Africa

She took her family to court in Niger to stop a forced marriage

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 18 2016 (IPS)

“I know exactly what it means to lose your home, to lose your belongings,” said Maher Nasser, Director of the Outreach Division at the UN’s Department of Public Information (DPI), during his opening remarks at a briefing on the refugee crisis.

Nasser, who moderated a panel of six experts, shared his personal experiences of being a child of refugees.

The briefing, organized by DPI’s non-governmental organization (NGO) relations section, explored ways to rethink and strengthen the response to the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.

“The feeling of longing, perhaps more than the physical loss of belongings and what you own—it’s the ever present feeling of loss, of longing to the homeland, to the house in which you were born, that you grew up in,” Nasser said in his address.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are 20 million refugees and an additional 40 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) globally, a total equivalent to the population of the world’s 24th biggest country. This means that one in every 122 people is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.

Of refugees, 51 percent are under the age of 18.

However, it isn’t the numbers that are provoking a crisis, Director of UNHCR’s New York Liaison Office Ninette Kelley told IPS. “It’s the absence of a managed response to them,” she stated.

Among options discussed to bolster refugee response, panelists highlighted the need for equitable ways to share responsibility.

“Countries need to work together to protect the large numbers of people who are on the move, or the responsibility falls unfairly on a small number of states who cannot cope any longer,” said Karen AbuZayd, Special Adviser on the Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants and panelist.

The majority of refugee-hosting nations are low to middle income countries, including Turkey, which hosts almost 2 million refugees, and Pakistan, which hosts 1.5 million. In Lebanon, Syrian refugees now make up 25 percent of the country’s population.

This has proved to be a challenge for many nations, overstretching their capacity and resources to effectively manage the crisis.

Head of the Delegation of the European Union to the UN’s Humanitarian Section Predrag Avramović illustrated the issue within Europe’s Schengen system.

Under the system, which allows residents to move freely between 26 European countries, asylum seekers must apply to the first European country they enter. This places the burden on a few countries, such as Greece which sees more than 2,000 refugees arrive at its shores each day.

In an effort to address this inequitable and crushing burden, the EU agreed to relocate 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy across the region. So far, 272, or just 0.17 percent, of such asylum seekers have been relocated.

The resettlement proposal also only accounts for small proportion of asylum seekers. In 2014 alone, at least 1.66 million people submitted applications for asylum, the highest level ever recorded. Europe received the majority of these applications but has struggled to process requests in a timely manner.

This has led to countries’ stringent regulations on asylum applications. For example, Austria, which is part of the main route for Northern Europe-bound refugees, announced a daily quota of 80 asylum applications per day, a measure that will be implemented this week.

At the briefing, Avramović emphasized the need for a more coherent and enforceable asylum and migration policies in Europe that meets legal and moral obligations.

Panelists also stressed the need for increased funds and more effective financing. This includes linking humanitarian and development assistance.

“It used to be that you had a humanitarian emergency, humanitarian agencies came in and development was something that came much later when the conflict had subsided or refugees returned home,” Kelley told IPS.

However, due to the changing nature of conflicts and crises, refugees now spend an average of 17 years in exile.

Refugee response must therefore include a resilience component, providing livelihood and education opportunities, panelists stated.

Education is not only a “key right,” but a “key prerequisite for development,” Nasser noted.

Though the Syrian conflict continues to dominate headlines, such responses must also go beyond Syrian refugees.

Kelley stated that UNHCR had a significant funding deficit for three of their biggest emergencies including the crises in Central African Republic, which received 26 percent of funds, and Burundi, which received 38 percent. Such issues need to be elevated more in the public’s attention, Kelley said.

“The only way that we can move forward is to have a much more predictable, supported system where states do share this global responsibility and both our humanitarian and development actions are lined up,” she concluded.

The World Humanitarian Summit, which will be held in Turkey in May, aims to set a new agenda for global humanitarian action, focusing on humanitarian effectiveness and serving the needs of people in conflict.

(End)

Polls open in Uganda's presidential election, with incumbent Yoweri Museveni seeking to extend his 30-year rule.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 18 2016 (IPS)

Ban Ki-moon maybe fighting a losing battle to resolve one of the biggest humanitarian problems facing the world body – even as he completes his last 10 months as UN Secretary-General.

Currently, there are over 125 million people – a staggering figure by UN standards — in need of immediate humanitarian assistance worldwide.

To put it in perspective, Ban points out, if all of the 125 million people comprise a new country, it will be the world’s eleventh largest, next to Japan.

“The numbers are unsustainable and the human costs are intolerable,” he complained last week.

Finding a solution to the crisis will be an integral part of the legacy he will leave behind when he finishes his 10-year stint office end December.

If he fails, chances are his successor will inherit the insurmountable problem when he or she takes over the Organisation as the new Secretary-General, come January.

Providing a breakdown of figures, the President of the General Assembly Mogens Lykketoft of Denmark says there are 20 million refugees across borders; 40 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) inside war zones; and an additional 65 million temporarily in need of support to survive because of climate-related famine.

“We in the UN are now trying to raise awareness and awaken conscience. The UN needs extra 15-20 billion dollars annually to support these people. Is it much money? Yes – but it is less than one out of every 4,000 dollars in national income worldwide,” he said.

In his appeal for funds, the Secretary-General says the world’s total gross domestic product (GDP) is over $78 trillion while the world’s financial institutions are worth more than $200 trillion.

“So $20 billion should not be a big issue, “says Ban, “provided there is a will – a political will.”

Ban also cites the more than $10 billion raised at a London pledging conference February 4 – primarily as humanitarian assistance to help refugees from war-ravaged Syria embroiled in devastating a five-year-old civil war.

During his last nine years as Secretary-General, he said, he has not seen the mobilization of over $10 billion in one day for a single cause, namely for Syria.

“This is something we should be very proud of,” he declared, pointing out that “the world is being tested.” He described the pledges as a sign of “great solidarity, leadership and vision.”

Addressing a meeting in London early February, Ban recounted his early days growing up in Korea as a one-time refugee depending on UN agencies for handouts – and for survival.

“I myself was once a displaced person. Some of you might have read my life story. I was born in Korea just before the end of the Second World War. When I became 6 years old, the Korean War broke out in 1950.”

“I had to flee my home with my parents without knowing where to go. Life was miserable, terrible, but for a young, young boy, I couldn’t feel as seriously and terrible as my parents might have felt. Most of you may not feel as I felt at the time.”

He said both he and his family survived on food and medicine provided by the United Nations and UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund].– humanitarian assistance, powdered milk and small toys, and UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] provided us textbooks, notes.

More importantly, “the United Nations provided us security,” with the United Nations, exercising for the first time, its authority to maintain international peace and security.

He said the Security Council showed unity at that time and it adopted a resolution creating a United Nations Command (UNC).

“Without the United Nations, I would not be able to stand before you today. If I think about all what had happened to me and to my country, to my people, I only was able to survive because of the United Nations, with the aid of the United Nations. And now I’m standing as the Secretary-General and feeling humbled.”

The writer can be reached at thalifdeen@aol.com

Mayimuna Monica* has been living with HIV for over 10 years and wants to have a baby. But she can’t because her uterus was removed against her will at a government hospital where she had gone to deliver her last child now aged eight. “My uterus was removed in 2007. When I got pregnant and […]

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the violence that broke out overnight and continued today in the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) civilian protection site in Malakal, in the northeast region of the country, claiming the lives of at least seven internally displaced persons and injuring approximately 40 others so far.

The United Nations and its international partner organizations said they are closely following the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), particularly in view of the upcoming elections in the country.

The political impasse in Guinea-Bissau could delay implementation of critical reforms and erode progress in the West African country’s development, the United Nations envoy there warned the Security Council today.

The number of civilians fleeing the recent conflict in the Jebel Marra area in Sudan’s Darfur region has jumped to 73,000 from 38,000, according to United Nations estimates, as some 30,000 people flocked to Sortony, where the displaced have been gathering next to a base operated by the African Union-UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID).

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Feb 17 2016 (IPS)

It is no coincidence that Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the only Secretary General in the history of the United Nations able to serve only one term instead of the two that have become traditional. The United States vetoed his re-election, in spite of the favourable vote of the other members of the Security Council.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who died on February 16, was considered too independent. We have now forgotten that at the request of the Americans, in 1992 he authorized, a United Nations intervention in Somalia, run by an American general, whose aim was to distribute $90 million in food and aid to the former Italian colony, that had been shaken by an internal conflict between local warlords.

The intervention cost $900 million in military expenditure, and ended with the downing of two Black Hawk helicopters, and the tragic death of 18 American soldiers, dragged into the streets of Mogadishu.

An obvious expedient for the US was to place the blame on Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who became the scapegoat during the US electoral campaign. Bill Clinton referred to him in his campaign, calling him BoooBoooGhali, and an agreement was made with the then US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeline Albright, to get rid of him, in exchange for becoming the US Secretary of State.

I traveled on the same flight to Paris with Boutros Boutros-Ghali, just after he left the UN (only the Italian ambassador went to say goodbye at the airport), and I remember the ease with which, when we arrived at the immigration queue, he went to the Non EU line, in spite of a policeman inviting him to the diplomatic exit. He said, my friend those times are gone, now I am a citizen just like you. And when we took a taxi, he had to dissuade the driver, who was an Egyptian, that he should pay even though the driver did not want to accept money from him.

The fact is, he was not popular at the UN. He was very strict, very private (he never attended a reception), and he was very aloof. He was, in reality, a professor of International Law, which was his real interest in life. And he did not enjoy socializing very much. He was suddenly alert when he met somebody with a personality, or an unusual person. But he saw the world of the UN as too pompous and formal.He always prefered a book to a diplomat. But if you could become his friend, you would find a very ironic and amusing mind, with a striking intellectual depth, and a shy human warmth.

He came from a traditional Egyptian orthodox family, who had been very rich, until President Gamal Abdel Nasser started the process of state nationalizations. He considered that because of his background, he could not be conditioned by power. He was a Copt, married to a strong and intelligent Jewish Egyptian, Leila, and he was able to make a career up to the level of Secretary of State, while maintaining his tenure at the University. When he was vetoed by the US for a second mandate, he told me: Americans do not want you to say yes: they want you to say yes, sir.

He never forgot his identity. He spoke of himself as an Arab, and he openly wondered if he would have been given the same treatment had he been white and American or European. He sympathized with what he called the underdogs and the exploited, and he tried to make the United Nations once again, a place of global governance. We have to remember that when he became Secretary General, in January 1992, the UN was at the end of a long process of decline, initiated under Reagan, in 1981.

In 1973, for the first time in history, the General Assembly unanimously approved a global plan of governance, which made international cooperation the basis for all its actions. Out of this plan, for instance, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Unido) was created. Even a Summit of Heads of States was held in Cancun, Mexico, in 1981, to advance a New Economic Order. It was the first outside visit of the newly elected American President, and he made immediately clear that the days of the UN were finished. The US would not accept to be straightjacketed into a democratic mechanism, where its vote had the same weight as that of Montecarlo (he probably intended Monaco). The US become rich thanks to trade, and his slogan was trade, not aid. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was part of the Cancun Summit, and a new alliance based on making markets and free movement of capital became the new basis for international relations.

From 1981 to 1992, the world changed dramatically, not only because of the collapse of a bilateral world, with the end of the Soviet Union, but because the winners took literally the end of communism as a mandate for a capitalism unencumbered by any governance.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali was not a left wing person. But he felt how the big powers were marginalizing the UN. The two engines of globalization, finance and trade, were already running outside of the organization. He spoke about this trend based on national interest with the concern of an Arab, and the distaste of a professor of International Law. He made a strong effort from the beginning of his term as Secretary General, establishing an Agenda for Peace, a strong juridical document with a clear role for the UN, which was conveniently ignored by the great powers.

He proceeded to hold a number of extraordinary conferences, from the Climate Change Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (the basis of the path to Paris), to the Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, the Conference on Population in Cairo in 1994, and the Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995, and the Beijing Conference on Women in the same year. In all those conferences, the US and the other great powers had to bow down to the rules of international democracy, and accept resolutions and plan of actions that they would gladly have avoided.

When finally, they got rid of him, in 1996, the decline of the UN started again. Even Kofi Annan, who was chosen to succeed Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Madeline Albright’s request, eventually fell into disgrace, because he tried to keep a measure of independence in his actions. Now the UN has no funds for action, and has become a dignified Red Cross International, left with education, health, food, children and other humanitarian concerns, far away from the real sources of money and power.

The Millennium Development Goals, adopted with great fanfare by the Head of States of the world in 2000, would cost less than 5% of the world’s military expenses. The five permanent members of the Security Council are responsible for the international trade of 82% of weapons, and its legitimacy for military intervention is a blanket conveniently used according to the circumstances. The sad situation of Iraq, Syria and Libya is a case in point. And the great powers have not hidden their agenda of moving the debate on governance away from the UN. The Group of Seven has become the Group of 20, and the World Economic Forum a more important space for exchange than the General Assembly.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali viewed the decline of the UN with regret. He went into positions which were consistent with his concerns. He become Secretary General of the International Francophone Organization, where again he had trouble with the French, because he wanted to make alliances with other Latin language countries, as he had a cultural view and not merely linguistic one of the world. He then became Commissioner for Human Rights in Egypt, and he did not deviate from his overall political view by becoming the Honorary President of the European Centre for Peace and Development, an organization created by the General Assembly, based in Belgrade, that has played a unique role in creating academic cooperation all over the Balkans and other countries of Eastern and Central Europe.

In this centre he found the place where his ideals for justice and peace, development and cooperation, were still vibrant and active. He died right at the moment of clashes between the fundamentalists of Islam and the others. He tried to draw attention to this problem that he had clearly seen coming, and he leaves a world where his ideas and his views have become too noble for a world where nationalism, xenophobia and conflict have become the main actors in international relations.

It is time now to look more closely at those ideas and ideals, and less at Boutros Boutros-Ghali as a human being, with its inevitable flaws and shortcoming which is also as he would want to be remembered. With him, we lived through what looks to have been the last great moment of the United Nations, with international law as e basis for cooperation and action.

Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News.

María Elena Rodríguez, 54, makes a living selling fruit at a street stand in San Salvador. She forms part of El Salvador’s informal economy, where workers are not covered by the pension system and women are a majority. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Feb 17 2016 (IPS)

El Salvador is debating reforms of the country’s privatised pension system, which could introduce changes so that it will no longer discriminate against women.

“The pension system has a male-centred, patriarchal focus that fails to take into account the specific differences that women face in the world,” said Marta Zaldaña, secretary general of the Federation of Independent Associations and Unions of El Salvador (FEASIES).

The head of FEASIES, which groups more than 20 trade unions, told IPS that one example of the sexist treatment received by women is the 115,000 domestic workers who are completely outside the system, with no right to a pension or even the minimum wage, or any other kind of protection or regulation.

People working in the informal sector of the economy, 65 percent of whom are women, do not pay into the system and will have no right to a retirement pension, economist Julia Evelin Martínez, a researcher at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University School of Economy, told IPS.“The reform should be an opportunity to redesign the pension system from the very foundations, in order for it to offer equal benefits to men and women.” -- Julia Evelin Martínez

The system was designed “based on the labour experiences and lives of men,” she said.

María Elena Rodríguez, 54, a street vendor who sells fruit at a stand on a San Salvador street, said the outlook for her old age is grim.

“I don’t have any coverage, I pray that the lord will give me the strength to work until I’m 65, and then I’ll ask my children to put me in an old-age home, because I don’t have any pension, I have nothing,” Rodríguez told IPS as she sold papaya slices to passersby.

She has three children, but says she doesn’t “want to be a burden for anyone,” adding that after a life of hard work, she should have the right to an old age without worries.

Lawmakers did not create rules enabling people in the informal sector of the economy to be covered by the system, which only applies to formally employed wage-earners.

With contributions by their employers, those covered by the system pay 13 percent of their wages into individual accounts managed by the pension fund administrators (AFPs), which take a 2.2 percent commission and invest the money.

Since late 2015, the government, the business community, academics and social organisations have been discussing what to do with the pension system which, since it was privatised in 1998, has neither expanded coverage nor improved pensions, as promised.

According to official figures, as of November 2015, 2.7 million people were enrolled in the pension savings system (SAP), in this country of 6.3 million people with an economically active population (EAP) of 2.8 million.

But 65.7 percent of the EAP works in the informal sector, while only 24.7 percent actually pays into the system, despite the fact that nearly everyone is formally enrolled, because at some point they registered and their names are still in the system.

That means only one out of four people in the EAP will have coverage when they retire, and many of these will draw very small pensions.

The debate is currently focused on how to improve returns in the pension funds, which were worth a total of 7.3 billion dollars in November. If the returns increase, pensions will grow.

Around 58 percent of that total is invested in pension investment certificates issued by the state, with low interest rates between 1.4 and three percent. Legally, El Salvador’s AFPs cannot invest in the international stock market, where the returns are higher, although the risks are too.

The government of left-wing President Salvador Sánchez Cerén wants to go even further, proposing a reform to create a mixed system that would include the private pension fund administrators – an idea that is opposed by the business community and the right-wing opposition.

Little information about the proposed reform has come out. But the government is reportedly proposing that workers who earn less than 484 dollars a month would be covered by a public system, and the rest by a mixed one.

In this debate, “we want to incorporate a gender perspective in the pensions system,” said Zaldaña, who also belongs to a group fighting for decent jobs for women, the CEDM.

The government acknowledges that women face unequal conditions. They retire at the age of 55, compared to 60 for men, which means they pay less into their accounts, and thus receive lower pensions when they retire.

To that is added the fact that they earn 15 percent less than men on average, even though on average women have more years of formal schooling, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2015.

The lower their wages, the less they pay into their individual accounts, under the current system.

“The problem is that culturally the population still has no awareness about the inequality in wages,” a public employee in a government office, Johana Peña, told IPS.

Roberto Lorenzana, the president’s secretary on technical questions, said in remarks to the government online news outlet Transparencia Activa that the gender imbalance is “a problem that we need to address” in any future reform.

He said the government’s position on this has points in common with that of the Salvadoran Association of Pension Fund Administrators (ASAFONDOS), which represents the country’s two AFPs.

However, it is unclear as to what changes are proposed to move in that direction, and Lorenzana and René Novellino, executive director of ASAFONDOS, did not respond to requests from IPS for an interview to discuss the issue.

Martínez, the researcher, believes the debate should look at the foundations of a system that is unfair to women – a problem that she said is not only seen in private systems.

“The reform should be an opportunity to redesign the pension system from the very foundations, in order for it to offer equal benefits to men and women,” she said.

The economist pointed out, for example, that women with formal jobs stop paying into the system during their four months of maternity leave. If they have an average of three children, they will have stopped paying towards their retirement for an entire year.

That time lost is added to the five years that they do not pay into the system as they retire earlier than men.

“This creates a distortion, a gap, a discontinuity, which is reflected in their labour history,” said Martínez.

Zaldaña, the head of FEASIES, said these gap periods should be counted as time worked, and the state should contribute the funds to make up for that lost time. This proposal has been presented to Lorenzana, she said.

A similar reform was implemented in July 2009 in Chile, where the government offers a bonus per child to each female worker.

The economist Martínez is pleased that the trade union movement is pushing for these changes, while she lamented that women’s rights groups in El Salvador have not taken up the battle.

Meanwhile, Rodríguez said, without slowing down in her sales of fruit to her customers, that she scrapes by “with the few cents that I make from my fruit stand, but I don’t know what I’ll do when I’m old.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

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Farhang Jahanpour is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University. He is a tutor in the Department of Continuing Education and a member of Kellogg College, University of Oxford.

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Feb 17 2016 (IPS)

Although the implementation of Iranian nuclear deal has been welcomed by all those who had been involved in the negotiations as part of the P5+1, the deal has had many vociferous opponents.

Farhang Jahanpour

In the United States, the opposition to the Iranian deal has not stopped at verbal denunciation alone. Only one day after the January 16th announcement of the implementation of the deal, the US Treasury unveiled new sanctions on Iran on the excuse that Iran had tested Emad missiles in October, contrary to the Security Council resolutions. These sanctions are at least against the spirit of the nuclear deal as the US had pledged not to impose new sanctions on Iran. First of all, Resolution 2231 had rescinded all nuclear-related resolutions, and the nuclear deal has ensured that Iran has no nuclear weapons.

In December 2015, the US Congress passed a new law seeking to stop terrorists from traveling to the US. The law changed the rules of the visa waivers afforded to citizens of some 38 countries, including a provision that dual citizens from Syria, Iraq, Sudan and Iran or anyone who has visited any of those countries over the past five years must obtain a visa in advance, including an in-person interview, prior to visiting the US. This law would inconvenience many dual Iranian citizens and many other nationals who wish to travel to Iran on business or tourism, thus violating the provisions of the nuclear deal. Iran’s name was added to the list at the last moment as a pure act of hatred.

It is no wonder that many Iranian officials say that they do not trust the US. It is clear that such acts are not aimed at improving relations between the two countries and encouraging Iranians to have closer relations with the West.

However, Iran did not waste any time in making the best use of the nuclear deal. The unfreezing of Iranian assets, said to be worth about 100 billion dollars, will help the Iranian economy that has been suffering for years under crippling sanctions. Even before the formal Implementation Day, President Vladimir Putin travelled to Iran in November 2015, his first visit for ten years. The two sides signed many deals on economic cooperation. The Russian engineering company Tekhnopromexport will build a 1.4 GW thermal power plant in Iran and a desalination plant with a capacity of 200,000 cubic meters of water per day near the city of Bandar Abbas. Moscow will extend Tehran a government loan worth 5 billion dollars to cover the implementation of 35 priority projects in the fields of energy, construction, seaports, railway electrification, and others. A further 2 billion dollars in the form of export credits is due to be provided by Russia’s State Corporation Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs. Victor Melnikov, head of the Iran-Russia Trade Council, said that the two countries could boost bilateral trade exchanges to 10 billion dolars in coming years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was the first foreign leader to visit Tehran following the lifting of international sanctions. During his two-day visit to Iran (22-23 January), the two sides agreed to raise the level of their bilateral trade more than tenfold, from 51.8 billion dollars in 2014 to600 billion dollars in the next 10 years. In an article on the eve of his visit to Iran, the Chinese President referred to the first Iranian delegation that had visited China more than 2,000 years ago, and he referred to the Silk Road that had connected those two ancient lands over many centuries. Presidents Rouhani and Xi oversaw the signing of 17 politico-economic agreements between the two countries worth tens of billions of dollars.

Perhaps even more important than the economic deals was Iran-China’s strategic partnership. The Chinese president confirmed his support for Iran to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran enjoys a unique geopolitical position, as a link between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, between Central Asia and the Caucasus, also linking China and India to Europe, thus acting as a hub for Eurasian integration.

During his visits to Italy and France (25-29 January), the Iranian president signed some 55 billion dollars in deals focused on the hydrocarbons, metals, transport, and automotive sectors. Unquestionably the biggest deal was Iran’s purchase of 118 Airbus planes, at a total cost of 25 billion dollars. Iran’s transport minister, Abbas Akhoundi, has remarked that Iran is in the market for some 400 medium and long-range planes, as well as 100 shorter-haul aircraft. He also said that Iran was open to deals with American aviation companies.

The wide range of deals across multiple industries highlights the overall appeal of the Iranian market to the world. Iran’s 80 million young and educated population, as well as Iran’s vast natural resources, have made it the biggest hope for the recovery of a sluggish European economy. Iran owns more than 7 per cent of the total global mineral reserves, ranking first in terms of proven gas and second in terms of oil reserves (fourth if shale oil is also taken into account). Iran also ranks first in the world in terms of zinc, 2nd in copper, 9th in iron, 10th in uranium and 11th in lead mines, as well as possessing 68 different types of minerals.

In addition to all its economic benefits, Europe also sees Iran as a major ally in the battle against ISIS. The world has moved on from the era of sanctions, which were on the point of collapse even prior to the nuclear agreement. It would be futile to try to reverse the global trend and to isolate Iran again. All that the attempts to isolate Iran would do is to push her further into the arms of the Russians and the Chinese, while most Iranians are strongly pro-Western and pro-American. There is a very large community of Iranian-Americans with a vast network of friends and relatives in Iran that could be used to bring Iran closer to the Western orbit. This asset should not be wasted.

It is time for US politicians to realize that past US policies in the Middle East have destabilized the region and have given rise to ISIS and other terrorist groups. They should turn a new leaf and make use of America’s soft power, rather than giving priority to military options and regime change.

(End)

Africa is eating more rice than other food staples, though it produces less than it needs. This is good news for the cereal’s potential to help Sub Saharan Africa out of poverty according to researchers. Rice is the second most important source of calories in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice), a […]

Across eastern and southern Africa, millions of children are at risk from malnutrition, hunger, water shortages and disease, the United Nations Children&#39s Fund (UNICEF) warned today, citing two years of erratic rain and drought combined with one of the most powerful El Niño events in the past 50 years.

The man who rescues Benin's mentally ill held in shackles

Boutros Boutros-Ghali: An Appreciation

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 16 2016 (IPS)

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 93, was the only UN Secretary-General (1992-1996) to be denied a second term in office because of a US veto in the 15-member Security Council.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The US, which preaches the concept of majority rule to the outside world, exercised its veto even though Boutros-Ghali had 14 of the 15 votes in the Security Council, including the votes of the other four permanent members of the Council, namely the UK, France, Russia and China.

In such circumstances, tradition would demand the dissenting US abstain on the vote and respect the wishes of the overwhelming majority in the Security Council.

But the US refused to acknowledge the vibrant political support that Boutros-Ghali had garnered in the world body.

Unlike most of his predecessors and successors, Boutros-Ghali refused to blindly play ball with the US despite the fact that he occasionally caved into US pressure at a time when Washington had gained a notoriety for trying to manipulate the world body to protect its own national interests.

In a statement released Tuesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Boutros-Ghali presided over a dramatic rise in UN peacekeeping at a time when the world increasingly turned to the United Nations for solutions to its problems, in the immediate aftermath of the cold war.

“Boutros Boutros-Ghali did much to shape the Organization’s response to this new era, in particular through his landmark report “An Agenda for Peace” and the subsequent agendas for development and democratization,” said Ban.

In his 345-page book titled “Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga,” released in 1999, Boutros-Ghali points out that although he was accused by Washington of being “too independent” of the US, he eventually did everything in his power to please the Americans.

But still the US was the only country to say “no” to a second five-year term for Boutros-Ghali although he also had the overwhelming support of the remaining 184 member states of the General Assembly at that time.

The former UN chief recalls a meeting where he tells the then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher that far too many Americans had been appointed to UN jobs “at Washington’s request over the objections of other UN member states.”

“I had done so, I said, because I wanted American support to succeed in my job (as Secretary-General”), Boutros-Ghali says. But Christopher refused to respond.

When he was elected Secretary-General in January 1992, Boutros-Ghali noted that 50 percent of the staff assigned to the UN’s administration and management were Americans, although Washington paid only 25 percent of the UN’s regular budget.

When the administration of US President Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, Boutros-Ghali was signalled that two of the highest ranking UN staffers appointed on the recommendation of the outgoing (President George) Bush’s administration– Under-Secretary-General Richard Thornburgh and Under-Secretary-General Joseph Verner Reed — were to be dismissed despite the fact that they were theoretically “international civil servants” answerable only to the world body.

They were both replaced by two other Americans who had the blessings of the Clinton Administration.

Just before his election in November 1991, Boutros-Ghali remembers someone telling him that John Bolton, the US Assistant Secretary of State for International Organisations, was “at odds” with the earlier Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar because he had “been insufficiently attentive to American interests.”

“I assured Bolton of my own serious regard for US policy.” “Without American support,” Boutros-Ghali told Bolton, “the United Nations would be paralysed.”

Boutros-Ghali also relates how Christopher had tried to convince him to publicly declare that he will not run for a second term as secretary-General. But Boutros-Ghali refused.

“Surely, you cannot dismiss the Secretary-General of the United Nations by a unilateral diktat of the United States. What about the rights of the other (14) Security Council members”?, he asked Christopher.

But Christopher “mumbled something inaudible and hung up, deeply displeased”.

Boutros-Ghali also says that in late 1996 US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, on instructions from the US State Department, was fixated on a single issue that had dominated her life for months: the “elimination” of Boutros-Ghali.

Under-Secretary-General Joseph Verner Reed, an American, is quoted as saying that he had heard Albright say: “I will make Boutros think I am his friend; then I will break his legs.”

After meticulously observing her, Boutros-Ghali concludes that Albright had accomplished her diplomatic mission with skill.

“She had carried out her campaign with determination, letting pass no opportunity to demolish my authority and tarnish my image, all the while showing a serene face, wearing a friendly smile, and repeating expressions of friendship and admiration,” he writes.

“I recalled what a Hindu scholar once said to me: there is no difference between diplomacy and deception.”

One of his “heated disputes” with Albright (later U.S. secretary of state) was over the appointment of a new executive director for UNICEF back in 1995. It was a dispute “that seemed to irritate Albright more than any previous issue between us”.

President Bill Clinton wanted William Foege, a former head of the U.S. Centres for Disease Control, to be appointed UNICEF chief to succeed James Grant.

“I recalled,” says Boutros-Ghali, “that President Clinton had pressed me to appoint him (Foege) when we had met in the Oval Office in May 1994.”

“I replied to her (Albright) as I had then to President Clinton: that while Dr. Foege was without doubt a distinguished person, unfortunately, I could not comply,” writes Boutros-Ghali.

He also told Clinton that he was personally and publicly committed to increasing the number of women in the top ranks of the United Nations, and UNICEF would particularly benefit from a woman’s leadership.

Since Belgium and Finland had already put forward “outstanding” women candidates – and since the United States had refused to pay its U.N. dues and was also making “disparaging” remarks about the world body – “there was no longer automatic acceptance by other nations that the director of UNICEF must inevitably be an American man or woman.”

“The U.S. should select a woman candidate,” he told Albright, “and then I will see what I can do,” since the appointment involved consultation with the 36-member UNICEF Executive Board.

“Albright rolled her eyes and made a face, repeating what had become her standard expression of frustration with me,” he wrote.

When the Clinton administration kept pressing Foege’s candidature, Boutros-Ghali says that “many countries on the UNICEF Board were angry and (told) me to tell the United States to go to hell.”

The U.S. administration eventually submitted an alternate woman candidate: Carol Bellamy, a former director of the Peace Corps.

Although Elizabeth Rehn of Finland received 15 votes to Bellamy’s 12 in a straw poll, Boutros-Ghali said he appealed to the Board president to convince the members to achieve consensus on Bellamy so that the United States could continue a monopoly it held since UNICEF was created in 1947.

And so Boutros-Ghali ensured that the post of UNICEF executive director will remain the intellectual birthright of the Americans – even to this date.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

From crowdsourcing to TV debates in Uganda's election

Fatma W. with her 7-year old son born from rape. Atieno was 17 when she was gang-raped at their home in Nairobi by three men who accused her family of hiding men from the “enemy” tribe. She stopped going to school after the rape. Fatma said her neighbors stigmatize her son because he was born from rape. Credit: © 2015 Samer Muscati / Human Rights Watch

By Agnes Odhiambo
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 16 2016 (IPS)

Owuor P.’s 16-year-old sister Nekesa tried and tried to get an abortion after she was gang-raped and found herself pregnant during Kenya’s post-election violence in 2007-8. “We are not sure how many raped her,” Owuor told me. “She told us that she saw three men rape her and then she lost consciousness. She was quiet most of the time after the rape.” In desperation after the birth of the child, she killed herself. The baby survived, and today Owuor is raising the child, who has a serious mental health condition, and is still grieving for his sister.

Nekesa was not able to have a safe abortion, even though she was the victim of a terrible crime. Kenyan law prohibits abortion except when the life of the woman is at risk and so Nekesa’s family, along with the hundreds of women and girls raped during the post-election violence, are forced to live with the painful consequences of unwanted pregnancies.

I interviewed 163 women and girls who suffered sexual violence during that post-election period, and found that hundreds are still suffering serious physical and mental health injuries, poverty and social exclusion. Our research also shows that the Kenyan government has not properly acknowledged this group of victims or provided them with justice or the health services they urgently need.

The violence that rocked Kenya over eight years ago killed 1,133 people and displaced another 600,000. Many people were left with lifelong disabilities from their injuries. There was widespread destruction and looting of homes and other property, and expulsion of people from their homes. The widespread sexual violence against women and girls—and to a lesser extent, men and boys—was less visible than other abuses, but was just as devastating.

Of the women and girls I interviewed, 37 became pregnant as a result of the rape. None of them were able to get a safe abortion. Some had illegal and unsafe abortions and eight years later, were still struggling with the health consequences. Others told me about their feelings of shame and guilt because of the stigma attached to abortion in Kenya.

I also spoke to women who had to give birth and who now live with ambiguous and conflicted feelings toward their children, who themselves often face stigma, rejection and verbal and physical abuse from their families. “I abused my child … I used to beat her very badly,” Adhiambo told me. Adhiambo was raped by a group of men and beaten unconscious. She told me that she has recently received counseling and her relationship with her daughter has begun to improve. Many other mothers of children born from these rapes also shared their mixed feelings of love and hate toward their children. I also met family members taking care of children whose mothers could not accept or raise them.

During the post-election violence in Kenya and in other countries where conflict-related sexual violence is common, humanitarian agencies and other groups work hard to help women get post-rape care under very difficult circumstances. But an essential element of comprehensive post-rape care, namely access to safe abortion for women who choose to end their pregnancies, often remains unattainable, leaving women and girls unable to make critical decisions about their health and their lives in the aftermath of sexual violence.

In January, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights opened a continental campaign for the decriminalization of abortion in Africa – to focus attention on unsafe abortion, which significantly threatens women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights. If governments are serious about the health needs of women and girls raped in conflict, they must include abortion in post-rape care and take steps to provide it to those who need it. The Kenyan government should review its restrictive laws on abortion to ensure that women and girls who become pregnant as a result of rape can get safe abortions.

There may also be some fresh hope for the women I interviewed, and perhaps for their children. Last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta promised to establish a reparations fund for victims. This should be established quickly and transparently and women should be involved in deciding how this money is spent. Funding should urgently be earmarked to meet the urgent healthcare needs of survivors and the needs of their children.

Not all women who become pregnant as a result of rape will choose to terminate their pregnancies, but all of them deserve to make that choice for themselves and have access to health care and support.

(End)

Battered but not beaten

Jomo Kwame Sundaram was an Assistant Secretary General working on Economic Development in the United Nations system from 2005 to 2015, and received the 2007 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 16 2016 (IPS)

2015 proved challenging for multilateralism, especially in relation to development concerns. July’s Addis Ababa third Financing for Development (FfD) conference delivered little real progress. Nevertheless, the September Sustainable Development Goals summit redeemed hopes with an ambitious and universal Agenda 2030.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Credit: FAO

More recently, the Paris climate change Conference of Parties produced an agreement after the 2009 failure at Copenhagen. However, while most developing countries made commitments in line with climate justice criteria, most OECD economies not only fell short, typically after failing to meet their commitments made under the earlier Kyoto Protocol. Even if fully realized, the Paris deal alone is not enough to avert climate change disaster as average global temperatures will still rise over two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The mid-December 2015 World Trade Organization (WTO) biennial ministerial meeting in Nairobi was another setback as the US and its allies sought to kill the Doha Round of trade negotiations, thrusting the WTO itself into existential crisis. Ending the round inconclusively will enable them to renege on commitments made in 2001 to get developing countries back to the negotiating table after the Seattle ministerial disaster.

The US and many other OECD countries have been increasingly unwilling to make any meaningful concessions in multilateral economic negotiations over the last decade. One big game changer has been recent US-led plurilateral initiatives, following Michael Froman’s appointment as US Trade Representative.

To make his case to kill the Doha Round, Froman cited the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, concluded in October 2015. Meanwhile, the European Union has begun negotiations with the US for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Not surprisingly, most developing countries want the Round to continue, hoping to finally realize the 2001 promises to rectify the previous Uruguay Round outcomes, which have undermined food security and development prospects.

By undermining WTO multilateral trade negotiations, bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements are the very antitheses of what they purport to do, namely advance trade liberalisation. In Southeast Asia, the TPP also undermines existing commitments, e.g. to the ASEAN Free Trade Area, and thus, the economic bases for regional solidarity and cooperation.

To come into effect, the TPP must first be ratified at the national level. This seems most unlikely to happen soon in the US Congress for varied reasons. TPP criticisms have been growing among US politicians, not only from all the Democrat presidential contenders, but also some leading Republican aspirants. The TPP has more support from Republicans than Democrats, but the Republican leaders of both houses have pledged to block it for the time being.

Ironically, a Democrat President has pushed the TPP without strong support from his own party. After touting the TPP as his top foreign policy priority for 2016, it only merited half a minute in President Obama’s hour-long final State of the Union address in mid-January.

Real focus not trade

Despite being portrayed as a trade deal, the TPP is not mainly about “free trade”. The USA and many of its TPP partners are among the most open economies in the world. The main trade constraints involve non-tariff barriers, such as ballooning US agricultural subsidies for example, which the TPP does not address.

OECD countries with more competent trade negotiating capacity had delayed agreement at an earlier meeting in Honolulu in mid-2015 before the October Atlanta deal. The delay was due to squabbling over how to manage trade in particular areas, reflecting influential lobbies. Thus, in fact, the TPP will actually protect and even advance interests that run contrary to free trade.

The TPP will strengthen monopolistic intellectual property rights (IPRs), well beyond the onerous provisions of the WTO Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement, especially for big pharmaceutical, media, information technology and other companies, for example, enabling ‘big pharma’ to have longer monopolies on patented medicines, keep cheaper generics off the market, and block the development and availability of ‘similar’ new medicines.

Meanwhile, growing evidence shows that IPRs hardly promote research, but may actually impede or delay innovation. TPPA provisions will also limit competition, raise consumer prices, constrain prudential financial regulation as well as threaten public health and the common good.

Investor-state dispute settlement

The TPPA will also strengthen foreign investor rights at the expense of local businesses and the public interest. Its investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system obliges governments to compensate foreign investors for the loss of expected profits! ISDS confers foreign investors with the right to sue national governments for regulatory or policy changes that ostensibly reduce the expected profitability of their investments.

It has been and can be invoked even when rules are nondiscriminatory, or profits come from causing public harm. ISDS provisions make it hard for governments to fulfill their basic obligations – to protect their citizens’ health and safety, to safeguard the environment and to ensure economic stability. For example, if a government banned toxic chemicals, it would have to compensate suppliers for lost profits, instead of requiring them to compensate the victims!

Thus, the taxpayer will be hit twice – first, to pay for the health and environmental damage caused, and then to compensate the manufacturer for ‘lost profits’ due to the ban. This will deter governments from doing the right thing, putting the public at risk.

Foreign corporations insist that ISDS is necessary where the rule of law and credible courts are lacking, but in fact, the US is seeking the same in the TTIP with the EU, impugning the integrity of European legal and judicial systems.

TPP politically-driven

It is no secret that the main US motive for the TPP has been to undermine China: in President Obama’s words, “With TPP, China does not set the rules in that region, we do”. The broad support for the China-mooted Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank even from traditional US allies, was a major embarrassment which the White House was desperate to overcome.

In Southeast Asia, such a realignment undermines the ASEAN commitment to a ‘zone of peace, freedom and neutrality’. Considering the paltry economic benefits as well as great risks involved, joining developing country governments are mainly doing so for political reasons while praying that they themselves will not pay high political costs for its consequences.

Concluding the TPP will encourage other plurilateral and bilateral agreements. While such arrangements undermine trade multilateralism, WTO officials and others continue to maintain the pretence of complementarity and coherence. The threat to abandon the Doha Round will be used by the North to extract more concessions from the South who still insists that the Round is necessary to realize at least some of their developmental and food security aspirations.

The fading prospects for economic multilateralism – on finance at Addis and on trade in Nairobi – as well as various other recent developments – including the many, typically self-serving political realignments in the ‘war on terror’ – threaten to irreversibly transform contemporary international relations, at the expense of sustainable development and the developing countries.

(End)