International Women’s Day, 2023World Parliaments Could Take Another 80 Years to Achieve Gender Parity Among Legislators

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Despite advances in gender representation in legislative bodies, the track record of women in the executive branches of government – as heads of state or heads of government — remains low.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

For the first time in history, says a new report from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), not a single functioning parliament in the world is “male-only”.

Is the increasing number of women in parliaments a singular achievement for gender empowerment? Or is it the result of mandatory legislative quotas for women’s representation in world’s parliaments?

According to the latest IPU report, Women in Parliament 2022, women’s participation in parliament has never been as diverse and representative as it is in many countries today.

The findings are based on the 47 countries that held elections in 2022. In those elections, women took an average 25.8% of seats up for election or appointment. This represents a 2.3 percentage point increase compared to previous renewals in these chambers.

Brazil saw a record 4,829 women who identify as Black running for election (out of 26,778 candidates); in the US, a record number of women of colour (263) stood in the midterm elections; LGBTQI+ representation in Colombia tripled from two to six members of the Congress; and in France, 32 candidates from minority backgrounds were elected to the new National Assembly, an all-time high of 5.8% of the total.

The report said legislated quotas were again a decisive factor in the increases seen in women’s representation.

Thomas Fitzsimons, IPU’s Director of Communications told IPS there are many factors that explain the successes of the countries that have made progress.

For example, he pointed out, technological and operational transformations, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have increased the potential for parliaments to become more gender-sensitive and family-friendly.

“The influence of gender issues on election outcomes, with increased awareness of discrimination and gender-based violence, as well as alliances with other social movements, also helped drive strong results for women in some of the parliamentary elections,” he noted.

“But if we had to choose one primary factor, it would be legislated quotas. Legislated quotas enshrined in the constitution and/or electoral laws require that a minimum number of candidates are women (or of the under-represented sex),” he said.

Chambers with legislated quotas or combined with voluntary party quotas produced a significantly higher share of women than those without in the 2022 elections (30.9% versus 21.2%).

“As for the future, we need to accelerate the momentum which is still too slow. At current rates of growth, it will take another 80 years before we reach parity,” Fitzsimons declared.

Antonia Kirkland Global Lead — Legal Equality and Access to Justice.at Equality Now, told IPS it is encouraging to see IPU’s data revealing that more women than ever are in political decision-making roles globally, and there has been an overall increase in the number of women in both government and parliamentary posts.

IPU’s data clearly demonstrates that quotas on women’s representation have had a positive, big impact. Countries applying quotas have enjoyed a 9.7% increase in women in parliaments in comparison to countries without, she said.

“However, it is lamentable that women are still so underrepresented at all levels of political decision-making, accounting for only 9.8% of Heads of Government and just over a quarter of MPs. It is also deeply concerning that gender parity in parliaments is at least 80 years away if we continue at the current pace.”

With the World Bank finding that only 14 countries have full legal equality between women and men, and UN Women gaging it will take another 286 years to eliminate gaps in legal protections, duty bearers must create a safe and empowering environment for women to engage in politics that fosters greater legal equality, said Kirkland.

She said more needs to be done to increase women’s political representation by understanding and removing obstacles that impede women’s participation in the public sphere and decision-making.

“To accelerate gender parity in parliaments, we need an end to sex-discriminatory laws in all areas of life which hold women back from engaging in politics in the first place.”

Political parties should highlight the importance and advantages of gender diversity, and implement initiatives that involve women in politics at all stages and within all branches of the political arena.

IPU’s report, she pointed out, shows that a shocking percentage of women in parliament are subjected to gender-based violence and sexual harassment in their own parliaments, on the streets, and in the digital world. Concerted efforts are required to tackle head-on gender-based violence and abuse targeting women politicians both online and offline.

Governments, parliamentarians, the private sector, and civil society need to seize every opportunity – such as the upcoming UN Global Digital Compact – to work together so that women are protected from online abuse. Perpetrates and those who facilitate or provide platforms for such abuse must be held accountable.

“Tackling this problem would result in less self-censorship by parliamentarians, greater interest from girls and young women to serve in government, and ultimately stronger democracies that are both more peaceful and gender-equal, declared Kirkland.

At the regional level, the report said, six countries now have gender parity (or a greater share of women than men) in their lower or single chamber as of 1 January 2023. New Zealand joined last year’s club of five consisting of Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Rwanda and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), at the top of the IPU’s authoritative global ranking of women in parliament.

Other notable gains in women’s representation were recorded in Australia (the strongest outcome of the year with a record 56.6% of seats won by women in the Senate), Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Malta and Slovenia.

High stakes elections in Angola, Kenya and Senegal all saw positive strides for women. Wide divides characterized results in Asia: record numbers of women were elected to the historically male-dominated Senate in Japan but in India, elections to the upper chamber led to women occupying only 15.1% of seats, well below the global and regional averages.

The Pacific saw the highest growth rate in women’s representation out of all the regions, gaining 1.7 percentage points to reach an overall average of 22.6% women in parliament. Every Pacific parliament now has at least one-woman legislator.

In the 15 European chambers that were renewed in 2022, there was little shift in women’s representation, stagnating at 31%.

In the Middle East and North Africa region, seven chambers were renewed in 2022. On average, women were elected to 16.3% of the seats in these chambers, the lowest regional percentage in the world for elections held in the year. Three countries were below 10%: Algeria (upper chamber: 4.3%), Kuwait (6.3%) and Lebanon (6.3%).

Bahrain is an outlier in the region with a record eight women elected to the lower chamber, including many first-time lawmakers. 73 women ran for election to the lower chamber (out of a total of 330 candidates) compared with the 41 women who ran in the last election in 2018. Ten women were also appointed to the 40-member upper chamber.

The IPU is the global organization of national parliaments. It was founded more than 133 years ago as the first multilateral political organization in the world, encouraging cooperation and dialogue between all nations. Today, the IPU comprises 178 national Member Parliaments and 14 regional parliamentary bodies. It promotes democracy and helps parliaments become stronger, younger, gender-balanced and more representative. It also defends the human rights of parliamentarians through a dedicated committee made up of MPs from around the world.

For more information about the IPU, contact Thomas Fitzsimons at e-mail: press@ipu.org or tf@ipu.org or tel: +41(0) 79 854 31 53

IPS UN Bureau Report

 


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This feature is part of a series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8. Source

How Emerging Economies Are Reshaping the International Financial System

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The G20 or Group of Twenty is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union. It works to address major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stability, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development.

By Ian Mitchell and Sam Hughes
LONDON, Feb 23 2023 (IPS)

It’s been 25 years since the 1997 Asian financial crisis led to the creation of the G20 forum for finance ministers; and 15 years since this became a leader-level meeting following the global financial crisis. During this period, there has been significant shift in the global finance and economic landscape.

The ascent of several emerging economies has seen their contributions to the multilateral finance system that supports development rise significantly. Our new report collates those contributions over the last decade for the first time. It charts how China’s annual contributions to the UN and multilateral development banks rose twenty-fold from $0.1bn to $2.2bn.

But it also looks collectively at a group of 13 rising economies whose developmental contributions to multilateral finance institutions have risen five-fold to over $6bn over the last decade.

These contributions now make up an eighth of the total; and have seen the creation of two new multilateral finance institutions.

In this piece, we draw out key findings from our analysis, including the balance between funding existing and new institutions like the New Development Bank.

We consider whether continued growth in the 13 emerging actors could generate enough new funding for development over the next quarter century, and even create an institution as large at the World Bank’s fund for low-income countries (IDA).

Despite recent rhetoric around the return to a bipolar world order, this report is evidence that a wide group of countries are already playing major role in the global economic and development system, and will continue to do so in years to come

The transformational effect of economic growth on the multilateral system

In 1990 most people in the world lived in low-income countries; by 2020, this share had fallen dramatically to just seven percent of people. Meanwhile, the share of the global population living in middle-income countries swelled from 30 percent in 1990 to 73 percent in 2020.

Such a transformation implies a greater number of countries with the economic output to contribute internationally: widening and deepening participation in the multilateral system.

And this is just what we’ve seen. Over the decade to 2019, we find a group of emerging actors have significantly increased their contributions of development finance to multilateral organisations.

These include thirteen major economies outside the group of more established providers within the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which tend to receive more attention.

Ten of these emerging actors are G20 members, including the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—but others have grown quickly too: Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Collectively, we refer to these thirteen emerging actors as the “E13.”

Over the decade, the E13’s annual contributions of development finance to multilateral organisations (both core and funding earmarked for particular purposes) have increased almost five-fold, from $1.3bn in 2010 to $6.3bn in 2019 (up 377 percent). And their unrestricted core contributions have risen even more: increasing from $1.0bn to $5.2bn (up 410 percent).

Of these core contributions, we see that those to UN agencies more than quadrupled over the decade, steadily rising from $0.3bn to $1.2bn (up 330 percent). But by far the most striking development in E13 core contributions has come from the creation and capitalisation of two new multilateral organisations: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB).

The role of China

Although China has recently stepped back its bilateral finance efforts, its multilateral contributions increased steadily to 2019; and provided a third (34 percent) of the E13 total over the decade. Our colleagues have examined this in detail, including how China has the second highest aggregate voting share after the US in international finance institutions it supports.

Still, our analysis also highlights the importance of Russia, Brazil and India who each contributed over $3bn over the period and collectively contributed a further third of the total. While China’s multilateral contributions have been concentrated (59 percent) in new institutions it co-founded (see below), other providers have concentrated funding in traditional institutions: for example, Argentina, Chile and Mexico did not support the new institutions while for Saudi Arabia and UAE they were 17 percent and 21 percent respectively.

Creating new multilateral finance organisations

Over the ten-year period we examine, almost half of the E13’s core multilateral contributions were to the two new institutions (AIIB and NDB). After 2016, funding provided to these institutions made up over two-thirds of their contributions. Indeed, in 2016 the first financial contributions to AIIB and NDB causedE13 multilateral development finance to triple in a single year.

The E13 provided an additional $6.0bn of core funds for AIIB and NDB in 2016, without reducing their multilateral contributions through other channels.

Though annual contributions reduced to $3.1bn in 2019, AIIB and NDB still accounted for half of the E13’s multilateral development finance in that year, leaving their contributions at the end of the decade far ahead of the beginning.

Figure 1. E13 core and earmarked contributions of development finance to multilateral organisations (nominal USD billions)

Source: Authors’ analysis

Emerging actors fund a sixth of the UN system

As well as higher absolute contributions (Figure 1), the E13’s role in the multilateral system has also grown in relative terms (Figure 2). As a share of the level of finance provided by the 29 high-income countries in the OECD DAC, the E13’s core multilateral contributions rose from 5 percent in 2010 to 12 percent in 2019—more than doubling their relative significance.

This was largely due to the effect of AIIB and NDB (clearly seen by the 2016 peak), but we also see that E13 core contributions to the UN system steadily and quickly rose as a share of the DAC level across the decade: from 5 percent in 2010 to 17 percent in 2019.

Figure 2. E13 core contributions of development finance to multilateral organisations as a share of contributions from DAC countries

Source: Authors’ analysis

A look to 2050—what role might the emerging economies play?

As the economies of the E13 continue to grow, what might this mean for their multilateral contributions in the future? Figure 3 shows how the share of economic output provided as development finance to multilateral organisations (either core or earmarked) tends to increase with higher levels of income per capita.

Though the relationship is steeper for the DAC than the E13, even the E13’s current trajectory implies a significant increase in future multilateral development finance from this group.

Ian Mitchell is Co-Director, Development Cooperation in Europe and Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Sam Hughes is a Research Assistant at the Center for Global Development.

IPS UN Bureau

 


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China and Russia Fail to Defund UN Human Rights Work

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Opinion

UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva

NEW YORK, Feb 15 2023 (IPS) – United Nations member states agreed to fully fund UN human rights mechanisms that China, Russia, and their allies had sought to defund in the 2023 budget. This should set a precedent for UN human rights funding in the future.

Human Rights Watch has warned for years about China and Russia-led efforts to slash funding for UN human rights work, which was aimed at undermining decisions by the UN Human Rights Council, General Assembly, and Security Council.

During the General Assembly’s budget negotiations in late 2022, China, Russia and allies proposed a resolution to defund human rights investigations in Sri Lanka, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine, Nicaragua, North Korea, Belarus, Syria, and Eritrea. Ethiopia proposed a resolution to defund an investigation of war crimes and abuses in Ethiopia itself.

Israel also urged states to deny funding for an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legal consequences of its 55-year occupation of Palestinian territory.

All these efforts failed. The Czech Republic, as European Union president, countered by proposing full funding for human rights mechanisms at the level proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres. The resolution passed by a sizable majority.

There’s more good news. Not only did the defunding efforts fail, the highly problematic recommendations put forward by the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) were rejected.

The Advisory Committee is supposed to be an independent body of experts, but in recent years, its “experts” from countries like China and Russia have been pushing their governments’ anti-human rights agendas and advocating for sharp cuts in funding for human rights work, with no good reasons.

Due to divisions between Western countries and developing states, the standard UN funding compromise had become accepting the non-binding Advisory Committee recommendations. For example, if its recommendations had been adopted, the staff and budget for the Iran commission of inquiry would have been cut in half.

UN member countries should treat the successful UN budget outcome as a blueprint for the future. The job of the Fifth Committee – which oversees UN budget matters – is to allocate resources, not question mandates approved by UN legislative bodies.

They should also reform or replace the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions with an advisory body staffed by genuinely independent experts, not diplomats doing the bidding of their governments.

Meanwhile, UN delegations should build on this success and ensure reliable full funding for all UN human rights mandates.

Louis Charbonneau is UN Director Human Rights Watch

IPS UN Bureau

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Outlook for 2023: Children in ‘Polycrisis’

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Opinion

A family walks past a heavily damaged building in Borodianka, Ukraine. Multiple threats are converging to leave families reeling. But putting children at the centre of the response can help shape a brighter future. Credit: UNICEF/UN0765276/Filippov

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 2023 (IPS) – The year 2022 was incredibly difficult for people around the world. We were confronted by a series of major crises, including a continuing pandemic, a major war in Europe, an energy crisis, rising inflation and food insecurity.

These events hit children particularly hard, compounding the already severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of children had to flee their homes because of conflict or extreme weather events. At the same time, child malnutrition and the number of children in need of humanitarian assistance rose.

The war in Ukraine, for example, has led to higher food and energy prices, which in turn has contributed to rising global hunger and inflation. Efforts to address inflation through rising interest rates in the US have driven up the value of the dollar against other currencies, making developing countries’ imports, debt repayments and their ability to access external financing more difficult.

As we explain in our new report, ‘Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook’, these realities have added up to what has been termed a ‘polycrisis’ – multiple, simultaneous crises that are strongly interdependent.

As we look to 2023, it’s clear that the polycrisis is likely to continue shaping children’s lives. The effects of these intertwined and far-reaching trends will be difficult to untangle, and solutions will be difficult to find as policymakers struggle to keep up with multiple urgent needs.

The situation is particularly dire in economically developing countries. Higher food and energy prices have contributed to a rise in global hunger and malnourishment, with children among the most affected.

The polycrisis is also limiting access to healthcare for many children, making it harder for them to receive treatment and routine vaccinations. Recovery from learning losses caused by the closure of schools will be slow and felt for years to come, while the shift to remote learning has left children from low-income families facing the greatest challenges in catching up.

At the same time, the combination of higher financing needs, soaring inflation and a tighter fiscal outlook will widen the education financing gap needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Climate change, too, is also a part of this polycrisis, with visible effects, including devastating floods in Pakistan and droughts in East Africa, making it harder for children to access education, food and healthcare, and causing widespread displacement of populations.

All these factors have led UNICEF to estimate that 300 million children will be in need of humanitarian assistance this year. This staggering number highlights the urgency for international organizations and governments to step in and provide assistance.

But the polycrisis doesn’t have to lead to further instability or, ultimately, systemic breakdown. Some of the stresses we saw in 2022 have already weakened, and new opportunities may arise to alleviate the situation.

For example, food and oil prices have dropped from their peaks, and good harvests in some countries may help to lower global food prices. Fortunately, we know there are solutions and strategies that work.

One potential solution is to increase investment in social protection programmes, such as cash transfers and food assistance, which can help alleviate the immediate economic impacts of the polycrisis on families. These programmes can also help to build resilience and reduce vulnerabilities.

The establishment of learning recovery programmes will help tackle the learning losses and prevent children from falling further behind. And early prevention, detection and treatment plans for severe child malnutrition have been effective in reducing child wasting.

Ultimately, a coordinated and collective effort is needed to protect the rights and well-being of children. This includes not only providing immediate assistance but also addressing the underlying causes of the polycrisis and building resilience for the future.

This cannot be achieved without a more coordinated and collective effort from international organizations and governments to help mitigate the effects of the polycrisis and protect children’s futures.

And, crucially, we must listen to children and young people themselves so that we can understand the future they want to build and live in. In fact, we followed this approach when we were assessing trends for ‘Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis’, asking young people from across the world age 16 to 29 to give us their views on some of the challenges their generation faces.

It’s critical that we take action to protect the most vulnerable among us. The future may be uncertain, but by working together we can help to build a better future for our children.

Jasmina Byrne is Chief of Foresight and Policy, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight.

‘Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook’, produced by UNICEF Innocenti – Office of Global Research and Foresight, unpacks the trends that will impact children over the next 12 months.

Source: UNICEF

IPS UN Bureau

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Pact Protecting Environmentalists Suffers Threats in Mexico

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Environment

A mining waste deposit in the center of the municipality of Topia, in the northern Mexican state of Durango, threatens the air, water and people’s health. The Escazú Agreement, In force since 2021, guarantees access to environmental information and justice in Latin American countries, as well as public participation in decision-making on these issues. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

A mining waste deposit in the center of the municipality of Topia, in the northern Mexican state of Durango, threatens the air, water and people’s health. The Escazú Agreement,
In force since 2021, guarantees access to environmental information and justice in Latin American countries, as well as public participation in decision-making on these issues. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

MEXICO CITY, Feb 7 2023 (IPS) – In the municipality of Papantla, in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, the non-governmental Regional Coordinator of Solidarity Action in Defense of the Huasteca-Totonacapan Territory (Corason) works with local communities on empowering organizations, advocacy capacity in policies and litigation strategies.

“This participation with organizations that work at the national level and have the capacity to influence not only the legal field is important,” Corason coordinator Alejandra Jiménez told IPS from Papantla. “They are able to bring injunctions, and this is how they have managed to block mining projects, for example.”

“Up to now, the Escazú Agreement is dead letter, that is the history of many laws in Mexico. Environmentalists have clearly suffered from violence, and let’s not even mention access to information, where there have even been setbacks.” — Alejandra Jiménez

She was referring to the collaboration between locally-based civil society organizations and others of national scope.

Since its creation in 2015, Corason has supported local organizations in their fight against the extraction of shale gas through hydraulic fracturing or fracking, a highly polluting technique that uses large volumes of water and chemicals, in Veracruz and Puebla, as well as mining and hydroelectric plants in Puebla.

Cases like this abound in Mexico, as they do throughout Latin America, a particularly dangerous region for environmentalists.

Activists agreed on the challenges involved in enforcing the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Escazú Agreement, seen as a tool to mitigate dangers faced by human rights defenders in environmental matters.

A case that has been in the hands of Mexico’s Supreme Court since August 2021 is currently addressing the power of organizations to express their disagreement with environmental decisions and will outline the future of environmental activism in this Latin American country of some 130 million people, and of the enforcement of the Escazú Agreement.

The origin of the case lies in two opposing rulings by Mexican courts in 2019 and 2020, in which one recognized the power of organizations and the other rejected that power. As a result, the case went to the Supreme Court, which must reach a decision to settle the contradiction.

In August 2022 and again on Jan. 25 this year, the Supreme Court postponed its own verdict, which poses a legal threat to the megaprojects promoted by the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a staunch defender of the country’s oil industry.

Gustavo Ampugnani, general director of Greenpeace Mexico, said the case was an alert to the Escazú Agreement, and that it should not represent a setback for the defense of the environment.

“The significance lies in the risks involved in a wrong decision by the Supreme Court on how to resolve this existing contradiction. If the Court decides that the legal creation of an environmental organization is not enough and that other elements are required, it would limit citizen participation and access to justice,” he told IPS.

Environmentalists are waiting for their Godot in the form of the novel agreement, to which Brazil and Costa Rica do not yet belong, to improve their protection.

The treaty, in force since April 2021 and which takes its name from the Costa Rican city where it was signed, guarantees access to environmental information and justice, as well as public participation in environmental decision-making. It thus protects environmentalists and defenders of local land.

Mexico’s foreign ministry, which represented this country in negotiating the agreement, has identified a legislative route to reform laws that make its application possible and promote the integration of a multisectoral group with that same purpose.

Escazú has been undermined in Mexico by López Obrador’s constant attacks against defenders of the environment, whom he calls “pseudo-environmentalists” and “conservatives” for criticizing his policies, which they describe as anti-environmental and extractivist.

For this reason, a group of organizations and activists requested in a letter to the foreign ministry, released on Feb. 2, details of the progress in the creation of inter-institutional roundtables, selection of indicators, creation of protection mechanisms, and training of officials, including courts, while demanding transparency, inclusion and equity in the process.

Activists from the southern Mexican state of Puebla protest the activities of a water bottling company, on Apr.19, 2021. Environmentalists face serious threats in Mexico, where the Escazú Agreement, which since 2021 provides guarantees to these activists in Latin American countries, has not been applied. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Activists from the southern Mexican state of Puebla protest the activities of a water bottling company, on Apr.19, 2021. Environmentalists face serious threats in Mexico, where the Escazú Agreement, which since 2021 provides guarantees to these activists in Latin American countries, has not been applied. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

High risk

In 2021, there were 200 murders of environmentalists around the world, a slight decrease from 227 the previous year, according to a report by the London-based non-governmental organization Global Witness.

Latin America led these crimes, accounting for 157 of the killings, with a slight decline from 165 the previous year. Mexico topped the list with 54 murders, compared to 30 in 2020. Colombia ranked second despite the drop in cases: 33, down from 65 in 2020, followed by Brazil (26 vs. 20), Honduras (eight vs. 17) and Nicaragua (13 vs. 12).

The attacks targeted people involved in opposition to logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness and dams, and more than 40 percent of the victims were indigenous people.

In Mexico there are currently some 600 ongoing environmental conflicts without a solution from the government, according to estimates by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

The most recent case was the Jan. 15 disappearance of lawyer Ricardo Lagunes and indigenous activist Antonio Díaz, an opponent of mining in the western state of Michoacán, which the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has demanded be urgently clarified.

One year after it came into force, the Escazú Agreement is facing major challenges, especially in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua, where environmentalists face particular risks.

Olimpia Castillo, coordinator of the non-governmental organization Communication and Environmental Education, said the context sends out a warning.

“It is a very interesting round, because article 10 (of the agreement) refers to highlighting the participation of the organizations. That article could be violated, which would mean a major limitation. These are things that as a country we are going to have to face up to,” the activist, who participated in the negotiation of the agreement as a representative of civil society, told IPS.

In Mexico, compliance with the agreement has already faced hurdles, such as the November 2021 decree by which López Obrador declared his megaprojects “priority works for national security”, thus guaranteeing provisional permits, in contravention of the treaty.

Dispute resolution

Activists are already planning what to do if the Supreme Court hands down a negative verdict: they will turn to the Escazú Agreement dispute resolution mechanism – although the signatory countries have not actually designed it yet.

“We would consider turning to the treaty to resolve the issue. Environmental activism is highly dangerous. But that should not set aside the right of organizations to intervene in decisions. Activists and organizations must be given tools to use regional agreements, because what is happening in the country is very serious,” said Greenpeace’s Ampugnani.

Castillo’s organization is working to raise awareness about the agreement. “If no one knows it exists and that they are obliged to comply with it, how do we make them do it? There are still informative processes in which an application has not yet received a response. We have to demand compliance. There are conditions to apply the agreement. But we need political will to comply with it and to get the word out about it,” she said.

Corason’s Jiménez questioned whether the treaty was up-to-date. “Up to now, the Escazú Agreement is dead letter, that is the history of many laws in Mexico. Environmentalists have clearly suffered from violence, and let’s not even mention access to information, where there have even been setbacks. There is an environment that hinders progress,” she said.

In her view, it is not in the interest of governments to apply the agreement, because it requires participation, information and protection in environmental issues.

In March 2022, the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Escazú Agreement took place, which focused on its operational issues and other aspects that the countries will have to hash out before the next summit is held in 2024.

The Supreme Court, which has not yet set a date for handing down its ruling, is caught between going against the government if it favors environmental organizations or hindering respect for the agreement. For now, the treaty is as far from land as Mexico City is from Escazú: about 1,925 kilometers.

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Democracy on the Blink

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Food insecurity in Sri Lanka has increased dramatically due to two consecutive seasons of poor harvests, foreign exchange shortages, and reduced household purchasing power. Amidst Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since independence, the UN revised its joint Humanitarian Needs and Priorities (HNP) Plan, appealing for more life-saving assistance to aid 3.4 million people. November 2022 Credit: UNICEF/Chameera Laknath

LONDON, Feb 3 2023 (IPS) – On February 4, Sri Lanka commemorates 75 years of Independence. But it will not be the extravaganza of the past years, the minaturised imitations of the grand displays on Moscow’s Red Square or China’s Tiananmen Square.

Still, a critical question has been reverberating in the community ever since the government announced a scaled down celebration to commemorate 75 years since Britain relinquished power in 1948.

After defaulting on the country’s debt servicing last April for the first time in its post-independence history and being forced to resort to massive printing of money to meet state expenditure, does Sri Lanka need to celebrate independence day this year however downsized it would be?

Particularly so, when President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government itself claims Sri Lanka is struggling economically and it would take years to recover from its current chaos created by leaders who inexorably pushed it to the tip of the abyss with stupid economic policies, wasteful expenditure and wide- scale corruption and fraud.

While imposing unbearable new taxes and other restrictions on the daily lives of the people, driving them further into penury with school children going without meals, fainting in their classrooms and in need of medical treatment which itself is becoming scarce, the country’s leaders don’t seem short of resources for celebrations.

Even the country’s diplomatic missions will be holding their annual independence day celebrations as the invitation I received indicated, feasting their countrymen as best as they could.

Yet over the last couple of months the government has been selling the story that it has no funds to pay for the Local Government elections due in March. A strange enough claim after President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in one of his other roles as finance minister, presenting the budget for 2023 last November allocated funds for the election and parliament, which oversees public expenditure, approved it.

Now, the very persons who allocated money just three months ago claim to lack funds for a constitutionally required election. Punning on the old Harry Belafonte calypso, there is a hole in the budget, said some wag on social media.

It is this contradiction in government conduct that an already enraged people find inexcusable. Having got rid of one elected president– Gotabaya Rajapaksa– who surreptitiously fled the country last July when mounting peoples’ protests demanded the Rajapaksa clan quit the government, they find themselves confronted with what Sri Lankans have come to see as a Rajapaksa clone– and now derisively call him Ranil Rajapaksa– thrust into the presidency to keep the family’s political fires alight.

The Roman poet Juvenal dismissively called the delusionary performances staged by the Roman emperors of the time to distract their discontented citizenry, “panem et circensus”- bread and circuses.

Bread, like some other essentials, might be scarce or priced beyond the reach of many of its 22 million people. A few months back, the UN agency UNICEF reported that 5.7 million Sri Lankans including 2.3 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance and the numbers are likely to rise in the coming days.

But the country’s leaders are not beyond performing their own circus acts. A few days back President Wickremesinghe appointed two more cabinet ministers bringing the total to 22.

Within hours Sri Lankans with their innate sense of humour were on social media branding the new cabinet “Ali Baba and the 22” with the doors to the cabinet still open for more acolytes chosen not for integrity and competence but loyalty.

Before the two new ministers fattened the cabinet, splicing off the portfolios of two existing ministers, President Wickremesinghe a couple of months ago appointed 37 state ministers leaving room for three more.

Sri Lanka’s bloated ministerial ranks would surely be one of the largest in today’s parliamentary democracies. Not only is it large in numbers but the perks offered to ministers and state ministers is stunningly staggering–salaries, free housing, several expensive vehicles with fuel, free utilities such as electricity, water, telephones up to a point, several personal staff with paid salaries, armed personal security with escort vehicles, a special allowance for each day they attend parliament, state pension after five years and other facilities not generally known.

While the government is prepared to splash state funds on bolstering party cadres and lickspittle who have creamed off state assets, in the last couple of months it has been using every ruse in the books-and some which are not in them- trying to deprive the people of their constitutional right to the franchise, by blocking the Local Government elections due shortly.

This election, last held in 2018, is for 340 municipal councils, urban councils and village bodies is scheduled for March 9—the date set by the independent Election Commission last month.

But as the day for the election, as constitutionally required, neared, the attempts to stymie it began with grandees of President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) and the Rajapaksa clan-run Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that is propping up Wickremesinghe with its parliamentary majority, asserting that economic recovery must precede elections.

Ministers and even state officials were trotting out excuses that there was no money to fund elections, expecting the populace to have forgotten the budgetary allocation passed by parliament a few months back.

As this was being written, internationally-known legal academic and former foreign minister Prof GL Peiris was telling the media the government had made seven attempts to try and stop the election including an affidavit to the Supreme Court filed by the secretary to the finance ministry claiming the state of the economy precluded holding elections right now.

The latest ruse was a law called the Election Expenses Bill to control spending for elections hurriedly passed by parliament. If, as Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapaksa said, this proposal has been hanging fire for years, why the rush now, the opposition and anxious voters asked.

Like the opposition, the public too smelled a rotten rat. It was seen as another attempt to derail the elections by calling for the provisions of the bill be incorporated which would call for more time.

Despite all the public bravura, both the Rajapaksa-controlled SLPP and Wickremesinghe-led UNP which was swept into oblivion at the 2020 general elections, fear that given the mood of the country which rose in mass protests for some seven months last year leading to the resignation of President Rajapaksa and three of his brothers from the cabinet, they would suffer ignominious defeat.

Especially so the UNP which lost every single seat including that of party leader Wickremesinghe who managed to creep back into parliament one year later through a clause in the electoral law.

Not only would a poor electoral performance by the SLPP and UNP which have now joined hands make governance difficult and troublesome, it would also strengthen public opposition both to the Rajapaksas and President Wickremesinghe who many argue-and rightly so-as a leader rejected by the country two years ago and lacking a popular mandate to rule the country.

So what one sees now is a symbiotic relationship between the executive headed by Wickremesinghe and the legislature controlled by the Rajapaksas, running the country and using outdated laws- some dating back to British times- to beat back public dissent, employing the security forces to trample on the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of the people- free speech and expression, of association and assembly and peaceful protest.

It also raises issues about the independence of the Attorney-General and some of the independent institutions set up under the constitution which are believed to have come under pressure during the Wickremesinghe presidency.

With two arms of the state- the executive and legislature under the control of the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa- led cabal and backed by the security forces as recent event have shown, Sri Lanka’s increasingly beleaguered populace can only rely for justice on the third arm of the state- an independent judiciary.

Over the years the judiciary has, now and then, been under pressure from dictatorial leaders who have not been averse to tamper with justice and the judicial process, sometimes denying impartial, independent judges their rightful place as chief justice or appointing friends or those amenable to the judiciary.

But two recent judgements by the Supreme Court have resurrected public faith that the judiciary could be relied on to safeguard the constitution and the peoples’ constitutional and human rights against state abuse of the law and the battering and brutality by the security forces.

A few months back the government tried to push through a “Bureau of Rehabilitation Bill” ostensibly to help treat and rehabilitate drug addicts and other drug users. Under cover of that it hoped to incarcerate political dissidents, activists and others which state security would identify those they do not like as ‘trouble makers’.

So, it included among those to be included under the law “ex-combatants, members of violent groups, violent extremist person and any other person or group of persons”.

The Supreme Court saw through this as an attempt to round up any person the authorities considered a political nuisance and hold them without recourse to the law. The court struck down the clause.

Holding that the Bill as a whole violated the constitution, it said it could be acceptable if certain clauses were amended. One of the clauses it found repugnant was the one cited above which the court wanted deleted, leaving rehabilitation open only to drug dependent persons and those identified by law as in need of rehabilitation.

In mid-January the Supreme Court delivered a landmark verdict which held former president Maithripala Sirisena, secretary of the defence ministry, police chief and top- ranking intelligence officers, of dereliction of duty and “failure to act” when valid and clear intelligence was passed on by foreign sources of an impending terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists on churches on Easter Sunday in 2019.

Some 270 persons including foreigners were killed and several hundred wounded in these attacks on churches and Colombo hotels.

Since these were civil cases, President Sirisena was fined 100 million rupees and the others lesser amounts. Sirisena as a former president was no longer entitled to immunity, a lesson for other former and future presidents that they too are liable to civil and criminal action such as corruption and human rights violations once they cease to hold office.

These judicial judgments bring some hope to the people that the citadels of power are vulnerable and could be breached by a strong and upright judiciary, the only institution now left to protect and uphold the country’s democratic traditions and norms.

If the judiciary is badgered, the last resort is too bloody to contemplate.

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for the foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s Deputy High Commissioner in London.

Source: Asian Affairs, London

IPS UN Bureau

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