Communication, a Key Tool for South-South Cooperation

Posted on March 24, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Conferences, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, Press Freedom, Regional Categories, South-South, TerraViva United Nations

South-South

Participants taking part in the colloquium “The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation”, organised in Buenos Aires by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America, within the framework of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 24 2019 (IPS) – Communication can be a key tool for the development of cooperation among the countries of the global South, but the ever closer relations between them do not receive the attention they deserve from the media.

This conclusion arose from the meeting organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America in Buenos Aires on Mar. 22, during the third and final day of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, which brought together representatives of almost 200 countries in the Argentine capital.

“The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation” was the colloquium that brought together journalists, political analysts and officials from international organisations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia.

The colloquium, organised by the regional branch of the international news agency IPS, was one of the parallel meetings to the conference and the only one dedicated to communication.

“Forty years ago, when the first conference, also held in Buenos Aires, approved the Plan of Action that forms the basis of South-South Ccoperation, there was awareness that communication was key,” said Mario Lubetkin, assistant director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“However, that notion has been lost and communication has not kept up with the changes that have taken place since then. This creates a vacuum for our societies,” said Lubetkin, the moderator of the meeting.

“There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs,” concluded Lubetkin, a former director general of IPS, an international news agency that prioritises information from the global South.

In front of an audience made up mainly of journalists and other media workers, the debate was oriented towards the most appropriate tools for developing countries to better disseminate news from the global South, the latest term coined to define the group of nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The president of IPS Latin America, Sergio Berensztein, stressed that “today there is an opportunity for nations like ours, thanks to the fact that there is no longer the biloparity of the Cold War era, nor the unipolarity of the years that followed. Today we are in a time of what we call apolarity.”

Berensztein stressed that at a time when there is a renaissance of protectionism and nationalism in the world, it is necessary for journalists to reinforce the idea of cooperation and ensure that a plurality of voices is heard on the international stage.

“We are living in a moment of crisis in which the old has not fully died yet and the new has not yet been fully born. That is why it is a time of uncertainty and accurate information is an element that favors the peaceful resolution of conflicts,” said Berensztein.

View of the room where the meeting on the role of communication in promoting South-South cooperation was held in Buenos Aires, organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America. The participants agreed that media outlets in the global South must generate attractive content that will allow them to combat a news agenda imposed by the countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The power of the large media based in countries of the industrialised North, which tend to impose their journalistic agenda on a global level, was present in the debate as a worrying factor and as evidence of the failure of initiatives aimed at bringing about a new and more balanced information and communication order.

“What is the best way to foment the mass circulation of information about the global South, in order to escape this problem?” was one of the main questions that arose during the two-hour debate, held at a hotel in the Argentine capital.

From the city of Lagos, in a videoconference, the news director of the Nigerian Television Authority, Aliyu Baba Barau, called for strengthened cooperation between media outlets and journalists from developing countries, through the organisation of trips and mechanisms that favour the sharing of resources.

“Nigerian TV permanently shares its resources with other countries,” he said as an example of what can be done in terms of cooperation in media projects in the South.

“The mechanism of South-South cooperation and its advantages need to be understood not only by those who lead our nations, but also by the global community,” said Baba Barau.

Media representatives from China played a prominent role in the exchange of ideas and reflected the strong interest in Asia’s giant in achieving closer ties with Africa and Latin America.

Participants included Zhang Lu, deputy editor of China Daily, the country’s largest English-language news portal; Cui Yuanlei, Mexico correspondent for the Xinhua news agency, which distributes information in several languages (including Spanish); and Li Weilin, team leader of the CCTV television network in São Paulo, Brazil.

Li said the media in emerging countries should not depend on the information distributed by the news networks of industrialised countries, and said journalism should be a way to share experiences.

He said, for example, that during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, CCTV produced coverage for people in Kenya to see how Jamaica’s star runners were trained, and for Jamaica to meet the Kenyan runners who perform so well in the long-distance and medium-distance races.

Roberto Ridolfi, Assistant-Director General of FAO’s Programme Support and Technical Cooperation Department, stressed that the countries of the South “do not have a shared past, but they do have the same future.”

Ridolfi said communication has a key role to play in the arduous path towards Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to improve the quality of life of the world’s population and bring the South into line with the level of development in the North.

“The media and journalists have the mission of attracting audiences with news linked to sustainability. The proliferation of plastics in the oceans, the devastation of forests or the problems plaguing food production are issues that should be on the agenda,” he said.

Like the other panelists, Ridolfi lamented that societies are unaware of the South-South cooperation mechanisms that have emerged in recent years and said journalists have a lot of work to do in that regard.

“We have yet to demonstrate to the world the real value and benefits of South-South cooperation,” the FAO official said.

The need for African, Asian, Latin American and Arab media to get to know each other better was recognised as a necessity.

The local participants were particularly emphatic about this, since Argentina is a country with deep cultural ties with Europe, where little is known about what happens in the countries of the regions of the South, beyond catastrophes and conflicts.

The challenge, now that new technologies have democratised communication but have also put it at risk, is to generate information from the South in attractive formats that allow a better understanding of the realities and opportunities in developing countries and between the countries and regions of the South.

South-South Cooperation Now Triangulates with the North

Posted on March 23, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Conferences, Development & Aid, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

South-South

The Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation was held at the Exhibition and Convention Centre in the Argentine capital, forty years after the Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries produced the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) in 1978. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 23 2019 (IPS) – It sounds like a contradictory play on words, but the countries of the industrialised North are currently the big supporters of South-South cooperation, as was demonstrated at the United Nations Second High-Level Conference on this subject, held in the Argentine capital.

If there is one thing that the three-day meeting in Buenos Aires, which ended on Friday Mar. 22, made clear, it is that the space created 40 years ago as an arena for mutual assistance and exchange of experiences among countries of the South, aimed at mutually promoting their development, no longer belongs only to them and has in fact become triangular.

Francisco Quintanar is a Salvadoran engineer who was in the Argentine capital to participate in the conference – not as a representative of El Salvador, but as part of the German delegation attending the meeting, which brought together 1,500 representatives from 193 countries.

“In the past, triangular cooperation was seen simply as a way of adding funding to South-South collaborative projects, but in which donors were passive actors. Now, instead, we do joint projects.” — Noel González Segura

He came to tell the story of an energy efficiency project born in February 2016, which benefited 10 textile, chemical and other companies in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The initiative was developed with technical assistance from Mexican experts and German funding.

“The Salvadoran companies were able to reduce their energy consumption by the equivalent of 2.5 million dollars a year thanks to this project, so the positive result was not only economic but also environmental,” Quintanar told IPS.

“This is an example of triangular cooperation: Germany provided the resources, Mexico provided technical expertise, and El Salvador and Nicaragua were the beneficiaries,” he added.

Hundreds of similar projects were exhibited at events parallel to the conference, which was inaugurated on Wednesday, Mar. 20 by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, along with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, and featured South-South/North triangular cooperation.

The meeting took place forty years after the U.N. Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, held in 1978 also in Buenos Aires, when the last military dictatorship of this South American country (1976-1983), responsible for serious human rights violations, was at the height of its power.

In the midst of the Cold War, that conference was characterised as an effort by countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia, aimed at strengthening their negotiating power and making their voices heard more on the international stage, while at the same time promoting mutual cooperation between their countries and regions.

The result of the 1978 conference was the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA), which built a bridge of political collaboration and economic and social cooperation among developing countries in what is now called the global South.

Salvadoran engineer Francisco Quintanar (L) was part of the German delegation that attended the South-South Cooperation Conference in Buenos Aires. His project on energy efficiency is an example of triangular cooperation between countries of the South, with the support of one or more countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Forty years later, in the gigantic lobby of the Buenos Aires Exhibition and Convention Centre, a two-storey underground building inaugurated less than two years ago, it looked like just another international meeting, similar to any other major U.N. conference.

On the stage of the High Level Conference, known in U.N. slang as BAPA+40, the sober suits of the diplomats from Japan, Norway or Switzerland contrasted with the colourful outfits of the African representatives.

And in the exhibition hall the participants could visit the stands of the Spanish or German development aid agencies, or the stand of Argentina’s Foreign Ministry, since it does not have a cooperation agency.

“The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the climate agenda make it necessary for the world to work in a very different way than it has in the past,” said Marc-André Blanchard, Canada’s permanent representative to the U.N.

“Neither the North nor the South can do it alone. That’s why Canada was so eager to be here,” he told IPS.

“Think of foreign aid to emerging countries. It is essential for them, but it is only two percent of the money needed to implement Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development,” which is articulated in the 17 SDGs, he added.

Blanchard concluded: “We need to find the remaining 98 percent and we can only do that with new forms of collaboration. That’s why countries in the South need countries like Canada as partners.”

The South-South Cooperation Conference was accompanied by a number of parallel events, organised for example by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), which discussed how to promote direct farmer-to-farmer cooperation among developing countries. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“We have knowledge or financial resources, but they are limited,” admitted Noel González Segura, director of planning at the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation.

“So through triangular cooperation with a traditional partner like the United States, Germany or Spain, we can multiply our capacity for action in favour of third countries,” he told IPS.

According to González Segura, “in the past, triangular cooperation was seen simply as a way of adding funding to South-South collaborative projects, but in which donors were passive actors. Now, instead, we do joint projects.”

“So, for example, the Germans come with money, knowledge and proposals, we add an international organisation and together we build a stronger partnership,” he said.

The Final Document of the Buenos Aires Conference, which unusually was distributed before the beginning of the meeting, speaks of the need to “better understand triangular cooperation and to provide more evidence and rigorous information on its magnitude, scope and effects.”

The text, signed by heads of delegations and senior government representatives, argues that triangular cooperation “offers an adaptable and flexible approach to the evolving problems of development.”

One of the cases reported during the conference was the cooperation of technicians from the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) of Argentina to help rural Haitians improve their ability to grow food after the devastation caused by Hurricane Jeanne, which in 2004 left more than 3,000 dead in the Caribbean island nation.

“After the tragedy there was a tremendous lack of fresh food. We traveled and worked there with Haitian technicians and 4,000 volunteers, 60 percent of whom were women,” said Francisco Zelaya, a technician at INTA, which depends on the Secretariat of Agroindustry.

“We reached 40,000 families and developed 13 local species of seeds,” he told IPS.

Zelaya said that “Argentina did not have the financial capacity to collaborate on a project like this. So the initiative was planned with Canada, which acted as a funder because it has a particular interest in Haiti, since it tends to receive many migrants from that country.”

For Roberto Ridolfi, assistant to the Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), “we must abandon the idea that two countries in the South can make a wonderful agreement and then ask a third country to foot the bill.”

“What we need are triangles, in which everyone brings something and takes something away. Innovative forms of South-South cooperation must be found. If we want to replicate North-South collaboration projects, it will be difficult,” he told IPS.

“It is about finding ways to combine skills, money and human resources from the three sides of the triangle. We don’t want to measure everything by money, but development is supported by investment,” Ridolfi said.

People Affected by Leprosy in Latin America Unite for Their Rights and Their Voice

Posted on March 14, 2019 by admin

Active Citizens, Civil Society, Conferences, Development & Aid, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global Governance, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Health

Family photo of part of the 111 participants in the First Latin American and Caribbean Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Hansen’s Disease, on the steps of the Morisco Palace, the headquarters of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, which hosted the three-day meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 14 2019 (IPS) – With the decision to found a regional coalition to promote rights and greater participation in national and international forums and decisions, the First Latin American and Caribbean Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Hansen’s disease, popularly known – and stigmatised – as leprosy, came to an end.

The final session of the meeting, on Mar. 14, approved 40 of the 58 proposals presented by the 111 participants in three days of debates at the headquarters of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a renowned scientific, medical and epidemiological research centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

José Picanço, 46, separated from his family and taken as a newborn to an orphanage because his parents were diagnosed with the disease in 1972, is one of those affected whose right to reparations remains unfulfilled. His three siblings are in the same situation.

When the family was reunited eight years later, the father turned his back on the children. The mother took them in, but died shortly afterwards. “I only lived with her, a saint, for five months,” Picanço recalled, barely managing to hold in his tears while giving testimony at the meeting.

“Humiliated as the children of lepers, suffering bullying and sexual harassment, many of the other children who were with me at the orphanage fell into drug abuse and alcoholism. It was a holocaust,” he said. “I hit my brother on the head, not knowing he was my own brother.”

“Of the 15,000 to 20,000 children separated from their families, more than 80 percent suffer from depression,” said Picanço in an interview with IPS, detailing some of the damage caused by the old rule of segregating the people then called “lepers”.

Mandatory isolation was widespread around the world, during different historical periods, and continues in some countries, even though it is known that the disease is curable and that patients cease to be contagious shortly after starting treatment.

Officially, Brazil abolished this practice in 1976, although it actually lasted 10 more years. Its direct victims were compensated starting in 2007, but their children were not. The activists gathered in Rio de Janeiro called for working for policies of reparations for children separated from their families.

Their complaints and proposals will be taken to the World Congress of associations of people affected by leprosy in Manila in September, which will also receive contributions from Africa and Asia, approved at recent similar regional assemblies.

“The goal is to form a large network of activists, to strengthen the movement” for the eradication of the disease and for care and reparations for those affected, said Kiyomi Takahashi of the independent Nippon Foundation, which is driving this international process of debate and cooperation.

The meeting in Rio de Janeiro fostered “a high-level dialogue, the result of Morhan and Felehansen’s long history of activities,” the Japanese expert told IPS, referring to the Movement for the Reintegration of People Affected by Hanseniasis (Morhan) in Brazil, and the National Federation of Entities Affected by Leprosy or Hansen’s Disease (Felehansen) in Colombia, the two organisers of the regional meeting.

Brazilian activists José Picanço (front) and Evelyne Leandro testified about how Hansen’s disease affected them during a Latin American and Caribbean meeting in Rio de Janeiro. Picanço was separated from his parents when they were diagnosed with leprosy when he was born in 1972 and was only reunited with them eight years later, shortly before his mother died. Leandro wrote a book about the difficulties of being diagnosed with the disease in Germany, where she lives. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“Morhan is my safe haven, to preach that separated children should be heard and have opportunities,” said Picanço, who explained that he joined the movement in 1992. Today he gives talks on the direct and indirect effects of the stigma still surrounding the disease, that is suffered by those affected and their families.

A blessing

The disease “was a blessing for me,” Isaias Dussan Weck, 50, the vice-president of the Colombian association Felehansen, told IPS without hesitation.

The diagnosis in 2006 destroyed him, he said. He lost the desire to work or to go out, he let his business of supplying cleaning products to companies go bankrupt, he even contemplated suicide. He ignored the stains on his body that did not prevent him from working and traveling, until they spread to his face, and he noticed that parts of his body were going numb.

He received treatment and was cured, left with only slight numbness in one arm and pains in his left leg.

But everything went badly for him until he was invited to meetings with other people affected by leprosy. “I began to understand, when I heard their testimonies and tears, why a young black girl with severe disabilities said that leprosy was a blessing to her,” Dussan said.

Activism for the benefit of those affected, against the stigma and the damage caused by the disease, in the association of the department of Huila, in southwestern Colombia, allowed him “to gain new meaning for life and to understand and practice love for my neighbour.”

“Helping and seeing a patient’s life improve is a wonderful emotion, and you help other people want to live,” he concluded. That new passion led him to Felehansen, where he took on leadership roles in the federation.

Irma Romero, 42, president of the Nuevo Amanecer Foundation in Barranquilla, on Colombia’s northern coast, had a similar experience. Her lengthy odyssey to a specialist’s diagnosis five years ago reveals the medical system’s shortcomings when it comes to detecting and treating the disease, also known as hanseniasis, which is still viewed by many as “a divine punishment.”

Romero stopped working in the textile industry due to disability and depression. “I couldn’t even walk,” she recalled. “I even denied God,” she told IPS.

Colombian activist Irma Romero, a native of the city of Barranquilla, sitting on the bus that transported the participants of the First Latin American and Caribbean Assembly of Organisations of People Affected by Hansen’s Disease, held Mar. 12-14 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Treatment using medicinal herbs, self-medication, rejection by relatives, attempts to separate her from her two children and abandonment by her husband all formed part of her suffering, which did not end with her treatment and cure.

The only permanent physical effects are numbness in her hands and feet, and sciatic nerve pain. But the discrimination continued.

“My life changed when I joined the association of affected people” four years ago, she said. “There I found people who had things in common with me, and a newfound love of my neighbour that I did not feel before,” said the activist, who became president of the Foundation the following year and reconciled with God.

Her foundation currently has 60 members. In Barranquilla she estimates that there are “about 200 affected people, but many more are hidden.”

The foundation is one of the 10 associations that make up Felehansen, eight of which call the disease hanseniasis or Hansen’s disease, one of which uses the term leprosy, and another of which refers to disabled people and is made up of patients who received a very late diagnosis.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines leprosy – the term it uses – as an infectious and chronic disease “transmitted by air through droplets from the nose and mouth, during close and frequent contacts with untreated cases.” It also specifies that leprosy is “one of the least infectious diseases.”

WHO reports that in 2017 there were 211,009 new cases worldwide, according to official data from 159 countries. That amounts to 0.3 cases per 10,000 inhabitants, which means it classifies as having been “eliminated,” according to WHO criteria.

Change of name: another recommendation

Proposing hanseniasis as the official name for the disease is one of the proposals that came out of the Latin American meeting, headed by Brazil, which has already adopted it, even prohibiting the mention of leprosy in the health system since 1995.

They are different concepts, because leprosy and leper have very negative connotations of “dirt, plague, impurities and divine punishment,” strengthened by numerous mentions with that moral burden in the Bible, argued Faustino Pinto, one of Morhan’s national coordinators.

But the activists from Colombia are not convinced. “People only know leprosy, they don’t know it’s Hanseniasis. To explain the issue to the population, you have to mention leprosy,” argued Romero.

“It will be necessary to educate the new generations about the concept of Hansen,” the Norwegian doctor Gerhard Hansen who discovered the bacillus that causes the disease, because adults are not likely to forget the stigma, said Dussan. “It’s harder to unlearn than to learn,” he added.

Another proposal of the Latin American Assembly is to extend the current Committee for Assistance to Brazilian Immigrants Affected by Hanseniasis to all Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean, in addition to extending it to other regions.

The reference point in this is Evelyne Leandro, a 37-year-old Brazilian who has lived in Germany for nine years and had a lot of difficulties getting diagnosed with the disease in a country where it is very rare and where very few doctors are familiar with it.

She was helped by her mother’s suspicion, awakened in Brazil by an outreach campaign on the disease, and by the Institutes of Tropical Medicine in Germany.

Her case and those of other immigrants in Europe are recounted in her book “The Living Death: the struggle with a long forgotten disease”.

People Affected by Leprosy Still Face Stigma in Latin America

Posted on March 12, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Conferences, Development & Aid, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global Governance, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Health

Kiyomi Takahashi of the independent Nippon Foundation explains the international movement for the rights of the victims of leprosy during the opening session of the First Latin American and Caribbean Meeting of Organisations of People Affected by Hansen’s Disease, held in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. The foundation is backing the process for the World Congress on Leprosy to be held in September. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

RÍO DE JANEIRO, Mar 12 2019 (IPS) – The First Latin American and Caribbean Meeting of Organisations of People Affected by Hansen’s Disease, more widely known as leprosy, seeks to exorcise stigma and discrimination. The meeting has brought together around a hundred activists in Brazil.

The rights and participation of these people in all aspects of the World Health Organisation‘s (WHO) Global Leprosy Strategy 2016-2020 are the themes of the meeting, taking place in Rio de Janeiro from Mar. 12-14.

The gathering will establish this region’s proposals, as did recent regional assemblies in Asia and Africa.

The goal is for all the experiences and proposals to converge towards the World Congress on Leprosy that will take place in the Philippines in September, Kiyomi Takahashi, of the independent Nippon Foundation, which is backing the entire process, stressed during the opening session.

Brazil is at the forefront of the debate because it is considered the only country that has failed to eliminate the disease and has the highest incidence worldwide, with 25,000 to 30,000 new cases each year, 95 percent of the total in the Americas, according to official data.

This is an unacceptable figure for “a curable disease that is treated free of charge in the public health system,” said Artur Custodio, coordinator of the Brazilian Movement for the Reintegration of People Affected by Hanseniasis (Morhan), which organised the Latin America meeting together with the Federation of Organisations of People Affected by Leprosy in Colombia.

In addition, Brazil stands out for abolishing the word leprosy, because it is historically laden with prejudice. Since 1995, Hanseniasis or Hansen’s disease is the official name of the disease, although the WHO and the United Nations in general tend to use the term leprosy.

Brazil is not considered to have “eliminated” the disease – a classification that is defined when the incidence is reduced to less than one case per 10,000 inhabitants, said Claudio Salgado, president of the Brazilian Hansenology Society.

The statistics distort the reality of a disease that remains hidden. The organisation points out that the number of cases dropped from 5.3 million in 1980 to 597,000 in 2001, to meet the WHO target of elimination by the year 2000.

Official data indicate that from 2003 to 2005 the number of cases fell 64.17 percent worldwide to 169,709, a result that is “impossible in epidemiology,” Salgado told IPS.

When a disease like hanseniasis is properly fought, its incidence falls steadily, but slowly and regularly, not abruptly, he noted.

What is hidden behind the figures, according to the expert, is shown by the case of Palmas, capital of the central Brazilian state of Tocantins, where an early diagnosis effort raised the incidence from 41.9 per 10,000 inhabitants to 219 per 10,000 between 2013 and 2016.

Participants at the First Latin American and Caribbean Meeting of Organisations of People Affected by Hansen’s Disease, from seven countries in the region, as well as international organisations. This is the first time that regional activists have met to propose policies in defence of the dignity of those affected by leprosy. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

This means, he argued, that when there is a clear decision to seriously address the disease, the numbers of people affected rise.

Another indicator from Brazil highlights an additional problem: there is 39 percent of “spontaneous demand” for treatment, which points to a lack of information and assistance. This is because spontaneous consultations occur in “advanced cases, with already apparent effects,” which are difficult to overcome, and sometimes incapacitating, Salgado said.

“The goal of elimination in 2000 had a positive effect of spurring initiatives and stimulating information and assistance. But declaring that it had been achieved led to an abandonment of commitments and actions,” said Salgado, a professor at the Federal University of Pará, in the northern Amazon region of Brazil.

“With that we are even losing knowledge, with reduced research in universities and reduced services. Compounded by the stigma of hanseniasis, a vicious circle is created and the tendency is for the incidence of the disease to grow again,” he concluded.

“There is a lack of research,” even to explain why the disease affects so many people in Brazil and why the prevalence drops when you cross the border, said Jorge Dominguez Sobrino, of Peru’s Health Ministry, which is working to fight leprosy in the province of Alto Amazonas, on the border with Ecuador.

“Perhaps genetic differences are a cause,” he told IPS.

In Peru the number of new cases points to “elimination,” but there is high prevalence in some provinces, especially in small towns. “There is a high hidden prevalence,” Dominguez Sobrino acknowledged.

Norah Salcedo of Bolivia (R) and Silvia Uieacu of Peru, who took part in the first meeting of people affected by Hansen’s disease or leprosy, complained about the poor care in their countries for people who have the disease. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Early diagnosis is the primary right in relation to leprosy, agreed Salgado and Custodio. It will be necessary to revise and change some of the bases of the strategies to actually eliminate the disease, while some speak of “eradication”, with the reduction of new cases to zero.

One concern of the specialists is the identification of many cases in children, indicating contagion through undiagnosed family members or other people close to them.

A contradiction in the official data is precisely that many countries where “elimination” of leprosy has been declared, with a rate of less than one case per 10,000 inhabitants, have a worrying number of affected children.

In addition, where the prevalence is lower, such as in southern Brazil and other Latin American countries, the damage to affected persons is more serious due to late diagnosis, when effects such as loss of peripheral nerves, fingers or entire limbs are already irreversible.

Leprosy, a disease that has been present since time immemorial, is infectious and chronic, caused by the Mycobacterium leprae bacterium, as defined by the WHO, which specifies that it mainly affects the skin, peripheral nerves, the mucosa of the upper respiratory tract, the eyes and other structures.

Norah Salcedo, from the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, suffered irreversible damage to limbs and needs crutches. “There is no adequate treatment in my country, the sick continue to decline, without assistance,” she complained to IPS.

Bolivia is a country that “eliminated” leprosy, according to official data. Salcedo, as well as Silvia Uieacu of Peru, acknowledged that there is a great lack of knowledge about the disease.

Seven Latin American countries are represented at this first Regional Meeting, which brings together health officials and representatives of international entities, such as the Pan-American Health Organisation, and institutions from Japan – especially the Nippon Foundation – Germany and the United States.

Brazil also attracts international attention for compensating the victims of the segregation system in the so-called leprosariums where the sick were isolated. This practice was maintained by law in the country until 1986, although the possibility of a cure had been known since 1941 and it was clear that with treatment, the people affected by the disease were no longer contagious.

Since 2007, the Brazilian state has been compensating people who were isolated, but now the Morhan organisation is seeking to extend reparation to children who were separated from their parents. It is estimated that around 16,000 children suffered this forced separation.

These policies are of interest to similar movements in other Latin American countries, participants explained during the first day’s debates.

Many of the people segregated in these “colonies” continue to live in them, even after they were no longer isolated, because they have no chance of returning to their places of origin or rebuilding their lives, activists say.

Innovative Sustainable Business: A Three Trillion-Dollar Opportunity that UN Environment Wants People to Develop

Posted on March 12, 2019 by admin

Africa, Climate Change, Conferences, Economy & Trade, Editors’ Choice, Environment, Featured, Global, Green Economy, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Natural Resources, Regional Categories, Sustainability, TerraViva United Nations, Trade & Investment

Environment

Achenyo Idachaba-Obaro, the founder of Mitimeth, a social enterprise that has trained hundreds of women on how to make popular handicrafts from water hyacinth. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

NAIROBI, Mar 12 2019 (IPS) – In the East African region, communities around the continent’s largest water body, Lake Victoria, regard the water hyacinth as a great menace that clogs the lake and hampers their fishing activities. But in Lagos, Nigeria, some groups of women have learned how to convert the invasive weed into a resource, providing them with the raw material needed to make handicrafts.

“Our biggest challenge right now is the market where these women can sell their finished products from the water hyacinth,” said Achenyo Idachaba-Obaro, the founder of Mitimeth, a social enterprise that has trained hundreds of women on how to make popular handicrafts from water hyacinth.

Dressed in a blouse partly made of fabric from water hyacinth and buttons made from a coconut shell at the ongoing United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, Kenya, Idachaba-Obaro showcased several products made from the aquatic weed ranging from boutique dresses, unique multipurpose baskets, vases, stationery, wall decor, and dining ware, among others.

“All these items are a product of handcrafts by women whom we have trained, and they are now able to generate extra income from a weed that is seen as a menace to many other people worldwide,” she told IPS.

So far, over 350 women, comprising mostly of widows but who also include students and teachers, from riparian rural communities have been trained on how to make finished products from water hyacinth, and they all sell them locally.

“Whenever we have a ready market, we always call on them to make water hyacinth ropes for us, which is the first stage of developing any water hyacinth fabric,” said Idachaba-Obaro.

In the past few months for example, a team of 70 women were able to make ropes which earned them 1.4 million Naira (3,880 dollars). “It has become a big business in Nigeria where everybody wants to be involved,” she said.

Her exhibition was one of the 42 technologies and innovative solutions from around the world that formed the 2019 Sustainable Innovation Expo at the UNEA conference in Nairobi, which is being held Mar. 8-15.
To move such innovations forward through research and to later upscale them, Joyce Msuya, the U.N. Environment Acting Executive Director and Assistant Secretary-General of the U.N. urged countries to provide enabling environments for both innovators and researchers.

“Innovation will be the heartbeat of the transformation we want and this cannot happen by itself. Policies and incentives to spur innovation and sustainable consumption and production must be backed by efforts to build implementation capacity,” she told the more than 4,000 delegates from 170 countries during the official opening of the assembly in Nairobi.

According to Siim Kisler, the Minister of Environment in Estonia and the UNEA President, there is need to find innovative solutions for environmental challenges through different approaches to sustainable consumption and production, inspiring nations, private sector players and individuals.

The Expo is the U.N. Environment Assembly’s solution-based platform for engaging innovators using exhibitions that reveal the latest technologies, panel discussions, and networking opportunities.

Other innovative techniques showcased at the expo include ‘Timbeter’ a digital (mobile app) timber measurement solution that uses a smart phone for accurate log detection.

“With this app on your smart phone, you only need to point the phone camera to say a lorry full of timber, and it will accurately give you the total number of logs on the truck, and circumference measurement of each of the logs,” Anna-Greta Tsahkna the Co-founder of the Estonian-based Timbeter told IPS.

So far, the technology has been embraced in Thailand, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and Chile where companies are using it to share measurements with contractors and clients. They use it to count logs, the log diameter and density in less than 3 minutes. It is an important tool in eradicating illegal logging.

Apart from another exhibition by a Canadian company that uses shipping containers to create affordable and sustainable housing, Brazilian experts from a company called Votorantim were showcasing a technique where they extract DNA from different forest species to analyse their chemical makeup.

“This makes it easy for users to know which type of trees, plants, grass or anything within the biodiversity they should target based on what they want to extract for medicines, cosmetics, perfumes among others,” said Frineia Rezente, the Executive Manager of Votorantim, said.

According to a statement by U.N. Environment, innovative sustainable business represents a trillion-dollar opportunity that can bring value to people and the environment.

Geneva Centre’s Executive Director presents the agenda of the 21 March “Celebration of diversity: beyond tolerance the path towards empathy” conference to African Group Ambassadors

Posted on March 7, 2019 by admin

Conferences, Human Rights, Religion

GENEVA, Mar 7 2019 – On 7 March, the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director Ambassador Idriss Jazairy was invited by the Permanent Delegation of the African Union to an official meeting of all African Group Ambassadors in Geneva to present the rationale and purpose of the Geneva Centre’s forthcoming conference on “Celebration of diversity: beyond tolerance the path towards empathy.”

The latter will be held on 21 March 2019 – on the margins of the 40th regular session of the Human Rights Council, from 13:00 – 14:30 in room XXIII at the United Nations Office in Geneva. The conference will be organized by the Geneva Centre and the Permanent Mission of the United Arab Emirates to UN Geneva.

Ambassador Jazairy informed the African Group Ambassadors that the purpose of the conference will be to give new impetus to ongoing efforts to counter the rise of extremism and xenophobia in all its forms and to promote the harmonious and equitable integration of diversity in the context of equal citizenship rights.

This was recently and strongly reiterated – the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director said – in the Outcome Declaration “Moving Towards Greater Spiritual Convergence Worldwide In Support of Equal Citizenship Rights” adopted by the World Conference on “Religions, Creeds and Value-Systems: Joining Forces to Enhance Equal Citizenship Rights” held on 25 June 2018 at Palais des Nations by the Geneva Centre under the Patronage of HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

In relation to the historic visit to the UAE, by His Holiness Pope Francis and the Great Imam of Al-Azhar His Eminence Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayyib, a Joint Document entitled “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” was adopted on 4 February 2019 by these Eminent Dignitaries reiterating the importance of harnessing the collective energy of religions and faiths to uphold equal citizenship rights and promote tolerant and inclusive societies.

In this connection, Ambassador Jazairy said that the conference will take stock of the convergence and complementarity of these two pronouncements that offer an inspiring ideal of world citizenship fostering unity in diversity and building bridges of respect for our common humanity.

In recognition of the inspiring role of African countries in building bridges of respect for our common humanity and to promote models of equal citizenship in the aftermath of the era of colonialism and Apartheid, Ambassador Jazairy invited all African Permanent Missions in Geneva to be present at the 21 March conference.

Ambassadors of the African Group expressed their strong commitment to support the work of the Geneva Centre and the endeavours of its Executive Director to promote a value-driven human rights system and to promote mutual understanding and cooperative relations between people.

The meeting was chaired by the Permanent Representative of the Central African Republic, HE Léopold Ismael Samba, and held in the presence of the Permanent Observer of the African Union HE Ajay Kumar Bramdeo.

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