No Story Worth Dying For?

Posted on April 11, 2019 by admin

Active Citizens, Civil Society, Conferences, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Headlines, TerraViva United Nations

This article is part of a series on the current state of civil society organisations (CSOs), which will be the focus of International Civil Society Week (ICSW), sponsored by CIVICUS, and scheduled to take place in Belgrade, April 8-12.

Infringements of press freedom and the targeting of journalists is one of the topics being discussed at the International Civil Society Week (ICSW 2019) – an annual gathering of civil society leaders, activists and engaged citizens taking place in the Serbian capital Apr. 8-12. Courtesy: CIVICUS

BELGRADE, Apr 11 2019 (IPS) – “Stay safe. There’s no story worth dying for.”
That’s the message to journalists from Nada Josimovic, programme coordinator of Amsterdam-based media rights organisation Free Press Unlimited.

Most journalists would agree with her. But beyond the threat of physical harm, women reporters and journalists of colour run another risk: being harassed online, with the spouting of sexist and racist venom.

This, of course, happens to rights defenders as well, all over the world. But in the case of women, the harassment is “sexualised … sometimes with threats of rape,” said Josimovic.

“How does one protect oneself?” she asked, during a panel discussion on press freedom at International Civil Society Week (ICSW 2019) – an annual gathering of civil society leaders, activists and engaged citizens taking place in the Serbian capital Apr. 8-12.

Co-hosted by the Johannesburg-based global civil society alliance CIVICUS, the meeting is focusing on a range of issues that include infringements of press freedom and the targeting of journalists.

As the event took place, news surrounding the deaths of media workers continued. On Apr. 11, the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Audrey Azoulay, issued a statement condemning the killing of a sports reporter in the north-western Mexican town of Salvador Alvarado on Mar. 24.

“I condemn the killing of Omar Iván Camacho Mascareño,” stated Azoulay. “I trust the investigation underway will enable the authorities to bring the perpetrator of this crime to justice.”

Mascareño, of local radio broadcaster Chavez Radiocast, was found dead with signs of severe head trauma and injuries indicating that he had been beaten to death, according to media reports.
UNESCO issues its “condemnations” on a regular basis, given the frequency of attacks.

The UN agency has the mandate to promote the safety of journalists and does so “through global awareness-raising, capacity building and a range of actions, notably the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity”, according to the organisation.

This includes a module on Combatting Online Abuse: When Journalists and Their Sources are Targeted, but Josimovic and others stress that enough isn’t being done to end the specific harassment of women journalists.

“I think that media outlets don’t have good support systems for this kind of attacks,” she told IPS. “The legal aspect is also complicated.”

Social media companies, for instance, will not reveal the address of the perpetrators when the targeted individual complains, she said. Additionally, there is sometimes a lack of solidarity from editors and colleagues who have never experienced the harassment.

“Because it’s not happening in the real world, people kind of minimise the effect,” she added. “But women in general face more harassment on-line. In every sector, it’s there.”

Anyone who has doubts about this has only to look at some of the reports via the International Women’s Media Foundation, she said.

Rights activists say that broad coalitions were needed to promote the protection of rights and that journalists and human rights advocates need to work together. Courtesy: CIVICUS

Because of the similarity in methods used to attack rights defenders globally, press freedom groups and civil society organisations should increase ways of working together, said some delegates at the ICSW meeting.

Vukasin Petrovic, senior director for programme strategy at Washington DC-based rights monitoring organisation Freedom House, said that broad coalitions were needed to promote the protection of rights.

“Journalists and human rights advocates are the centrepiece of any strategy,” he told IPS. “The protection of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are in the interests of both.”

Responding to a question about required journalistic “distance” and impartiality, he acknowledged that sometimes the relationship between the media and civil society can become too close.

“We do need transparency and accountability on all sides,” he said. “But building coalitions can make advocacy more powerful.”

For Dragan Sekulovski, executive director of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia – a country that’s “a champion when it comes to wiretapping” – part of the defence of media needs to come from the sector itself.

That includes promoting quality journalism and “leaving this to the audience to judge”, he said. In this way, public opinion may swing in favour of the media, helping to deter attacks and harassment.

“Quality” journalism requires resources, however, and as various media groups point out, the sector has been ravaged over the past years by job losses, low pay, copyright abuses and other ills.

This is compounded by declining public trust – because of a range of factors, including smear campaigns, accusations of purveying “fake news”, journalists’ own behaviour, and, of course, calling media “the enemy of the people” as American President Donald Trump has done.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, many of Trump’s tweets so far as president has “insulted or criticised journalists and outlets, or condemned and denigrated the news media as a whole”.

It has thus become an uphill battle to get some sections of the public to see the importance of journalists’ work, and to engage actively in protecting media freedom, said activists at the ICSW meeting.

“Media organisations need to engage with citizens to make them understand why (citizens) need them,” said Josimovic.

Whether this would stop the attacks and harassment, especially of women journalists, is anyone’s guess. The issue will no doubt be raised again during discussions May 1-3, when the “main celebration” of UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day takes place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Civil Society Leaders Meet Amid Protests, Attacks on Rights

Posted on April 7, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Conferences, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Civil Society

Representatives said that civil society and concerned citizens worldwide have started to respond with “renewed determination” to the unprecedented challenges facing the world, and that this resolve will be in the spotlight during International Civil Society Week (ICSW). Pictured here is a protest by France’s Gilets Jaunes (or Yellow Vests) from earlier this year. Credit: Olivier Ortelpa/CC By 2.0

PARIS, Apr 7 2019 (IPS) – Amid rising attacks on rights campaigners, and mass protests in countries such as France and Serbia, civil society groups are urging governments to ensure the protection of “democratic values” and freedom of expression.

In Belgrade, some 850 human rights campaigners, civil society leaders and engaged citizens will meet Apr. 8 to 12 for the annual International Civil Society Week (ICSW) – a gathering co-hosted by the Johannesburg-based global civil society alliance CIVICUS and Serbian association Civic Initiatives, with the support of the Balkans Civil Society Development Network.

Under the theme, “The Power of Togetherness”, ICSW 2019 “seeks to generate deep conversations among civil society leaders, social justice advocates, development practitioners, members of the philanthropic community, diplomats and others on emerging global challenges and how civil society should be responding to these,” said Mandeep Tiwana, CIVICUS’ chief programmes officer.

“Defence of democratic values, civic space and participation, along with citizen action, will be among the topics of discussion,” he told IPS in an email interview while en route to Belgrade.

“Our message to governments is that the right to peaceful protest is a basic human right enshrined in constitutional and international law. Governments have an inherent responsibility to enable the right to peaceful protest as an integral element of the defence of democracy,” he added.

The ICSW meeting comes at a time when human-rights organisations, campaigners and media workers in many regions have experienced growing repression, including arrests, beatings and killings that have shocked and outraged international observers.

“In country after country, democracy is under attack, with populist and right-wing movements gaining ground and democratic regression being witnessed even in countries historically considered bastions of democracy,” CIVICUS says.

“Activists, journalists and people who speak out against growing restrictions are persecuted. A historic rise of populist leaders continues to erode fundamental freedoms, heightening political polarisation and sowing division,” the group adds.

“This year’s event in Serbia comes at a critical and opportune time for civil society and the world’s citizens to realise the power of unified, collective action to challenge a global trend that threatens our fundamental freedoms,” said Lysa John, CIVICUS’ Secretary General.

The discussions will take place against a backdrop of unrest in various countries: massive public demonstrations have been continuing in Serbia, for instance, while France’s Gilets Jaunes (or Yellow Vests) marched again on Apr. 6 in Paris and other cities for the 21st weekend in a row.

This latest French strife began last November in response to fuel price increases, and the demonstrators say they won’t give up until their demands are met for a restructuring of French society so that the “elite” aren’t always in charge.

During earlier marches, rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticised the French police for using “excessive force” and “heavy-handed” crowd control and anti-riot measures.

But some protestors have also participated in violence, looting and the targeting of media professionals, as reporters covering the marches have come under attack.

Media workers, in fact, often find themselves between a rock and a hard place, caught amongst the security forces and protestors as they try to report on turbulent events. CIVICUS said that the role of the media and their relationship with civil society will be a key topic of discussion at ICSW, alongside the focus on protecting rights campaigners.

“CIVICUS is working in several ways to stop attacks on members of the media and civil society activists targeted for exposing rights violations or speaking truth to power,” Tiwana said. “We engage with a broad range of civil society organisations that support press freedom using several approaches ranging from in-depth participatory research and analysis to raising awareness of attacks on the media, strategic coalition building, and directly engaging decision-makers at the national and international levels.”

He told IPS that joint efforts had contributed to the “release of journalists and the scrapping of repressive bills that restrict media freedoms” in some instance, while in others the efforts had “helped put serious violations of media freedoms on the UN’s radar through its various human rights mechanisms”.

The choice of Serbia’s capital as the 2019 ICSW venue will draw attention to current protests and also recall the bloody recent history of the Balkans, highlighting the need for international vigilance in protecting rights, according to civil society groups.

“During the 1990s, authoritarian regimes produced conflicts, severe human rights violations and genocide. Today, as we approach European Union membership, internal and international independent monitoring mechanisms show shrinking media freedoms, a lack of separation of power and rule of law, and deterioration of freedom of elections,” stated Maja Stojanovic, of Civic Initiatives.

“This region, and particularly Serbia, demonstrates that changing laws, strategies or governments offers no guarantees – democracy does not exist if it is not built constantly. By hosting this year’s event in Belgrade, we will convene and send messages rooted in local circumstances and, in the same time, fully reflecting global challenges,” she said.

Ahead of the meeting, Serbia and four other countries have been added to a global watchlist of countries that have seen an “escalation in serious threats to fundamental freedoms in recent weeks and months”, according to CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks threats to civil society across the world.

Citizens of all five countries (Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Venezuela are the others) are experiencing increasing rights violations that “include killings, attacks on protesters, media restrictions and arbitrary detentions of human rights defenders”.

“It is deeply concerning to see escalated threats to basic rights in these countries,” said Marianna Belalba Barreto, CIVICUS’ Civic Space Research Lead.

“It is critical that these five governments wake up to their failure to respect international law and take swift action to respect their citizens’ most basic freedoms in a democratic society,” Belalba said.

CIVICUS is also calling upon “neighbouring states and international bodies to put pressure on these countries to end the repression”.

The Amazon Seeks Alternatives that Could Revolutionise Energy Production

Posted on April 5, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Conferences, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Editors’ Choice, Energy, Environment, Featured, Green Economy, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Integration and Development Brazilian-style, Latin America & the Caribbean, Projects, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Energy

Milton Callera (holding the microphone) and Nantu Canelos, members of the indigenous Achuar community, explain how the two solar boats built to transport their people on the Amazon rivers of Ecuador work. The project is from the Kara Solar Foundation, which is promoting an alliance to “solarise” river transport in the Amazon rainforest. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

MANAUS, Brazil, Apr 5 2019 (IPS) – A large steel wheel, 14 meters in diameter and 1.3 meters wide, could be the energy solution of the near future, generating 3.5 megawatts – enough to supply a city of 30,000 people, according to a company in the capital city of the state of Amazonas in northwest Brazil.

An internal fluid, which expands through a chemical reaction in contact with an ink, drives the rotation that produces electricity without interruption for at least five years, say executives at Eletro Roda, a company in the city of Manaus that is marketing the invention and is building its first demonstration unit.

“Installation of the unit costs less than half that of an equivalent solar power plant and occupies an area of just 200 square meters, compared to 50,000 square meters for solar and 5,000 square meters for wind power,” Fernando Lindoso, the director of the company in which he is a partner, told IPS.

In other words, in the space occupied by a wind power plant that generates 3.5 megawatts (MW), 25 electro-wheels could be installed, multiplying the generating capacity by a factor of 25.

In addition, it has the advantage of stable generation, “free of the intermittency of other sources,” said Lindoso, who estimated the cost of each 3.5 MW unit at around five million dollars, a price that is reduced for social projects.

There are interested parties in Japan, India and other countries in Asia, as well as in European and Middle Eastern countries, based on earlier prototypes that never made it to market, he said.

There will be a smaller version, generating one MW, “30 percent cheaper”, of identical dimensions, but with three tons of the fluid that is biodegradable, instead of the four used in the other model.

This was one of the alternatives presented at the Fair and Symposium on Energy Solutions for Communities in the Amazon, which brought together more than 500 participants and 39 companies and institutions in Manaus Mar. 25-28.

“My favorite is the solar boat, a good example of how to find solutions,” said Sam Passmore, director of the Environmental Programme at the U.S.-based Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, one of the meeting’s eight international sponsors.

A large metal wheel that can be taken apart in order to facilitate transport produces electricity by rotating driven by an internal fluid, which is expanded by a chemical reaction. Producing 3.5 megawatts, the generator to be sold by Eletro Roda could produce a steady supply of electricity on just 200 square meters of space. Credit: Courtesy of Eletro Roda

An alliance for solar-powered transportation in the Amazon is propose by the Kara Solar Foundation, of the indigenous Achuar people of Ecuador, who since 2017 have built two 18-passenger boats powered by electricity from a rooftop made of photovoltaic panels.

Kara means dream in the Achuar language and it is about maintaining the sustainable culture of river transport, as opposed to “the roads that threaten our territory, presented as if they represented development,” project coordinator Nantu Canelos told IPS during the fair.

“We want to build 300, 400 solar boats,” said Milton Callera, technical director of the Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (Coica).

Riverside dwellers and indigenous people in Brazil are also seeking to “solarise” their boats, especially the small ones, dedicated to fishing and the transportation of a few people. The problem is where to put the solar panels on the so-called “flying boats”, without slowing them down.

The discussions at the symposium, however, focused on the need to universalise energy. “There are still 500,000 people, or 100,000 families, without access to electricity in Brazil’s Amazon region,” according to Paulo Cerqueira, coordinator of Social Policies at the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

Attorney Joenia Wapichana, the first indigenous woman to hold a seat in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, speaks at the opening of the Symposium on Energy Solutions for Communities in the Amazon, in the city of Manaus. She is from Roraima, the state with a high indigenous population in northwest Brazil that is suffering a serious energy crisis due to the interruption of supplies from neighboring Venezuela. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The Light for All Programme, launched in 2003, benefited more than 16 million people, according to the ministry, in this country of 208 million people. But so far, isolated and remote communities, not reached by the power grid, have been excluded.

There are also millions of families who do have electricity, but are outside the National Integrated System, including the entire state of Roraima, in the northeast, with 580,000 inhabitants, on the border with Venezuela, from where it received most of its electricity until the supply crisis that erupted in March in the neighboring country.

Isolated communities in the state receive electricity mainly from diesel- or other petroleum-fueled generators.

The slogan for such cases is to replace costly, slow and unreliable transportation fueled by fossil fuels on the Amazon rainforest rivers, and to prioritise clean sources of energy. Solar power is presented as the most feasible solution, since the Amazon rainforest is not windy.

The exception is Roraima, where the state´s numerous indigenous people are studying the adoption of wind farms to help defend themselves from the impacts of the Venezuelan crisis.

Autonomous solar generation projects are mushrooming in the Amazon, in indigenous villages and riverbank settlements, sometimes funded by non-governmental institutions and international assistance, such as the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Rainforest Foundation of Norway.

Willi Seilert, from the I9SOL Institute, explains how his solar panels are manufactured, during the Fair and Symposium on Energy Solutions for Amazonia, held in Manaus. He has a project to disseminate a thousand small solar panel factories in Brazil, in order to make photovoltaic generation cheaper in poor communities. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

As a result, companies such as Fabortec Solar, which installs photovoltaic systems and sells equipment, focused on designing and offering off-grid projects, incorporating batteries and equipment that ensure operation and maintenance by the users themselves.

“The Amazon is a great market for those who don’t mind long trips and can work in places that are difficult to access,” a company technician told IPS.

The expansion of solar energy in many parts of Brazil, not only in the Amazon, prompted Willi Seilert to design a plan to promote 1,000 solar panel micro-factories throughout the country.

This could make the product cheaper and facilitate access by poor families and communities to solar energy, in addition to training, employing and generating income for nearly 20,000 people in the country, he estimated.

That’s why he founded the I9SOL Institute, where the “9” stands for innovation.

A 50-square-meter office, at least 10 people trained by two instructors, a glass-top table, an oven and a few tools are enough to produce small solar panels, he told IPS.

“The main obstacle is the import of photovoltaic cells, which Brazil does not produce and which has to pay too high a tariff, because of a strange legal measure adopted in 2012,” he lamented.

In addition to this, there are two industrial processes for processing silicon, and “the rest is packaging work that trained people can do without difficulty,” he said, before pointing out that this continues to be the case in China and India, which provides employment for millions of workers, especially women.

The project is to be launched in Teófilo Otoni, a city of 140,000 people in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, whose mayor plans to employ prisoners nearing release in the solar industry, Seilert said.

There are more energy alternatives in the Amazonian region. Experiments with the use of oil from the babassu (Attalea speciosa) palm tree abundant in the Amazon and neighboring areas, and from andiroba (Carapa guianensis), a tree with oilseeds, for electricity generation were presented at the symposium.

Railton de Lima, the inventor of the Eletro Roda, which he called a “voluntary engine for mechanical energy generation,” also developed a system for converting urban waste into charcoal briquettes to generate electricity, making it easier to recycle metals.

This technology is already used in several Brazilian cities, including Manaus. Of Lima’s 28 inventions, more than half are already being used in the market, and others are being developed for energy purposes.

Creativity, which helps to seek more suitable alternatives, is also found in poor communities.

“The idea of the right to energy is powerful” and stimulates solutions, said Passmore of the Mott Foundation. In the same sense, the diversity of peoples and communities represented at the Manaus meeting was “a very positive factor,” he concluded.

South-South Cooperation: a Path to Implementing UN’s 2030 Agenda

Posted on March 25, 2019 by admin

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

Opinion

António Guterres, is Secretary-General of the United Nations

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 25 2019 (IPS) – I see five issues that will be central to implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. South-South Cooperation can offer solutions to all of them.

First, rising inequality both between and within countries is eroding trust and deepening a sense of injustice. Globalization has enabled many people to escape poverty – but its benefits are not shared equitably and its costs fall disproportionately on the poor and vulnerable.

António Guterres

Cooperation can enable developing countries to learn from each other and grow more quickly, close income gaps and build inclusive, resilient societies.

Second, climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are losing the race. 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record and natural disasters are impacting nearly every region.

That is why I am bringing world leaders together at a climate action summit in New York in September. I am calling on leaders to bring concrete, realistic plans that raise ambition on mitigation, adaptation, finance and innovation.

We must enhance nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next decade.

We need fundamental shifts to support green financing and increase investment in climate action from billions to trillions.

The Green Climate Fund must become fully resourced and operational. And the pledge to mobilize 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 for climate action in the developing world, including mitigation and adaptation, must be implemented.

South-South cooperation will be vital to ensure mutual support and exchange of best practices, to enhance adaptation and increase the resilience of developing countries and communities facing the devastating impacts of climate change.

South-South Cooperation can also support the transformation of economies dependent on fossil fuels, with strategies that reinforce both sustainable development and environmental protection.

Third, infrastructure and energy needs are set to expand enormously, thanks to population growth and urbanization in the Global South.

Some 60 percent of the area that is expected to become urban by 2030 has yet to be built. If we get this wrong, we will lock ourselves into a high-emissions future with potentially catastrophic consequences.

But if we get infrastructure right, it will be an opportunity for development cooperation, industrial transition and growth, cross-border trade and investment, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable development.

Fourth, gender has been described as the docking station for the SDGs, since it offers opportunities to engage on different crosscutting issues. It must be at the heart of all efforts if we are to succeed.

We have seen significant progress for women over the past forty years. More girls are in school; more women are doing paid work. Harmful practices like female genital mutilation and child marriage are in decline.

But this progress is not complete; indeed, we are seeing a pushback against our efforts and in some cases the gender equality gap is widening.

This affects us all, because where women are better represented in politics, we see improved social protection and increased spending on development. When women have access to land and credit, harvests increase. When girls are educated, they contribute more to their communities and break cycles of poverty.

And let’s not forget that countries with the highest number of women in parliament, in national security institutions, and as farmers, are indeed in the Global South.

Fifth, the multilateral development system must be better positioned to support South-South cooperation and implement the 2030 Agenda.

South-South cooperation has evolved significantly over the last decades – but multilateral institutions, including the United Nations, have not kept up.

I am grateful to Member States for recognizing the role of the United Nations in the outcome document for the South-South Conference (in Buenos Aires). We will take up the mandates you are entrusting to us, and you can count on my personal commitment to make sure the ongoing reforms of the United Nations reinvigorate our support for South-South cooperation.

We also need to realign financing for sustainable development and unlock the trillions that will deliver the 2030 Agenda.

South-South cooperation can never be a substitute for official development assistance or replace the responsibilities of the Global North set out in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement.

South-South Cooperation must also involve young people, civil society, the private sector, academia and others, building innovative partnerships and extending the reach of initiatives. It must harness the potential of new technologies and digitalization that create opportunities and promote inclusivity.

South-South cooperation is a global exercise of all countries of the South to benefit everyone, including the Least Developed Countries. Every country, every partner has something to share or teach, whatever their circumstances.

This conference is a starting point.

Later this year, over the course of a week in September, Heads of State will gather in New York for the Sustainable Development Goals Summit and the Climate Action Summit. They will discuss Universal Health Coverage, Financing Sustainable Development and the Global Partnership to support Small Island Developing States.

All these meetings are aimed at accelerating implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, which were born from a consensus on the common interests that bind us together.

Now is the time to stake out that common ground again and take bold and transformative action.

Together, we can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we can beat climate change, and transform the lives of people around the world.

I thank the Government and people of Argentina for hosting this Conference.

Forty years ago, the landmark international conference on South-South Cooperation resulted in the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries.

Since then, the Buenos Aires Plan of Action, known as BAPA, has been the foundation and reference point for South-South cooperation, based on principles of national ownership, equality and non-conditionality.

BAPA transformed the dynamics of international cooperation.

It highlighted the value of a different form of cooperation, based on the exchange of knowledge and appropriate technologies among nations facing similar development challenges.

Across the global South, we have seen remarkable advances since BAPA. Thanks in part to South-South cooperation, millions of women, men and children have been lifted out of extreme poverty. Developing countries have achieved some of the fastest economic growth rates ever seen and have set global standards for sustainable development.

As we gather again in Buenos Aires, we recognize and celebrate the long journey we have walked together.

But we also recognize our common challenges.

Today, we are here to ensure that South-South cooperation remains responsive to the evolving realities of global development and the changing needs of developing countries as they implement the 2030 Agenda.

We have an opportunity to develop and strengthen frameworks for South-South cooperation; improve systems and tools; increase transparency; and strengthen accountability.

*Extracts from a keynote address by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the Conference on South-South Conference in Buenos Aires on March 20, 2019.

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

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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”.

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