Remembering Jimmy Carter: a UN Perspective

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Opinion

Carter was a man of decency and integrity who devoted his life to promoting peace and democracy. Credit: Courtesy Kul Chandra Gautam

 
Former US President Jimmy Carter, a leader of impeccable integrity and decency who devoted his life to promoting peace and democracy worldwide. I recall his contribution to the peace process in Nepal and his leadership in combatting deadly diseases in Africa.
 
Jimmy Carter enthusiastically supported the child survival campaign led by UNICEF. He had nominated Jim Grant to be the Executive Director of UNICEF and said that it was one of the most important decisions of his presidency.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 2 2025 (IPS) – Former American President Jimmy Carter was a man of peace and principles. He presided over a tumultuous period in American history from 1977 to 1981, working hard to restore trust in government after the Watergate scandal and the divisive era of the Vietnam War. He brokered a landmark peace deal between Israel and Egypt and negotiated a historic treaty to hand over the Panama Canal to Panama.

Carter, a champion of human rights both in the US and around the world, passed away at 100 on December 29, 2024.

More than any recent American president, Carter pressed gently but firmly on autocratic regimes worldwide to respect human rights and the rule of law. When he led the country with immense moral authority, it encouraged many human rights advocates, while dictators worried about the US sanctions.

At home, Carter got many progressive legislations passed in areas of consumer protection, welfare reforms and the appointment of women and minorities in America’s judiciary. However, he had difficulties managing the US economy, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And in the 1980 Presidential election, when he lost his bid to Ronald Reagan, his active political career came to an end.

Kul Chandra Gautam

But he didn’t retire to a comfortable life, rather, he embarked on a noble mission as one of the world’s highly respected elder statesmen, deeply committed to promoting democracy and human rights. He founded the Carter Center with a motto of “Waging Peace, Fighting Disease and Building Hope”.

With his team, he worked tirelessly to help resolve conflicts, monitor elections and improve human health through campaigns to eliminate several neglected diseases afflicting the poorest people worldwide, particularly in Africa.

“For his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social development,” Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Links with UNICEF and Nepal

Carter greatly admired UNICEF Executive Director James Grant and strongly supported the UNICEF-led global child survival and development campaign. Further, the organisation was a key partner in the Carter-led global campaign to eradicate a debilitating disease called dracunculiasis or Guinea-worm disease.

My first substantive meeting with Carter took place on August 3, 1995, at an event in Washington, DC, organised jointly by the Carter Center, USAID, WHO and UNICEF to mark the 95 percent reduction in Guinea worm cases worldwide and to recommit to its total eradication. I had a long and fruitful discussion with Carter on strengthening our collaboration in the global campaign to eradicate Guinea-worm disease.

In February 2004, I joined President Carter and WHO Director-General JW Lee on a 3-day field visit to observe and advocate for Guinea-worm eradication in Ghana. I learned about Carter’s humble personality, deep commitment to many worthy causes and impressive advocacy skills.

In our informal interactions, we often talked about Nepal.

Carter’s involvement in Nepal

Carter visited Nepal twice to observe Nepal’s Constituent Assembly Elections. He advised Nepali leaders, including the Election Commission, based on his worldwide experience and credibility in observing elections and conflict resolution. Over the years, the Carter Center produced several reports on Nepal dealing with issues related to the peace process, challenges in drafting Nepal’s Constitution and other important issues of social justice and equity.

I instinctively supported Carter’s noble efforts to promote peace, democracy and development. However, like everybody else, Carter was human and fallible, and some aspects of the Carter Center’s reports on Nepal were flawed.

In particular, Carter’s hasty verdict that Nepal’s first Constituent Assembly election was free, fair and peaceful ignored the fact that there was an unusually high degree of intimidation in many rural constituencies. The non-Maoist parties’ candidates were prevented from campaigning, and voters were threatened with physical violence for weeks preceding the actual voting.

There were well-intentioned but inaccurate analyses of Nepal’s socio-political dynamics by the Carter Center, the International Crisis Group, and even the United Nations. In their effort to appear “balanced and even-handed”, they gave the undue benefit of the doubt to the progressive-sounding rhetoric of the Maoists, ignoring their violent and corrupt practices.

Carter witnessed the insincerity and duplicity of the Maoists when they initially welcomed the 2013 election for the second Constituent Assembly but then denounced it as rigged and unfair when the results showed that they had suffered a humiliating loss.

Unlike during the first CA election, Carter took the necessary time to analyse the second CA election better. He left somewhat sobered by a deeper understanding of the Maoists’ opportunistic and undemocratic nature.

A man of faith and integrity

Jimmy Carter was a deeply religious and spiritual man who often turned to his faith during his political career. But as a progressive man and defender of human rights and gender equality, he found himself at odds with his Southern Baptist Church when it opposed gender equality, citing a few selected verses from the Bible that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and must not be allowed to serve as priests.

Carter protested and took a painful decision to sever ties with his Baptist Church, saying that parts of its rigid doctrine violated the basic premises of his Christian faith. He wrote to his fellow Baptists and published an op-ed article “Losing my religion for equality”.

Carter had a philosophical and spiritual perspective on death. As he suffered from multiple bouts of cancer treatment, he remarked, “I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I just asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death”.

May Carter’s noble soul rest in eternal peace.

Source: Kathmandu Post, Nepal

Kul Chandra Gautam is a distinguished diplomat, development professional, and a former senior official of the United Nations. Currently, he serves on the Boards of several international and national organizations, charitable foundations and public-private partnerships. Previously, he served in senior managerial and leadership positions with the UN in several countries and continents in a career spanning over three decades. As a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, he has extensive experience in international diplomacy, development cooperation and humanitarian assistance.

IPS UN Bureau

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Civil Society Trends for 2025: Nine Global Challenges, One Reason for Hope

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LONDON / MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Dec 24 2024 (IPS) – It’s been a tumultuous year, and a tough one for struggles for human rights. Civil society’s work to seek social justice and hold the powerful to account has been tested at every turn. Civil society has kept holding the line, resisting power grabs and regressive legislation, calling out injustice and claiming some victories, often at great cost. And things aren’t about to get any easier, as key challenges identified in 2024 are likely to intensify in 2025.

Andrew Firmin

1. More people are likely to be exposed to conflict and its consequences, including humanitarian and human rights disasters, mass displacement and long-term trauma. The message of 2024 is largely one of impunity: perpetrators of conflict, including in Israel and Russia, will be confident they can resist international pressure and escape accountability. While there may be some kind of ceasefire in Gaza or halt to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, those responsible for large-scale atrocities are unlikely to face justice. Impunity is also likely to prevail in the conflicts taking place largely off the global radar, including in Myanmar and Sudan. There will also be growing concern about the use of AI and automated weapons in warfare, a troublingly under-regulated area.

As recent events in Lebanon and Syria have shown, changing dynamics, including shifting calculations made by countries such as Iran, Israel, Russia, Turkey and the USA, mean that frozen conflicts could reignite and new ones could erupt. As in Syria, these shifts could create sudden moments of opportunity; the international community and civil society must respond quickly when these come.

Inés M. Pousadela

2. The second Trump administration will have a global impact on many current challenges. It’s likely to reduce pressure on Israel, hamper the response to the climate crisis, put more strain on already flawed and struggling global governance institutions and embolden right-wing populists and nationalists the world over. These will bring negative consequences for civic space – the space for civil society, which depends on the freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly. Funding for civil society is also likely to be drastically reduced as a result of the new administration’s shifting priorities.

3. 2025 is the year that states are required to develop new plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change under the Paris Agreement. The process will culminate in the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, likely the world’s last chance to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. This will only happen if states stand up to fossil fuel companies and look beyond narrow short-term interests. Failing that, more of the debate may come to focus on adaptation. The unresolved question of who will pay for climate transition will remain central. Meanwhile, extreme weather events such as heatwaves and floods can be expected to continue to devastate communities, impose high economic costs, drive migration and exacerbate conflicts.

4. Globally, economic dysfunction is likely to increase, with more people struggling to afford basic necessities, increasingly including housing, as prices continue to rise, with climate change and conflict among the causes. The gap between the struggling many and the ultra-wealthy few will become more visible, and anger at rising prices or taxes will drive people – particularly young people deprived of opportunities – onto the streets. State repression will often follow. Frustration with the status quo means people will keep looking for political alternatives, a situation right-wing populists and nationalists will keep exploiting. But demands for labour rights, particularly among younger workers, will also likely increase, along with pressure for policies such as wealth taxes, a universal basic income and a shorter working week.

5. A year when the largest number of people ever went to the polls has ended – but there are still plenty of elections to come. Where elections are free and fair, voters are likely to keep rejecting incumbents, particularly due to economic hardship. Right-wing populists and nationalists are likely to benefit the most, but the tide will eventually turn: once they’ve been around long enough to be perceived as part of the political establishment, they too will see their positions threatened, and they can be expected to respond with authoritarianism, repression and the scapegoating of excluded groups. More politically manipulated misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and anti-migrant rhetoric can be expected as a result.

6. Even if developments in generative AI slow as the current model reaches the limits of the human-generated material it feeds on, international regulation and data protection will likely continue to lag behind. The use of AI-enabled surveillance, such as facial recognition, against activists is likely to increase and become more normalised. The challenge of disinformation is likely to intensify, particularly around conflicts and elections.

Several tech leaders have actively taken the side of right-wing populists and authoritarians, putting their platforms and wealth at the service of their political ambitions. Emerging alternative social media platforms offer some promise but are likely to face similar problems as they grow.

7. Climate change, conflict, economic strife, repression of LGBTQI+ identities and civil and political repression will continue to drive displacement and migration. Most migrants will remain in difficult and underfunded conditions in global south countries. In the global north, right-wing shifts are expected to drive more restrictive and repressive policies, including the deportation of migrants to countries where they may be at risk. Attacks on civil society working to defend their rights, including by assisting at sea and land borders, are also likely to intensify.

8. The backlash against women’s and LGBTQI+ rights will continue. The US right wing will continue to fund anti-rights movements in the global south, notably in Commonwealth African countries, while European conservative groups will continue to export their anti-rights campaigns, as some Spanish organisations have long done throughout Latin America. Disinformation efforts from multiple sources, including Russian state media, will continue to influence public opinion. This will leave civil society largely on the defensive, focused on consolidating gains and preventing setbacks.

9. As a result of these trends, the ability of civil society organisations and activists to operate freely will remain under pressure in the majority of countries. Just when its work is most needed, civil society will face growing restrictions on fundamental civic freedoms, including in the form of anti-NGO laws and laws that label civil society as agents of foreign powers, the criminalisation of protests and increasing threats to the safety of activists and journalists. Civil society will have to devote more of its resources to protecting its space, at the expense of the resources available to promote and advance rights.

10. Despite these many challenges, civil society will continue to strive on all fronts. It will continue to combine advocacy, protests, online campaigns, strategic litigation and international diplomacy. As awareness grows of the interconnected and transnational nature of the challenges, it will emphasise solidarity actions that transcend national boundaries and make connections between different struggles in different contexts.

Even in difficult circumstances, civil society achieved some notable victories in 2024. In the Czech Republic, civil society’s efforts led to a landmark reform of rape laws, and in Poland they resulted in a law making emergency contraception available without prescription, overturning previous restrictive legislation. After extensive civil society advocacy, Thailand led the way in Southeast Asia by passing a marriage equality law, while Greece became the first predominantly Christian Orthodox country to legalise same-sex marriage

People defended democracy. In South Korea, people took to the streets in large numbers to resist martial law, while in Bangladesh, protest action led to the ousting of a longstanding authoritarian government. In Guatemala, a president committed to fighting corruption was sworn in after civil society organised mass protests to demand that powerful elites respect the election results, and in Venezuela, hundreds of thousands organised to defend the integrity of the election, defeated the authoritarian government in the polls and took to the streets in the face of severe repression when the results weren’t recognised. In Senegal, civil society mobilised to prevent an attempt to postpone an election that resulted in an opposition win.

Civil society won victories in climate and environmental litigation – including in Ecuador, India and Switzerland – to force governments to recognise the human rights impacts of climate change and do more to reduce emissions and curb pollution. Civil society also took to the courts to pressure governments to stop arms sales to Israel, with a successful verdict in the Netherlands and others pending.

In 2025, the struggle continues. Civil society will keep carrying the torch of hope that a more peaceful, just, equal and sustainable world is possible. This idea will remain as important as the tangible impact we’ll continue to achieve despite the difficult circumstances.

Andrew Firmin is Editor-in-Chief and Inés M. Pousadela is Senior Research Specialist at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. The two are co-directors and writers for CIVICUS Lens and co-authors of the State of Civil Society Report.

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We Can and Must Do Our Best

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Opinion

Yasmine Sherif with children at a school in Ethiopia

NEW YORK, Dec 20 2024 (IPS) – As 2024 comes to a close, I dare to say that this has been an especially gruesome year for millions upon millions of young children, their parents and their teachers. The world has witnessed one horrific crisis of cruelty, dispossession and human suffering after another.

Ukraine has entered its worst winter, suffering a brutal war with 65% of its energy supplies destroyed. While the West Bank is increasingly under attack, Gaza is still under bombardment, 1 million Palestinians lack shelter in the cold and, as the Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator for OCHA, Tom Fletcher, stated, “Gaza is apocalyptic right now.”

Meanwhile, the gruesome internal armed conflict in Sudan rages on, having caused over 11 million internally displaced and over 3 million refugees in neighboring countries. Each carries the yoke of profound human suffering. From Lebanon, Yemen and the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to the Sahel and across sub-Saharan Africa, millions of children have very little hope left for a future.

Girls in Afghanistan beyond grade 6 remain shackled to their homes, banned from continuing their learning. Countless children have to live with the life-long consequences of surviving rape and brutal sexual violence – sometimes as mere babies – in armed conflicts in the DRC, North-East Nigeria and beyond. In the Sahel, children have to flee their villages on fire with nothing more than their last piece of cloth on their frail bodies. In Latin America, Venezuelan refugee children continue to struggle in exile, facing dangers in every corner, from trafficking and gangs, to missing out on the opportunity of an education and a future.

These are real examples of some of the 44 countries and contexts in which ECW invests financial resources towards a holistic quality education, safe learning environments and school meals.

The question is: are we all doing enough?

As many will know, Education Cannot Wait is a global platform in the UN system, hosted by UNICEF. It is made up of our High-Level Steering Group, our Executive Committee and our Secretariat, along with strategic public and private donor partners, Ministers of Education and numerous admirable and hard-working UN and civil society partners, as well as communities.

ECW is able to deliver with speed because it is a catalyst that brings together partners who operate with the same level of commitment, energy and determination. We are also able to deliver with depth and quality because we share the same vision of a child-centered approach and learning outcomes.

In the midst of this very dark year, Education Cannot Wat delivered on its mission, making more than US$228 million in investments, including US$44 million in First Emergency Responses, US$176 million in Multi-Year Resilience Programmes and US$8 million in Acceleration Facility grants – the latter for piloting innovative approaches.

Our funding gap was further closed as we reached nearly US$1 billion in financial resources for our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan. But more resources are urgently needed if we are to cater to the actual needs and reach, at minimum, 20 million children (pre-school, primary and secondary) and their teachers by the end of this strategic period.

With an additional US$570 million, we can completely close this gap. It is possible. When annual military expenditures worldwide stand at US$2.4 trillion, there is no justification whatsoever to fail in investing a minimum of US$570 million for Education Cannot Wait to support lifesaving and life-sustaining education for children enduring the brunt of man-made and climate crises; as well as to invest substantive financial resources to our sister-funds, such as the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd).

As our ongoing analysis and research at Education Cannot Wait indicates, the number of children in emergencies and protracted crises – who are denied or deprived an education – is getting closer to a quarter of a billion children and adolescents. We can prevent this.

While we are all trying to do something, we can and must do so much more. It is possible.

This leads me to the founder and outgoing High-Level Steering Group Chair of Education Cannot Wait, The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, the UN Special Envoy for Global Education. He had a vision that led to the creation of Education Cannot Wait. Joined by strategic partners in governments, the UN and civil society, he pulled through its establishment at the World Humanitarian Summit.

In just a few years, this vision has turned into over 11 million children, adolescents and teachers benefitting from a quality education in the harshest circumstances around the globe.

In the immortal words of Viktor Frankl: “The world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his [and her] best.”

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown did his best and has made an incredible difference transforming millions of lives and generations to come.

Let his legacy inspire us all.

With this, on behalf of the whole Education Cannot Wait family, I wish you Happy Holidays. May 2025 be a brighter year.

Yasmine Sherif is Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait

IPS UN Bureau

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UNCCD COP16 Spotlights Drought But Fails to Agree on a Legally Binding Protocol

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Combating Desertification and Drought

COP16 in Riyadh launched a drought resilience initiative, which also saw contributions of over USD 12 billion for land restoration and drought resilience. Credit: IISD/ENB

COP16 in Riyadh launched a drought resilience initiative, which also saw contributions of over USD 12 billion for land restoration and drought resilience. Credit: IISD/ENB

RIYADH & HYDERABAD, Dec 17 2024 (IPS) – The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 16) concluded early hours of Saturday with a renewed focus on building drought resilience globally. However, the COP also failed to agree on bringing a legally binding drought protocol. Like the biodiversity and climate change COPs held earlier in the year, COP16 also failed to finish in time and ended by postponing several key decisions to COP17 scheduled to be held in 2026.

The COP started on December 2 in Riyadh, under the presidency of Saudi Arabia. On Saturday, in a press statement, Osama Faqeeha, Deputy Minister for Environment, Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, and Advisor to the UNCCD COP16 Presidency, claimed that the conference was a resounding success because it had attracted the largest number of participants till date, representing diverse sectors.

“The Riyadh Action Agenda has already helped galvanize state and non-state actors around the world. However, COP16 in Riyadh is just the beginning of its impact, and Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP16 Presidency will continue to engage with everyone, from the investment community, NGOs and scientists to Indigenous Peoples and farmers, to maximize its lasting global legacy,” he said.

One of the biggest success stories scripted in Riyadh was the launch of a drought resilience initiative, which also saw contributions of over USD 12 billion for land restoration and drought resilience. Launching the initiative on the first day of the COP, Saudi Arabia announced it was contributing USD 150 million for its operationalization. The rest of the fund was pledged by the Arab Coordination Group, which has 22 member countries, including the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. The initiative would aim to support 80 of the world’s most vulnerable countries to increase their capacity to combat the effects of drought and build their drought resilience.

“The Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership will work to deliver a transformative shift in how drought is tackled around the world. Harnessing the collective impact of major global institutions will move drought management beyond reactive crisis response through enhancing early warning systems, financing, vulnerability assessments, and drought risk mitigation. This stands to be a landmark moment for combating international drought, and we are calling on countries, companies, organizations, scientists, NGOs, financial institutions and communities to join this pivotal partnership,” Faqeeha said.

AI For Combating Drought

As part of the Riyadh Action Agenda, Saudi Arabia’ also launched the International Drought Resilience Observatory (IDRO). This is the first artificial intelligence-driven global platform that will help countries assess and improve their ability to cope with more severe droughts. This innovative tool is an initiative of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA).

Saudi Arabia also announced the launch of an international sand and dust storm monitoring initiative. This effort, part of a regional early warning system, aims to complement existing efforts overseen by the World Meteorological Organization. Based in Jeddah, the Sand and Dust Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System (SDS-WAS) increases the number of global World Meteorological Organization-affiliated nodes to four. Saudi Arabia also pledged $10 million in funding over the next five years to enhance early warning systems in countries currently unable to monitor for sand and dust storms.

However, despite their best efforts, the COP16 could not bring all negotiators to agree on its proposal of creating a legally binding treaty for action on drought. The protocol, if agreed upon, could have been a huge step forward, having the world’s first legally binding global treaty on drought, land degradation and desertification, equivalent to the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Paving Greater Participation of Youths and IPLCs

Among the other decisions taken at the COP16 is the creation of a Youth Caucus and an Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Caucus. Though a caucus within the COP has an advisory role without any voting power, it can help broaden the participation of the Indigenous people and provide an opportunity to them for lobbying for language concerning Indigenous issues in the future negotiation texts.

Reacting to the development, Jennifier Corpuz, leader of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), an umbrella organization of Indigenous Peoples and local communities from seven global regions, said that it was a decision that had been long overdue.

“The decision by the UNCCD to support the development of a Terms of Reference for an Indigenous Peoples Caucus and a local communities caucus is a great development for enhancing rights-holder engagement in the work of the UNCCD. It is the last Rio Convention to support the establishment of an IP Caucus and the first to explicitly support a specific local community Caucus, so it is about time, even long overdue. The hope is that the new UNCCD IP and LC caucuses learn from the nest practices and enhanced participation arrangements established in the other Rio Conventions and avoid the mistakes,” Corpuz told IPS News.

UN Warns Against Business-As-Usual Approach

Meanwhile, throughout COP16 in Riyadh, the UNCCD released several major publications highlighting the urgency of tackling land degradation, desertification and drought. The UNCCD’s financial risk assessment flagged that presently there is a $278 billion annual shortfall in funding for land restoration and drought resilience and emphasized the urgent need for private sector engagement.

The UNCCD also issued a landmark report into the growing global expansion of drylands, finding three-quarters of the Earth’s land became permanently drier over the last three decades. In addition, the rate of land degradation has rapidly increased. As a result, there are now 1.6 billion hectares of degraded land instead of 1 billion hectares in 2015. This means the convention’s flagship program, Land Degradation Neutrality, which aims to restore all degraded land by 2023, now also urgently needs a greater level of efforts as there is now half a billion more hectares to be restored. If this was to be achieved, the parties must shun their business-as-usual approach and put greater focus on land restoration, said Ibrahim Thiaw, the Executive Secretary of UNCCD.

“Land Degradation Neutrality is an ambition that was adopted in 2015 based on the science and it is still valid. If we manage to achieve it as it was conceived in 2015, that is a big step forward. Unfortunately, with more recent studies and data, we realized that we need to restore even more land by 2030 than it was envisaged in 2015. It doesn’t change or diminish the importance of the decision made in 2015. Because now we have updated science, we know that we need to restore 1.5 billion hectares of land instead of 1 billion hectares by 2030 in order to have equilibrium in the world. So basically, we have science to tell the decision-makers of the world that business as usual does not work,” Thiaw told IPS News.

The next UNCCD COP will be held in 2026 under the presidency of the Government of Mongolia. With the most ambitious of the decision—a global drought protocol—left unreached, onus is now on the UN to build a consensus among parties on a global drought agreement before they convene at COP17.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

‘We Will Not Go Quietly Into the Rising Sea,’ Tuvalu Tells International Court of Justice

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Climate Change Justice

Territorial integrity is not limited to physical land territory. It must be conceived as of a historical and cultural norm linked to the vitality, dignity and identity of the people holding the right to self-determination to ensure respect for territorial integrity goes beyond ensuring the maintenance of physical land boundaries—Professor Phillipa Webb

Water floods in, showing how nature and people are at risk. Trees can’t grow because of salt, leaving no protection. This photo warns about climate change’s effect on our islands and atolls. It’s a clear sign we need to act to keep our world safe. Credit: Gitty Keziah Yee/Tuvalu

THE HAGUE, Dec 13 2024 (IPS) – Rising sea level caused by greenhouse gas emission-fueled climate change is threatening existence in coastal communities and island nations. At the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on Thursday, December 12, 2024, small island states, including Tuvalu and a Pacific-based fisheries agency detailed their ongoing existential threats caused by the climate change-induced sea level rise and impacts on fishery-based livelihood.

Tuvalu, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) both focused their oral presentations before the court on highlighting added and exacerbated struggles faced by people in the region through visual evidence and testimony of the frontline community.

At the request of Vanuatu, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ to issue an advisory opinion on the obligations of UN member states in preventing climate change and ensuring the protection of the environment for present and future generations. While its advisory opinion will not be enforceable, the court will advise on the legal consequences for member states who have caused significant harm, particularly to small island developing states. So far, more than 100 countries and agencies have presented their case before the court.

On Thursday, island states stressed the disproportionate effects of climate change on small islands, urging the court to recognize the duty of cooperation, the stability of maritime zones, and the principle of continuity of statehood.

Climate Crisis Can not be Solved in Isolation—Tuvalu

Tuvalu, a small island nation in the South Pacific with over 11,000 people, emphasized its right to self-determination and territorial integrity at a time when it is facing an existential threat from climate change-induced sea level rise.

The low-lying island nation of Tuvalu is fighting for its existence; according to scientists, much of their land area, along with critical infrastructure, will be under water by 2050. Tuvalu urged the ICJ to issue a strong advisory opinion on states’ obligations to combat climate change and protect small island states.

Furthering the submission, Laingane Italeli Talia, Attorney General of Tuvalu, said climate change is the single greatest threat the country is facing. “It cannot be that in the face of such unprecedented and irreversible harm, international law is silent.

“Tuvalu, accordingly, asks the court to keep the unprecedented infringement on our people’s right to self-determination at the very center of his critical advisory opinion in order to help chart the pathway forward for our very survival.”

‘Annihilation Posed By Nuclear Weapons’ 

Professor Phillipa Webb, representing Tuvulu, used the analogy that the threat of disappearance faced by states like Tuvalu is like the potential annihilation posed by nuclear weapons.

“This extreme circumstance triggers all the tools that international law provides for respecting statehood, ensuring territorial integrity and protecting sovereignty over natural resources,” Webb said.

“Tuvalu’s constitution affirms that its statehood will remain in perpetuity, notwithstanding any loss to its physical territory. In the same way that the right to survival requires state continuity, the right also compels respect for territorial integrity, which encompasses a state’s permanent sovereignty over its natural resources,” Webb said, drawing on the drawing on the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States.

“Respect for territorial integrity and territorial sovereignty is an essential foundation of international relations in the context of climate change. This obliges States to prevent and mitigate transboundary environmental harm. It requires that States facilitate adaptation to climate change impacts, and these measures should not be limited to the preservation and restoration of coasts and islands but also to protecting the rights of peoples to self-determination.”

The right to self-determination includes aspects other than physical land, and the court should take this into account.

“Territorial integrity, a corollary of the right to self-determination, is not limited to physical land territory. It must be conceived as a historical and cultural norm linked to the vitality, dignity and identity of the people holding the right to self-determination to ensure respect for territorial integrity goes beyond ensuring the maintenance of physical land boundaries. Like other concepts in international law, such as cultural heritage, biodiversity and intellectual property, it covers tangible and intangible assets.”

Quoting Tuvaluan climate activist Grace Malie, Webb told the court, “Tuvalu will not go quietly into the rising sea.”

Statehood Should be Ensured—AOSIS

AOSIS submitted its case on behalf of the 39 small island and low-lying coastal developing states and urged it to consider the existential threat posed by climate change-induced sea level rise and the possibility that some states may not even have dry land in the near future.

It emphasizes the importance of equity and self-determination in the context of climate change and the need for international law to support the continuity of statehood and sovereignty.

Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, Chair of AOSIS and Permanent Representative of Samoa to the United Nations, focused on the impact of the climate crisis on states defined by the ocean’s limited resources and geographic vulnerability.

“Small island developing states rely heavily on coastal and marine resources as key drivers of our economies,” he said. “However, climate change is disrupting the fishery sector because of warming waters and an altered marine environment.”

The AOSIS asked the court to uphold the principle of continuity of statehood as established in international law, ensuring that statehood and sovereignty endure despite physical changes to land territory.

Luteru added, “In this era of unprecedented and relentless sea level rise, international law must evolve to meet the climate crisis and the disproportionate effect that it has on states.”

Focus on Sustainability of Tuna Fisheries—FFA

Rising sea level and ocean warming are not only threatening the existence of island nations but they are also hammering a major way of livelihood, fishing. Representing the fishing community at the ICJ, FFA highlighted the state of loss of fisheries, including tuna.

Tuna fisheries are crucial for the economic, social, and cultural development of Pacific Island communities, with 47 percent of households depending on fishing as a primary or secondary source of income.

FFA, an intergovernmental agency, focuses on sustainable use of offshore fisheries resources, particularly tuna, which are facing threats to climate change impacts.

“Damage to fisheries and loss of fish stocks will have a significant negative impact on the income, livelihoods, food security and economies of Pacific small island developing states, as well as social and cultural impacts,” Pio Manoa, Deputy Director General of FFA, said.

“Climate change is driving tuna further to the east and outside of members, exclusive economic zones into the high seas, threatening the loss of economic and food security of Pacific small and developing states.”

Studies show climate change-driven redistribution of commercial tuna species will cause an economic blow to the small island states of the Western and Central Pacific, ultimately threatening the sustainability of the world’s largest tuna fishery.

By 2050, under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the total biomass of three tuna species in the waters of 10 of the Pacific small islands developing states members of the agency could decline by an average of 13 percent.

“The adverse consequences for the livelihood and well-being of coastal communities are profound, including their very security and survival impacts on marine resources, including offshore fisheries such as tuna,” Manoa said. “It is therefore incumbent upon the international community to take necessary action to deal with anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and their consequences.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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This Year Saw Most of the World Repressed – but in Civil Society there is Hope

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Civil Society, Democracy, Featured, Global, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Credit: United Nations

NEW YORK, Dec 10 2024 (IPS) – Today is International Human Rights Day, Normally, it should be an occasion to celebrate the work of those who strive to create peaceful, just, equal and sustainable societies. But conditions for human rights defenders and their organisations to operate freely are extremely challenging around the world.

Almost three quarters of the world’s people live in states that severely constrain civic freedoms. These are the latest findings from the CIVICUS Monitor, a cross-continental research collaboration between over twenty civil society organisations.

Despite enormous technological and cultural advancements claimed by humankind the overwhelming majority of the world’s population are being actively denied agency to shape the decisions that impact their lives. Major restrictions in law and practice on the fundamental civic freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression are putting journalists and civil society activists at serious risk of persecution when they expose high level corruption or critique the actions of powerful decision makers.

Civic space conditions in some 30 countries where over a quarter of the world’s population live are so poor that even the slightest hint of dissent against those who hold power can get one thrown into prison for a long time or even killed. Such countries include Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Sudan among others.

This year, Eswatini, Ethiopia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza and the West Bank have been downgraded to the worst ‘closed’ rating on the CIVICUS Monitor due to an acceleration in repression there.

As a human rights defender it worries me that countries with proud histories of resisting colonial oppression and with hard won constitutional commitments to democratic principles such as India, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines have ended up being placed in the second worst ‘repressed’ category on the CIVICUS Monitor.

As a development advocate who campaigned for the adoption of an ambitious set of universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, it concerns me that governments are deliberately limiting the ability of civil society organisations to work with them to create more equal and fairer societies.

Civic space restrictions negatively impact the quest for transparency, accountability and participation in public affairs. The Sustainable Development Goals include guarantees on access to information and fundamental freedoms as well as on responsive, inclusive and participatory decision making, which are essential for public spirited individuals and organisations to push for transformative changes in the political, social and economic spheres.

But CIVICUS Monitor researchers have recorded thousands of restrictions on the freedom of expression in 2024 including physical attacks on journalists and civil society activists merely for doing their work in the public interest.

Atefeh Rangriz, a defender of worker’s and women’s rights in Iran is currently languishing in prison on trumped up national security related charges. Guatemalan journalist Jose Ruben Zamora continues to be persecuted through the courts for exposing deep networks of patronage that exist among political and economic elites in that country.

Their cases are illustrative of the enormous challenge of thousands of journalists and civil society activists unjustly imprisoned around the world in countries as disparate as Belarus, Egypt, Israel and Vietnam.

The most recent CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, released this September, draws attention to deterioration in civic space conditions in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Thailand and Zimbabwe, all of which are ruled by erratic authoritarian leaders. Because global civic space conditions are so challenging, including in several powerful states, the appetite of the international community to consistently call out flagrant violations of international law standards has been severely hamstrung in recent times.

It’s thus absurd that Azerbaijan, a petrostate with closed civic space, hosted the COP29 climate summit this year in an attempt to greenwash its reputation. The previous two COP summits were held in countries with equally appalling records: United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The election of Donald Trump, an avowed supporter of the fossil fuel industry, as the next president of the United States does not portend well for climate causes or for civic freedoms given his adulation for authoritarian leaders.

Climate justice, environmental and land rights activists are facing persecution in far too many countries for exercising their right to peaceful assembly. Earlier this year, five Just Stop Oil activists received sentences ranging from four to five years in prison in the United Kingdom for planning a non-violent protest action by blocking a motorway in 2022.

In Uganda, protestors were arrested merely for seeking to deliver a petition to the authorities outlining the adverse effects of an oil project including environmental degradation, land loss and violations of community rights. In September, Juan López, Honduran community leader and advocate for the rights of the Guapinol River, was assassinated despite calls for his protection.

Just as anti-apartheid protestors faced pushback in the 1980s, artists, students and academics have been targeted in several western democracies for advocating for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people. It’s now forbidden to wear a keffiyeh within Canada’s Ontario state’s legislative assembly and there have been attempts to censor pro-Palestinian groups in Germany, the Netherlands and the USA. In Australia, four writers who had publicly opposed Israel’s war on Gaza had their workshops’ contracts terminated with the State Library of Victoria.

Nearly 10% of the total civic space violations documented globally in 2024 by CIVICUS Monitor researchers either took place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or were perpetrated against those expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Despite this, throughout 2024 people continued to pour out onto the streets to express solidarity with beleaguered Palestinians. This in itself is extraordinary.

Even if global civic space conditions were mostly unwelcoming this year, civil society actions led to some remarkable victories for rights and justice. Greece became the first overwhelmingly Christian Orthodox country to legalise same-sex marriage while recognising the rights of same sex couples to adopt children. Thailand broke ground in Southeast Asia by passing a marriage equality bill in May 2024, making it the first country in the region to legalise same-sex marriage.

In the Czech Republic, civil society efforts led to a landmark reform in rape laws, now classifying any non-consensual sexual act as rape, removing the need for proof of force and strengthening protections for victims. In Kazakhstan, in response to a high-profile murder trial, lawmakers swiftly introduced new legislation that re-established criminal penalties for battery and enhanced protections for domestic violence survivors.

In Poland, a bill passed in February 2024 made emergency contraception accessible without a prescription, reversing a restrictive 2017 law and marking a significant win for womens’ rights over their bodies.

Moreover, people continued to exercise their protest rights across the globe this year. In Bangladesh, the longstanding oppressive government led by Sheikh Hasina was forced to step down following persistent public demonstrations against its regressive actions. In Venezuela, people outvoted the incumbent authoritarian government of Nicholas Maduro at the polls but his regime ended up rigging the election results. However, this doesn’t mean the struggle for democracy in Venezuela has been permanently suppressed.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” said Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. As these examples show, despite pervasive repression, the impulse to overcome oppression remains alive. Gains made through sustained civil society resistance through 2024 offer us hope that no matter how powerful autocratic forces may be, there will always be an undercurrent of civil society ready to weather the storm and strive for a better world for all.

Mandeep S. Tiwana is the Interim Co-Secretary General. CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance.

IPS UN Bureau

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