ACAPULCO, Mexico, Nov 2 2023 (IPS) – Acapulco is a paradise. A port of golden sunsets, toasted sand, and deep blue sea. Its dream beaches captivated the hearts of Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. US President John F. Kennedy chose its shores to spend his honeymoon with Jackie Kennedy. Its luxury hotels and the untamed sea made it the most famous tourist destination in Mexico.
Rosi Orozco
Today, Acapulco is devastated. A Category 5 hurricane—the deadliest possible rating—called “Otis” hit the beach on October 25 with incomparable force. No one anticipated it. Hours before it made landfall, it was just an inconvenient storm. Suddenly it became a deadly cyclone. Most of the hotels are destroyed, the sea swallowed people, houses were blown away, and dozens of people are dead.
In the last century, its beauty attracted the world’s most influential celebrities. Its tranquil mornings and lively nightlife attracted actresses, singers, politicians, aristocratic musicians, and families who wanted to spend their summers by the sea. I myself spent my youth at the family timeshare apartment in Acapulco, and it was there that I met my husband Alejandro, with whom I’ve been married for 40 years. My life is permanently connected to Acapulco.
Luxury businessmen, millionaire athletes, and Michelin-starred chefs arrived. Also drug dealers, money launderers, and men looking for girls and boys to rape in exchange for food or a few dollars for their parents who lived in the city’s poor areas.
Because there are two Acapulcos. They both share an airport and roads, so all roads lead to that pair of versions of the same city. There is a “diamond Acapulco” where the rich vacation with all the amenities at their disposal. And there is a “traditional Acapulco,” where the poor live who work for wealthy tourists.
The people who inhabit “diamond Acapulco” and “traditional Acapulco” do not usually cross paths. They live in the same city, but they are separated by golf courses and exclusive shopping malls. Only rich foreigners and wealthy nationals cross to the poor side when they feel a repugnant urge: to make their plans for child sex tourism a reality with girls and boys as young as 3 years old.
Acapulco is one of the most unequal tourist destinations in the world. In Mexico, it is the most unequal municipality of all: more than 60% of its 900,000 inhabitants live in extreme poverty, which means they do not know what they will eat today or tomorrow. They are the workers who serve plates of fresh seafood, who sweep marble floors, who fill the wine glasses of tourists.
For years, journalists and human rights organizations have told horrific stories that combine poverty, inequality, and sex tourism: a 6-year-old boy rented out to be photographed naked in exchange for milk and eggs; a 9-year-old girl sold to a Canadian tourist to be his wife for a month; homeless teenagers invited to sex parties on lavish yachts in exchange for food; parents and mothers waiting outside hotels for their children to be raped for a price paid in dollars per hour.
Those pedophiles and child molesters turned Acapulco into the country’s primary destination for child sexual tourism. They also led Mexico to the disgraceful second position in the production of child pornography, only surpassed by Thailand, according to data from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Today, Acapulco is a different place. Little remains of the port that enchanted singers Agustín Lara and Luis Miguel. There are thousands of poor families without homes, hundreds of workers who lost their jobs, and dozens of fishermen without boats to go out to sea to find sustenance. The destruction is so extensive that complete economic recovery is estimated to take decades, not years.
Under these conditions, childhood is at very high risk. Many families have lost so much that their bodies are the only currency they have left. And in the dirty business of forced prostitution, child bodies are the most sought after.
Amid this unprecedented crisis in Mexico, the Chamber of Deputies approved amendments to the general law against human trafficking. These changes aim to broaden the scope of the law enacted in 2012 and update it to address new technologies that traffickers and organized crime engaged in sexual exploitation can use. The wording has some issues that we are still analyzing, but it also includes positive aspects.
For example, it introduces new protections for individuals with injuries, intellectual disabilities, and Afro-Mexican towns and communities. The latter represent 6.5% of the total population in Guerrero and 4% of the residents in Acapulco, according to the National Population Council.
Civil society organizations are monitoring these changes and hope that the deputies will honor their commitment to protecting the victims.
Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of all, not just in Mexico, to help Acapulco back on its feet, a place that has given so much to both nationals and foreigners. It won’t be easy or quick, but every day we delay puts the vulnerable children at risk due to the magnitude of sexual tourism in that beautiful port.
After Hurricane Otis, Acapulco will be different. Its reconstruction is an opportunity to build a new city on the ruins of depravity, one with values and respect for human dignity. I long for the day to see it standing and for its coastline, beach, and air to remain a paradise, especially for children like me who grew up happily by the sea.
A “for sale” sign seen outside a house in Centro Habana. As you walk along the streets of the Cuban capital, you see a variety of “for sale” signs on a number of houses. The same is true in cities and towns in Cuba’s 168 municipalities. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
HAVANA, Oct 16 2023 (IPS) – To emigrate to the United States and fulfill her hopes for a better life, Ana Iraida sold almost all of her belongings, including the apartment that, until her departure, saved her from the uncertainty of living in rented housing in Cuba, a country with an unresolved housing crisis.
“I inherited the apartment in Havana from my maternal grandmother, who passed away in 2015. It was small, but comfortable. I sold it for 6,000 dollars to pay for my documents, paperwork and airfare,” the philologist, who like the rest of the people interviewed preferred not to give her last name, told IPS.
“It is difficult to sell, because many people want to emigrate, and they are practically ‘giving away’ the houses. But at the same time hard currency is scarce and a person with thousands of dollars prefers to use them to leave the country.” — Elisa
From Houston, Texas in the U.S., where she now lives, the young woman said that, thanks to loans from friends, “I raised another 4,000 dollars. I got to Nicaragua in December 2022 and from there I continued by land to the U.S. border.”
Ana Iraida said she feels “fortunate” to have had a home that was “furnished and in good condition,” with which she covered her expenses. She said that others “have a more difficult time because they do not have a home of their own.”
In the last two years, emigration from Cuba has skyrocketed amidst the deterioration of the domestic economic situation, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the tightening of the U.S. embargo, partial dollarization of the economy, the fall in the purchasing power of wages and pensions, shortages of essential products and inflation.
Errors and delays in the implementation of reforms to modernize the country and the ineffective monetary system implemented in January 2021 have also played a role.
In this country of 11 million people, in 2022 the exodus led some 250,000 people to the United States alone, the main receiving nation of migrants from this Caribbean island nation, from which it is separated by just 90 miles of sea.
To stem the wave of immigration, on Jan. 5 the U.S. government extended to nationals of Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti a humanitarian temporary residency permit program, known as “parole”, similar to the one implemented in October 2022 for Venezuelans and previously for other nationalities.
As of the end of August, more than 47,000 Cubans had obtained the humanitarian permit, of whom 45,000 had already immigrated, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
A view of Havana from Cerro, one of its 15 municipalities. This city of 2.2 million inhabitants, the biggest in the country, has the largest housing deficit in Cuba, exceeding 800,000 housing units. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
One of the requirements for the temporary residency permit is to have sponsors who are U.S. citizens or hold some other legal status, in addition to having the financial resources to support the beneficiary or beneficiaries.
Swapping or selling parole
Owning your own home can also be an opportunity allowing whole families to move abroad.
“People are swapping houses for parole status. A few weeks ago I facilitated the exchange of a house for five parole permits to the United States. And in another case, with a residence in Miramar (a wealthy neighborhood in western Havana), nine people were the beneficiaries,” said Damian, a historian who privately engages in buying and selling, for which he charges a commission.
Damián explained to IPS that “residents in the United States ask for 10,000 to 12,000 dollars to provide a guarantee for parole status. The number of people they give a guarantee for depends on the value of the house. When the process is completed, the property is sold to a relative or friend of that person in Cuba.”
Walking through the streets in the Cuban capital, the most varied signs reading “for sale” can be seen on crumbling or remodeled buildings. The same is true in other cities and towns of the country’s 168 municipalities.
On online sites and Facebook groups for buying and selling activities, there is a proliferation of advertisements with photos and information about the properties, such as the number of rooms, the presence of a landline telephone line or an electrical installation that allows the connection of 110 and 220 volt equipment.
Some negotiate the price with or without furniture, others negotiate with buyers who pay cash in hand, or who pay in dollars, euros or make the deposit abroad.
“It is difficult to sell, because many people want to emigrate, and they are practically ‘giving away’ the houses. But at the same time hard currency is scarce and a person with thousands of dollars prefers to use them to leave the country,” said Elisa, a lawyer who told IPS she is interested in settling with her husband and son in Spain.
She said she has been trying to sell her apartment in La Vibora, another Havana neighborhood, for a year. “I can’t find a buyer, not even now that I dropped the price to 10,000 dollars, half the initial price, and it’s furnished,” she complained.
In Cuba’s informal real estate market, offers range from 2,000 dollars or less to a million dollars. The lowest of these figures is far from the average monthly salary, equivalent to 16.50 dollars on the black market.
A man pulls a cart loaded with building blocks past a house for sale in the municipality of Centro Habana. In view of the government’s diminished construction capacity and the decline of funds for housing, since 2010 the government authorized the free sale of various materials for construction, repairs, remodeling and expansion. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
Hurdles despite the reforms
Now, Cubans can sell their properties even to move away from the country, a situation very different from 15 years ago, when only swaps of houses between two or more owners were possible. Homes could only be sold to the government, and they were confiscated if the people living there emigrated.
Under laws passed in the early years after the 1959 revolution, most citizens became homeowners.
The Urban Reform Law of 1960 turned housing properties over to those who lived in them, prohibited their sale or lease, and abolished private construction and mortgages.
After decades of prohibitions, in October 2011 the 1988 General Housing Law was amended and the doors were opened to free purchase and sale between Cuban citizens and even foreign residents, endorsed before notaries and with the payment of taxes.
The law also eliminated certain formalities and official regulations on swaps.
Prior to the restitution of the right of ownership of residential units, in 2010 the government approved permits allowing people to build, repair or expand their own homes.
In view of the government’s reduced capacity for construction and the decline in housing funds in that same year, the free sale of cement, sand, gravel, cement blocks and corrugated iron bars was also authorized, which until then had been exclusively centrally allocated or sold in convertible pesos (CUC, a now defunct currency equivalent to the dollar).
The authorities promoted the granting of subsidies to vulnerable families, especially those affected by hurricanes, and micro-credits to build, expand or remodel homes.
These measures helped drive a boom in private construction and repairs.
As in other areas marked by the scarcity of materials, red tape and unequal purchasing power, the granting of housing and sale of materials is not exempt from corruption, theft and poor quality work, which has given rise to repeated complaints from the public.
There is still a housing deficit of more than 800,000 homes, while one third of Cuba’s 3.9 million homes are in fair or poor condition.
The largest deficits are concentrated in Havana, a city of 2.2 million inhabitants, as well as in Holguín, Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey, the other three most populated cities.
In 2019, a Housing Policy was launched, aimed at eliminating the housing shortage within a decade, based on the incentive of local production of construction materials and recyclable inputs, in addition to the contribution from the government and the centrally planned economy.
But the policy has run into hurdles as a result of the economic crisis, and multiple factors such as delays in paperwork and procedures, loss of material resources, unfinished subsidies and financial resources tied up in the banks.
The shortage of foreign currency and insufficient investment stand in the way of increasing production and incorporating equipment to boost construction capacity and sustainability.
Official data show that in 2022, more than 195 million dollars were dedicated to business services, real estate and rental activity, including hotel construction, which represented almost 33 percent of investment in the sector.
Since 2019, 127,345 housing units were completed and 106,332 were remodeled or repaired, said Vivian Rodriguez, general director of Housing of the Ministry of Construction, during the most recent session of the Council of Ministers, on Oct. 1.
The authorities acknowledged that compliance with the year’s plan of 30,000 new units is under threat. Maintaining this pace would mean eliminating the housing deficit in more than 28 years.
A rundown house stands next to a newly remodeled home on a street in the municipality of Playa, Havana. A third of Cuba’s 3.9 million homes are considered to be in fair and poor condition. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
No immediate solution
The lack of housing and the deterioration of existing homes continue without a viable solution in the short or medium term.
On many occasions, people of different generations are forced to live together in small homes, many of which are in a state of disrepair, putting a significant number of families at risk.
Access to housing has also been identified as a factor in the low birth and fertility rates that Cuba has been experiencing for decades.
There is also a problem after tropical cyclones and heavy rains, when centuries-old buildings that have never been remodeled or repaired collapse, or those vulnerable to strong winds are left roofless.
The private practice of professions such as architecture is also not allowed, and although since September 2021 the government has authorized the incorporation of micro, small and medium-sized companies, some of which specialize in the construction and repair of real estate, they still encounter obstacles to their practice.
“There could be many solutions, but in my opinion an essential one is that building materials must be available and at affordable prices; or that houses can be sold to workers so they can pay for them on credit. Otherwise, families will continue to be overcrowded, roofs and walls will collapse on us, or we will grow old without a place of our own,” Orlando, a prep school teacher living in Havana, told IPS.
A view of Caracas from the south side of the narrow valley where it sits, dotted with houses and residential buildings where full occupancy was the norm until a few years ago. As a result of the massive migration of young people and adults, more and more homes are left unoccupied or inhabited only by the elderly and young children. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS
CARACAS, Oct 4 2023 (IPS) – Gladys swore she would not cry in front of her small children, but she still had to wipe away a couple of tears when she turned her head and looked, perhaps for the last time, at her dream house on Margarita Island in Venezuela, from where she migrated, driven by a lack of income and by fear.
“It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours (she works in administration, her husband is a mechanic, and they have two boys), but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate,” she told IPS from Miami, Florida in the U.S.
Due to the economic, social and political crisis, which gave rise to a complex humanitarian emergency, 7.7 million Venezuelans, according to United Nations agencies, have migrated from this country, the vast majority in the last decade, and the flow is not slowing down, especially to other countries in the region.
“It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours, but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate.” — Gladys
The family of Gladys, who like other people who talked to IPS preferred not to give her last name, tried their luck in Colombia, Panama and Spain, before finally settling in the United States, “and the worry about the house followed us like a shadow, but fortunately we made a deal with an enterprising young man who takes care of it, improves it and pays a modest rent.”
There are thousands like her. Migrants try not to leave their homes empty and abandoned, because they could lose them. For this reason, since most migrants are adults in their most productive age and young people, relatives of other ages remain in the homes, giving Venezuela the appearance of being a country of elderly people and children.
“I have to close up my home,” said Juan Manuel Flores, from San Antonio de Los Altos, a satellite city of Caracas with many middle class houses. “The neighbors will take care of it. It took us more than five years to build it and it cost between 150,000 and 200,000 dollars. Now I can’t get more than 60,000 dollars for it. We are not just going to give it away for that price.”
Flores, a teacher at a school where he earns less than 200 dollars a month, is preparing to travel to Spain, where his wife and adult daughters have gone ahead of him. “I will return to Venezuela when the country and its economy improve, and housing prices will rise again,” he told IPS, although without much conviction.
Solitude eats away at houses and buildings even in sought-after areas of the residential and commercial municipality of Chacao, in eastern Caracas. The real estate and construction market is suffering in Venezuela from the general economic crisis and in particular from the oversupply of housing created by those leaving the country. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS
Why not rent out their house? “Because the laws and the authorities always favor the tenant, and if they have children it is impossible to get them out when the lease is up, whether they pay the rent or not, and they end up staying in the house for years,” said Nancy, a pastry chef, also from San Antonio, who left a niece in charge of her apartment when she moved to Brazil last year.
Selling is also not an option in most cases, because the magnitude of the exodus over the last decade has so depressed demand that the most that can be obtained for a property is 15 or 20 percent of the value it had 15 years ago, if you are lucky. So selling a home even if you want to is a long, difficult process that provides meager results.
Those who have no other choice say that they are not selling their home but “giving it away” for whatever they can get, with great regret, mostly to internal migrants from other parts of the country, who “take refuge” in Caracas because outside the capital there are recurrent power outages, and scarcity of water and fuel, in addition to other shortages.
“Real estate deteriorates, ceases to serve those who need it and remains an important asset that produces nothing for the owner, for example a migrant who needs to pay rent as soon as they arrive in another country,” Roberto Orta, president of the Venezuelan Real Estate Chamber, told IPS.
The businessman said “this is an issue that, we have proposed, should be addressed with political will in order to reform the laws that constrain the real estate market, to benefit both landlords and tenants. Up to 250,000 homes could be freed up in five years.”
A view of the working-class neighborhood of 23 de Enero on the west side of Caracas. In low-income barrios, closed, empty houses are almost non-existent, as those who decide to emigrate look for relatives to move in, to avoid the risk of the homes being invaded or robbed. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS
A trade is born
In the residential buildings located in Caracas and other cities, closing up an apartment and moving outside the country is not the same as leaving a house abandoned to solitude and neglect, because the neighbors, for their own safety and in order to pay the common expenses, keep watch and take care to prevent strangers from occupying the empty apartments.
But houses, especially middle-class homes, are an attractive and easy target for crime and even for people who want to occupy them by de facto means. That is why a new profession has appeared: the home caretaker.
“I have taken care of three houses in housing developments in the southeast (of Caracas), it’s the way I make ends meet,” said Daniel, who also works as a self-employed gardener. “I would go to one house twice a week, three times a week to another, and every day to another.”
He explains that in the last house “the owners were Portuguese business owners who went away and left three dogs. I would go to a pet food store to pick up the food, feed the dogs, check around the house and that was it.”
Family friends of the owners have now taken charge of the dogs and Daniel no longer receives payment for taking care of them. “I don’t have an account in dollars, I was paid through a restaurant friend of the owners, who does have an offshore account,” he said.
To pay for caretakers from abroad, intermediaries are indispensable, since in Venezuela, whose currency has been made nearly worthless by the economic crisis, there is a de facto dollarization, without agreement from the U.S. authorities, who also use sanctions to block the transactions of government bodies.
Daniel is saving up to join one of the groups forming in Antímano, the working-class neighborhood where he lives in the southwest of the capital, to migrate as well. He said that “I didn’t leave a few weeks ago because I hadn’t sold my motorcycle yet, otherwise right now I would be in the Darien,” the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama that thousands of migrants cross every day.
A more successful caretaker is Arturo, who is in charge of two houses with large living rooms, corridors, yards, a swimming pool and parking area. He is paid a modest fee to care for and maintain the homes, but is authorized to rent them out for social gatherings and parties.
“In both cases the owners are people with good incomes, they left with their children to study abroad and plan to return in a few years if conditions in the country change. They would like to find their homes as they left them,” he said.
When he rents out the property for a day or a night, guests can use the yards, swimming pool and even awnings, tables and chairs. But Arturo closes off access to the more private parts of the house and hires assistants to watch out for damages or disturbances. “I live well, I keep up the houses and each one brings me about 3,000 dollars in profits per month,” Arturo said.
President Nicolás Maduro delivers a batch of houses in the northwestern state of Falcón, which form part of the 4.6 million homes that the government claims to have built and provided to Venezuelan families since 2013. The figure is questioned by organizations dedicated to monitoring economic and social rights. CREDIT: Minhvi
No empty houses in the shantytowns
In the shantytowns of the cities and towns of this country – which has a population of 33.7 million according to government figures and 28 million according to university studies – the situation is different and there are hardly any empty or unoccupied houses.
“In the shantytowns, no house is left empty. The very next day someone can invade it, occupy it, or take what is left inside by those who left, furniture or household goods. Someone stays in charge, the grandfather or in-laws, a trusted neighbor, or a relative is brought from the interior of the country,” explained Alejandra, from the Gramoven area.
She lives in a shantytown of informally constructed dwellings in the northwest of Caracas, similar to the ones that cover most of the many hills and hollows occupied by the capital’s most disadvantaged inhabitants.
“Many people leave, the young people emigrate, my children want to leave through the Darien jungle. But nobody leaves their house empty. If you do, you lose it,” Alejandra said.
In Santa Bárbara del Zulia, on the hot plains south of western Lake Maracaibo, “the situation is the same,” Julio, a bricklayer who migrated to Colombia for four years and has returned to care for his elderly parents, told IPS.
“You can’t leave your house alone in these towns,” said Julio. “When my parents went to Maracaibo and Caracas for medical treatment, they went and came back quickly, because the Community Council warned them not to leave their house empty for too long, because they would not be able to ward off people who wanted to occupy it.”
The Community Councils are committees set up by the government to represent and manage community affairs – such as the distribution of bags of subsidized food to poor families – and they channel decisions by the government.
“But people are leaving anyway. It’s something that won’t stop as long as people here earn only a pittance and can’t even eat properly (the minimum wage and official pensions in Venezuela are equivalent to four dollars a month). People care about their houses, but food has to come first,” said Julio.
View of a row of houses practically abandoned by most of their inhabitants in a town in eastern Venezuela. Migration from the countryside and small towns to large cities and oil producing areas marked the 20th century in Venezuela. And today, migration from this country mainly to other Latin American nations has become a regional crisis. CREDIT: VV
A matter for the government and the business community
While the plight of people leaving their homes continues to drag on, the government of President Nicolás Maduro announces more or less twice a year the construction of hundreds of thousands of new homes, in a program initiated by his late predecessor Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), called “Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission”.
According to official figures, since 2011, 4.6 million homes have been built and delivered by the Mission, mostly residential complexes to which the president goes to personally hand over the keys of one or more houses to their new inhabitants.
In accordance with the Mission, the occupants are tenants, not owners, so they cannot sell the homes. If they leave, the home can be reassigned to new tenants. To avoid this, those who choose to move to another city or country first look for relatives who can move into the house, and thus keep it.
However, the official figures on the number of homes built is not borne out by anecdotal evidence, to judge by the myriad of informal self-built houses still occupied in the slums, and by reports from business and civil society organizations.
The Chamber of Construction reports that the sector has decreased 96 percent in the last 10 years, and that its members employ 20,000 workers, down from 1.2 million in better times, while cement companies are working at 10 percent of their capacity and the steel industry at seven percent.
The civil society organization Provea, which specializes in the study of economic, social and cultural rights, has compared and contrasted the figures of the Housing Mission – which have not been audited, according to Provea – with independent studies, and reached the conclusion that the government has built and delivered only 130,856 housing units in 10 years.
In 1955 the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) published his famous novel “Casas Muertas” (Dead Houses), describing the decline of Ortiz, a town in the central plains, caused by the loss of its population due to malaria and emigration to the big cities and oil production centers.
The flow of Venezuelan emigration in this century has not been enough to turn this into a country of dead houses. But its many closed doors bear witness to a collapse that has pushed millions of its inhabitants abroad, as do the small number of lights that are lit at night in the buildings of Caracas and other cities.
Jamaat-i-Islami party stage protest in Peshawar against price-hikes. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, Sep 26 2023 (IPS) – “We are under extreme stress about skyrocketing prices of essential edible commodities and the cost of gas and electricity. The situation is becoming worse because every day. We must pay more for wheat flour, sugar, tea, milk, oil, etc.,” Azizullah Khan, a civil servant, says.
Khan draws a monthly salary of 30,000 rupees (USD100), but the cost of living is increasing daily, making it hard for his family of eight to survive.
The electricity bill for August was 20,000 rupees (USD67), and two-thirds of his salary went into paying that, while the remaining 10,000 rupees (USD33) is meant to pay for gas and other family expenses, which, he says, is next to impossible.
“Now, we are seriously thinking of selling the small house we inherited from our parents because we have to repay loans to the shopkeepers and pay the school fees of three children,” says Khan, 30. He lives on the outskirts of Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces.
Pakistan’s leading economy and business analyst, Khurram Hussain, told IPS that the country has been seeing relentless and unending pressure on the exchange rate and price levels for more than two and a half years.
“The present bout of exchange rate volatility began in May 2021 and has continued unabated since then,” Hussain says. The dollar had from around 150 rupees to the dollar to about 300 to the dollar, he says.
Quoted in Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan, he noted: “It took ten years for the dollar to double in value from 75 to 150 rupees, from 2008 till 2019. It took less than two and a half years to double again from May 2021 till today.
At the same time, inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, started to skyrocket a few months after May 2021 and has risen relentlessly until now, with a few interruptions.
Muhammad Raees, 28, a daily wager, is severely hit by the cost of living.
“One year back, the price of 20 kg wheat four was Rs1300, which has now increased to Rs3000. I don’t find work every day because the construction activities have nosedived due to cement, iron, marble, and tile prices, and most of the contractors have stopped work,” Raees, a father of two, says.
“Many times, I have thought of committing suicide, but then I think of my children and wife,” he says.
At least ten people have committed suicide in the past two months.
“They were unable to pay electricity bills. Now, the government is mulling about jacking up the gas price by 50 percent. The poor population is the worst hit,” he says.
Javid Shah, a vegetable seller in Nowshera city adjacent to Peshawar, is fed up with life. “Cost of transportation has increased, and so the prices of vegetables and, as a result, sales have declined. Many who bought 1 kg of tomatoes, lady fingers, and potatoes daily are now taking half a kg,” he says. “I have to discard rotten vegetables daily for lack of sales.”
Akram Ali, a fruit seller in a tiny shop, also constantly complains of high inflation and devaluation of rupees. Ali says his business has reached a standstill as people no longer buy fruits due to high prices.
“As a result, I am going to close shop and start the business in a hand pushcart to save on rent.”
“My two sons are going to school, but the last one and half years have been tough, and I cannot pay their fees. Both have quit schools and sit at home,” he complained.
Saleem Ahmed, a local economist, tells IPS that pulses, considered poor men’s diet, are so expensive they are out of reach of many.
“All pulses are imported in dollars, so their prices have increased. The people are struck by inflation, and they cannot buy items, like pulses, which used to be cheap,” he said.
Prices were stable until former Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed in April 2022 in a no-confidence vote at the National Assembly.
“People have been running from pillar to post for two square meals. As if inflation wasn’t enough, huge smuggling of sugar, wheat flour, pulses, oil, etc. to neighboring Afghanistan have hammered the last nail in the coffin of the poverty-stricken masses,” he said.
Ahmed says the government is taking loans from the IMF, the World Bank, and other lenders with high interest rates, impacting the cost of living.
In such a scenario, Afghan refugees living in Pakistan are jubilant over the rising Afghan economy under the Taliban, and many are weighing options to return to their country.
“In Pakistan, the US dollar is equal to 300 rupees while it is traded for 75 Afghani back home,” Muhammad Mustafa, an Afghan with a sanitary business in Peshawar, says.
Mustafa says he had sent his elder son to Kabul to search for the rented shop so he could shift his business there.
“All my family live in Kabul, and we want to be there. The time is ripe for us to shift (back) there,” he says.
Petrol is being sold at 312 rupees (USD1.5) per liter in Pakistan, while its rate was 80 Afghani (USD1.02) in Kabul.
A protest for women’s rights in Puebla, Mexico. Credit: Melania Torres/Forus
NEW YORK, Sep 15 2023 (IPS) – At the UN SDG Summit in New York, the Forus global civil society network is calling for decisive action on SDG implementation. Clearly, as we hit the midpoint towards the “finish line” of the Agenda 2030, progress is stagnating.
The 2023 Special Edition of the SDG Progress Report emphasized that we’re falling short in implementing the SDGs. In April this year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres deplored that “Progress on more than 50 per cent of targets of the SDGs is weak and insufficient; on 30 per cent, it has stalled or gone into reverse,” disproportionately impacting the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.
As we approach the halfway mark of the 2030 Agenda, we urge world leaders at the UN General Assembly to address the precarious state of SDG implementation. Here’s our 5 asks.
Walk the talk with clear implementation plans and benchmarks for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.
“In Guatemala, there are two worlds, one for a small group that benefits from this macroeconomic stability, this weakness of democracy, this co-optation of state institutions, and a large majority of the population that faces poverty and inequality,” says Alejandro Aguirre Batres, Executive Director of CONGCOOP, the national platform of NGOs in Guatemala that recently published an alternative report on the implementation of the SDGs in the country.
Human rights activists in Cartagena, Colombia from the Coalition of Human Rights in Development at the Finance in Common Summit. Credit: Sebastian Barros/Forus
Governments must make specific national implementation plans to advance the Sustainable Development Goals, with clear benchmarks on when to achieve the targets set in 2015. Following the SDG Summit, we call on the United Nations and its partners to ensure that the “National Commitments to SDG Transformation” called for by the Secretary-General are adequately compiled and tracked, including by providing a transparent and inclusive platform for showcasing these commitments, helping to ensure adequate implementation, follow-up and accountability. All efforts and commitments must focus on breaching the increassing gap in inequalities, healing polarisation and restoring socio-environmental rights at the core of Agenda 2030 implementation as no form of development should come at the cost of environmental degradation and injustice.
Presenting a viewpoint from Asia, Jyotsna Mohan Singh, representing the Asia Development Alliance, emphasizes that while the SDGs look good on paper, their real-world implementation remains far from satisfactory. She explains, “Governments should develop a policy coherence for sustainable development roadmap with timebound targets,” adding that it’s all about creating spaces grounded in equity where civil society and other stakeholders can join discussions and connect with local communities.
In regions like the Sahel, stretching 5,000 kilometers below the Sahara Desert from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, challenges like conflict, political instability, extreme poverty, and food insecurity affect nearly 26 million people. Yet, this region is teeming with opportunities, boasting abundant resources and a young population, including 50% young women and girls. As civil society leader Mavalow Christelle Kalhoule, Forus Chair and President of SPONG, the Burkina Faso NGO network, puts it, “What unfolds in the Sahel and in so many other forgotten communities ripples across the globe, impacting us all even if we choose to look away. Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals is vital to unlock a different future. But for global change to truly happen, we need countries to come together, we need solidarity, horizontal spaces, and for world leaders to start listening and acting accordingly.”
Commit to the protection of civic space and human rights.
“Although the state of Pakistan has ratified many global instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the SDGs, the irony is that none of them have been transformed into local policies and regulatory frameworks. Unfortunately, civil rights advocates and organizations have either transformed themselves into humanitarian organizations or practiced self-censorship to avoid state atrocities. Pakistan is failing to achieve SDGs due to disengagement with civil society and other stakeholders. Ironically, the government is unable to provide reliable data on any of their own priority indicators to measure progress towards the implementation of SDGs, particularly on rights-based indicators,” says Zia ur Rehman, National Convener of the Pakistan Development Alliance. Their newly published Pakistan Civic Space Monitor reveals a generally restricted civic space, including restraints on freedom of speech, assembly, information, rule of law, governance, and public participation, with further deterioration. This rings true for 92% of Forus members – comprising national and regional civil society networks in over 124 countries – who consider the protection of civic space and human rights a top priority.
Fridays for Future activists during a Climate March in Brussels, Belgium. Credit: Both Nomads/Forus
Indeed, over the past decade, thousands of civil society organizations have faced increasing challenges due to restrictions on their formation and activities. Nine out of 10 people now live in countries where civil liberties are severely restricted, including freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, and expression, according to the CIVICUS Monitor. Forus reports confirm that civil society deals with increasing restrictions, involving extra-legal actions, misinformation and disinformation about their work both online and offline. Research also highlights the insufficiency of current institutional mechanisms to ensure an enabling environment for civil society, including addressing impunity for attacks on civil society and human right defenders, implementing supportive laws and regulations, and facilitating effective and inclusive policy dialogue. A recent ARTICLE 19 report highlights the inadequate integration of crucial elements like freedom of expression and access to information into SDGs, hampering progress. Journalist killings increased in 2022. Additionally, monitoring access to information mainly focuses on having a legal framework, ignoring its quality and adoption. Strengthening these rights is vital for advancing all SDGs. The growing number of human rights defenders being killed every year – at least 401 in 26 countries were murdered for their peaceful work in 2022 – is another worrying trend that needs to be reversed as the protection and promotion of human rights is the cornerstone of achieving sustainable development. Without human rights we will just move backwards.
Strengthen and Catalyze Robust Financing for the SDGs.
From the recent Summit for a new global financing pact to the Finance in Common initiative, it’s clear that the focus this year has been on increasing investment. But we need quality not just quantity, as expressed in a join civil society declaration aimed at public development banks signed by over 100 civil society organisations from 50+ countries. While we welcome UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s call for a SDG Stimulus, we remind Governments, International Financial Institutions, public development banks and donors that more efforts must be done to scale up investments for the realization of the SDGs at all levels, including through additional support for civil society and by involving communities in all “development talks”. The role of the private sector and financial institutions in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda must be talked about openly. It is important to include in all development projects being carried out specific budgets for actions linked to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Discussions about financial reforms that are being repeatedly undertaken by several countries cannot happen behind close doors and in non-inclusive forums such as the G7 and G20. Instead, they should be open, inclusive, and transparent, involving a broader spectrum of protagonists, including civil society, to ensure fairness and sustainability in shaping global financial policies.
“The SDGs are severely off track as we reach the critical half-way point of Agenda 2030. We need a renewed global ambition on financial commitments to make progress on the SDGs. Reforms of global financial architecture are a crucial part of this to ensure we have a fairer, more effective, inclusive and transparent system supporting lower-income countries that are at the forefront of the global climate, debt, poverty, food, and humanitarian crises. It’s not about a lack of finance, it is about political will and getting our priorities right,” says Sandra Martinsone, Policy Manager – Sustainable Economic Development at Bond UK.
Mobilize Transformative Commitments for SDG16+.
Recognizing the vital role of SDG16+ as a critical enabler for the entire 2030 Agenda, governments should come to the SDG Summit with targeted, integrated, focused and transformative commitments to accelerate action on SDG16+. As developed in the #SDG16Now collective campaign, this includes domestic policies and resources, legal reforms and initiatives to advance SDG16+ at the international, national and local levels, as well as ambitious global commitments to strengthen multilateralism and international resolve to promote peace, justice, the rule of law, inclusion and institution-building. Additionally, governments must use key moments – such as the 2024 High-Level Political Forum and the Summit of the Future – to advance implementation and delivery of the SDGs through similar commitments to action, and ensure adequate follow-up to these commitments going forward.
Ensure civil society participation and listen to communities, reinvigorate commitments to SDG17.
The 2030 Agenda overall cannot be achieved without building on the role of civil society and fostering a true global partnership. Every year at the fringes of the UN General Assembly, initiatives such as the Global People’s Assembly bring to the ears of world leaders the voices of communities historically marginalised. Governments need to reinvigorate engagement towards SDG17 to trengthen the means of implementing sustainable development goals and revitalising global partnerships for sustainable development. It’s high time we move away from conducting discussions about the future of development in closed-door settings. Tokenistic participation of civil society, where their involvement is merely symbolic or superficial, undermines the core principles of nclusivity, hurting genuine progress and meaningful collaboration. A more inclusive approach must be embraced that actively involves civil society and communities. Let’s #UNmute their voices and perspectives by bringing about reforms to current participation mechanisms, and giving them a real platform to be heard.
In 2015 every government in the world agreed as a global community on what we want for our comon future for people and planet. So many efforts and work went on to reach such an agreement. Now is the time for governments and world leaders to walk the walk and prioritize people and the planet, delivering the 2030 Agenda, essential to secure our shared future. It is time for world leaders to act decisively and uphold their commitments to the SDGs.
Asian Parliamentarians believe it’s important to prioritise spending on ageing and youth populations. Credit: APDA
NEW DELHI, Sep 5 2023 (IPS) – Legislators from around the world, this week, officially submitted to the Sherpa of the G20 meeting set for September in New Delhi a declaration calling on governments to prioritise spending on ageing, youth, gender, human security, and other burning population issues.
The submission to the G20 Sherpa follows a workshop held on August 22 in New Delhi to discuss the Declaration first presented at the G7 Hiroshima summit in April by the Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (GCPPD) under the UNFPA.
“We have now submitted the Declaration to Amitabh Kant, Sherpa to the G-20 so that it can be taken up,” Manmohan Sharma, Executive Secretary of the Indian Association of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (IAPPD), told IPS.
Lawmakers met in New Delhi to discuss the prioritisation of resources to prepare a declaration to the G20. Credit: APDA
Keizo Takemi, member of the House of Councillors, Japan, and Chair of the AFPPD, observed that India faced many challenges that are hard to overcome, and these included the large size of its population, limited school attendance, and a high rate of unemployment. “Prioritisation of population issues is the most important,” he emphasised.
Hooda, a leader of the opposition Congress party from the state of Haryana, said he was concerned at the dwindling budgetary outlay in social sectors like health and education over the last few years in India. “Currently, for some reason, inclusive growth in education and health has fallen,” he told delegates.
A presentation to the workshop by Suneeta Mukherjee indicated that India is among the top five nations leading the ‘out-of-school’ category, with 1.4 million children in the 6-11-years-old age category not attending school. Also, out of every 100 students, 29 per cent drop out of school before completing elementary education.
Mukherjee, an Indian career bureaucrat who has served at the UNFPA, said the situation appeared to be worsening at the upper primary level given that the dropout rate at the upper primary level had gone up to 3 per cent in 2021-2022 while it was only 1.9 per cent in 2020-2021. The annual dropout rate of secondary school students was 14.6 in 2020-2021.
Citing recent studies in her presentation, Mukherjee said 36 per cent of Indians between the ages of 15 and 34 believe that unemployment is the biggest problem facing the country. She said one survey showed 40 per cent of graduates identified unemployment as their most pressing concern.
Said P.J. Kurien, chairperson of IAPPD: “It is important that all MPs take up population-related issues. They need to ask what percentage of the budget is devoted to education and health and ensure that every child goes to school with special attention given to girls.”
Echoing Kurien, Sharma said it was up to members of parliament to ensure that no child is left out in his or her constituency. “The solution is in your hands, but the prioritisation is missing.”
Delegates outlined at the workshop legislative steps taken by Parliamentarians in their countries in implementing the International Conference on Population Development’s Programme of Action and 2030 Agenda.
Josephine Veronique Lacson-Noel, Member, House of Representatives of the Philippines, said over the last two decades, her country had enacted such legislations as the Magna Carta of Women, Reproductive Health Law, 105-Day Expanded Maternity Leave, Act Prohibiting Child Marriage, Universal Health Care Act, Youth Council Reform and Empowerment Act, and an Act to enable conditional cash transfers.
On the anvil, she said, is the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Bill, a law to recognise, evaluate and redistribute unpaid care and domestic work done by women, and another to accord social protection for older persons and the promotion of active aging.
For 2023, the budget allocation for reproductive health was $14.9 million dollars, and that for training teachers to implement comprehensive sexuality education was $13.8 million, Lacson-Noel said.
Andrea W. Wojnar, UNFPA India representative and country director for Bhutan, said with the right expertise and skills, India’s 1.4 billion people could be turned into 1.4 billion opportunities.
Wojnar said India, with its large youth cohort — its 254 million youth in the 15-24 age bracket — can be a source of innovation and solutions, especially if girls and women are provided educational opportunities and skills to access new technologies and are empowered to fully exercise their reproductive rights and choices.
With close to 50 per cent of its population below the age of 25, India has a time-bound opportunity to benefit from the demographic dividend, according to Wojnar.
“Women and girls should be at the centre of sexual and reproductive policies and programmes. When rights, choices, and equal value of all people are truly respected and held, only then can we unlock a future of infinite possibilities,” Wojnar said in a statement.
“As the national fertility rate falls below 2.1 (the replacement level), India is at a unique historical opportunity, witnessing a great demographic transition as a youthful nation,” Wojnar said, adding that India also has the largest number of outmigrants and is affected by ageing, urbanisation and issues around sustainable development.
Wojnar warned that, overall, the Asia Pacific region was six times more likely to be affected by disaster events than other regions and is highly susceptible to changing weather patterns, calling for special attention by governments.
The Declaration presented to the Sherpa of the G-20 called on governments, among other things, to implement comprehensive legislation and policies that address all forms of gender-based violence and eradicate harmful practices such as child marriage, early and forced.
It also called for investment in sexual and reproductive health and rights, as well as comprehensive sexuality education toward making future societies economically dynamic and for building peaceful, inclusive, and sustainable societies. Support for political and economic participation by women and girls could ensure the development of societies that guarantee liberty and individual choice for women and girls, it said.
Governments were asked to promote and assure equitable access to health innovation, finance, technology, and medicines in the global community which can support human security, leaving no one behind.
Acknowledgement of the grave impacts of environment/climate change and global warming was important, as also the need to promote policies that address the needs of geographically vulnerable countries, which is a threat to health and human security, the Declaration said.
Investing in young people by providing decent work opportunities and enabling them to become a driving force for sustainable development was important as also addressing active and healthy ageing to enhance people’s overall quality of life by improving areas such as health and long-term care through resilient universal health coverage, physical security, and income stability.
Governments were also asked to enact national legislation and policies and ensure political will through allocation, oversight, and monitoring of budgetary resources to build universal health coverage, which is vital to enhance the global health framework.
