23 November.
Yet, neither the government nor the humanitarian community has adequate resources to respond. With a few days remaining in the year, the 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan which seeks US$1.09 billion remains only 70 per cent funded. Additional resources are urgently needed to prevent the dire humanitarian situation from becoming a catastrophe, so we continue to engage partners on this subject.
In this regard, I undertook missions to Europe in October and to the Gulf in September. Throughout my interactions with partners, I stressed the need for additional funding to address Somalia’s escalating humanitarian crisis and elaborated on how inaction not only risks a reversal of the gains but puts the lives of millions of Somalis in jeopardy.
Through my field visits in Somalia, I have also seen first-hand the grim realities of adverse climate conditions. Somalia is no doubt on the frontline of climate change. The recurrent droughts and floods are driving widespread displacement, rapid urbanization, hunger, malnutrition and poverty.
Climate change is also increasingly seen as the driver of conflict and a threat to the country’s security as the struggle over meagre resources deepens divisions. In addition, the loss of traditional livelihoods makes people vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups such as Al-Shabaab.
Somalia is currently experiencing a third consecutive season of below-average rainfall, with nearly 80 per cent of the country experiencing drought conditions, water shortages and livestock deaths. One in five Somalis does not have enough water to cover his/her basic needs.
On a positive note, as part of the efforts to mitigate the climate emergency, the government, with the support of the United Nations, has recently adopted an ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution to achieve global climate targets, in which Somalia committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
Somalia’s crises are multifaceted, and they require comprehensive solutions from all stakeholders. It is our collective responsibility to support the efforts of the Somali people to cope with these crises and find lasting solutions that build resilience against future shocks. We must not fail the people we pledged to serve.
Adam Abdelmoula is Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia. He told a press conference in December that the UN and its partners have launched a nearly $1.5 billion Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP). Roughly 7.7 million people in the country will need assistance and protection in 2022, a 30 per cent rise in just one year.
Credit: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament/Henry Kenyon
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 13 2022 (IPS) – On Jan. 3, the leaders of the five nuclear-armed members of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) issued a rare joint statement on preventing nuclear war in which they affirmed, for the first time, the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev maxim that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
The U.S., Chinese, French, Russian, and UK effort was designed in part to create a positive atmosphere for the 10th NPT review conference, which has been delayed again by the pandemic. It also clearly aims to address global concerns about the rising danger of nuclear conflict among states and signals a potential for further cooperation to address this existential threat.
The question now is, do they have the will and the skill to translate their laudable intentions into action before it is too late?
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price hailed the statement as “extraordinary.” A more sober reading shows that it falls woefully short of committing the five to the policies and actions necessary to prevent nuclear war.
In fact, the statement illustrates how their blind faith in deterrence theories, which hinge on a credible threat of using nuclear weapons, perpetuates conditions that could lead to nuclear catastrophe.
The statement asserts that “nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.” Yet, such broad language suggests they might use nuclear weapons to “defend” themselves against a wide range of threats, including non-nuclear threats.
Given the indiscriminate and horrific effects of nuclear weapons use, such policies are dangerous, immoral, and legally unjustifiable.
At the very least, if the leaders of these states are serious about averting nuclear war, they should formally adopt no-first-use policies or, as U.S. President Joe Biden promised in 2020, declare that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter or possibly respond to a nuclear attack.
Even this approach perpetuates circumstances that could lead to nuclear war by accident or miscalculation. The only way to ensure nuclear weapons are never used is “to do away with them entirely,” as President Ronald Reagan argued in 1984, and sooner rather than later.
But on disarmament, the statement only expressed a “desire to work with all states to create a security environment more conducive to progress on disarmament with the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons with undiminished security for all.” This vague, caveated promise rings hollow after years of stalled disarmament progress and an accelerating global nuclear arms race.
A year ago, Russia and the United States extended the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, but they have not begun negotiations on a follow-on agreement. Meanwhile, both spend billions of dollars annually to maintain and upgrade their nuclear forces, which far exceed any rational concept of what it takes to deter a nuclear attack.
China is on pace to double or triple the size of its land-based strategic missile force in the coming years. Worse still, despite past promises “to engage in the process leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” Chinese leaders are rebuffing calls to engage in arms control talks with the United States and others. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, announced last year it would increase its deployed strategic warhead ceiling.
Fresh statements by the five NPT nuclear-armed states reaffirming their “intention” to fulfill their NPT disarmament obligations are hardly credible in the absence of time-bound commitments to specific disarmament actions.
At the same time, the five, led by France, have criticized the good faith efforts by the majority of NPT non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to advance the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Contrary to claims by the nuclear-armed states, the TPNW reinforces the NPT and the norm against possessing, testing, and using nuclear weapons.
Rather than engage TPNW leaders on their substantive concerns, U.S. officials are pressuring influential states, including Sweden, Germany, and Japan, not to attend the first meeting of TPNW states-parties as observers. Such bullying will only reinforce enthusiasm for the TPNW and undermine U.S. credibility on nuclear matters.
The leaders of the nuclear five, especially Biden, can and must do better. Before the NPT review conference later this year, Russia and the United States should commit to conclude by 2025 negotiations on further verifiable cuts in strategic and nonstrategic nuclear forces and on constraints on long-range missile defenses.
China, France, and the UK should agree to join nuclear arms control talks no later than 2025 and to freeze their stockpiles as Washington and Moscow negotiate deeper cuts in theirs.
Instead of belittling the TPNW, the five states need to get their own houses in order. Concrete action on disarmament is overdue. It will help create a more stable and peaceful international security environment and facilitate the transformative move from unsustainable and dangerous deterrence doctrines toward a world free of the fear of nuclear Armageddon.
Source: Arms Control Today
Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, Washington DC.
Women and men from the rural community of Sachac, at more than 3500 meters above sea level, build a kilometer-long infiltration ditch to capture rainwater and use it to irrigate crops in Cuzco, in Peru’s Andes highlands. CREDIT: Janet Nina/IPS
CUZCO, Peru , Dec 22 2021 (IPS) – “When I was a little girl we didn’t suffer from water shortages like we do now. Today we are experiencing more droughts, our water sources are drying up and we cannot sit idly by,” Kely Quispe, a small farmer from the community of Huasao, located half an hour from Cuzco, the capital of Peru’s ancient Inca empire, told IPS.
She is one of the 80 members of the Agroecological School of the Flora Tristan Peruvian Women’s Center, a non-governmental institution that has worked for the recovery of water sources through traditional techniques known as seeding and harvesting water in this part of the southern Andean region of Cuzco.
Muñapata, Huasao and Sachac are the three rural Quechua-speaking communities in the province of Quispicanchi, located between 3150 and 3800 meters above sea level, that have so far benefited from the project. The feminist-oriented institution promotes solutions based on nature and community work to address the problem of water scarcity and inadequate water use practices.
“We want to boost water security as well as gender equality because they are two sides of the same coin,” Elena Villanueva told IPS. On Dec. 14 she presented in this city the results of the initiative whose first phase was carried out in 2020 and 2021, with the support of the Basque Development Cooperation Agency and Mugen Gainetik, an international association for cooperation with countries of the developing South also based in Spain’s northern Basque region.
According to the National Water Authority (ANA), Peru is the eighth country in the world in terms of water availability, with a rich hydrodiversity of glaciers, rivers, lakes, lagoons and aquifers. However, various factors such as inefficient management of water and uneven territorial distribution of the population, in addition to climate change, make it impossible to meet consumption demands.
“The lack of water severely affects families in rural areas because they depend on small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods. The melting of glaciers as well as the increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts due to climate change are reducing water availability,” Villanueva explained.
This impact, she said, is not neutral. Because of the gender discrimination and social disadvantages they face, it is rural women who bear the brunt, as their already heavy workload is increased, their health is undermined, and their participation in training and decision-making spaces is further limited.
Kely Quispe, a farmer trained at the Flora Tristán Center’s Agroecological School, holds a tomato in her organic garden in the farming community of Huasao. Her vegetable production depends on access to water for irrigation, but climate change has made water more scarce in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco in southern Peru. CREDIT: Janet Nina/IPS
“Moreover, although they are the ones who use water to ensure food, hygiene and health, and to irrigate their crops, they are not part of the decision-making with regard to its management and distribution,” she stressed.
The expert said that precisely in response to demand by the women farmers at the Agroecological School, where they receive technical and rights training, they are focusing on reviving water harvesting techniques used in ancient Peru, while promoting the equal participation of women in rural communities in the process.
She said that approximately 700 families living in poverty, some 3,500 people – about 11 percent of the population of the three communities – will benefit from the works being carried out.
Harvesting water
So far, these works are focused on the afforestation of 15 hectares and the construction of six “cochas” – the name for small earthen ponds, in the Quechua language – and an infiltration ditch, as part of a plan that will be expanded with other initiatives over the next two years.
The ditch, which is one kilometer long in 10-meter stretches, 60 centimeters deep and 40 centimeters wide and is located in the upper part of the community, collects rainwater instead of letting it run down the slopes.
The technique allows water to infiltrate slowly in order to feed natural springs, high altitude wetlands or small native prairies, as well as the cochas.
The mayor of the rural community of Sachac, Eugenio Turpo Quispe (right), poses with other leaders of the village of 200 families who will benefit from the forestation works and the construction of small reservoirs and infiltration ditches that will increase the flow of water in this highlands area that is suffering from prolonged droughts due to climate change. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
In their communal work, villagers use local materials and greenhouse thermal blankets to help retain water. In addition, they have used extracted soil to raise the height of the ditch, to keep rainwater from running over the top.
Although the ditch has been receiving rainwater this month (the rainy season begins in November-December), the ecosystem impact is expected to be more visible in about three years when the cocha ponds have year-round water availability, helping villagers avoid the shortages of the May-October dry season.
Several community members explained to IPS that they will now be able to harvest water from the ditch while at the same time caring for the soil, because heavy rain washes it away and leaves it without nutrients. Some 150 agricultural plots will also benefit from a sprinkler irrigation system, thanks to the project.
Since agriculture is the main livelihood of the families and this activity depends on rainwater, the main impact will be the availability of water during the increasingly prolonged dry periods to irrigate their crops, ensure harvests and avoid hunger, for both villagers and their livestock.
Eucalyptus and pine, huge consumers of water
The mayor of the Sachac community, Eugenio Turpo Quispe, told IPS that this is the first time that water seeding and harvesting practices have been carried out in his area. “We had not had the opportunity before; these works have begun thanks to the women who proposed forestation and the construction of cochas and ditches,” he said.
The local leader lamented that due to misinformation, two decades ago they planted pine and eucalyptus in the highlands of his community. “They have dried up our water sources, and when it rains the water disappears, it does not infiltrate. Now we know that out of ten liters of rain that falls on the ground, eight are absorbed by the eucalyptus and only two return to the earth,” he explained during the day that IPS spent in the community.
Women farmers from the rural community of Sachac show the map of water sources in their area and the uses for irrigation of their crops, for human consumption and household needs, as well as watering their animals, which they cannot satisfy throughout the year due to the increasingly long and severe dry season. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
Turpo Quispe said they had seen forestation and construction of cochas and ditches in other communities, but did not know how to replicate them, and that only through the Flora Tristán Center’s project have they been able to implement these solutions to tackle the serious problem of shrinking water sources.
In Sachac, the three techniques have been adopted with the participation of women and men in communal work that began at six in the morning and ended at four in the afternoon. “Side by side we have been planting native plants, digging ditches and hauling stones for the cochas,” the mayor said proudly.
In this community, 9,000 seedlings of queuñas (Polylepis) and chachacomos (Escallonia Resinosas) – tree species that were used in the times of the ancient Inca empire – were planted. “These trees consume only two liters of rainwater and give eight back to Pachamama (Mother Earth),” Turpo Quispe said. As part of the project, the community has built fences to protect crops and has relocated grazing areas for their animals.
“We have planted seedlings and in 10 or 15 years our children and grandchildren will see all our hills green and with living springs so that they do not suffer a lack of water,” the mayor said.
Kely Quispe from the community of Huasao is equally upbeat: “With water we can irrigate our potatoes, corn and vegetables; increase our production to have enough to sell and have extra money; take care of our health and that of the whole family, and prevent the spread of covid.”
“But just as we use water for life, it is also up to us to participate on an equal footing with men in irrigation committees and community councils to decide how it is distributed, conserved and managed,” she added.
A model shows the water sources in the rural community of Muñapata in the Cuzco region, in Peru’s southern highlands. It was made by local women and men who built a system based on ancestral techniques for the collection and management of water, as increasing drought threatens their lives and crops. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
The decade of water security
Villanueva of the Flora Tristán Center said it was important for the country’s local and regional authorities to commit to guaranteeing water security in rural areas within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The International Decade for Action: Water for Sustainable Development was declared for 2018-2028 by the United Nations and SDG6 is dedicated to water and sanitation, to ensure universal and equitable access for all, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, and support the participation of local communities in improving management and sanitation.
“At the national level, public policies aimed at seeding and harvesting water should be strengthened because they revive the communities’ ancestral knowledge, involving sustainable practices with low environmental impact that contribute to guaranteeing the food security of families,” she said.
However, Villanueva remarked, in order to achieve their objectives, these measures must not only promote equal participation of men and women, but must also be accompanied by actions to close the gender gap in education, access to resources, training and violence that hinder the participation and development of rural women.
