By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, May 30 2023 (IPS)

There have been an array of proposals to sustain journalism around the world– from tax incentives and subsidies to the idea of allocating 1% of governments’ GDP to a drastically increased ODA for independent journalism in the global South.

The debate has been intense and rightly so.

What is needed is a long-term project that would put together a global architecture supporting serious and reliable journalism regardless of the size and business model of the outlets producing it. Amid such calls for governments and philanthropies to do more, something finally is moving.

Yet the needs require real ambition and farsightedness that in practice means a coherent global governance to safeguard trustworthy media worldwide. The International Fund for Public Interest Media, initially announced by France during the Paris Peace Forum in 2022, is taking shape and an initial pilot cohort of media outlets already got selected.

Because of its hybrid form of governance, independent but backed by governments and major philanthropies alike, the IFPIM could become the biggest source of funds for media around the world.

As per the information provided on its website, it has already raised $50 million USD from more than 15 governments, philanthropies, and corporate entities but the ambition is much bigger.

The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), an initiative of the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy, an entity funded by the American Congress, estimates that global spending to support independent media globally should be $1 billion a year.

The reality on the ground– considering also how many legacy media houses are struggling with revenues and a declining readership– might require a much bigger figure.

If the situation was already dire before the pandemic, COVID was the knockdown blow for many media around the world that were already assaulted by the damaging impacts of big tech companies and their social media platforms. And now we also have to deal with an even more threatening and disruptive use of artificial intelligence.

While AI-based technologies can offer some positive elements on how media engage with public, the risks are enormous. “AI-based technologies also have an enormous potential to harm our information ecosystems and threaten the fundamental human rights on which robust, independent media systems, and free societies” reads a resolution recently passed at the International Press Institute General Assembly just held in Vienna.

With this gloomy scenario, the public interest media landscape is rapidly turning into what experts define as “news desert. We should be all very weary of the perils associated with its consequences. After all, as explained by the World Trends Report published by UNESCO, it is a vital issue because journalism is a public good that must be protected at any costs.

In such a scenario the fact that the IFPIM aims to reach $500 million USD, itself a milestone in this quest, is a relief. Still, it is not enough.

An issue to be taken into account is the fact that we are dealing with a fragmented landscape in this line of sector. There are already a small but increasingly more visible and impactful ecosystem, still in construction that is made up of blended agencies supporting independent media around the world.

Some of the most significant among them are the Media Development Investment Fund, MDIF that takes a more investor like approach then what seems the still in construction approach of IFPIM, has been already able to provide a variety of funding options.

With also a mixed lineup of investors, MDIF has already invested $300 million USD in 148 media outlets from 47 different countries. In addition, there is an increasing number of “intermediary” organizations.

Some of them like Pluralis acts more like investors (among its own backers there is MDIF). Others offer a blended package, financial and capacity building like Free Press Unlimited IMS, International Media Support while United for News takes a market approach of linking ads with local online news outlets.

BBC Media Action and Internews, on other hand, are intermediary closer to the field.

Though each of these represent a different model of support, are different from each other, they are all aimed at enhancing the viability of robust, independent media.

Interestingly we are seeing a crosspollination of such initiatives because their backers are often interlinked to each other with a major philanthropic foundation or bilateral donor supporting multiple initiatives at the same time.

And we are not mentioning the mechanisms that several bilateral institutions in the West are putting together only exclusively to safeguard and protect journalists in danger.

For example, the recently announced Reporters Shield, an undertaking of USAID, is particularly designed on tackling SLAPPs, the strategic lawsuits against public participation.

Undoubtedly the IFPIM is going to be a standout catalyst but it is rightly showing commitment to partner with other key stakeholders.

The recent MoU signed with Reporters without Frontiers, RSF and the Forum on Information and Democracy, the latter itself a global initiative leading the debate on safeguarding journalism that is housed at RSF, is promising but it is not enough.

If the ambitions of IFPIM is to become a global fund for media and journalism support akin to the funding mechanisms being used to fight HIV and Tuberculosis, all the actors investing in independent media must truly come together.

The fact that some of the major philanthropic organizations are putting resources in different baskets could be a positive element in a yet to establish globally coordinated multilayered approach promoting journalism and media houses.

Such common intent would enable a truly global ecosystem allowing media to return to prominence they used to command and becoming, once again, a central pillar of public debate.

First governments with adequate fiscal capacity should do whatever it takes to support their own media industry. Some of them in Europe are already doing so and also in the USA there are discussions for a new legislation and other financial tools, including cash vouchers for the citizens to buy subscriptions.

Yet if we want to safeguard journalism and media around the world, it is essential to boost public and private media working with integrity in the North, including legacy newsrooms.

It is not just about providing incentives, rebates or other financial support or ensuring that big tech owned platforms pay what is due to the newsrooms like it is slowly starting to happen.

It is also about re-persuading people, including the youths, to read news, on and off line.
Massive awareness initiatives involving schools and universities should also be prioritized in a way that a common user of news, can also turn into a citizen journalist or opinion writer.

Second, a truly global and truly massive funding for media and journalism should be established even by merging existing entities. The result could become mega funder or donor of donors, a true Global Fund for Media and Journalism.

All major governments and philanthropic organizations would inject financial resources and know-how that would then trickle to other smaller actors in the supply chain.

In a potential ecosystem protecting media and journalism, there would be enough spaces for intermediary organizations like the ones already operating close to media houses on the ground, especially in the global South.

It might be that entities like IFPIM and MDIF, each with its unique identity and features but united in their intents, one day might come together or might themselves act as at the upper level of a pyramid sustaining journalism and media, just a step below what would be a Global Fund for Media and Journalism.

Journalism and the thriving of media should also become a central area of focus of the United Nations. Despite the obvious resistance that might come from certain camps, the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres should include it in its ambitious Our Common Agenda.

Two of its twelve strategic pillars, “promote peace and prevent conflict” together with “build trust” should be strengthened with initiatives focused on media. A global code of conduct that promotes integrity in public information, one of the milestones under “build trust” should be accompanied by other bolder actions.

Let’s not forget that UNESCO has been already involved in the promotion of media with two programs, like the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) on the top of the narrower, journalist focused protection tool Global Media Defense Fund.

Positively, at the present, the momentum to save the media is gaining strength.
Yet it is indispensable to ensure that the focus is going to be on medium and long term measures rather than on a short term fixes.

Without a global design and ambition, it’s certain that the situation is only going to be worse. All global actors, together with the professionals and activists on the ground, must come together. The level and speed of discussions around the future of media must step up.

It is only with profound changes in the funding mechanisms of journalism that serious and reliable news outlets both in North and South, either legacy or startups thriving on internet, will be able to continue to operate and thrive.

There is no firewall to stop the journalism’s decadency. Only urgency and bold actions offer the best chance to ensure a “New Deal” for global media and journalism.

Simone Galimberti is the co-founder of ENGAGE and The Good Leadership. He writes mostly about youths’ involvement in the UN, social development and human rights.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Apr 18 2023 (IPS)

The Future We Want was the groundbreaking outcome of the Rio+20 Summit, the summit, held in 2012, where the idea of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was first conceptualized.

Amid the unfolding of several global crises, where geopolitics mixes with structural unbalances that are putting at risk the long-term viability of planet Earth, isn’t really high time we got serious about our future?

Can the SDGs be turned not just in a tool for global pressure and advocacy but also a planning tool that involves, mobilizes and empower the people? There is still so much to be done and the levels of urgency can’t be greater.

According to the recently released Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2023, “the region will miss all or most of the targets of every goal unless efforts are accelerated between now and 2030”.Can localizing the SDGs in the Asia Pacific region and also elsewhere, change the status quo?

In theory, localizing the goals can make a huge difference but we need to ensure that such process means the truly involvement and engagement of the citizens.

A recent online workshop tried to assess where we stand following the Rio+20 Summit whose ultimate scope was, twenty years after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, to relaunch humanity’s commitment towards a different model of development.

One of the key points that emerged in the event, which also saw the participation of Paula Caballero, one of key architects of the SDGs, is the fact that these goals still remain a powerful but mostly unleveraged tool for change.

While it is essential to mobilize more funding for their implementation, the Secretary General is rightly pushing with the idea of an SDG Stimulus— a missed goal to see the SDGs as a tool to radically re-think the way governance works.

The best intentions and the many, often overlapping efforts now at play in terms of localizing the SDGs, do not even aim at such scope of ambition. At the best, localizing the SDGs is about planning local actions rather than new ways of governance.

Moreover, the UN is struggling to come up with anything effective at operational level. For example, the Local 2030 Platform remains still an unfinished job despite its ambitious objectives.

A December 2021 analysis about ways to strengthen it, authored by the Stockholm Environment Institute, did indeed confirm the need to an all-encompassing platform that brings the SDGs closer to the people.

Still, there is so much to be done to ensure that Local2030 Platform can become a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, we are still far from a global mechanism capable of turning the goals in a such a way that the people can use them as a tool of participation and genuine deliberation. The scattered, fragmented and often ineffectual way the UN System works certainly does not help the cause.

A similar initiative, the SDG Acceleration Actions, is supposed to be an accelerator of SDG implementation that is “voluntarily undertaken by governments and any other non-state actors – individually or in partnership”.

In the Asia Pacific region, we can find also a new partnership, ESCAP-ADB-UNDP Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership mostly focused on research creation and knowledge delivery.

As important as they are, such initiatives lack linkages and risk becoming not only overlapping but also a duplication to each other. Could local bodies do the job and truly democratize the SDGs?

Such entities, both local and regional governments (LRGs) have a huge role. For example, the United Cities and Local Governments, a powerful advocacy group based in Barcelona, is undoubtedly breaking ground in this direction.

With now a much user-friendly web site and with a new catchy messaging, UCLG is a global force pushing strong towards empowering local governments and cities so that they can truly take the lead in matter of localizing the SDGs. UCLG also runs the most updated database on local efforts to implement the SDGs, the Global Observatory on Local Democracy and Decentralization or GOLD.

For example there are the “Voluntary Subnational Reviews (VSRs), considered as “country-wide, bottom-up subnational reporting processes that provide both comprehensive and in-depth analyses of the corresponding national environments for SDG localization”.

In addition, the Voluntary Local Reviews could be even more impactful tools as they assess how municipalities, small and big alike, are implementing the SDGs. In Japan, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, IGES, is doing a great deal of work to also track the implementation of the SDGs locally with its online Voluntary Local Review Lab.

Still there is a disconnection among all these initiatives despite the fact that UCLG has been championing the Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments. As an attempt at bringing together a myriad of like-minded groups run by mayors and local governments around the world, it is a praiseworthy undertaking.

While it is essential to create coherence and better synergies between what the UN is trying to do and the actions taken by mayors and governors globally in the area of SDGs localization. But it is not enough. There is even one bigger and more worrying disconnection.

Even if local authorities are truly given the resources and powers to shape the conversation about the implementation of the SDGs and back it up with actions on the grounds, we are at risk of forgetting those who should be truly at the center of the debate: the people.

Localizing the SDGs should mean truly giving the people the voice and the agency to express their opinions and ideas rather than become an exclusive fiefdom of local politicians.

Finding ways to truly allowing and enabling people to take central stage in implementing the SDGs implies a rethinking of old assumptions where local officials, elected or not, have the sole prerogative of the decision making. This is fundamentally a question of reinventing local governance and make it work for and by the people.

But it is easier saying it than doing it!

It is a real conundrum because, if it is certainly possible to come up with symbolic initiatives, all tainted by forms of fake empowerment, a totally different thing is to devise new forms of genuine bottom up, inclusive governance indispensable to achieve the SDGs.

The Global Platform in its Vision 2045 refers to genuine and better democracy practices leading the planning of local governments.What are they going to do to translate these words into real deeds?

There are other ways to involve people in the global discussions but they are just tokenistic. For example, UNESCAP recently organized in Bangkok its 10th Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD).

It is an important event and the regional commission has been striving to be more inclusive and each year the summit also counts with a People’s Forum and even a Youth Forum. The problem is that, while integral part of the discussions, they are officially considered just as “associated and pre- events”.

Changing the protocol and the way the UN works is not easy but why should we keep holding such important engagements as just nice “add-ons”?

Even with the release of comprehensive Call to Action by the youths of the region before the APFSD summit, what real difference are their opinions and voice making? As simplistic as it sounds, much more should be done in making these conclaves really inclusive even though the real game won’t happen in these fora but at grassroots levels.

It is there where the challenge of localizing the SDGs must be won. It is where citizens really need to be listened to and where their power should be exercised.

In imaging the future, we really want, is to put citizens at the center of it. And it is high time we truly democratized the SDGs. After all, there is no, better form of localizing them.

Simone Galimberti is the co-founder of ENGAGE and of the Good Leadership, Good for You & Good for the Society.

The opinions expressed in this article are personal.

IPS UN Bureau

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The open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights was established in 2014 in response to Human Rights Council resolution 26/9 with a mandate to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 31 2023 (IPS)

The ongoing discussions on an internationally treaty, described as a “legally binding instrument” on business and human rights, remains one of the most neglected issues that should instead command the attention of the public.

Such a legal tool would bind companies to uphold high standards and most importantly, it would entail mandatory guarantees for accessible and inclusive remedy and therefore, clear liabilities for victims of alleged abuses perpetrated by companies.

It all started in 2014 when two nations of the South, Ecuador and South Africa successfully pushed for a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council on the establishment of a so called “international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights”.

By reading the title of the resolution you can immediately realize that one of the conundrums being discussed is the overarching scope of such treaty especially in the reference of the nature of the companies being subject to it.

In practice, would only multinational or also national private corporations come under its jurisdiction?

Interestingly, at the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) created to draft the text of the treaty, many developing nations, for example, like Indonesia, were strongly advocating for only multinationals to be included.

This is a position of convenience that would exclude local major operators involved in the plantations business from coming under scrutiny of the treaty.

Other complex issues are centered on the liability especially in relation to instances where a corporation is “only” directly linked to the harm rather than cause.

As explained by Tara Van Ho, a lecturer at the University of Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre, if “a business is only “directly linked to” the harm, it does not need to provide remedies but can instead use its “leverage” to affect change in its business partners.”

The difference between causing or contributing to harm and instead being only liked to it can be subtle and remain an exclusive debate among scholars, but its repercussions could or could not ensure justice to millions of people victims of corporate abuses.

Another point of attrition is the complex issue of the statutes of limitations and the role of domestic jurisdiction over the future treaty.

With all these challenges, after 8 years of negotiations, the drafting is moving in slow motion amid a general disinterest among state parties, as explained by Elodie Aba for Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

An issue that should capture global attention has instead become a realm of technical discussions among governments, academicians and civil society members without generating mass awareness about it.

The need for a treaty related to abuses of corporations is almost self-evident, considering the gigantic proofs that have been emerging both in the North and South.

Despite nice words and token initiatives, the private sector has been more than often keen to close its eyes before abuses occurring through its direct actions or throughout its supply chains.

Amid weak legislations, especially in developing countries, the hard job of trying to keep companies accountable, until now, has depended on a set of non-binding, voluntary procedures formally known as the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

The Principles, prepared by late Harvard Professor John G. Ruggie in his capacity as UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, proved to be a useful but at the same time inadequate tool.

It has been useful because it was instrumental in raising the issue of human rights within the corporate sector, something that was for too long and till recently, a taboo.

In order to further mainstream it, for example, a UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has been established as a special procedure within UN Human Rights.

Along the years, this independent group, composed by pro bono academicians, has carried out considerable work to strengthen both the understanding of and the adherence to the Principles.

There is no doubt that there have been attempts at going deeper, especially from the legal point of view on the Principles, especially on their articles related to right to remedy, the thorniest issue.

In this regard, the Accountability and Remedy Project have been providing a whole set of insights through multiple consultations and discussions, a process that still ongoing with the overall purpose of making a stronger cases on “the right to remedy, a core tenet of the international human rights system”.

Yet principles, UN Global Compact, are toothless tool and showed considerable limitations, starting from the most obvious element, the fact that they are not binding.

In the meantime, in 2021 the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, on occasion of their 10th anniversary of the Principles, launched road map for the next 10 years.

It is actions, despite their intrinsic limitations due to the nature of the Principles, should be supported but more financial resources are indispensable. Yet finding the financial resources or better the political will to do so remains an issue.

A recommendation from late Prof. Ruggie to create a Voluntary Fund for Business and Human Rights did not go anywhere.

“The Fund would provide a mechanism for supporting projects developed at local and national levels that would increase the capacity of governments to fulfill their obligations in this area as well as strengthen efforts by business enterprises and associations, trade unions, non-governmental organizations and others seeking to advance implementation of the Guiding Principles”.

Even more worrisome is the fact that till now a new Special Representative for Business and Human Rights has not been appointed yet.

Having an authoritative figure, especially a former head of state rather than an academician, could help bring more visibility to the ongoing “behind the curtain” discussions related to the need for a strong Treaty.

Such a political figure could not only command a stronger attention on the issue but also provide “cover” to the delicate work of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, complementing and strengthening its mandate.

Engagement with the education sector, law and business schools, as advocated by a report published by Business and Human Rights Asia, a UNDP Program, can be essential.

Together with a stronger media coverage, students and academicians can help elevate the issue of human rights and its linkages with the private sector.

We could imagine competitions among students at national and international levels on how the principles can be better implemented as a “bridge” tool towards a binding legal mechanism.

Students could also have a major say on the opaque drafting process of this treaty.

At the end of the day, there will be compromises and shortcomings, but with a bigger bottom-up approach, a strong Treaty could become a “global” Escazu’, the first ever binding environment agreement in Latin America and the Caribbean.

UNDP with its Business and Human Rights Asia unit that recently organized in Kathmandu an excellent 4th UN South Asia Forum on Business and Human Rights. But it could also be bolder.

The forum did a great job at giving voice to indigenous people, one of the key stakeholders in the global negotiations for the treaty.

A lot of discussions were rightly held on the impact of issues like climate change and migration and their links with businesses’ attitudes and behaviors towards local populations.

Yet, there was no conversation nor on the treaty nor on the future evolution of the principles. It might certainly be an issue of a limited “mandate” but UNDP could, together with UN Human Rights, be a neutral enabler on a global discussion on the treaty and on how the Principles can further evolve while we wait for such a legal tool.

The Principles should also be better linked with the UN Compact, creating more synergies and coordination between the two.

The fact that nations like France, Germany and the Netherlands have been stepping up with new vigorous legislations in the field of business and human rights is extremely positive.

Equally important is the commitment of the EU to come up with Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) or the OECD to revise its Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct but the nations behind these initiatives must commit to the drafting process of the Treaty.

Otherwise, we run the risk that discussions will continue without anyone caring about them. Such an unfortunate situation must truly be “remedied’ with the right smart mix, political will, starting from the Secretary General and a powerful alliance of progressive nations in the both South and North driving the process and involving other peer nations.

Ultimately civil society must also step up beyond their technical and legal recommendations and truly engage the people.

Simone Galimberti is the co-founder of ENGAGE and of the Good Leadership, Good for You & Good for the Society.

Opinions expressed are personal.

IPS UN Bureau

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Pakistani women peacekeepers in the audience at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad, where Secretary-General António Guterres delivered an address on the topic of peacekeeping. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
 
On the one hand, the special procedures under UN Human Rights focused on women should be re-organized and on the other hand, country level programs supporting women should become more unified. Meanwhile, a new global platform, building on the Generation Equality Forum, could bring these two complementary but vastly different realm of works, together to engage the global public and the leaders.

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 6 2023 (IPS)

If you want to have a good reading on women and young girls’ activism, there is a high chance that you have missed an incredibly interesting report.

Entitled Girls’ and Young Women’s Activism, the publication is a product of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, formally a special procedure mechanism within the United Nation Human Rights, officially the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The blueprint offers a real and practical guidance on about how the direct involvement and engagement of women and young girls is essential if governments are serious about achieving gender equality and ends, once for all, any type of gender-based discriminations.

The Working Group is composed by five experts, mostly academician but also practitioners, on women’s rights and despite the low profile, it maintains a real busy annual schedule that makes its work incredibly relevant and valuable.

It does not only meet three times a year for planning and coordination and but also holds a dialogue at the Human Rights Council in June in addition to reporting to the General Assembly in October/November and also participates at the annual March meeting of the Commission on the Status of the Women.

On the top of all these tasks and consider that their commitment with the Working Group proceeds along their official and equally demanding full-time jobs, the members also conduct annual visits to member states to monitor and assess their work to protect women and girls against discrimination.

The problem is that its work does get neither visibility nor recognition.

One of the reasons is that the UN human rights architecture promoting and defending the rights of women is too complex and fragmented and requires a drastic overhaul.

There are too many mechanisms often with an almost overlapping mandates tasked to protect women’s rights, perhaps also a reflection on the inevitable rivalries at the UN and the consequent compromises that are always struck by the member states.

In addition to the Working Group, there is also the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, currently Ms. Reem Alsalem, who started her tenure on August 2021.

Her mandate is stronger and certainly more visible than those of the members of the Working Group even though she operates within UN Human Rights.

Though the former mechanism is focused on fighting discrimination and the latter is instead exclusively aimed at assessing cases of violence against women, you might wonder if it could be more effective and value for money to devise a more united approach, a more effective modality to monitor and defend the rights of women around the world.

Certainly, we cannot discount the fact that we are talking about special procedures mechanisms within the Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body within the UN that is actually the only forum where the member states of the UN discuss, share and peer reviews their human rights.

The special procedures are important because they uniquely involve top experts in matters of human rights and their contributions provide even more legitimacy to the important work that the UN System is doing to uphold the rights of vulnerable persons around the world.

A possibility to strengthen their work could be to imagine a different “governance” that maximizes their opinions and reviews, even with the possibility to provide full time tenures and adequate resources to support their work and give it the visibility it deserves.

Let’s also bear in mind that in matter of women’s rights, there is also the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women that should be considered as the guardian of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women known as CEDAW.

It is composed by twenty-three experts and one of its main tasks is to “assist States parties in the preparation of initial and subsequent periodic reports” and holding constructive dialogue with them and issue the so called “concluding observations” on what the member states present to show their commitment to CEDAW.

To help with coordination among mechanisms, there is actually, at least on the paper, a very lean and weak coordinating mechanism called Platform of Independent UN and Regional Experts Mechanisms on Elimination of Discrimination and Violence against Women, or EDVAW Platform.

Officially started in 2017, the platform aims to “promote thematic and institutional cooperation between the UN and regional expert mechanisms on the elimination of discrimination and violence against women and girls with the view of accelerating domestication of international and regional standards, achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls”.

The reality is that this mechanism never got traction nor got the mandate to truly coordinate among UN and external, autonomous regional mechanisms outside of the purview of the UN system.

Mentioned earlier, the Commission on the Status of the Women is the oldest of all these mechanisms that, while proved to be indispensable over the last decades to mainstream women rights within the universal human rights agenda, is now outdated.

Till now we have been only focusing on mechanisms to uphold, monitor and protect the rights of women.

We have not yet discussed the “program” side of the equation, the work to prevent violence and discrimination against women and promote their empowerment being done by UN agencies and programs, including UN Women the agency that provides the secretariat of the Commission on the Status of Women.

In this respect, there is also, always within the UN System, the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality or IANWGE, bringing together all the main women focal points of all UN agencies and programs.

Under responsibility of UN Women, the Network appears weak and just a formality though we should assume that at country level, all the work related to women’s empowerment is coordinated under the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (formerly named United Nations Development Assistance Framework).

This is a process that itself could require a further upgrade to truly maximize cooperation and avoidance of overlaps between and among agencies and programs.

It is evident that in both domains, on the one hand, the human rights accountability mechanisms and on the other hand, the actions and programs on the ground to change the status quo, there is need of a much stronger synergy and coordination, something that might be objected by several members of the UN that are unlikely to support anything akin to strengthen mechanisms upholding human rights.

Even the Commission on the Status of Women itself, whose upcoming session will be held between the 6 and17 March, should be re-thought.

With a multiyear thematic plan, the Commission, is a toothless and unnoticed advocacy and knowledge creation institution that each year comes up with a topic up for analysis and discussion.

This year, for example, the focus will be on “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls” while last year’s theme was centered around climate change, environment and disaster prevention.

There are no doubts that it is important to have a global convening forum that brings together the top experts on issues that are so relevant to achieve SDG 5. Yet it is not hard to imagine how a stronger, more coordinated women centered architecture in the UN could achieve and produce more while spending less.

Let’s remind ourselves that the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs brought some institutional innovations in the way the UN operates, primarily the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, that is the major SDGs focused platform promoted by the UN.

Besides its usual gathering in July, this year the Forum will also host another SDG Summit in September, the biggest format to discuss about and review the SDGs at the highest levels of political leadership worldwide.

Yet, while we are referring to a strong advocacy and review mechanism with a considerable amount of convening power, the High-Level Political Forum is simply what it is, a review mechanism of countries’ performances towards accomplishing the SDGs and important vehicle for debating them.

A reform of a stronger UN System that is better positioned to truly achieve SDG 5, should acknowledge an existing deep gulf between promotion and defense of human rights focusing on women (as well other human rights issues) and, on the other end, actions on ground at legislative, judiciary and economic and social levels to change the status quo.

For example, UN Human Rights has no formal role in hosting the High-Level Political Forum that is instead organized by ECOSOC and has a very limited presence at countries level.

A better chance at ensuring that the rights of women are defended while their living conditions improve, could be based on two complementary internal reforms within the UN System: an improvement on how Human Rights operates and a drastic rethinking of how the women focused service, advocacy and delivery-oriented agencies of the UN work.

On the former, the UN Human Rights could undertake, with the aim of giving them more voice and authority, a major reform of its “accountability” mechanisms that rely on the professionalism, integrity and expertise of world class activists, advocates and legal scholars.

The role of the Commission on the Status of the Women should also be reviewed. As per now, its outreach and voice are limited within the development sector and it has become almost irrelevant and unknown to the global public opinion.

On the latter, in terms of programs and initiatives supporting women and their rights around the world, only a true One United Nations approach at country level could do the job with ultimately a much better coordination and one unified “delivery” channel.

Both processes of change and their respective spheres of work, accountability and program, could then be promoted through a united “Global Women” platform that could end up with the same visibility that COP process gained for climate action.

A recently created multi partnership forum could, potentially, become such main vehicle to achieve SDG 5. I am talking of Generation Equality Forum, a joint initiative of Mexico and France that has been facilitated by UN Women.

It holds a great potential to facilitate new collaborations that so far has been convened twice in 2021, first in Mexico City and then in Paris, paving the way for an ambitious global program of action, the Global Acceleration Plan.

The interesting part of it is that the Forum is truly action oriented with its members committing to take action through six sub areas groups, branded as Generation Equality Action Coalitions that include the entire spectrum of areas that would ensure achieving SDG 5.

From gender violence to economic justice, to bodily autonomy and sexual reproductive rights, to climate justice to technology and innovation, to leadership, the coalitions, made up by hundreds of civil society organizations, global foundations and private corporations, can really facilitate partnerships with private sector and civil society, a capacity that the UN System has never mastered.

Can this new and bold attempt to catalyze efforts and investments for the rights of women and girls around the world become the epicenter of a new women focused development architecture?

Can a hybrid vehicle to rally global investments and actions for women help galvanize global attention on their rights and at same time do the job of meeting the targets of SDG 5?

Finally, would a new women focused “governance” of development assistance also force the UN System to change for good its working modalities?

Even if the accountability mechanisms under UN Human Rights would remain formally separated by this process of renewal for women ‘rights, nevertheless the banner of the Generation Equality Forum transformed into a “Global Women” platform could be used to highlight and “empower” their work.

The fact that this year there will be another gathering of the Generation Equality Forum could offer additional new momentum to the initiative though last year only a very low key event celebrated its 1st year anniversary.

Yet it was still an important gathering because it was where the Forum’s first accountability report was unveiled.

In few days from now the Forum will actively participate in the upcoming session of Commission on the Status of Women but with some insights, perhaps, the opposite process should occur.

The Commission and all other women focused mechanisms and programs, at minimum, could become part of a much larger and more institutionalized institution that should also be fully aligned to and possibly become the central pillar for SDG 5 of The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

We know from the latest Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: the Gender Snapshot 2022 that there is still so much to be done in the field of gender empowerment that urgency and radical thinking should not be discouraged nor set aside.

Rather they should be truly embraced head-on. Meanwhile another great publication on women and young girls’ activism will be read by too few people.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE and co-initiator of the Good Leadership, Good for You & Good for the Society, both active in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

UNDEF was created by UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan in 2005 as a United Nations General Trust Fund to support democratization efforts around the world. It was welcomed by the General Assembly in the Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit (A/RES/60/1, paragraphs 136-137)PDF. UNDEF funds projects that empower civil society, promote human rights, and encourage the participation of all groups in democratic processes.
 
The large majority of UNDEF funds go to local civil society organizations. In this way, UNDEF plays a novel and unique role in complementing the UN's other, more traditional work -- the work with Governments -- to strengthen democratic governance around the world. UNDEF subsists entirely on voluntary contributions from Governments; in 2021, it reached almost 220 million dollars in contributions and counts more than 45 countries as donors, including many middle- and low-income States in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 15 Rounds of Funding so far, UNDEF has supported over 880 two-year projects in more than 130 countries Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 6 2023 (IPS)

The UN Democracy Fund, also known as UNDEF, is an interesting tool but it is too small and lacking resources to mark a difference.

How can the UN do a better job at promoting democracy? This is a key question that high-ranking policy makers at the UN should ask themselves.

It is a subject that makes many uncomfortable because democracy still remains a contested topic within the UN due to the resistance by some of its member states which have not adopted standard democratic practices in their way of governing.

Yet, it is worthy for the UN to try to play a bigger role in its promotion as democracy itself is too important an issue to be neglected despite the high sensitiveness around it.

If you think well, it is almost a miracle that the UN is celebrating International Day of Democracy that falls every year on the 15 of September.

It is, without questions, one of the most undeterred and less prominent celebrations endorsed by the UN and the lack of visibility of the day might not be a mere coincidence. Finding ways and tools to elevate democracy at the UN is a conundrum that is hard to untangle.

For example, how can the UN Democracy Fund also known as UNDEF be more effective and more inclusive?

https://www.un.org/democracyfund/news

Credit: United Nations

UNDEF is one of the most flexible programs promoted by the UN and probably one of the best, if not the most suitable to reach out members of the civil society that often are working in dire conditions under dire legislative and regulatory environments and, consequentially, are starving for funding.

From gender empowerment in politics to press freedom to dialogues about democracy and fights against corruption, we have a program that could do wonders if expanded and enhanced.

UNDEF recently closed its annual round of applications (its 17th since its foundation) and once again as every year, it gained some spotlights before returning to the shadows of international development.

While its application process is relative straightforward for being a UN program, its review process is overly complicated and based on multiple vetting layers that, at least apparently, seem to be overlapping each other and unnecessary.

Yet, even when a project is selected, the most difficult part comes when, as the web site of UNDAF explains, “shortlisted applicants are now required to complete the final stage of the selection process: negotiating a formal project document with UNDEF. Only upon successful conclusion of this process will the project be approved for funding”.

This last procedure is simply unhelpful and certainly does not make life easier for any organization that gets selected.

Perhaps such a complex governance structure exemplifies the exceptionality of the UNDAF that, it is important to note, is not embedded in any official programs nor is led by any UN agency but it is rather something on its own standing.

It’s autonomy is not itself a negative factor, actually it can even bring more effectiveness by leveraging its nimbleness but only if this approach comes with intention and an overall purpose to allow it to be more agile and independent.

Instead, I am afraid the way UNDAF is run just the result of a difficult environment, a sort of expedient that allows to “manage” something strategically meaningful but that, at the same time, is also something that is seen critically by those members of the UN that have not embraced democracy as their system of government.

The fact that the fund and the money it manages is just a drop in the ocean might confirm the latter option. According to its web site, UNDEF “receives an average of about 2,000-3,000 proposals a year and only some 50 are selected”.

It is not surprising that only 7 full staff are managing the entire fund with the precious support of an equal number of interns.

Moreover, the UN should also not shy away from supporting innovative practices in the field of democracy. For example, it should embrace deliberative democracy or any other forms of bottom- up policing aimed at giving a voice and, importantly, an agency to the citizens.

It is certainly something less controversial than liberal democracy that is put in question by countries like China.

Indeed, even a country like China with its one-party system of governance has in the past (especially in the pre-President Xi’s era) embraced, at least partially, bottom-up participation through deliberation.

One way for the UN to play a bigger role in supporting democratic practices is to champion them from the angle of good governance and deliberative practices can be very useful on this regard. This was the main task assumed in the past by the UNDP.

What is this program, one of the biggest and most resourceful, doing at the moment to advance democracy? What are its plans for the future?

In its attempt to enable transformative changes across all the SDGs, something that as the UNDP also points out, requires structural transformations, there is the risk to lose the focus on good governance, once a strength of the program.

In its new Strategic Plan 2022-2025, governance is one of the six so called “Signature Solutions” and it is at the center of holistic, whole of the government “systems approach” that is supposed to ensure structural changes.

Still. if you read the definition of governance in the plan, you might wonder how important democracy and human rights are.

“Helping countries address emerging complexities by “future-proofing” governance systems through anticipatory approaches and better management of risk”.

This is a definition that might come from the blueprint of a top global consultancies that has to do business with autocratic regimes rather than the “formula” to promote true democratic change.

It is not, therefore surprising that in the entire document, the word “democracy” does not appear even one. Unsurprisingly UNDP almost never runs civil society or democracy enhancing funding directly benefiting local grassroots organizations.

Perhaps only the UNDP Governance Centre in Oslo, currently in search of a new strategic direction, could help its “parent” organization to re-discover an interest on democracy.

Another key agent within the UN system for the promotion of democracy via the strengthening of human rights is, obviously, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights.

The new High Commissioner, Volker Türk, a veteran of the UN and a national of Austria, initially was thought to be the unassuming candidate that would not make much noise in the international community.

Instead from his initial statements, Türk is taking head on some of the most controversial and sensitive and yet very important files.

Perhaps, OHCHR as the organization is known, could take a very important role in working more directly with the civil society to advance human rights and with them, democracy.

UNDAF’s role and mandate could be boosted and supported through a strategic partnership with OHCHR or even through multi-funding arrangements from other agencies and programs within the UN system.

Let’s not forget that it was then UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan that back in 2005 came up with the idea of a special thematic fund promoting democracy.

The fund remains within the mandate of the current Secretary General, Antonio Guterres who leads the Advisory Board of the UNDAF.

Guterres should explore all the options to strengthen UNDAF as currently it is structured, a United Nations General Trust Fund but with much broader resources or as a standing alone entity something that hardly can materialize.

Paragraphs 135 and 136 of UNGA Resolution 60/1. 2005 “World Summit Outcome” welcoming the creation of UNDAF, reinforce its rationale:

“Democracy is a universal value based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives”.

Surely, UNDAF should complement and reinforce the work of UNDP and OHCHR as it explained in its TOR.

What at the end can make the difference can be the willpower and commitment of Guterres to include democracy in his ambitious reform agenda of the United Nations.

The writer is the co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

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Speaking on International Volunteer Day, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said over one billion volunteers work in service of their communities every day. It is one of the clearest expressions of solidarity: a recognition that our global community must work together to tackle our common challenges as outlined in the Global Goals: everything from driving down poverty to confronting climate change.
 
So far in the year 2022, he said, over 11,000 UN Volunteers have served with over 56 UN entities as part of the UN Volunteers programme, which we are proudly hosting in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Ranging from 18 to 81 years of age, this is the largest number of UN Volunteers ever.

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Dec 6 2022 (IPS)

The International Volunteer Day, a worldwide event commemorated every year on the 5th of December, comes at the end of a long line of special commemorations, each of them relevant and paramount to achieve the UN’s Agenda 2030.

The commemorations included the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25, World AIDS Day on December 1, the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery on December 2 and the International Day of Persons with Disabilities December 3.

After many years of work in the volunteering sector, I feel it is high time for some sort of evaluation of where we are in terms of promoting and fostering what I call the BIG V, a terminology that I feel better express the potential and dynamism of volunteerism.

Focusing on the potential of the BIG V is probably the best place to start such review.

On the one hand, all the achievements carried out by the country in the last two decades could not have been possible without the thousands and thousands of citizens involved and engaged, with passion, drive and zero economic interests, in trying to make the country better and more inclusive.

Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator

These are the persons who are always at hand and ready to help when there is an urgent need within the community. These are the persons who take the lead in liaising with local authorities and try to find small but essential solutions in our daily lives.

I am not fantasizing them, these are real persons though perhaps their number is shrinking especially in the urban areas. I am also talking about activism, a form of volunteerism, where simple citizens and members of tiny NGOs are pushing for a just and noble cause, be it a better public health, a stronger education system, the preservation of the soil or the defense of the rights of those who are the most vulnerable.

So, considering this vast multitude of engaged and active citizens, we would not be surprised if a country like Nepal has a huge potential in terms of leveraging its social capital, the element that provides the foundations above which civic engagement, of which volunteerism is one of the greatest expressions, thrives on.

From this perspective, there is no doubt that whole country should really be proud of their volunteers, even if many of such unsung heroes, do not even bother to define themselves in a such way because what they know is that actions, at the end, are the ones that count.

On the other hand, if there are plenty of volunteers everywhere, we also need to pay attention at the dynamics unfolding within the society especially the ones affecting youths. One hour on social media is one hour taken away from studies, sports but also it is an hour stolen away from a possible volunteering action.

This is a problem because we must be clear that volunteerism is not just good for the society but it’s also good for ourselves. The reason is simple: volunteerism helps becoming better persons, more emphatic and altruistic, qualities that are now proven to be also indispensable for a successful career.

In a way volunteerism is path to personal leadership and mastery because we can learn so much from it. It is a school of humbleness that teaches to value the small things that we often take too much for granted and also helps us appreciate the work of others, especially those who are not in close to us, those are different from us.

In short volunteerism can really bring us together and enhance national cohesion and cohesiveness. That’s why it is so important that the Nepal puts a whole of nation effort to really elevate volunteerism and perhaps we should start with rebranding it, making it easier to talk about it and easier for the youths to connect with.

That’s why the term BIG V could be a better way to spread the message and convince more people to get involved. It is also essential that we work at system level and the new Federal Government should at the earliest discuss and review the draft national volunteering policy that is taking dust since more than two years.

On this regard, it is extremely encouraging that some of the Provincial Governments like Gandaki have already a volunteering policy in place.

Yet approving a document is going to be meaningless if there is no political will to act upon it. The point is that the BIG V should really become a priority, that essential factor that can support and help locally elected officials to perform their duties.

Think about it: federalism is built on the premise that citizens will be more active and engaged and volunteering, in all its diverse ways and forms, can be the indispensable ingredient to help achieve a better form of governing, one centered on the citizenry.

Around the world, mayors have been leveraging the power of volunteerism, harnessing the commitments of their citizens to supplement and strengthen the implementation of local publicly funded interventions.

We need a strong coordination system to promote and implement volunteering efforts, an issue that the draft national policy already partially covers. On this point, it is essential to ensure the creation of adequate “’volunteering supporting structures” at federal, provincial and local levels, that can really help mainstream volunteerism across all the areas of national governance.

It might be a coincidence that this special commemoration falls after so many other equally important special “days” but perhaps it was all intentional because volunteerism is the platform and the means through which the humanity can solve some of its most obstinate and hard challenges, including climate change.

The latter is an issue that, without the activism of millions of youths across the world, would not have come to commend the public and the leaders’ attention.

In short volunteerism is a force of good and Nepal needs it. But we can’t keep take it for granted. We need to highlight it, we need to truly make an effort to make it easier for persons of all ages and groups, to give their time and skills and help the society become a better, more inclusive and sustainable place to live.

The Author is the co-founder of ENGAGE and of the ‘Good Leadership, Good for You & Good for the Society.’

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: UNICEF

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 13 2022 (IPS)

If we truly want to re-imagine the role education can play in the decades to come, it is going to be indispensable to take drastic measures to elevate the role of teachers in developing countries.

The upcoming Transforming Education Summit in New York — September 16-19 — has the ambitious task to re-draw the traditional boundaries of learning, helping imagine how children of today can truly become equipped with the best tools to overcome the increasing challenges faced by the world.

It is clear that teachers in developing nations are the key agents for enabling such personal journey of growth and transformation and yet teachers are too often neglected and overlooked.

The issues the planet is facing– from income inequalities to climate change to geopolitical tensions– are all interlinked to each other.

An enhanced learning experience alone especially in the public schools around the developing world is a must, but it is something that has been pursued at best with very mixed results for decades.

Yet, the gap between private education and public school system in many emerging countries is not closing but rather getting bigger and bigger. At the same time, achieving better educational outcomes must be accompanied by a strong drive to embed a sense of civic engagement among the students.

Civic engagement is a sensitive issue that can be misinterpreted and used for the wrong purposes, including in the cases when politics enter in the fold by inculcating the mind of students with elements of hyper nationalism and chauvinism.

Instead of being a tool to allow students to step up for their communities, a tool that acts as civic glue, we can get the opposite results, with the formation of indoctrinated cadres with a closed mindset rather than an open one.

Teachers should be the ones who are able to bring in the tools that allow a student to grow with a positive desire to do better at a personal level but also for the enhancement of the society, creating the conditions for a quality learning that is not self-centered but rather aimed at the public good.

Therefore, all stakeholders involved in the educational sector have to reckon on how it will be possible to raise the profile of local teachers, creating the conditions for them to act as true agents of change.

Let’s not forget that we are talking about individuals who often have no other options in life than starting a teaching career and often do not have neither the qualifications nor enthusiasm nor passion for the job.

It is an enormous challenge for any developing nation, a challenge that it is not extremely costly but also difficult to design especially in terms of career development of the teachers.

If it is simply unrealistic to raise the bar in terms of mandating higher education specialization for all teachers in public schools while at the same time ensuring the inclusion of more strident accountability measures for them.

It is certainly positive that an exponential increase of funding for public education is going to be of the major topics to be discussed at Transforming Education Summit but funding alone won’t suffice.

We need to focus at micro level and imagine new pathways for those public teachers who are really passionate about their jobs, to obtain the indispensable tools they need to step up in their jobs, and help their students to “holistically” and unselfishly succeed at life.

For the many who are hanging around without love nor a commitment for their job, it is inevitable that governments must muster the courage and the resources for them to slowly transition out of their profession, a proposition, that, considering the already high level of unemployment plaguing most of the developing countries, is neither easy nor “politically” convenient.

Yet, if we truly want to rethink the way education work for the most vulnerable children, we really need to sketch out new paths for making teaching one of the most attractive professions in the developing world.

Programs like Teach for America and its affiliates around the world are, with no doubt, doing a great deal of good job by trying to include young graduated recruits in the profession for two years but though admirable, it is not enough.

We need to truly create an enabling framework for young graduates to embrace teaching for the long term, allowing them to make a precise choice in picking a career as a teacher.

That’s why the upcoming Summit should dedicate enough energies to think big about the teaching profession from a perspective of the South where teaching is not held in high esteem.

Why not then provide the resources, especially technical, to create national and local academies for building the teaching profession of tomorrow?

Sooner rather than later, it is going to be indispensable to set higher qualifications in order to teach at school but at the same time, governments could start changing the landscape of the teaching profession by setting up Leadership Academies for the Teaching Profession.

Imagine centers for learning, where the best teachers and the best principals from all public schools, can enhance their skills and knowledge throughout a holistic pathway of professional and personal growth.

Such academies could offer both full time intensive but also executive mode type of courses with the best experts working as faculties.

In the USA, the late billionaire Eli Broad committed a tremendous amount of resources in equipping schools’ executives, including principles through cutting edge capacity building trainings.

His philanthropic work also made it possible the creation of The Broad Center at Yale School of Management, a center Transformative leadership for public education.

This is the vision required to transform the education in the still developing and emerging world. It is not just about the commitment of the international community to fund public schools through multiyear plans.

What is required is tailored made plans to transform the teaching profession locally.

It is paramount we focus on leadership rather than just simply career development of the teachers. Leadership, after all, is what is required, to bring the quality of education to another level while promoting the virtues of civic engagement.

The upcoming Summit should devote tangible time for a conversation on how we can transform the teaching profession.

An inclusive quality education capable of building the skills for the 21st century can be realized only if the international community and developing nations work together to innovate in the field of educational leadership.

They need to find new ways to award the best local teachers and while helping those in the profession but disengaged and disinterested to find their own vocation.

Let’s not forget that truly transforming education in the developing world requires big and bold national plans but also a unique focus at micro level, working alongside those teachers who believe in their professions.

Finding novel ways to support their work can be the best legacy of the Transforming Education Summit.

Simone Galimberti is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 5 2022 (IPS)

There are many ways the UN can have a sizeable role in promoting the engagement and participation of youth and helping them becoming a central pillar of a new way of doing policy-making.

After all, if we want to rethink the relationships between the state and citizens, the foundation of a new Social Contract as envisioned by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, youths must be enabled to have a voice and an agency powerful enough to directly influence decision making, locally and globally.

At the former level, the UN can set up UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies wherever it operates. Such entities would be more then tokenistic forums where meetings happen on “off basis” but instead would be structured as permanent mechanisms with a power of not only advising but also monitoring the work being carried out by the UN Country Teams.

Having in place such forums locally would pave the way for bolder action at the higher levels, on the international arena.

It is here where there is a great deal of scope for the UN to model a truly radical change in terms of youths’ participation globally, raising the bar in terms of what youths’ involvement means and what it can imply.

If we truly create pathways for youths to play a more central role and we generate a structure or mechanism for them to fulfill such responsibilities, international politics, while would not drastically change overnight, surely would be impacted.

This is the reason why Guterres should strive for something that, though discussed in the past, was never close enough to be fully considered nor implemented.

I am referring to the idea of creating a permanent UN Youth Assembly that would autonomously act alongside of the established General Assembly and would become a forum where youths from around the world can discuss and set the policy course.

This permanent mechanism could either be linked up with the assemblies or forums that the UN could establish at national level or could simply have a completely different, standing alone nature with its members being selected at national levels through transparent and competitive process.

While we cannot imagine at the moment that such body would yield any veto power, it could, for example, have a symbolic, though powerful role especially in making its voice heard by the major global powers.

For example, it would have access, on consistent basis, to the UN Security Council, the most consequential institution within the international community.

While the official positions of its members, results of government-to-government negotiations behind the curtain, won’t be altered, at least they could be openly challenged.

Imagine some representatives of the UN Youth Assembly addressing, after their own deliberations, the sessions of the Security Council: this would be a powerful reminder to the world leaders that youths can dare to think differently.

The working modality of this envisioned UN Youth Assembly could become a template for participation and transparency where inputs and feedbacks from youths around the world could make such assembly truly owned by all the youths from across the world.

Thanks to the progress of digital work, a permanent online platform could offer themes of discussions for the UN Youth Assemblies in a way that everyone, even those not formally part of the UN Youth Assembly, could participate.

Ensuring a strong connection between this assembly and the youths around the world is as vital as daunting.

The risk is that any bold attempt of creating a new world body for youths to be involved in the decision making could become an elitist platform where only the most connected youths would participate.

Instead of bringing in youths from disadvantaged groups, the “usual suspects”, youths from well off families with access to opportunities, would “capture” their new “toy”.

That’s why it is vital that UN agencies and programs around the world do a better job at promoting civic engagement and participation, enabling innovative pathways for also the less advantaged youths to participate and deliberate.

Setting up national mechanisms for the UN to engage youths at national level could offer a pipeline for a more diverse crop of youths to have a chance to be involved and participate.

Investing in capacity building of youths is more and more critical.

Thanks to innovative partnerships with civil society, trainings, courses, institutes or academies could offer a way for the UN to create a sort of “upward mobility” in terms of opportunities to participate for many youths now excluded.

In addition, the members UN Youth Assembly should be chosen on rotation basis and exercise their duties for short periods like six months or at the longest, one year as such short mandates would give chances to more youths to be in the Assembly.

Moreover, a way to ensure a deep link between this new body and the ground reality, each of its representatives would be supported by a deliberative group at national level, a further connection between local youths and the international arena.

Imagining such body comes with risks.

In relation to its duties and responsibilities, the UN Youth Assembly could be easily become object of derision.

It would be seen as another tokenistic tool that governments could use to promote some forms of reforms that in reality, instead, would continue to legitimize the current status quo in terms of decision making and power relations.

That’s why it is important that UN Youth Assembly is provided with the analytical and research tools that would make it an authoritative source of insights and proposals from a youths’ perspective.

Youths led deliberations should be based on a proper process of accessing to the best available information and through a very structured exercise of deliberative process that would, ultimately, end up with recommendations or proposals, also in forms of policy briefs.

Setting up a UN Youth Assembly won’t preclude other forms of youth’s activism and participation.

For example, we have seen with climate activism, how forceful youths’ actions have to be in order to become visible and noticed.

The Assembly would be just another way, now completely missing, for youths to properly channel their opinions and voices, overcoming the multitude of improvised consultation mechanisms that are often created for major global leaders ‘gatherings whose impacts are close to nil.

Moreover, like the UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies locally, the UN Youth Assembly could be given some limited binding powers in steering the course of the UN agencies and programs, having a clear voice and power in deciding their global strategies and priorities.

The future of youths’ participation aimed at setting the global agenda will be a mix of different and yet complementary actions from the ground and from the top alike.

Peaceful manifestations, including those of civil disobedience, have a place together with other forms of youths’ involvement.

Having a new global platform to express their voices should not be seen as a way to stifle bottom-up initiatives but, rather, as another way to help transform the way political power is exercised.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Aug 10 2022 (IPS)

The upcoming summit on Education, part of the UN Secretary General’s ambitious agenda, can truly bring accountability and participation to the inevitably new ways education will be imparted in the future.

With scorching temperatures, uncontrolled flames and floods devastating our planet, millions of people are realizing that we are all going to pay a high price for climate inaction.

The current climate crisis is furthering compounding the other emergency that is still affecting all of us, a public health crisis fully exposed by the Covid pandemic.

Amid this gloomy scenario, the international community cannot forego its duties not only to strengthen the global education system but also its moral obligation to re-think it and re-imagine it.

While it is easy to criticize the UN as a system incapable of effectively tackling these multidimensional challenges, we cannot but praise Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his far sighted vision encapsulated in his global blue print, Our Common Agenda.

It’s a bold statement that contains multiple proposals including the ambitious goal of reinventing the global education.

In this context, and on September, the UN will host the most important forum to discuss how education can emerge as the thread that can equip the citizens of the world with the right tools to thrive in a truly sustainable and equitable planet.

The Transforming Education Summit, scheduled to take place at the UN September 19, should be seen as a stand-alone effort while it is intended to be the beginning of an ambitious global brainstorming. It is also the culmination of several other major events in the past few years.

In 2015 the Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action provided the vision for implementing the SDG 4, the global sustainable goal focused on inclusive and quality education.

We know how brutal the effects of the pandemic were on learners worldwide especially in developing and emerging nations.

In face of these challenges, with the global headlines focused on the public health emergency and the futile attempts at negotiating a breakthrough climate change agreement at the COP 26, few noticed that the international community tried to take action.

In November 2021, it gathered in Paris for a Global Education Meeting’s High Level Segment hosted by UNESCO and the Government of France. The outcome was the Paris Declaration that building on the work of a previous summit, the Extraordinary session of the Global Education Meeting (2020 GEM), held in October 2020, provided a clear call for more financing and a stronger global multilateral cooperation system.

The fact that our attention was totally focused to other existential crises should not deter us from reflecting on how such events were neglected by world media and, as a consequence, how little discussion about the future of education happened.

I am not just talking about discussions among professionals on the ground but also a debate that involves teachers and students alike. The upcoming Transforming the Education Summit will try to revert this lack of attention and overall weak engagement among the people.

The Secretariat of the event, hosted by UNESCO, one of the agencies within the UN system that lacks financial support but still proves to be real value for money, is trying its best to enable a global conversation on how the future of education should be.

It is in this precise context that UNESCO has set up an interactive knowledge and debate hub, the so-called Hub that, hopefully, will become a permanent global platform for discussing education globally.

Imagine a sort of civic agora where experts, students, parents, policy makers alike can share their best practices and bring forwards their opinions on how to follow up on the decisions that will be taken in September.

It is also extremely positive that a Pre-Summit event at the end of June in Paris, laid out some grounds for the September’s gathering especially because youths also had a chance to speak and share their views.

It is not the first-time youths are involved, but the full involvement of the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth in the preparation of the Transforming the Education Summit could be a turning point, shifting from mere and tokenistic engagements to real shared power with the youth.

That’s why the existence of a specific process within the preparation of the summit, focused on youth, is extremely important and welcome not just because it will generate a special declaration but because it could potentially become a space where youths can have their voices and opinions heard permanently.

Let’s not forget that the ongoing preparations were instrumental to revive the outcomes of the “Reimagining our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education” developed over two years by the International Commission on the Futures of Education, a body chaired by President Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia, and published in 2021.

It is truly transformative because the title itself is aligned to the aspirational vision of Secretary General Guterres to establish a new social contract.

A new social contract in the field of education really needs to rethink the domains of learning and its established but now outdated goals. Learning should become, according to this report, a holistic tool to create personal agency and sustainable and just development.

For example, education for sustainable development and lifelong education together with global citizenships should stopped being considered as “nice” but burdensome adds on.

Today’s challenges, the report explains, must be focused on “reinventing education” and the knowledge it provides must be “anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.”

Wisely, Guterres intends the summit in September to be the starting point for a much longer conversation that will build on the insights and knowledge emerged in these last few years.

Governance of the global education system will also be central and with this, we will have an opportunity to find creative ways, ways that just few years ago were imaginable, to include people, especially the youths.

No matter the efforts now put in place to create awareness and participation for the summit, no matter how inclusive the Youth Process will be, the fact that there is still a very long way before creating spaces where persons on the ground can truly participate.

Too few are aware of the existence of a Global Education Cooperation Mechanism led by the SDG4-Education 2030 High-Level Steering Committee that also includes representatives of youth and teachers and NGOs.

While there is no doubt that such inclusive format is itself innovative, the challenges ahead require a much more accessible and holistic set-up.

The existence of a global accountability mechanism was one of the key points discussed and emerged in the Youths Consultations during the Pre-Summit in Paris.

The High-Level Steering Committee needs not only more visibility because of its “political” aim of galvanizing global attention and energizing and influencing global leaders so that education can become a global priority at the same levels of climate action and public health.

It should also have a stronger representation of youths, teachers and NGOs and it can evolve into a real permanent forum for discussions and even decision making.

As difficult as it to imagine a new global governance for education, what we need is a space, virtual and as well formally established as an institution, where not only experts and governments’ representatives gather and decide.

A space for accountability but also for enhanced participation.

There is still a long way before reaching a consensus on how education will look like in the years to come but there is no doubt that bold decisions must be taken also to reimagine its governance.

The Transforming the Education Summit can herald the beginning of a new era.

Media will have a special role to play: not only on reporting on the summit and its following developments but also for giving voices to the youths and for bringing forward the most progressive ideas that should define how education will shape this new era.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

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A residential building in Nairobi, Kenya. According to UN estimates, by 2050 about 68 per cent of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. Credit: UN-Habitat/Kirsten Milhahn

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jul 7 2022 (IPS)

When we think of urbanization we often end up referring to the increasing number of megalopolises that are sprawling around the world.

Yet less thoughts are given on the fact that the future patterns of urbanization will be centered on secondary cities or semi urban spaces, now becoming extensions of these gigantic cities.

It means that the world will continue to urbanize even though the world share of population living in this new urban continuum is forecasted to slow down, reaching 58 per cent in the next fifty years according to data from UN Habitat.

Yet, especially in the developing world, such reduction will still bring in a whopping increase of 76% of the number of cities in low income nations that in practically terms will mean a rise of 2.2 billion residents mostly in Africa and Asia.

These are some of the key findings of the World Cities Report 2022, the flagship publication of UN Habitat that was recently launched in occasion of the 11th World Urban Forum, the biannual event that was held last week in Poland, bringing together top policy makers, experts and activists working in the area of urbanization.

The insights and discussions enabled by these publications and events are indispensable to activate the so called New Urban Agenda, a strategically important though overlooked agenda to rethink sustainability from the perspectives of those living in the cities.

Unfortunately there is still so much to be done here and unsurprisingly there are huge constraints in terms of funding to implement this vision even though more recently, several financial commitments have been done, including a massive boost in resilient infrastructures during the recently held G7.

The international community should be indeed worried and not only in terms of bridging the resource gap for a sustainable urbanization.

Global leaders need to seize the opportunity and reconsider the ways cities are governed.

While it remains paramount to think in terms of the future of the millions of people living in big cities, the trends and patterns are pointing to the urgency of systematically thinking about governing urban spaces in terms of multilevel governance.

It means we need to work on a future system of policy making and decision making that is able to function and deliver beyond a single administrative jurisdiction.

Such a model must be capable to address the needs of the people living within and in the peripheries from three key dimension, spatial, social and economic.

The opportunity here is not only about re-thinking the existing boundaries, merging existing administrative units, creating bigger and more extended centers of power with the tools and resources of governing entire metropolitan regions.

This, in itself, would be a mammoth task because it will eat away power to different, often overlapping and certainly inadequate local bodies of governance now in existence.

The real chance we need to seize is to re-think, holistically, the way local governance works and take action on the general ineffectiveness of local bodies in terms of social inclusion.

Securing stronger and more resilient cities, able to withstand the more frequent shocks and hazards, will require a new social compact, a re-distribution of powers between local governments in charge of urban spaces and the citizenry, especially those left behind.

This latter group is at the core of the recommendations World Cities Report 2022, highlighting how vulnerable citizens must shift from being “passive victims” of current patterns of urbanization to “active urban change agents”.

Such pivot towards the downtrodden can be successful if we go beyond the traditional recipe made only by stronger social policies.

This is a formula that tends to largely be centered around, on the one hand, more sophisticated and generous social protection schemes like universal basic income and, on the other, around health coverage and housing.

These three social areas of interventions, together with quality and affordable education, are extremely important but we need to imagine a new social contract in terms of participation and engagement.

Indeed, according to the so called Urban Resilience Principles, the guiding pillars for a different vision for the future of cities, it is essential to ensure a meaningful participation of the people, especially those disadvantaged, in the planning and governance of any future urban governance system.

“With ever larger cities, the distance between governments and their citizens has increased” explains the World Cities Report 2022 report.

“Effective communication, meaningful participation opportunities and accountability structures built into integrated governance relationships are all necessary responses for addressing the trust equation”.

The document goes even further, calling for new forms of collaborative governance that involve different stakeholders joining the decision making process.

That’s why deliberative democracy, often at the fringes of the political science studies, is now being rediscovered as a possible remedy to the distance between traditional decision makers and citizens.

Obviously there is one particular group that, not only has huge stakes in the future of urban spaces but also can play a vital role to re-animate the debate about more bottom up, participatory forms of democratic decision making: the youths.

Some attempts are being made in this direction.

Over the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting held on the 27th of April to review the progress taken so far in implementing the New Urban Agenda, the Youth 2030 Cities initiative brought together youths from Ecuador, Colombia and Ghana to discuss about their role and their contributions for a better urban future.

The event was a culmination of trainings and discussions in six different countries around the world, an exercise that led to the preparation of “DeclarACTIONS”, roadmaps and at the same time real blueprints for youths driven changes around sustainable urbanization.

These are not just aspirational documents but they contain concrete and practical proposals, result of a long raging series of interventions supported by UN Habitat and the Foundation Botnar.

The Youth 2030 Cities program is an example of how it is possible to enable youth to convene and discuss.

Potentially, it can be seen, as a bold attempt at expanding the decision making process at local level.

The challenge will be on how to shift from pilot mode to an approach that systematically includes all citizens, including the youth, in the policy and decision making processes.

An institution like UN-Habitat has a very important mandate to mainstream participatory processes across the developing and emerging world, enabling new transformative ways for people to be involved and engaged.

System ways partnerships, starting from within the UN System, can harness the potential shown when youths are allowed to discuss and debate.

The dynamics facilitated by Youth 2030 Cities, can truly bring transformative changes but with them, we need bold and farsighted vision from the world leaders.

Let’s not forget that, real change will happen when people, especially the youths, are empowered, not just to be consulted and be able to express their opinion, but when are enabled to take binding decisions.

The fact that also the World Urban Forum 11 saw the same Youth 2030 Cities youth to gather for a global “DeclarAction”, is promising but the road ahead is still indeed very steep.

Simone Galimberti is co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

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UN Resident & Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, Najat Rochdi, visited refugees’ camps in Bekaa and UNDP Home farming projects in Ablah-Bekaa on 25 August 2021. Credit: Twitter/ UN Lebanon

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jun 3 2022 (IPS)

Few deny the huge role the United Nation plays in global multilateral system especially in the area of poverty eradication, sustainability and climate change.

As enabler of the Agenda 2030, the UN system has the ability, stemming from its extraordinary convening powers, to bring around the table global leaders and key stakeholders for the most consequential decisions humanity must take.

Its agencies and programs do make a difference, uplifting millions of people out of poverty.

Yet, at the same time there is no doubt that the system is too complex and fragmented with too many overlaps and duplications that often make its work, using a development jargon, not of much “value for money”.

Short of a complete overhaul that would revolutionize its governance and shut down many of its operations around the world, including the merging of many of its agencies and programs, there is an ongoing attempt of reforming the system from the inside.

Recognizing the urgency for improvements but unable to undertake this needed drastic shift, Secretary General Antonio Guterres is doing what he can.

The focus is on better cooperation and coordination among the agencies and programs around the world and, while not as ambitious as the situation would require, it is still a mammoth operation that has been tasked to UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed.

Based on Resolution 75/233, adapted on 21 December 2020, the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review of operational activities for development of the United Nations system, this is the formal name of the ongoing efforts, is attempting to create a new working culture within the UN.

Such change is desperately needed. The focus is going to be on ensuring a “new generation of United Nations country teams working more collaboratively and according to a clearer division of labor, driving greater alignment with country needs and priorities”.

Some key updates on the progress being made, the so-called Report of the Chair of the UNSDG on the Development Coordination Office and the Report of the Secretary-General on Implementation of General Assembly resolution 75/233 on the quadrennial comprehensive policy review of operational activities for development of the United Nations system, are offering some perspectives on what being achieved and what is still missing.

The UN Resident Coordinator in Thailand, Gita Sabharwal (3rd from right), talks to migrants in Tak province on the impact of COVID-19. Credit: UNSDG/Build back better: UN Thailand’s COVID-19 strategy.

At the center of this broad reform is the revitalization of the role of the UN Resident Coordinators, now full-time positions on their own and no more tied to job of the UNDP Representatives.

The idea is to enable and empower a “primus inter pares” figure, someone who has the authority to also look after and monitor the work being done by each single agencies and programs whose work, so far, has been infamously uncoordinated.

As a consequence, planning mechanisms like the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, UNDAF, the planning matrix listing all the contributions of each single UN entity in a given country, has been turned into a stronger tool, the Country Cooperation Framework.

The name shift from ‘assistance’ to “cooperation” is symbolically indicative of the different role the UN system aims playing: an enabler and facilitator rather than a static, top down “bossy” partner.

There is also a new common assessment, the UN Common Country Analysis (CCA), “an integrated, forward-looking, and evidence-based analysis of the country context for sustainable development”.

Now, the Resident Coordinators have a stand-alone structure supporting their tasks, including different advisors, economists, data specialists and very importantly, partnerships and communication experts.

Technically, their job now also foresees “supporting governments mobilize financing for the SDGs”, as they are going to be “focused on innovative SDG financing approaches with Governments and key partners”.

The ambitious goal is to turn the Resident Coordinators in connectors and to some extent, “fund raisers” for the local governments they are supporting.

With also a new Accountability Framework in place, the common vision is as self- evident as much required but as daunting to achieve as it can be: create a “path forward for the system to work collaboratively under robust and impartial leadership, building on the strengths of each entity but moving away from the ‘lowest common denominator’ that prevailed in the previous architecture”.

The new approach is based on the much needed “dual reporting model in which, at least on the paper, the Resident Coordinators have a role in monitoring and assessing the work of each head of agencies/programs and the latter, on their end, would also asses the work of the Resident Coordinators.

That such system, far from being revolutionary, was never put in place earlier, clearly tells of the substantial ineffectiveness and lack of coordination that stymied the UN System for decades.

Having stronger coordination system makes total sense especially if the empowered Resident Coordinators, of whom, positively, now fifty-three per cent are women, can truly scale up joint pooled funding, bringing together different agencies and programs.

It is already happening but it would be really a game changer if most of the programs supported by the UN would be implemented through this modality.

In this regard the Joint SDG Fund, “an inter-agency, pooled mechanism for integrated policy support and strategic financing that acts as a bridge”, can be promising and if wholly embraced, truly transformative.

Mechanisms like the Joint SDG Fund should become the standard working modality at country levels with more and more power centered on the Office of Resident Coordinators.

Such development would mean much leaner agencies and programs in the country offices because otherwise the risk is to create another coordinating structure without simplifying and “slimming down” the system on the ground.

The scale of work to accomplish in this reform is still significant.

An internal survey, part of official report of the SG General, is emblematic.

Answering to “what extent have the following measures improved the UN Country Team’s offer to the country in the last year”, among the respondents, there was still a considerable percentage indicating that only “moderate change” had occurred so far.

Therefore, there is not only the risk that the well-intentioned reforms being pursued are simply not up to the gigantic needs of change that the UN must achieve but that it will take lots of time and energies to even bring around minimum change at country level.

Moreover, a stronger and better UN system on the ground means also a UN able to do a much better job at engaging and working with the people and civil society.

Being mandated with working with and supporting national governments does not imply as it happened so far, that the UN keeps insulate itself from the society.

You will always read about tokenistic measures that make appear like the UN is always open for collaborations and always striving to reach out the commoners but the reality is very different.

All this means one thing: the revamped offices of the Resident Coordinators have a huge role in enabling a transformation in mindsets and working culture inside the UN.

The report of the Secretary General could not have been clearer on this aspect.

“We must continue our efforts to ensure the reform of the United Nations development system brings about the changes in behavior, culture and mindsets that can maximize the collective offer of the United Nations”.

The Author, is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not for profit in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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A rescued boat woman and her two children eat some welcome food at a centre in Kuala Cangkoi, Indonesia. The UN urges 'people-centred' approach to migrants and refugees in Southeast Asia. Credit: UNHCR

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Apr 29 2022 (IPS)

The recently disseminated Zero Draft Ministerial Declaration of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF)– the main UN event to track the member states’ progress to achieve the Agenda 2030 slated to be held in the first half of July– is a disappointment.

For all its comprehensiveness, the document neglected to mention one of the most significant elements that could help the world navigate the next pandemic while successfully tackling climate change and biodiversity loss and excruciating levels of inequalities.

It was in July 2020 when the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered the 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, an important speech focusing on eliminating inequalities and injustices.

It is also where the idea of a New Social Contract emerged strongly.

Seen as an indispensable antidote against raising inequalities and injustices that the pandemic both exposed and further expanded, the Secretary General was not only remarkable for recalling the sins of colonialism perpetuated by Europeans like him in the past.

He was also bold for proposing a “New Social Contract, between Governments, people, civil society, business and more, must integrate employment, sustainable development and social protection, based on equal rights and opportunities for all”.

The concept of reinventing the social contract wasn’t’ particularly new in truth.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Oslo Governance Centre (OGC), the Friedrich-Ebert- Stiftung (FES) in Berlin and New York, the Julian J. Studley Fund of the Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School had been working on a global research study on resilient social contracts.

The outcome of this research was “Forging Resilient Social Contracts: Preventing Violent Conflict and Sustaining Peace, an11-country research and policy dialogue” that looked at the drivers that can either lead to stability and shared prosperity or the opposite, more insecurity and a continued state of violence.

The OECD has been also looking at the issue of state’s legitimacy with a groundbreaking report in 2010, The State’s Legitimacy in Fragile Situations unpacking complexity, a document that highlighted the risks of thinking from a western only perspective while supporting the extremely complex process of nation building.

Hybridity forms of governance that rely on local contexts and traditions, were highlighted as promising, though certainly not perfect, spaces of decision making, able to effectively hold together elements of bottom up decision making.

With the idea of top down nation building projects disintegrating following the Afghan’s debacle, strengthening local legitimacy is turning again to the fore.

Without it, it is impossible to shape and deliver effective and inclusive institutions that are so important now more than ever and, as to speak, not only in traditionally fragile political systems.

That’s why Guterres’s lecture in 2020 was so transformational because he was able to shift the focus on the social contract from a narrow peace building frame related to developing nations emerging from conflicts to a much broader context that significantly affects also more established democracies.

The stress and tensions that democratic systems have been experiencing in the last decade are supporting dynamics that risk to tear apart the fabric of many prosperous nations founded on a liberal political system.

Yet the Zero Draft Ministerial Declaration seems to totally forget the day-to-day relevance of establishing a new social contract, a new model based on civic engagement and people’s participation where citizens co-own the process of policy making.

Is this happening because the matter in discussion is so sensitive that some members of the United Nations might feel uneasy about getting engaged in a serious discussion about people’s involvement in shaping the public good?

For example the draft just mentions the role of Voluntary Local Review, the central process around which the SDGs can be localized, a dynamic that has been recognized as central to advance the overall Agenda 2030 and instrumental to build a new civic rapport between the citizenry and the state.

On the positive side, at least there is a mention of the UN Youth 2030, the global youth blue print that is supposed to play a big role in advancing a UN system that is more youth centered.

It is not that there is not enough discussions on partnerships, an essential element if we are serious about rethinking the process of decision making from the ground up.

For example, The Mexico Partnership Forum held in Merida on 17-18 March 2022, served as a “platform to strengthen engagement and relationships across all relevant stakeholders and sectors, while building back better from COVID-19, leading to more transformational whole-of-society approach to partnerships for advancing SDGs in Mexico”.

In another instance, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the International Development Law Organization, and the Government of Italy are organizing the SDG 16 Conference 2022, People-Centered Governance in Post Pandemic World that was held from 21 to 22 April.

In addition, we should not forget that the UN Habitat promoted New Urban Agenda is based on stronger level of collaborations and partnerships to redefine, through the lens of shared prosperity and equity, our existence in cities across the world.

Perhaps it is just easy to talk about partnerships and collaborations among different stakeholders but ultimately the SDG16 that embraces partnerships at its core, should be seen in a much broader and progressive way.

In Pathways for Peace Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, a joint publication between the World Bank and the United Nations released in 2018, it is remarkably clear the fundamental role of inclusive decision making.

First, “societies that offer more opportunities for youth participation in the political and economic realms and provide routes for social mobility for youth tend to experience less violence”.

Second “Inclusive decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace at all levels, as are long-term policies to address economic, social, and political aspirations”.

The reports continues: “Fostering the participation of young people as well as of the organizations, movements, and networks that represent them is crucial”.

Good governance does not happen with a stroke of raise in international aid to fragile nations.

International aid could enable and support certain dynamics especially if resources reach out effective non state actors but it is a very tricky business that could also result in more corruption and lack of accountability and perpetuation of exclusive power generation.

Genuine localized good governance instead is all about a local leadership able to nurturing through a self-strengthening loop, resilience and inclusion on the ground, though, in many cases such loop is too weakened to bear fruits.

Social protection policies, difficult to design and hard to deliver and certainly very expensive, are the key ingredient capable of enabling a sense of agency for those who have been the most neglected in the society.

Yet intervening in the economic space, as difficult as it is, along won’t suffice.

We need to offer real and meaningful opportunities for people to participate regardless of the political systems in place.

If one party nations do hesitate to foster this new sense of participation, then their entire foundations upon which their legitimacy is based, could crumble while dealing with any future crises and by now, we know well that we will experience more and more of them.

That’s why that speech of Antonio Guterres in 2020 was so important and should not be left forgotten.

It is also not enough to talk about the New Social Contract from a perspective of volunteerism as valuably done by UNV with the State of the World Volunteering Report 2022.

We need to deeper into discussing effective ways to empower the citizenry, starting from those left behind.

Hopefully this challenge, one of the biggest of those we face as humanity, would be adequately discussed by the United Nations.

The upcoming conference on Power, Politics and Peace, scheduled for May 31 by the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre, could offer an opportunity to do so.

Power, politics and peace, are, after all, the defining treats of the New Social Contract and if we forget it, it would be at a very high cost for all of us.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities. He writes on civic engagement, development and regional integration and politics. Opinions expressed are personal.

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Credit: UNESCO

By Pawan Ghimire and Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Apr 1 2022 (IPS)

The International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, which will be commemorated on April 6, is a day that celebrates the positive effects that sports can have on the society.

The humanity needs to confront existential challenges but few remember that in September 2019 the United Nations declared the then upcoming decade as the ‘Decade of Action”, ten precious years where the world would act at unison to achieve the Agenda 2030.

Then the international community could not imagine that a devastating pandemic was about to come and the consequences of Covid-19 are still being experienced throughout the world.

The suffering and painful experiences that many of us have been going through in the last two years show that the vision enshrined in the Agenda 2030 is still a far cry from being realized.

The United Nations Secretary General’s response to these daunting challenges is called “Our Common Agenda”, a blueprint for a stronger, fairer and more inclusive multilateral world.

In this special day we need to ensure that sports can play a significant role in putting such bold plans into action, turning ambitious goals into a real opportunity to mobilize millions of people.

This is the power of sports and it is key that we think of sports for development and peace not as a standing alone sub-area.

Rather our efforts should be to turn the entire sports industry into a tool for social change.

Credit: United Nations

Certainly, when we talk about sports for development and peace, we refer to thousands of not-for-profit organizations, the vast majority of whom, despite their small in size and budgets, are active on the ground, trying to offer solutions to myriad of problems at local level.

For example, sports can bring people together and be an enhancer of a society that is more equal and just where women, vulnerable groups can have a stronger voice and agency.

If we think about disability, we know that millions of persons with disabilities in the developing world, still face multiple problems that deny them their rights to have a dignified life.

Investing in inclusive sports practices can be a powerful tool that can bring people together, persons with disabilities but also persons without disabilities.

It can be an important advocacy tool for a better level playing field, allowing people without disabilities to think and reflect about their privileges and the lack thereof for their disable peers.

In short sports can be a glue that connects people but it can also be a potent platform where disadvantaged persons can train their skills and fulfill their ambitions.

Let’s call this the uniquely transformative power of sports.

We know many stories of sports celebrities, champions admired throughout the world that could find their path to glory because of their achievements in the field of sports.

That’s why this special day should not be just celebrated as a day for committed advocates and practitioners alone but rather as an opportunity to push for a better leveraging of sports to help those left behind and at disadvantage to find a way forward in life.

For this to happen, we need a comprehensive strategy able to attract the interest of all stakeholders involved in sports.

The true is that, while sports for development and peace is more and more recognized worldwide as a social innovation, there is still huge divide between such practices and the mainstream sports industry.

Many global sports clubs with resources and phenomenal outreach are doing their bit to promote a positive use of sports within local communities but we need to be more ambitious.

What it is indispensable is to reach a new global understanding on the transformative role sports can have.

That’s why the United Nations Secretary General needs to elevate sports at the core of his Our Common Agenda, ensuring that sports can be, not only the unifying factor, the glue but also the toolkit that can bring the required change.

United Nations agencies should do a better job not only at mainstreaming sports in their programs but also enabling partnerships with professional sports as well, engaging and working with clubs and leagues to truly harness sports for the common good, not as just a nice “add on”, through the usual CSR projects, but as a key strategy for their success.

The Our Common Agenda envisions a series of global gatherings and initiatives focused on different themes, including education and the future of job market and gender equality.

Interestingly, within this blueprint, there is a commitment to do more to involve and engage youth meaningfully.

The ideal goal for Secretary General Guterres would be a different United Nations that can do a much better job to prioritize youth’s needs and aspirations, putting them in the driving seat.

It will certainly take a lot of effort to shift gear and move from words to deeds in making the United Nations more youth centric.

Starting truly investing in sports, bringing them at the center of the development and social agenda in the developing as well higher income countries, is certainly one of the best ways to implement the Agenda 2030.

It will bridge the generational divides and allow more and more youth to be in the “game” not as spectators but as key protagonists.

If you think about, there is really no better way to get into actions in this decade.

Pawan Ghimire is chairman – Cricket association of the blind Nepal and treasurer of World Blind Cricket Limited, UK

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE. He can be reached at simone_engage@yahoo.com

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Credit: UN Women

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 29 2022 (IPS)

The 10th edition of the World Happiness Report was recently published and once again the findings raised an array of mixed emotions with many questioning the real foundations underpinning the most discussed aspect of the Report, the World Happiness Ranking,

For example, according to the ranking, Nepal appears to be the happiest place in the South Asia but is it really the case? Many experts from the country doubt about it as it was reported by The Kathmandu Post on the 22nd of March.

In the article, Dambar Chemjong, head of the Central Department of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University simply asks “What actually constitutes happiness?”

This is a complex question to answer but certainly it is fair to wonder how come each time this report gets published, it is inevitable that the richest nations, especially the Nordic ones come up on the top while the poorest and more fragile ones instead are hopelessly at the bottom.

There is no doubt that material prosperity determines a person’s quality of life and the World Happiness Report looks at GDP and life expectancy. In addition, the report also explores other factors like generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption.

These six variables, put together, are central to depict what the report calls “life evaluations” that “provide the most informative measure for international comparisons because they capture quality of life in a more complete and stable way than emotional reports based on daily experiences”.

The ranking is based on the Gallup World Poll, that asks “respondents to evaluate their current life as a whole using the mental image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and worst possible as a 0”.

One of the key findings is that social connections in dire times, especially if we think about what the entire world had to endure following the pandemic, do make the difference.

“Now, at a time of pandemic and war, we need such an effort more than ever. And the lesson of the World Happiness Report over the years is that social support, generosity to one another, and honesty in government are crucial for well-being” says Jeffrey Sachs, one of the major “architects” behind the entire concept of measuring happiness worldwide.

This statement further validates the need to further think more broadly about the importance these social relationships and social bonds have in developing nations.

That’s why analyzing happiness across nations should be considered as a working progress and the goal should be to better picture the complex situations on the ground in many parts of the developing world.

These are all nations that have been experiencing hardships consistently, even before the Covid pandemic outbreak and, therefore, they should be acknowledged for having developed unique forms of social bonds and solidarity.

Instead, these social factors, these connectors and the levels of reliance stemming from them in these “unhappy” nations”, are overshadowed by some of the variables determining the life evaluations.

People in developing nations have less access to public services and they are more exposed to corruption and bad governance. Lack of health infrastructures or unequal job market do have a strong incidence in determining a person’s human development and quality of life.

Yet does the fact that their lives are tougher automatically means people are there are unhappy?

Moreover, should not we consider the stress and mental health often affecting the “prosperous” lives of the citizens living in the north of the world?

Probably the problem is the idea of having a ranking itself. Though desirable and useful, measuring real happiness is a daunting and complex job.

Trust, benevolence, real generosity (not just the extrapolated, like in the report, based on donations during the last month) are all key determinants of happiness.

Yet these same factors have always been strong in developing societies where people rely on mutuality and self-help rather than depending on governments unable to fulfill their duties.

As it is now, the World Happiness Ranking risks to become just a “plus” version of the Human Development Index.

There is still a long way to better decipher and understand the meaning of happiness in the so called South of the World.

There is also a great need for the authors to better explain in simpler terms their methodology of calculating the ranking especially the relationships between the six key variables analyzed and positive and negative emotions that are also taken into consideration.

The fact that the ranking and the science behind the report is still a working process, it is recognized in the report itself.

An option would be to re-consider the variables of “life evaluations” that, by default, underscore the concept of wellbeing from a western perspective.

On the positive side, it is encouraging to see how the report includes also a part on “cross-Cultural Perspectives on Balance/Harmony”, central if we want to have a less westernized approach to happiness.

The 2022 edition of the Report devotes also considerable space to the biological basis of happiness, the relationships between genes and environment, what the report calls “Gene-Environment Interplay”.

Such nexus, affecting a person’s feelings and emotions and all the intricacies coming from these interactions, should make us reflect if it is really worthy to continue pursuing the goal of having an annual global ranking on happiness.

The idea of a ranking on happiness risks defeating the purpose of the gigantic and noble effort of better understanding how we can be happier and how public policies can have a role or not in these unfolding dynamics.

Simone Galimberti is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities. Opinions expressed are personal.

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By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 10 2022 (IPS)

The global consensus about an international treaty on pandemic prevention is certainly a milestone towards the creation of a global health security framework.

A new treaty is likely to bind the member states to higher standards of compliance, especially if a global accountability mechanism is also enforced.

Consider the disregard towards the International Health Regulations (2005), IHRs, the only tool available to control what in jargon is referred as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

Despite numerous review exercises, some of which taken more than a decade ago in the aftermath of the first SARS outbreak in Asia and again after EBOLA hit Western Africa, the vast majorities of these regulations were not enforced in the following years.

The consequence is that we are still paying the price and very dearly.

Though the negotiations on the treaty details, especially the complex aspects of its binding legality, won’t be a cakewalk, such tool can offer a strong bulwark against future lethal cross border infections.

Yet a global treaty won’t be nearly enough alone to guarantee a pandemics free future.

What missing is the willpower to truly link preparedness and basic health care, something that is complex and very expensive at the same time.

A real breakthrough in the global health system will be seen when a new willingness is found unprecedented levels of basic health financing around the world, especially in the developing nations.

We need massive investments in building national health systems able to provide what it is normally referred as Universal Health Coverage, defined by the WHO, as access to a broad range of services, which would include the services that contribute to preparedness to future pandemic

If new resources are essential, the capacity of managing them properly is equally important so that the weakest member nations of the United Nations can strengthen their health system.

Unfortunately, for most of them, there is still a long way to go.

The WHO has a huge responsibility and duty to support such process but so far it failed and with it, the international community.

A different organization, starting from its governance, might instead radically change the status quo and enable the creation of trust that essential if we want more money to build national public health system based on equity.

In the case of the IHRs, it is true that primary responsibility of enforcing them lays with the member states, the WHO is the guardian and at the same time a key enabler in their implementation.

A stronger WHO could have done more not only to compel governments towards the implantation of the IHRs but also to be more effective in partnering with developing countries in rebooting their national primary health care centers and hospitals.

Instead, the agency’s reputed failures since the first outbreak of SARS in early 2000s showed the inability of a too complex and too political organization without adequate means.

That’s why we need to ensure that the WHO can play a much bigger role: not in replacing the ministries of health in the developing world but in supporting them in building equitable health systems.

For this to happen we do not need the WHO to be re-tooled and re-purposed but also re-founded.

The focus on the new treaty should not prevent drastic changes in how public health services are delivered in the developing nations and a lifting any “red line” in re-thinking the WHO.

Since 2017, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, its current Director General, embarked the organization into a process of key changes but these improvements, important as they are, do not go far enough.

What we need is a radical turnaround.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, again new proposals have been made to strengthen the organization.

A lot of emphasis has been laid on increasing the predictability and availability of unmarked resources, so called of “Assessed Contributions”, rather than having, as happens now, a WHO totally relying on voluntary contributions from donors that so far constitute the vast majority of the resources it manages.

Such contributions are driven by interests and priorities of the donors rather than those of the agency.

A balancing in the budget contributions of the organization might surely help but at the same time it might be worthy reflecting that some of the most results-oriented agencies within the UN System are entirely dependent on such voluntary contribution.

This for example is the case of UNDP and UNICEF, the strongest and richest agencies within the UN System. Perhaps the real problem is not the lack of resources in itself but the politicization of an organization that is basically owned by its member states, the governments.

The same could be said for UNESCO.

It is not a coincidence that both agencies share low budgets and are among the weakest among their peers.

At UNICEF, for example there is nothing akin to the role played by the World Health Assembly that effectively controls the WHO.

The governance there is totally different and it is led by an Executive Board representing the member states that though, have considerable sway over the management of the agency (that’s why the Executive Director is always an American), it is less politicized and less controlling than an assembly of member states.

Perhaps what we should have is a global fund for public health more similar in its governance and delivery to UNICEF.

Such radical transformation, improbable at the moment, might be instrumental in truly rebuilding from scratch the WHO and instrumental in turning it into a much more effective agency with less competing centers of powers like is happening now with what are de-facto semi-independent regional offices.

As consequence a new organization branded as the Global Fund for Public Health could attract the huge investments that developing countries need to build strong and resilient health system, insuring Universal Health Coverage for all their citizens.

So far donors have been too narrow and selective when focusing on public health.

For example, the focus has been on prenatal and postnatal care, reproductive health, all very important domains of public health.

Yet such narrow focus on these areas through a silos approach prevented investing into creating, in partnership with the developing countries, reliable and equity-based health systems at disposal of the public.

Let’s not forget what the Secretary General said back in 2016 Seventieth session Agenda entitled “Strengthening the global health architecture” dedicated on strengthening of implementation of the recommendations of the High-level Panel on the Global Response to Health Crises Report, one of the several published so far to retrofit the health system to deal with global pandemics.

“I believe that WHO needs to reposition itself as an operational organization, clarifying its reporting lines and adjusting its business processes so that it can perform its operational role most effectively during times of health crises”.

Moreover in 2016 the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future argued that “public health is the foundation of the health system and its first line of defense”.

For this to happen we need a new WHO and such a new organization could create the trust for an unprecedented mobilization of funding in public health, resources that World Bank and other regional banks and donor agencies should disburse.

Both Indonesia and Germany, respectively guiding this year the G 20 and the G 7, expressed a strong commitment to reform the global health system.

A narrow focus on a pandemic preparedness treaty would be a miss opportunity to truly revolutionize global health governance and with it, reset and transform the WHO.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities. Opinions expressed are personal.

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A woman, accompanied by a child, casts her vote during the general elections in Mozambique. Meanwhile, the United Nations marked the annual International Day of Democracy last September calling on world leaders to build a more equal, inclusive and sustainable world, with full respect for human rights. Credit: UNDP/Rochan Kadariya

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 14 2022 (IPS)

There is no doubt that the building the magnificent Women’s Pavilion at the Dubai World Expo 2020 deserves unconditional praise and admiration, a bold landmark that projects the concept of gender empowerment and gender equality.

Yet at the same time I am wondering why the organizers of the World Expo didn’t come up with a different kind of pavilion, one focused on democracy and people’s participation in policy affairs.

On many ways, celebrating women but overlooking democracy and with it, one of its prerequisites and at the same time, byproducts, human rights, is a contradiction that, unfortunately should not shock us considering the overall state of democracy and human rights around the world.

In this context the Summit for Democracy organized by President Biden in December was an important undertaking.

It wasn’t because United States of America was behind it, a country that, as we know, it is dealing with some deep fractures in terms of in issues related to voting rights and universal franchise.

It was but because the Summit was a symbolic gesture, a statement about, on the one hand, the relevance and resilience democracy still has for millions of people around the world and, on the other hand, almost paradoxically, about its vulnerability and fragility.

If many people still can exercise their franchise and freely express their opinion, global reports like the Global State of Democracy 2021 Report published by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, IDEA, it is clear that democracy is under assault both in traditional liberal democratic settings as well as in regions with emerging democratic practices.

Unfortunately, the ongoing geopolitical dynamics are preventing a neutral debate about the future of democracy and instead a clash of perspectives and with it, different political systems, is prevailing, hampering an important conversation.

On the one hand, there is the liberal democracy model based on periodic elections and on the other side of the spectrum, we find the one-party ruling system.

In the between, a mix of hybrid models that, while formally embracing electoral democracy, act more like authoritarian regimes.

Yet perhaps there is another way to look at this equation, a possibility that would put universal human rights at the center of any political system being embraced, regardless its voting practices.

“The response to the pandemic, and to the widespread discontent that preceded it, must be based on a New Social Contract and a New Global Deal that create equal opportunities for all and respect the rights and freedoms of all.” – UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: United Nations

You might not be able to periodically elect your representatives but still in practice, you could enjoy freedom of opinion, the liberty to express your judgement on the current status of affairs in your country.

It is unclear how criticism and divergent opinions are continuously seen as such a lethal arms that can put at risk the survival of nations but this is what is happening almost on daily basis.

For example, while Dubai is celebrating its mesmerizing Expo, the U.A.E. are still jailing human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor detained since March 2017.

Whatever the charges against him, the authorities are showing contempt for the most basic human rights and this is not just an isolated episode but rather a consistent pattern of abuses.

Undoubtedly, it can be certainly be better in relation to basic human rights and that’s why the Summit for Democracy could become an opportunity to press nations like the U.A.E. to show leadership rather than fear and insecurity in matter of democracy and human rights.

The U.A.E. like many other authoritarian or totalitarian regimes are a success stories in so many extents.
Events like the Expo or the upcoming World Cup in Qatar, another democratic outcast despite the recent election of the Shura Council or the soon to happen Winter Olympics and Paralympics Games in China, are showing how such countries have found their own path to excellence and prosperity.

There are risks associated with a nation like the USA pushing the democracy agenda but still the follow up summit that will be organized by the Biden Administration in 2022 could offer a way for more nations to step up and show some commitment at least to human rights.

Will those nations who did not get invited to the summit this year, nations like the U.A.E. and Qatar do more in this area or simply will they carry on with business with a “business as usual” approach?

To be clear, there is no doubt that it would be a mistake to just promote the liberal democratic model based on elections and representation as the only blue print to be followed universally.

There are, indeed, other ways to reinvigorate democracy and human rights and for example, the ongoing conversation on the New Social Contract being promoted by the United Nations could offer such venue to rethink the relationships between people and their governments.

That’s why it is so relevant to be as inclusive as possible in building on the momentum opened by the UN Secretary General with its push for a New Social Contract because such discussions could enable nations like the U.A.E. to also join and contribute, on their own ways, to the formulation of a better and just, not just more efficient, governance models.

Involving youth is going to be paramount.

Recently during the World Youth Forum organized by the Egyptian Government, another nation falling well behind in human right standards and practices, Secretary General Guterres, invited youth to “keeping speaking out”.

I am not entirely sure how such invite would be digested by President El-Sisi, the convener of the Forum but Guterres is right in asserting youth’s right to speak up and share their voice.

More than ever, the United Nations have an enormous responsibility to keep focusing on human rights and freedom of expression and such an effort can help move forward, even indirectly, the global agenda being embraced by President Biden.

While Guterres might not be able to explicitly talk about democracy and elections, he is well positioned to further enhance the debate around the New Social Contract and with it, bring up inconvenient topics to those leaders uncomfortable to talk about democracy and human rights.

And such leaders from states like U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Brunei, China or Nicaragua, just to mention few nations certainly not trailblazers in human rights, should not only listen to but also get engaged with such issues.

Will Biden tactically find a way to allow the United Nations, with its proclaimed neutrality, to be involved in such difficult conversations?

Human rights abused cannot be condoned anywhere and this is also a standard applicable to everyone, including to those states who proudly burnish strong democratic credentials, for example, nations of the E.U. or the U.S.A. itself.

We hope that one day not too far from today, the U.A.E. and other likeminded nations might be able to tell their own success stories in terms of human rights protection and people’s participation to local affairs.

They do not lack the creativity and resources to find their own solutions that, while meeting the highest human rights standards, at the same time, can be localized enough to offer novel ideas to make their societies more inclusive, more open and just.

After all, a social contract just based on economic prosperity, while doing the job now, won’t go too far nor will be resilient enough to navigate future crises.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities. The opinions expressed here are personal.

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By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Dec 2 2021 (IPS)

The International Volunteer Day, on December 5, is not just one of the many internationally observed days that the United Nations commemorates annually.

Its significance is much broader especially because volunteerism can truly become one of the most important tools at our disposal to promote a different development paradigm and overcome all the challenges that the ongoing pandemic has exacerbated.

It is also central to one of the top priorities set by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, the creation of a new Social Contract that can re-draw the relationships between governments and citizens, finding new venues for the people to participate in the public life, especially from the perspective of novel ways to think about policy making.

In this sense, volunteerism is an agent for change because it one of the best expressions of civic engagement and therefore it will deserve much more attention and with it, much more resources in order to help solving the most substantial issues the humanity is facing.

That’s why the role of United Nations Volunteers, UNV is going to be central. As a semi-independent agency, formally part of the UNDP, UNV can really become an engine to promote volunteerism, a concept that includes several activities from mutual help to advocacy to direct service provision.

Over the last two years UNV has undertaken a major exercise in rethinking the role of volunteerism. In July 2020, UNV, in partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent, IFRC, galvanized the global volunteering community with a major exercise to discuss and frame the role volunteerism has in achieving the Agenda 2030.

Entitled “Re-imagining Volunteerism”, this event, formally known as a global technical meeting, led to the definition of the Plan of Action to Integrate Volunteering into the 2030 Agenda, a “framework under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) through which governments, volunteer-involving organizations, UN agencies, private sector, civil society and academia come together to strengthen people’s ownership of the 2030 Agenda and integrate volunteering in national strategies and policies”.

One of its most visible outcomes is the Call for Action, an inspiring document that is guiding the international community on harnessing the power of volunteerism for the common good.

As part of this ambitious process, UNV also opened up several community groups to discuss about key issues, including, the most recent one, just concluded, over the ways that volunteerism can become more inclusive and accessible.

The fact that UNV is opening up and asks for suggestions and ideas is a very important development, an effort that must acknowledged and praised. It is also something that holds much potential in order to create a global community of practitioners engaged over the ways volunteerism can be promoted and scaled.

With the end of this year, UNV is also set to launch a new multi annual strategic plan and, while the details of the new plans still remain undisclosed, it is key that the leadership at UNV makes such process as open and as transparent as possible.

Open, accessible consultations are one of the best ways to let practitioners and social scientists alike to contribute in shaping the next milestones for UNV.

The future strategic goals of this semi-autonomous agency must be aligned with the comprehensive blueprint that Secretary General Guterres launched in September, Our Common Agenda that is an ambitious set of plans to re-energize multilateralism.

One of key aspects of this plan is the strengthening of the UN system of its work and engagement with youth and as result, the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth will be strengthened in the coming years and a new office for youth will be established.

This is an important development because in the past UNV also played an important role as a sort of youth focal point within the United Nations, an interesting proposition but also complicated one because we know that volunteerism transcends age groups.

So, one of the key questions in the new strategic plan of UNV will be how to contribute to reinforcing the youth agenda within the UN system without alienating other key stakeholders that still can play a huge role in promoting and implementing volunteerism around the world.

For sure, youth can be a vehicle, a bridge to reach out other age groups, an insight that surely is being taken into account by UNV in its strategic planning process.

At the same UNV needs to be strengthened and provided with more resources in order to help achieve the SDGs and play a crucial role in defining the boundaries and features of the New Social Contract.

More resources would allow UNV to open more country offices. For example, a country like Indonesia, with a strong volunteering culture and major international player, still does not count with a UNV office.

Additional resources will allow UNV to experiment with new programs that can promote inclusive forms of volunteering, especially because it is now widely recognized that volunteerism can be an equalizer and tool through which a youth can develop personal leadership.

It is also indispensable that UNV is enabled to play a much stronger role as advocate and champion of volunteerism wherever the UN is active, with the technical expertise and resources to support governments to implement volunteering actions on the ground, even though policies or specific legislations.

An empowered, more vocal, stronger UNV won’t only be in need of much stronger support by the international community. The stakes at play will also require UNV to modernize and become more and more agile, flexible, faster and open to local communities.

This will require a change in the working culture as UNV reflects many of the positive aspects of the UN system in terms of professionalism and high standards but it is also inevitable that it also incorporates the less positive sides that typically characterize huge international organizations.

The changes made in terms of setting up community groups to talk and discuss about policies can be scaled up and made it easier and more user friendly. But this is just one aspect that need to be improved.

In order for UNV to scale up its role, we need an organization that is able to get out of the “balloon” typically and to some extents, inevitably associated with the UN. To some extents, it needs to embrace a sort of startup culture symbolized by more informality and openness to fail and risk.

In short, a t-shirt culture rather than the traditional “McKinsey & Company” dress that almost ended up characterizes the entire UN system.

The UN plays a tremendous and vital role everywhere it operates but it is also known for its complex, often opaque working structures, and an inclination to be not exactly what the concept of “value for money” implies.

In short, bureaucracy and red tape can distort and diminish the important work being done globally and UNV could become a trend setter within the wider UN community for a much more dynamic working culture.

The upcoming launch of the State of the World’s Volunteerism Report will be another important milestone for UNV. With it, we will have even a more comprehensive understanding on what volunteering could help achieve if strengthened and embraced worldwide. UNV is a force for good within the international development community.

Still its potential is untapped and in order to do so, we need a bolder, more creative and fast agency, one that can be set the standards for a more effective development system.

Simone Galimberti is a Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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“Our Common Agenda” report looks ahead to the next 25 years and represents the Secretary-General’s vision on the future of global cooperation and reinvigorating inclusive, networked, and effective multilateralism. The Secretary-General presented his report to the General Assembly in September 2021 before the end of the 75th session of the General Assembly. Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Oct 4 2021 (IPS)

There is no doubt that Secretary General Antonio Guterres is going big and bold with the recent release of an ambitious blueprint that could pave the way for a more inclusive, effective and networked international system centered on youth’s aspirations and needs.

Titled Our Common Agenda, the report is fundamentally a call for action, a manifesto for change with plenty of innovative ideas, an encompassing and holistic document that builds on the Declaration on the Commemoration of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the United Nations that was signed last year on 21st of September.

The aim is really to start a reflection that leads to imagine a possible different and better future as there is the recognition that we have almost reached the breaking point and fundamental changes are urgent.

As stated in the document, Our Common Agenda “represents the Secretary General‘s vision on the future of global cooperation and reinvigorating an inclusive, networked, effective multilateralism” and there was no better way for the Secretary General to start his second mandate.

The challenges are so dire and multifaceted.

From the “triple planetary emergency” of climate change, biodiversity and pollution to envisioning a better, more equal education and health care systems while making a strong case on the centrality of social protection systems as the best shield to protect the most vulnerable in times of shocks, it is high time for a difference global governance.

Such new system can better reflect an approach to international relations based on cooperation and solidarity.

This is exactly what Guterres is trying to pitch with Our Common Agenda, concrete actions that might show the way to the international community on the directions global leaders must take if they want to ensure a better, more equal planet for the generations to come.

There are many proposals on the plate.

For example, the High-Level Summit on the Future will be a platform aiming to forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like and how we secure it”.

Clear on this agenda is an effort to bolster a new understanding on peace by reducing new threats, including those coming from cyber warfare and lethal autonomous weapons, including investing in new efforts to prevent new conflicts.

The proposal for a Global Digital Compact is another idea to create a global debate and consensus on ensuring that new technologies, including artificial intelligence, become a force for good rather than a tool of self-harm and destruction.

Retooling the global economy to the new challenges emerging from the climate emergency is another top priority for the Secretary General.

New sources of funding must be created and in an era of complex and “creative” financial derivatives and other tools that are enriching the global capitalist elite, ironically, we are running out of imagination and creativity.

Indeed, funding is one of the thorniest roadblocks to an agreement at the Cop 26 in Glasgow.
How can we secure a better, greener and less polluted world if there is still no agreement on 100 billion USD climate financing package that was agreed in Paris back in 2015?

In trying to answer some of daunting questions, Secretary General Guterres is proposing biennial summits to “tackle public and private financing for climate change, with the overriding aim of creating a more sustainable and resilient global economy.”

New metrics able to “value the life and the wellbeing of the many over short term profit for the few” might replace the GDP.

What it is noticeable is that the level of ambition found in Our Common Agenda aims to create momentum on a series of ideas and initiatives that have been for long occupying a space in the debate sphere but could never move forward for lack of buy in.

The World Social Summit in 2025, another of the proposals, is exactly designed to rally world leaders behind the concept of New Social Contract, a better deal between the people and the government.

In practice it means universal health care, stronger education system, more responsive public services and huge investments in social protections measures. Unless a global consensus will emerge from other world leaders, hardly any of these proposals can be implemented.

Yet it is worthy for the UN as a system to enable a global conversation on what needs to be changed if the humankind aspires to thrive for the next decades and beyond.

Perhaps the most important part of Our Common Agenda is the focus given on the youth.

I am not really talking about tokenistic measures like creating a new UN Youth Office that basically will integrate the neglected and overshadow office of the UN SG’s Envoy on Youth.
The Secretary General is absolutely right in bringing youth on the top of the agenda but how doing so will be key.

While it is important to lay the ground for a Declaration on Future Generations, another promised envisioned in the report that also include holding a Transforming Education Summit in 2022, what at the end will count is finding practical ways to enable youth to be active and engage in the society.

The UN should certainly play a big part in centering a new global agenda for change on the youth but the proposals envision to “retrofitting” the UN System for the future, also included in the report, risk just to be a smokescreen.

We truly need a more agile, more effective UN System but in order to achieve such shift, so much change in its offices around the world must first happen because they really need to be more people responsive, more open and less opaque.

This means going well beyond the “McKinsey or BCG for the good” caps that represent the business as usual at the UN, a style that also contributes to insulate its agencies and programs in a comfortable, almost luxurious balloon.

A different mindset and different attitudes are needed and this does not mean neglecting or going beyond the UN core mandate of working with the governments.

This is something extremely important but should not prevent more openness and more understatement and perhaps humbleness.

Therefore, besides the bold announcements contained in Our Common Agenda that are related to youth, UN agencies and programs should undertake a turnaround so that they can truly become more youth centric.

This implies also a rethinking of usual working approaches in order to embrace the freshness and enthusiasm of the youth.

From the ground to the top, the UN system can truly foster civic engagement, youth participation especially by better involving girls and young women through new grassroots programs in partnership with local governments and civil society and by also advising the UN Country Offices.

As Secretary General is in last mandate, Guterres is right at envisioning a better world order focused on a genuine multilateralism.

Yet in order to create opportunities for the youth to be able to participate in the decision making at global level, the home work start within the UN system locally.

It is here where the Secretary General can really have an impact and shows the world leaders how to model a youth centric future.

The Author is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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One in six youth have had to stop working since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an ILO report released last year. Credit: Benjamin Suomela, International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 15 2021 (IPS)

A pre-pandemic report published by the International Labor Organization, ILO, the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2020, offered a sober analysis on the job market prospects for youth.

“The labour force participation rate of young people (aged 15–24) has continued to decline. Between 1999 and 2019, despite the global youth population increasing from 1 billion to 1.3 billion, the total number of young people engaged in the labour force decreased from 568 million to 497 million”.

In addition, while youth are those who can adjust and adapt the most to the new technologies, they are also the ones who are at the most risk of seeing job opportunities earlier available now disappearing.

With the pandemic and the multiple and overlapping crises brought by it, the chances for a youth to get employed are even dimmer especially in developing and low middle-income economies.

While in these nations, a youth belonging to the upper-and-middle class families are likely to navigate the post pandemic successfully thanks to their skills but also thanks to their status and connections, vulnerable youth instead remain stuck in cycle of exclusion and lack of opportunities.

This is even truer if you are living with a disability, be it physical or developmental or a psychosocial condition that deters you from easily finding an employment.

Considering that the vast majority of youth living with a disability in a developing nation are starting their quest for a job at stark disadvantage in relation to their peers without disabilities due to lack of quality education and other opportunities offered by the society, the Covid-19 pandemic really risks furthering lowering their odds at a dignified livelihood.

A joint publication by ILO and the Asian Development Bank, ADB, Tackling the COVID-19 youth employment crisis in Asia and the Pacific, clearly depicts a grim future for millions of youth aspiring to enter the job market.

“Young people’s employment prospects in Asia and the Pacific are severely challenged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Youth will be hit harder than adults in the immediate crisis and also will bear higher longer-term economic and social costs” shares the report.

A job for a youth with disabilities, not only in the Asia Pacific Region but elsewhere, is now even more distant possibility.

A reset that potentially could unleash a positive revolution in the global and national priorities, under the banner of “build forward better”, is what has been sought by experts from around the world.

Such drastic shifts to turbo-charge more sustainable economies can also help turn them into more inclusive ones, ensuring a quantum leap in job opportunities for those left behind before the pandemic.

For a youth living with disabilities, this implies stronger chances at finding a job together with better opportunities in the education system, a prerequisite for the former.

A change of prospective of this proportion would imply not only putting disabilities at the center of government’s actions but also a whole effort to reframe disabilities in the modern society.

Shifting mindsets on the role persons with disabilities can have is a sine qua non if we really want to create a level playing field.

Positively, in the last few years, there is no doubt that a lot of progress has been made towards more inclusive job markets but we are only at the beginning.

Despite positive signals, we need go deeper and wider and bolder.

The Return on Disability Group created by Canadian Rich Donovan, author of Unleash Different, has been a pioneer in pitching the business case of focusing on disabilities as an opportunity.

ILO is leading the efforts within the UN system by enabling the Global Business and Disability Network, a global consortium with major corporations willing to include accessibility and overall disability rights among their top priorities.

GSK, the mammoth pharma company has become a trailblazer in the field by setting up The Global Disability Confidence Council that is made up by its senior leaders.

“Disability Confidence describes the corporate best practice that ensures dignified and equitable access & inclusion for people with disabilities as valued colleagues, potential colleagues, customers, shareholders & fellow citizens” explains GSK.

Around the world there are other promising initiatives like The Valueable500, a global campaign whose members, all major corporations, commit to practical and game-changer initiatives to promote disability inclusion.

For example, Proctor and Gamble is conducting a global disability audit while Mahindra & Mahindra, the Indian car manufacturer, is working to enable a jobs portal to better target and include youth living with disabilities.

These are just few examples of what global conglomerates can do to change the status quo.

Yet, piecemeal approaches cannot work and that’s why we need a holistic, whole of the government impetus to drastically reframe how policy making works to fulfill the rights and needs of persons with disabilities.

Global business can play an essential role here as well.

First of all, it is an imperative that global corporate networks focused on disability talk and collaborate among each other.

Second, though what the most powerful multinationals are doing is relevant, is not nearly enough and our expectations in what multinationals can do, must be higher.

Surely, we need more of them to pledge new internal targets but one-off initiatives must become the springboard for much more holistic actions that include their global supply chains and global sales.

If Proctor and Gamble really wants to elevate disability to the next level, then resources need to be spent all across its massive operations, including the suppliers and contractors.

If Mahindra & Mahindra is serious about disability, then it should ensure that all its distributors around the world embrace the issue as well.

Together with this “total encompassing” approach, resources must be used for advocacy and lobbying. The latter word is often used with a negative connotation but we really need to lobby governments and policy makers to truly become serious on disability rights.

The job market, especially in developing and emerging countries, will become more inclusive only if the local business peoples and local politicians are forced to commit to disabilities.

This means not only accessible work places or even possible quotas in the job market but a rethinking of policy making starting from education and social security because without accessing to quality education, youth with disabilities will only continue to remain at the margins of our economies.

The global private sector can truly make a difference here because they have the prowess and capacities to be listened to and demand action.

The quest for a more inclusive job market does not entail just initiatives to make it more inclusive of persons with disabilities.

That’s why the 2nd edition of Global Disability Summit next year, must truly be focused on new partnerships with the private sector aimed at mainstreaming disabilities at the center of the economies and societies we want to re-imagine.

Working from the top and “retrofitting” the job market by making it more inclusive should lead to a whole society approach that leverages the skills and untapped potential of youth with disabilities.

Simone Galimberti is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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Football for reconciliation, an event held between people involved the Colombian peace process. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged everyone involved in the sport sector to help advance climate action, combat discrimination and prejudice, and ensure that global sporting events leave a positive legacy. April 2021. Credit: UNVMC/Jennifer Moreno

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Aug 17 2021 (IPS)

Does sport need to change to better serve society? What can sport and development actors do better in the future? How can sport play a greater role in contributing to development and peace? Can we reimagine the role of sport? Can we resolve the conflict and contradictions inherent within sport?

These are some of guiding questions for a call for articles launched last April by the International Platform on Sport and Development, the most authoritative forum to promote and discuss the transformative role sports can have in the society.

The timing of the call could not have been more appropriate as by that time it was day by day becoming evident that the consequences of the pandemic would have been as lasting and devastating as few could have imagined just few weeks earlier.

With the Olympics Games just concluded and with the upcoming Paralympics Games starting soon, there is no better time to reignite the debate on the future of sport.

The questions at the basis of that call for articles kicked off an interesting discussion on possible shapes that sport could take in the years ahead.

Unfortunately, with multiple waves of Covid-19 coming and going, we got somehow used to what has been described as a new-normal and the debate on the future of sports is at risk of losing vibrancy and momentum.

Yet in certain regions, the pandemic brought in what could have been, earlier on, described as unimaginable decisions at levels of policy making.

Think about bold actions in the areas of climate change or a new emphasis on inequalities. Unfortunately, such groundbreaking actions, long due, are only going to benefit the citizens of certain nations, mostly those who have more robust finances and effective governance.

While there is certainly an emerging understanding that a better and fairer world would be able to achieve the Agenda 2030, still it must be a global undertaking in which least developed countries (LDCs) and lower middle income nations are also properly supported. We also need to find new champions to rethink the role that the entire sport sector can have in society all over the world, not just in the North.

Can sports play a big role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Should sport for development remain a self-standing sector well-distinguished and separated from the sports industry or should it be part of a broader continuum?

Certainly, the Black Lives Matter movement proved that professional sports league in North America, while hardly can be turned into social businesses, can take a strong position in advocating for ending racism and create more equity.

Most of them with, the NBA in the frontrunner thanks to its players demanding a change from “business as usual” approach, are showing long term commitment to social justice with strong messaging and also with new initiatives at community levels.

Yet many other professional leagues have not shown the same level of sensitivity, perhaps reflecting the overall feelings within their supporters. In a country like Italy seeing football fans using far right, fascism inspired salutes and gestures, after all, has been almost normalized.

The conundrum is how we can ensure, on the one hand, that all professional, elites sports leagues are brought into a debate over their own responsibilities, drawing clear red lines on what it is expected as well as what is not going to be tolerated from them and on the other hand, how we can facilitate a stronger, much stronger connection between these professional sports and community level sports for development initiatives.

Surely finding answers to such questions will require a lot of education and openness to introspect and rethink old assumptions.

With the area of development being led by small organizations been badly affected by the pandemic, how can we truly ensure that more social consciousness at elite’ and professional levels also turn into consistent support to help scale up such initiatives globally?

One issue concerning them is certainly about investing in metrics and capacity building.

Here it is where the Commonwealth is doing a great work, measuring the impact of sports for development even though we should also engage elite sports to rethink their contributions in the society and not only in terms of CSR.

On the capacity sides, more evidence is being created about what works the most and with the highest levels of impact but a lot will depend on the fact that more resources are needed and this can only happen if we think long term and we determine the inextricable links between sports for development and other dimensions of sport in general.

So a central issue is not just about how the niche sport for development can be better administered and promoted but the challenge is about creating anew a global governance for a better sport.

That’s why there is a strong case to re-imagine the sport sector as whole, making sports for development truly an integral part of it, not just a nice add on.

For this to happen elite and professional sports must reform and truly ensure that their profit-making machines sustain, at much bigger levels, grassroots levels amateur games and a pledge to substantially back initiatives till now considered as part of this standing alone “sport for development” sector.

We need a bold rethinking of the role sports can have at the UN and we need forward looking policy making to advocate for such drastic change.

Putting sport at the center of the global agenda implies doing away with silos approaches. It will require creativity, ingenuity and commitment and truly new innovative policy making.

New partnerships will be essential and that’s why the UN Secretary General should call for a global summit on sport where niche experts from sport for development can work with top athletes and industry leaders of elite sports’ leagues and federations to truly re-imagine the role of sports to achieve a better society.

Such forum can lead to a new “Global Agenda on Sport for 2030” and a way to create consensus on such new global sport agenda, could start with the High-Level Political Forum, HLPF the main discussion platform on the SDGs that can be used to highlight the societal potential of sport.

In 2022 the HLPF, the 10th, will focus on some crucial SDGs including SDG 4 (quality education) and SDG 5 (gender quality) among others and therefore we have a unique opportunity to leverage the power of sports to achieve concrete results in the areas of social development, reinvigorating the Agenda 2030 from a youth’s perspective.

The HLPF next year could become the launch-pad to mainstream sports, especially those explicitly with a societal focus (that must be considered as part of a larger continuum), at the core of the development agenda.

While issues related to the overall governance of sports and those specifically related to sport for development must also be tackled, we can start building a roadmap to re-imagine sport and let’s involve the heads of state and global leaders, many of which are passionate about it.

They must be part of the equation, and they must endorse and support such reform.

Without their engagement and without the involvement of some global sports stars, the status quo will prevail and a big opportunity to reboot and reset sport as a whole will be wasted.

Let’s not forget, sport, can truly become the core of “build forward better” movement.

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Excerpt:

As Nepal faces breaking point amidst its worst COVID-19 outbreak, the United Nations and its partners launched in May 2021 the Nepal Covid-19 Response Plan calling for US$ 83.7 million to mobilize an emergency response over the next three months to assist 750,000 of the most vulnerable people affected by the pandemic. The plan was endorsed by the Nepal Humanitarian Country Team and the Government of Nepal’s COVID-19 Crisis Management Centre and lays out critical areas of support required to complement the Government of Nepal’s response efforts. Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jul 23 2021 (IPS)

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to reinstall the House of Representatives and appoint– after a prolonged and nasty legal battle– a new Prime Minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, there is high probability that a government of national unity will be put together in Nepal.

After months of uncertainty and utter disregard of the rule of law by former Prime Minister Sharma Oli, whose attempts to remain in power at any costs has severely impacted the country’s response to a more lethal 2nd wave of Covid 19, the new government has the work cut out.

Not only it needs to do whatever it takes to avoid another and much more brutal outbreak but also it must take the responsibility to reboot the entire health system before the next general election.

Though predictability and certainty are not yet common features of this still young democracy that just few years ago undertook an ambitious path towards federalism, if everything will go smooth, the country will still have to wait one and half year before the next vote.

It is enough time for an experienced though not necessarily effective politician like Deuba that he is embarking on his 5th and possibly last term as Prime Minister, to be ambitious and lay the foundations for the establishment of real national public health system.

Certainly, it is going to be a daunting task especially in a country in which the private sector was enable, in the past two decades, to take advantage and exploit a weak regulatory system to its own advantages.

During the 2nd wave there have been multiple cases of private hospitals extracting exorbitant fees from family members of patients affected by Covid.

No matter several tokenistic attempts at regulating the health care costs during the crisis and far from a real crack down of such practices, it wasn’t unsurprising that the Ministry of Health and Population’s perception of a toothless institution was greatly magnified during this second wave.

It did not help that the first doses of vaccines sent by India months ago were distributed with too loose criteria or with no criteria at all.

For example, banks’ workers and many other representatives of the private industries, including those in the tourism sector, the latter mostly unemployed since the first outbreak last year, were included in the list of essential workers deemed as priority.

I am wondering why not then ensuring in such list also streets vendors or small shop keepers from whom the vast majority of Nepalis still buy their daily groceries or why not simply prioritizing only the elders, many of which had to wait for months and months before receiving the 2nd dose?

It is clear that despite certain proven level of expertise, the Ministry of Health and Population could not prevail in the tough process of decision-making regarding vaccine distribution that was centralized by Oli and his advisors, with their quest of power at any costs and with any means topping any public health’s concerns.

Poor governance and disregard of constitution so predominant with the Oli’s administration costed the lives of thousands of people. Deuba does not need to start from scratch.

First of all, while this scriber is writing, it is certainly positive that the new Prime Minister is inaugurating a new vaccination program.

Provided that several pledges of new vaccines will materialize into real inoculations on the ground in few weeks from now, listening to the experts and ensure that scientific evidence prevails over politicking, will be essential.

The scary truth is that, with every aspect of the lockdown being lifted, the second wave did not really die off yet and it soon could metastasize in a much more dangerous contagion.

The infections are increasing day by day and as per yesterday only in the Kathmandu Valley there were almost 500 cases a day, a figure that might be indicative of a worse scenario soon to come. Getting this right and finally prioritize this emergency is going to be essential.

This means finding an agreement, albeit a temporary one, with the private hospitals that must adhere to common national standards in the provision of Covid 19 related care.

The urgency to avoid a third wave might bring some common sense among the private operators that must drastically reduce the cost of their services for all those Covid patients.

Such agreement could become a template for future and much tougher negotiations that would lead to the establishment of a truly cooperative approach where private operators should become an essential though complementary pillar of a national health system.

Similarly, to what happened for the Covid 19, existing regulations on whatever is legit to be charged on the public for any type of health service is not only scarcely regulated but even less enforced.

Linked to this issue is that any new budget provisions should drastically scale up the national health insurance program that has been implemented so far only through a too timid phase in manner that created a spotty map of the places where such service is accessible.

Ask any citizens of the country and there will be high probability that they never ever heard of such provision.

The insurance not only needs to be accessible everywhere in an easy and predictable fashion but also the max coverage allowed should be increased.

As per now with a contribution of 3500 NRS (around $ 30 US), a family of five can be reimbursed up to 100,000 NRS a year, around $ 830 US a year).

This is not barely enough to cover the real expenses of any major operation even in public hospitals which keep charging the public even if they are much more accessible (or just simply less costly) than their private counterparts.

The legal framework is centered on the Health Insurance Act that was approved in 2017 but what is needed is not only a big push towards its implementation.

There is also a need of an amendment for making it on the one hand more inclusive and on the other, mandatory rather than just voluntary in nature like per the current provisions.

Last but not the least, Oli, in one of his “grandeur” decisions, had declared the creation of 396 new public hospitals.

In the budget that was presented by his former Finance Minister just at the end of May, whose destiny is now totally uncertain with a new government in place, there were provisions for this herculean program whose implementation, provided that the resources will be available, risks to be marred by corruption and rent seeking.

Realizing these hospitals, in cooperation and partnership with the provinces and municipalities who are in charge now of public health, would truly provide a big breakthrough to enable the creation of a real national public health system.

Certainly, Deuba and the coalition of parties that will prop him up in the months ahead, including his Nepal Congress, are much keener than Oli towards the implementation of a truly federal state, a very complex undertaking that would never work out without the full support of parties in power in Kathmandu.

With so much at stake, Deuba would better ensure his legacy by effectively starving off a third Covid 19 wave and by building the columns of a more equitable, just public health system in Nepal.

The Author, is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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A woman, accompanied by a child, casts her vote during the general elections in Mozambique. Credit: UNDP/Rochan Kadariya

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jul 9 2021 (IPS)

These days there hasn’t been certainly a shortage of reports portraying the decline of liberal democracy around the world.

With rising popularism and a divisive use of social media, we should not be surprised about a general malaise taking roots in most advanced liberal democracies.

From the Freedom in the World 2021 report published by the Freedom House to the Democracy Index 2020 released by the Economist Intelligence Unit to the IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Indices there is more and more evidence that liberal and representatives’ democracies are under duress.

Could the ongoing debate about a New Social Contract, a concept launched by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, help revive one of the essential elements of any democratic society, people’s interest and participation in the civic life?

If his recent re-election at the helm of the United Nations might have dissipated doubts that this new idea was just a fad, what are the chances for this debate surrounding the New Social Contract to become an opportunity to enhance public engagement at local levels without further dividing the gulf between classic liberal democracies on one side and other nations adopting less democratic, more authoritarian political systems?

Provocatively, could such debate instead help nearing such the gap?

To set aside any doubts, inevitably, the New Social Contract is not about enhancing democracy around the world.

This would clearly a utopian proposition for the Secretary General to embrace but rather an attempt to rethink and improve, regardless of the political system being adopted, the norms between citizens and the state.

Initially coined during the 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in 2020, Guterres made the case for a more just and inclusive society centered around the fights against inequalities and discriminations because, he said, “People want social and economic systems that work for everyone”.

Members of the Madheshi community of Biratnagar attend a political rally to demand autonomous federal regions and greater representation in parliament. Credit: UN Photo/Agnieszka Mikulska

“The New Social Contract, between Governments, people, civil society, business and more, must integrate employment, sustainable development and social protection, based on equal rights and opportunities for all”.

As vague as it is in terms of boundaries and ultimate goals, the New Social Contract can be seen as a framework that can, not only revitalize our societies but also build a fairer, cleaner and just economy able to overcome the multiple challenges created by the pandemic.

The Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals attached to it, offer the blueprint upon which such idea can be built locally.

Being still a working in progress, the New Social Contract can offer an impetus not only at re-designing the relationships between social partners, governments, unions and businesses but it can also be a source to generate more interest among the population about public life.

Making sense of it especially from the perspective of youth can be challenging but it is essential doing so because we cannot imagine a renewed citizenry without including youth whose vast majorities are uninterested and disenchanted from the public discourse.

A possible pathway to generate new passions for civic life among youth would start from helping them being more informed about what is happening at local and national levels, something that can evolve to higher forms of deep interests.

The last stage of this continuum would be supporting them into embracing forms of direct engagement.

Engagement is driven by a strong interest for the public life and the willingness to turn such desire to know more into contributions, actions on the grounds.

Last year, UNV came up with a new volunteering framework that fully captures the different features and characteristics of giving your time, energies and skills for the public good.

Indeed, volunteerism with its different forms and dimensions, is one of the best tools to involve people and youth in particular in the public life.

That’s why it is not surprising that the upcoming UNV’s State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, is going to explain how volunteerism can be a true enabler for determinant for the New Social Contract.

More opportunities for public engagement will also generate more trust, an essential trait of any healthy and cohesive society and it is here where the ongoing efforts to localize the SDGs can make the difference by bringing people together for the common good, for achieving the goals at grassroots levels.

Achieving the SDGs at this level is not about just actions, about mobilization of resources of human, in kinds or financial nature. It is also about deliberation and here, after this long detour, I am reconnecting with the issue of democracy.

The design of a New Social Contract as a conducive platform to achieve the SDGs locally by involving people on the ground, can be a tool to elevate the quality of democratic discourse, generating platforms for a new form of shared decision making or shared governance.

Interestingly, while political parties wherever they operate, might become a hindrance to such change because their role as gatekeeper of public participation would be eroded, this conceptualization of shared governance might become of interest to nations not adhering to representative, parties dominated liberal systems.

In the field of political science there is a dynamic movement of social scientists exploring the concept of deliberative democracy that would allow, through different means, including sortition, to have new forms of real, rather than token, forms of public involvement and participation in the decision making.

It’s true that so far, most of the attempts putting in practice deliberative democracy have been applied in the contexts with solid liberal democratic traditions.

A diverse range of “experiments” have been carried out with the most successful probably being the Ostbelgien Modell adapted by the Parliament of the German-speaking Community of Belgium where there is a permanent Citizens’ Council that enable an ecosystem of Citizen’s Assemblies.

Ireland in the past used successfully some aspects of deliberative democracy to involve the general public in discussing and debating key constitutional issues that also helped generating consensus on gay marriage gender equality.

This legacy continues with a Citizens’ Assembly that recently submitted a report, after prolonged consultations and deliberations, on the issue of gender equality.

Iceland has been using a hybrid form of public deliberation, though led by a small number of elected citizens but with ample opportunities for people to crowdsource the nation’s constitution.

Other forms, with vary degree of success and with different level of inclusivity and decision-making power, were tried in two provinces of Canada, British Columbia and Ontario.

Within the growing area of deliberative democracy studies, there is now a great interest on the so-called “deliberative micro public” where a limited number of citizens gather to decide on certain issues of common interest.

If you have seen The Best of Enemies, a movie portraying an exercise of public deliberation about segregated learning in the Jim Crow’s United States in the early seventies, you get the idea about what these might look like.

Many of these lessons learned might also be of interest to policy makers whose political systems have not embraced democracy.

With the discussions still going on how the New Social Contract should look like at local levels and with the agenda of SDGs localization being recognized as instrumental to achieve the Agenda 2030, we could have an opportunity to advance stronger forms of public participation in the decision making locally and everywhere.

This would strengthen the meaning of good governance around the world while also creating new space for deliberations in contexts that normally shut them.

Perhaps deliberative participation, a term that might be easier to sell globally, if properly carried out at local levels, could become a cornerstone of the New Social Contract, reinvigorating classic democracy where already exists while creating space for others political systems to evolve and be more inclusive.

The Author, is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not for profit in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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Children work at a mine in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UN says child labour figure has risen to 160 million, as COVID puts many more at risk. Credit: UNICEF/Patrick Brown

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jun 11 2021 (IPS)

Among the many daunting issues leaders of the G7 will have to discuss in their upcoming summit in idyllic Cornwall on June 11-13, child labour won’t be on the official agenda.

Yet the latest figures jointly released by ILO and UNICEF in occasion of the upcoming World Day Against Child Labour on 12th June are depicting a very worrying scenario with unprecedented rise of children engaged in work.

“Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward”, the latest major publication on the issue, shows that there are now 160 million children in child labour, a rise of 8.4 million in the last four years, a very worrying, though unsurprising finding that is a major blow to the gains of the last two decades.

That’s why it is an imperative that the leaders of the G7 take a stand against this global plague, ensuring that any global strategy focused on “building forward better” must also enlist the fight against child exploitation as a top priority within a broader strategy to reset global development.

At legislative levels there are some encouraging developments that could pave the way for an holistic approach built on the Agenda 2030 that will create a global momentum around global target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The target, after which a global coalition against child labour is named, focuses on “taking immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.

For example, several countries around the world including France and Netherlands have in place a strong human rights due diligence legislation that compels major corporations to have more robust compliance mechanisms along the lines of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct.

The good news is that the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, is expected to come up with a wide-ranging reform package on a mandatory human rights due diligence by the end of year though there is fear this might be further delayed.

Though future negotiations within the complex decision-making system of the EU might water down the final legislation, there is no doubt that the expectations are so high and the level of ambition expected to be found in the final document so large that half cooked measures won’t be accepted by the Parliament whose consent is mandatory for the legislation to be approved.

Amid also news that the G7 is close to a deal on a global taxation agreement that will affect the major world corporations, we might assume that the best and most effective way to tackle child labour “head on” is to force corporates to step up their commitment towards human rights.

Probably this is the most pragmatic manner from a western’s point of view to have child labour again at the center of the global agenda.

Given the almost universal discontent against big business all over the world, this is also perhaps the safest bet to ensure that G7 and G20 nations will not overlook the fight against child labour from their proceedings.

While it is vital that the global leaders meeting over the weekend in a beautiful setting in Cornwall to take a stand on the issue, yet we should not neglect that, most of the times, child labour is a phenomenon thriving out of an enabling environment in the developing world, and in the worst cases, it is almost an intrinsic element of the local fabric.

Oftentimes working children are recruited by small, often informal micro businesses in the developing world, economic entities that are not even under the purview of local tax offices nor those of the mostly ineffective Labour authorities in charge of checking on child labour.

The ILO-UNICEF joint report is clear on this point when it explains that it is “much more common in rural areas with 122.7 million rural children in child labour compared to 37.3 million urban children where children are involved in agriculture related work.

To confirm the trend, according to the report, the “largest share of child labour takes place within families with “72 per cent of all child labour and 83 per cent of child labour among children aged 5 to 11 occurs within families, primarily on family farms or in family microenterprises.”

These insights prove how challenging the fight against child labour has always been in the last two decades despite very encouraging improvements worldwide.

Exercising pressures on big corporations alone won’t suffice also because many of the developing countries with high number of working children are not attractive enough to host manufacturing sites that elsewhere are technically run by local contractors often in breach of the most basic human rights provisions.

To really build forward better, G7 and the G20 need to go well beyond a much-needed equitable distribution and production of vaccines, a mammoth task itself.

They need to come up with ambitious plans that will mobilize massive amounts of resources in unprecedented figures that will help developing nations not only to transit towards a net zero future but doing so by also ensuring a far greater equity in the national development outcomes pursued by developing nations that must be inclusive of the most vulnerable segments of their populations.

It means dealing with child labour not as a standing alone problem but as a part of a bigger strategy able to close the faulting lines so common in many emerging nations, like weak public health and poor education, lack of dignified job opportunities, all scars of remarkable but unfair economic pre-pandemic growths that proved to be unable to truly trickle down.

World leaders should go tough on billionaires and uncanny global corporations but at the same time they should remember the fight against child labour is a priority and an essential pillar to build a more equitable world.

A way for them to start would be to come up with an urgent plan of action to back those nations in the Pathfinders Initiative, countries who showed in the past commitment against child labour but whose efforts are now at risk of a brutal reversal.

Bold action is a must especially if we do not want to make a contempt of Year for the Elimination of Child Labour that happens to be undergoing unnoticed by most.

Eliminating child labour by 2025 might be out of reality but taking meaningful actions in that direction now is not.

The Author, Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal, writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives. He can be reached at simone_engage@yahoo.com

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Excerpt:

The international community commemorates World Day Against Child Labour on June 12

Sunrise in the Ebro Delta in Spain's Catalonia region. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last month there was a 40% chance of the watershed global warming mark being met during the time frame, and these odds are increasing with time. Credit: WMO/Agusti Descarrega Sola

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jun 2 2021 (IPS)

With the climate negotiations getting more and more intense in the light of ensuring meaningful achievements in the upcoming COP- 26 summit in Edinburgh, an event that is key to move forward the pathway towards a net zero future started in Paris, this year World Environment Day on June 5 assumes an even more emblematic meaning.

While the ongoing climate negotiations have finally found relevance not only among policymakers but also among the masses thanks to new level of civic mobilization that is instrumental in creating a new global consciousness about the real perils of climate change, we are at risk of overlooking an equal important issue that is connected to the core of the climate challenge.

Fortunately, the World Environment Day 2021 could not choose a better topic to bring remedy here, finally highlighting the linkages between the dangers of a world economy driven by carbon fossils and the repercussions that emissions stemming from them and other types of human activities are having on the planet’s biodiversity.

To stress the new sense of urgency, that with “Ecosystem Restoration” as theme, World Environment Day is launching the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration that will be focusing on restoring, supporting and enhancing the planet’s different habitats in which life, of different forms and species, should supposedly abound and thrive rather than being at risk of extinction.

Restoring ecosystems should be therefore seen as a rallying cry, a call for action to ensure that biodiversity claims its due visibility in the broader call for a sustainable future under the banner of the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Policy makers are right now under pressure to come up with bolder and stronger emission targets and it is encouraging how a global leadership movement is emerging to tackle climate change.

If the Petersberg Climate Dialogue has now become a traditional forum, many other leaders from parts of the world’s previously less engaged on climate action, are stepping up.

Just days ago, the P4G Seoul Summit 2021 was held showing a new commitment from the Government of South Korea to become a trailblazer in matter of climate actions.

Yet, with so much discussions on climate change going on, the hope is not just that global leaders will muster the foresight and determination to truly lay out a long term “build forward better” vision of their countries but will also be able to bridge the gap that separate discussions on climate change from those focused on the planet’s endangered biodiversity.

Worryingly enough, the public opinion and consequentially the world leaders did not yet broaden their focus yet from the COP 26 discussions, enlarging their horizons to include another strategic summit that will be held from 11 to 24 of October in Kunming, formally the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Unfortunately, the global governance mechanisms do not facilitate cross cutting thematic linkages and therefore so far Edinburgh got much higher levels of attention than Kunming.

Yet, the same consensus existing now that new ambitious carbon emissions targets are essential for our survival, should also imply an acknowledgement on the need to elevate biodiversity to the same levels of attention and urgency that climate now musters.

The ninth Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity held in 2019 could not make a better case for such recognition.

“Scientists warn that we are heading for fundamental change in Earth systems as a result of changes in the biosphere” while stressing that “there are close links between the biodiversity and climate agendas, and it is well understood that a temperature rise of 1.5˚C will have impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function and services”.

With such high stakes at play it is baffling how we tend to neglect the importance of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets that were endorsed during the Tenth meeting of the Conference to the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held Nagoya, Japan, 18-29 October 2010

Kunming is even more important because it will adopt a post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that will be considered as “a steppingstone towards the 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature, where by 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and widely used, maintaining ecosystem services sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essentials for all people”.

The vision of a “2050 living in harmony” was agreed in Nagoya but it needs an urgent rebooting and this is what Kunming should deliver, a new ambitious agenda that is able to be mainstreamed across the policy spectrum.

Indeed, mainstreaming is one of the biggest issues being discussed in the preparations to the Kunming summit.

In the regional consultation workshop on the post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework for Asia and Pacific, participants highlighted the missing linkages between work in the field of biodiversity, climate change and the overall SDGs framework.

“With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is a need to consider how future biodiversity targets will relate to or compliment the Sustainable Development Goals. Similarly, the need to link future biodiversity targets to the climate change agenda was also noted”, the report of the workshop explains.

Fortunately, there are some good news for us.

In the last official review of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, Protected Planet Report, there have been good progress in the extension of lands and oceans being protected but “a third of key biodiversity areas lack any coverage, and less than 8% of land is both protected and connected”.

In addition, the overall “quality” of such protected areas remains a question that must be addressed urgently, a concern well highlighted by Naville Ash with UNEP:

An interesting though much unexplored linkage between efforts on biodiversity and climate action is the “importance of nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation” and this is a huge area open for a global brainstorming and ideation process, reimagining different, more biodiverse and sustainable living settings.

These days the third session of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-3) of the Convention on Biological Diversity is taking place virtually in order to make the next biodiversity framework more effective, more streamlined and better relevant to the discussions taking in place around climate change.

We need to formulate a new narrative about biodiversity because at the end of the day it is a different side of the same coin and policy makers must be educated on strong linkages between climate change and biodiversity loss.

It is not surprising that resources needed for such “coupling” approach are going to be huge. According to the State of Finance for Nature report, released on the 27th of May, making a much-needed contribution in linking the two areas of biodiversity and climate, a total investment in nature of USD 8.1 trillion is required between now and 2050.

As you can see this year World Environment Day is not like any previous one.

There are two questions that this day should help reflect over: Will the celebrations ensure that the new UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is going to be aligned with climate change discussions and Agenda 2030?

And will it help create a new sense of awareness and urgency that tackling climate change requires the protection and expansion of our wealth expressed in biodiversity and, at the same time, gigantic resources?

Answering these two questions in the right way will determine the odds human beings will have to truly thrive in the decades ahead.

The Author, is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not for profit in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives. He can be reached at simone_engage@yahoo.com

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The following Oped is part of a series of articles to commemorate World Environment Day June 5

In Beijing, China, 11th grader Xiaoyu studies at home while her mother also works remotely. Credit: UNICEF/UNI304636/Ma

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, May 5 2021 (IPS)

Children all over the world are having tough times while coping with the consequences of the pandemic but the circumstances affecting them in the Philippines are even more daunting.

The learning crisis that has been affecting millions of vulnerable children deprived of their education throughout the lockdown as schools remain shut, is probably its most visible example whose resolution will require strategic vision, long term commitment and a holistic dimension all together.

The situation remains even more worrisome due to the draconian regulations surrounding the imposition of strict lockdown measures for minors within Metro Manila Council, where children have been prohibited from going out since March.

The controversial decision did not come out of the blue but instead builds on rules being enforced by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, whose decisions have been defined as opaque by the Economist.

Throughout the lockdown the Task Force took a hardline position forcing millions of children to strictly abide to home stay regulations, basically indicting them to something resembling reclusion and segregation.

The measure has been widely condemned across the spectrum as disproportionate and too much restricting of the rights of the children.

“These measures should consider the highest level of acceptability and feasibility, proven effectiveness and should minimize the negative consequences on health and well-being of all members of society” according to an official statement by UNICEF Philippines released on March 19.

Certainly, there is not an easy way out to ensure that children from most vulnerable communities can have their rights fully re-enforced as the pandemic has exposed long simmering fractures in the system that have systematically penalized poor kids.

Ideally, a common solution to the problem should be found within ASEAN but till then, the onus goes on better policy making that should be open to collaborations and partnerships.

Closing the digital divide would allow better conditions for disadvantaged kids not to be left behind in any future scenario where another pandemic might strike.

It means huge investment from the Government but also from the telecom sector together with resources being allocated by external development partners like the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the European Union and others.

Reaching out to the most vulnerable segments of the citizenry with appropriate technology would create the market incentives for a massive rollout of fast connectivity that, if properly subsidized, would create incentives to telecoms to invest in the most deprived areas of the country, including urban pockets with high levels of vulnerability.

At the same time, an inclusive digital blueprint, a goal also being pursued collectively at ASEAN level, will not make up for other types of investments the education sector is desperately in need for.

The Philippines like many low-income nations must prioritize investments in public education from better teaching to better equipped infrastructures to a wider social protection system with financial measures directly targeting the most vulnerable children and their families.

The challenge is to strike a balance between short terms needs and longer terms benefits, using the current crisis instrumentally, laying the foundations for more equitable child focused public services, assuring a national framework but also a locally effective governance systems that prioritize children’s needs.

Obviously, education and health are the key cornerstones of such a new child centered approach to government.

UNICEF has been trying to provide a global template on how to effectively ensure that minors are not paying the highest price while enduring the perverse effects of this pandemic.

The A Six Point Plan to Protect Our Children is a blueprint on how to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on children, covering areas from inclusive education to equitable health service to better child protection measures and stronger actions to access clean water, sanitation and hygiene without losing the focus on climate change.

“For education, we are working with DepEd and DOH to establish a system for up-to-date, real-time risk assessment of critical populations to map out risk levels and service gaps across DepEd regions/schools divisions and districts/schools to be used for scenario-building, planning and budgeting for safe school reopening” according to UNICEF Philippines Representative Oyunsaikhan Dendevnorov.

Re-opening schools remain a priority for the Philippines and more could be done to come up with joint responses to the learning crisis from the region, considering that the issues faced by children in the Philippines are shared with other low-income nations within the ASEAN.

Unfortunately, the latest meeting of the ASEAN Education Ministers, coordinated by the Philippines, happened on the 20th of November last year and the next one is only supposed to be scheduled for 2022.

During that meeting the Philippines championed the idea of “Transforming Education the ASEAN Way: Forging Partnerships in the Age of Global Disruptions” but this looks more like a catchy slogan than a well thought plan.

The recently held meeting of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (SOC-COM), under which children related issues fall, also did not provide any transformational solution and was the usual long declaration short in practical actions.

With regional cooperation unable to provide the required impetus to improve the immediate needs of children in the Philippines, then it is essential to come up with concrete measures that can help localize and adapt the UNICEF’s six-point action.

First of all, the strictest aspects of this lockdown now enforced in the Capital region must urgently be addressed as its consequences will have an impact too severe on children especially on their emotional wellbeing.

As the mayors of Metro Manila have started deliberating the so called “flexible” modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), such new arrangements must ensure that right to education of the most disadvantaged children.

With the current school year approaching its end BY mid-July, perhaps it is time for some experimentation focused on ensuring a smooth start of the new academic year slated for the 23rd of August.

Working on the digital divide and fixing the problems faced by the Department of Education while imparting distance learning should be a priority.

On this front there are certainly many lessons learned, as admitted by Education Undersecretary Alain Pascua.

Improving distance learning from the quality perspective and working on the equity side with investment in accessible technologies and digital infrastructures should not come at the expenses of immediate action for a partial return to face-to-face education.

In this regard, pilot experiments should be held to allow kids to be back in the classroom with different modalities being tested, including blended learning modalities with shifts and half classmates attending physically while others digitally wherever possible.

For example, as soon as the situation will allow, those children staying at home could gather in smaller groups within their neighborhoods, an effort that could be supported by a national call for action in which graduate students will step in as support teachers.

There is also a lot of potential in the Department of Education’s Alternative Learning System (ALS) that is centered around the concept of flexibility that is so paramount for vulnerable children who have dropped out from school.

Further scaling the research work carried out in this area by De La Salle University with the support of the World Bank could be a smart investment to be undertaken. Ensuring better targeted approaches to fight the increasing levels of child poverty is also essential.

“Support to data collection to provide timely information on the situation of children and families, and advocating increased spending for the most vulnerable children and coverage of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) to include all children living in poverty”, are essential and tasks Unicef Philipines is committed to contribute as Dendevnorov further explains.

Getting this right is a complex process but the Government of the Philippines has to step up its commitments to ensure the rights of children are fully upheld, balancing short term needs with longer terms planning.

On the latter, there is also an opportunity to re-think the entire education system, not only making it pandemic proof but also transformative and quality based as well, ensuring a learning experience that will positively shape children’ up brining.

This is the proposal from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry that is putting together a task force to come up with a list of recommendations that would address the fault lines of the educational system being exposed by the pandemic.

This task force will start operating amid calls for a new official education commission to be designed on broader reforms, possibly charting what has been defined as a “realistic road map” for change, leveraging new collaborations between the government and the private sector and civil society that could bring positive outcomes for the future of the learning in the country. ‘

Will any discussions on educational policy reform putting at the center of the deliberations the interests of the most vulnerable children, not only from a quality learning perspective but also from a child protection dimension?

While better exchange of information and the pursuit of a common approach within ASEAN would be desirable in winning the challenge of inclusive learning in a post pandemic world, for now it is up to the Government of the Philippines to work in partnership with the civil society, the private sector and international organizations for holistic and child centered solutions.

It is a gigantic challenge ahead, charting out doable and practical actions in the immediate while drastically reform the way education is imparted in the country.

Only a long-term vision followed by steadfast political commitment and a genuine desire to be open to collaboratives, will offer the right blueprint for a renewed focus on children’s wellbeing in the country.

*The Author writes on social inclusion, volunteerism, youth development, regional integration and the SDGs in the context of Asia Pacific.

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Thousands of men, women and children fall victim each year to human trafficking, a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. The 18-year-old girl (pictured) was taken to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and promised work as a housekeeper but forced to become a sex worker. Credit: UNICEF/UN045727/Pirozzi

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Apr 20 2021 (IPS)

The numbers are so staggering that is hardly imaginable striking a positive tone about the situation of child trafficking in Nepal and yet some positive developments are occurring here in a country that soon could be set to graduate from the group of least developing countries.

Only last week a story was published about seven girls aged between 10-18 from a district neighboring India that had gone missing but luckily were found safe by the Indian police and returned back to their families.

The existence of an open border between the two countries poses one of the greatest challenge in fighting child trafficking as also explained by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi in a program held in December 2020. This is just one episode amid an ongoing crisis that is affecting thousands of children every single year.

For example, on the 2nd of April, the national police arrested five men accused of trafficking and forcing to prostitution underage teenage girls.

Unbelievably as it might seem, according to the official data from the Government of Nepal, around 300 children, with girls being in the majority, go missing because of child trafficking.

Those ending up in India, deceived and entrapped without apparent escape, are forced into a circle of exploitation and abuse that will mark their lives, while for others their subjugation means a new life characterized by misuse and ill treatment in the Gulf countries.

At the same time, we should not forget the heinous patterns of enslavement within Nepal that feed many industries, from entertainment to construction to public transportation. While boys are also victimized, it is clear that child trafficking is particularly hard on underage girls that become objectified as domestic and sexual workers.

In all the cases, none of the children dragged into these abuses know if one day will be able to be rescued, rehabilitated and have a chance to start their lives anew.

#EndHumanTrafficking visual. According to the UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 30% of human trafficking victims are children. Credit: UNODC

A recent report published by the Ministry of Women, Children, and Senior Citizens portrays the situation even in starker terms with estimates that 2,729 children, including 831 boys and 1,898 girls, were reported missing in fiscal 2019- 20, a stunning number but still a reduction in comparison to the previous year when 3,422 had been missing.

Probably the only factor that contributed to the slowdown was the closing of the international borders due to the pandemic but with the lockdown that followed hitting the poorest the most and with a second wave of the virus now reaching the country, it is very realistic to imagine a much worse scenario in the months ahead with more and more children finishing in the networks of unscrupulous traffickers, many of which are relatives or known people.

The economic boom that followed the signing of the peace agreements and the abolition of the monarchy did not materialize in positive advantages for the most vulnerable segments of the population, another evidence that trickle down economy only works to help the middle class move on the social economic ladder.

Despite the gloomy scenario, we are witnessing some positive developments that might help revert the trend and constitute important steps towards ending child exploitation in the country.

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons of the US State Department in the latest edition of its annual Trafficking in Persons Report published in 2020 highlights the challenges faced by the country but also recognizes some important improvement, especially in terms of the Government’s commitment to eradicate the problem.

First of all, Nepal ratified the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons also known as Palermo Protocol that came into force in the country on the 16th of June 2020.

It is an important legislative milestone that is now prompting the Government to amend the Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, making it a more robust legislation able to better deter and punish those engaging in acts of children’s trafficking.

Due to the complexity of the issue, other legislations have to be amended including the Foreign Employment Act but also The Immigration Act, exposing the links between child trafficking, force labor and abuses in foreign employment.

The National Child Rights Council is a new institution that builds on the legacy of the Central Child Welfare Board and was born out of Section 59 of the Children’s Act 2018, the recent piece of legislation aimed at modernizing the entire approach to child protection in the country.

Just recently the Council was able to rescue 53 children in Nepal involved in street vending selling items like water and food through local contractors that have been recommended to the Labor Office for prosecution.

Now these children are being protected, thanks to the Council, in safe shelters with the goal of having them reunified with their families as soon as the conditions will allow.

“We are expanding in, cooperation with the Provincial Governments, our outreach in all the seven provinces and soon we will be able to have a stronger presence throughout the nation” says Milan Raj Dharel who has been involved in the field of child protection for his entire life, first working with established civil society organizations and now as founding executive director of the Council.

In order to better intervene in the incidents of child trafficking like the one involving the seven girls, the Council, explains Dharel, is working to systematize cross border rescue protocols so that it will be easier for children rescued in India to be repatriated back to Nepal.

Moreover, some improvements have been also made in the sensitive process of de-institutionalization, closing many faked orphanages that have been taking advantage of and profiting out of the hosted children.

It is still a serious problem, said Dharel, but important achievements have been taken in this regard but at least stronger regulations are in place and very importantly, these are now being enforced.

“Another area we are working with is the upcoming entering in force of new Child’s Rights Rules” that we expect to be endorsed within the end of the May this year”.

According to Dharel, with the new Children’s Act in place, it is now imperative to have the new rules endorsed that will better reflect the transformation of the country in a federal republic where many powers are enshrined with locally elected governments and provinces.

The new regulations will also codify the existence of two child help lines, the 104 being managed by the central police with technical support of the Council and the 1098 that instead is managed, always with Council’s help, by CWIN, a leading civil society organization working in the area of child protection.

According to its official data, only in 2021, 492 case were registered by the 1098 help line, the majority of which were made by female with abuse and child marriage resulting as the two main causes for the requests of help, reinforcing the rationale that only long term solutions encompassing a full spectrum of support, including better social protection schemes directly reaching out the most vulnerable families, are the answers to the complex factors underpinning child abuses, including trafficking.

According to Dharel, the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Affairs, is working to ensure that the amendments to the Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act will be tabled in the next winter session if the situation allows as Nepal is undergoing a delicate situation politically and fresh elections might be called soon.

Despite the objective difficulties of the problem itself and the instability that the country faces, the fact that in this particular sphere of governance, focused on ensuring better life prospects for the most vulnerable children, there is a political will to act and improve the existing legislations whereas needed and finally enforcing them is definitely encouraging.

Partnerships with civil society organizations remain indispensable as they play a big role in stopping and rescuing many minors as well more efforts are required to ensure intra-institutional collaborations within the organs of the State, including with the National Human Rights Commission that since 2005 has been publishing the flagship annual National Report on Trafficking In Persons in Nepal.

Will the country be able to do more, leveraging its “whole of system” approach, mobilizing more partnerships and innovative social programs to root out the causes of child trafficking and finally shut down this dark business that still enriches many and victimizes many more innocent minors?

*Simone Galimberti writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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People walk down a street of shops in Kathmandu, Nepal. Credit: World Bank/Peter Kapuscinski

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 11 2021 (IPS)

There is hardly a better way to promote human rights in Nepal than celebrating Muskan Khatun for being one of the winners of the prestigious International Women of Courage (IWOC) Award, released on the International Women’s Day by the Government of the United States of America.

As an acid attack survivor, Khatun, despite her young age, turned herself into a courageous advocate. Her work, together with many of her peers, themselves victims, was instrumental, in pressing the Government of Nepal to enact tougher regulations against the perpetrators of acid and burn violence.

With Kathun being rightly celebrated as an icon, will now the government be able to match the same level of commitment shown by her and many others victims of human rights abuses?

It should be the case as Nepal has been recently re-elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council, UNHRC, a prestigious position that the country could leverage to become a global trendsetter in upholding and promoting human rights.

In occasion to the recently held 2nd cycle of the Universal Periodic Review, UPR the only human rights accountability mechanism at global level, the Government has projected a very confident self-image, depicting a fairly positive picture on status of human rights in the country.

While it is unsurprising for a Government to push forward such narrative, the reality is much more complex and less optimistic than depicted.

It is true that at legislative and policy levels, an array of actions have been taken, mostly centered on the introduction of the new National Penal Code of 2017 and the Criminal Procedure (Code) Act of 2017.

Through these changes, previous provisions in matter of persecution of human rights abusers, especially in relation to sexual abuses, have been toughened and brought closer to the international standards.

Yet while it is important to recognize such steps, more should be expected from a member of the Human Rights Council like Nepal, a country that highly upholds democracy and pluralism in its Constitution and is often seen as a success story in terms of post conflict national reconciliation.

The areas where the country needs to step up its commitment, bridging the gap between rhetoric and facts on the grounds, are certainly not lacking. It is not only the perennial issue of transitional justice, since years in a stalemate that reflects the fears and insecurity many top political leaders feel about being held accountable.

“It is a countrywide effort to advance truth and justice that the state must facilitate as a collective process involving communities, political and religious leaders, and citizens” shares Madhav Joshi. In absence of political leadership, the only option to move forward the peace process rests with survivors and victims’ families and other activists.

Removing the existing roadblocks in restorative justice, ensuring culprits are brought to book might help shifting gears in other human rights dimensions that warrant urgent attention.

Nepal, for example, did not ratify yet the Convention against Torture nor took any action in relation to its Optional Protocol, a consequence of the existing situation in dealing with its conflict. The new Criminal Code, approved in 2017, extended prison terms to a maximum of five years but as explained by Amnesty International in its recommendations to the UPI, this is not enough.

“Punishments are not proportionate to the gravity of a crime under international law. A separate anti-torture bill, pending in Parliament since 2014, fell short of international legal requirements”.

In addition, the new provisions are comparatively weak especially in relation to a six-month limitation period to file complaints as “under international law, acts of torture must not be subject to a statute of limitations” as explained by a consortium of leading international and national human rights organizations.

As consequences, tortures are still too common in detention, reports Advocacy Forum-Nepal, a leading human rights organization. Those paying the highest price are members of minority groups like Dalits that end up being disproportionally targeted despite an amendment to the Caste Based Discrimination and Untouchability (Offence and Punishment) (CBDU) Act that increased the minimum sentencing to three months.

The situation clearly reflects stigmas and perceptions that are so rooted and common against members of other minorities, including persons with disabilities, LGBTQ community that face discrimination on daily basis.

We can notice a trend: improvements in the law that, despite their deficiencies, should have an important impact on the ground, are not able yet to bring tangible results in the reduction of human rights abuses.

Exemplary is the case of sexual abuses and gender violence: there have been positive legislative developments in the areas of rape and sexual abuses but the statute of limitations, extended to one year, is still “too short and fosters impunity for the crime of rape” as explained Human Rights Watch in its submission for the recently concluded UPR cycle.

At community level, there are still too often accidents including rapes and grave abuses that often remain unresolved like in the case of the murder of Nirmala Pant. The gap between action at legislative and policy spheres and lack of progress on the ground can be explained by the levels of implementation of the previous recommendations provided to Nepal in the previous UPR cycle in 2015.

“The majority of those concerning enforced disappearance, extra-judicial killings, impunity and transitional justice, remain unimplemented” is explained by TRIAL International, Human Rights and Justice Center and the THRD Alliance.

This is certainly a record that should not belong to a country who is for a second consecutive term in the UNHRC. The fact that the National Human Rights Commission has been crippled by a serious lack of cooperation from the Government in fulfilling the vast majority of its recommendations is worrisome and dangerous.

It is evident that enforcement is the real issue and the partial steps in the right direction should not overlook a culture of impunity that remains hard to be eradicated where abuses continues, many going unpunished.

Amrit Bahadur Rai, Nepal’s permanent representative to the United Nations as reported by the Kathmandu Post shared that the re-election of Nepal to the Human Rights Council “is also a recognition of Nepal’s efforts in protection and promotion of human rights both at home and across the globe, including through our peacekeepers,” If Nepal wants really become a torchbearer of human rights in its own country and around the world, then it must do more. Victims turned into human rights defenders like Muskan Khatun are surely going to remind the government of is responsibilities.

As for the case of more stringent regulations to punish the perpetrators of acid and burn violence, where the citizens were the ones who played an indispensable role in propping up the Government, holding it accountable, human rights defenders and members of the civil society are the ones that must remain engaged and vigilant.

They must be helped and supported.

The international community should step up their approach to human rights, helping keeping the government of Nepal accountable to its obligations, supporting it towards becoming a beacon for human rights standards.

*Simone Galimberti writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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Rural woman farmer Chandra Kala Thapa works in the fields near Chatiune Village, Nepal. Over $39 million has been earmarked by a UN-backed fund to combat effects of climate change in Nepal. Credit: UN Women/Narendra Shrestha

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 16 2021 (IPS)

Raju Pandit Chhetri is one of the most acclaimed climate change policy experts in Nepal and South Asia. As Director of the Prakiriti Resource Centre, an action focused think tank based in Kathmandu, Pandit Cheetri shares his opinion on the latest climate focused policies being undertaken by the Government of Nepal, especially the 2nd Nationally Determined Contribution NDC that was recently submitted by the Government.

Q: Before discussing the second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) released by the Government in December, what is your assessment of the first one published in October 2016?

Raju: The first NDC was much more inclusive as it tried to balance between the adaptation, mitigations and means of implementation. It was done it a short period of time and no proper format existed then. It was prepared to demonstrate Nepal’s commitment to the Paris Agreement.

Q: Coming now to the second NDC, it states that “Nepal is formulating a long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategy by 2021 with the aim to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050”. Given the fact that Nepal’s emissions are minimal, were you expected such goal?

Raju: Given the emission scenario and context of Nepal, achieving net-zero GHG by 2050 is doable, if there is political commitment and actions, we can achieve this even earlier. It’s great that Nepal has this vision and wants to implement it via a strategy. Given Nepal’s forest coverage, potential for renewable energy and low per capita emission this is a realistic target. Nationally we need to do more.

Q: Shouldn’t the NDC be already providing a roadmap to achieve this goal? Do we need another strategy just because the NDC document is fairly a generic one?

Raju: I guess for now, the NDC is more of a visioning paper for next five to 10 years. It would have been good if the details were presented but, in any case, for a least developed country (LDC) country with insignificant amount of carbon emission, it isn’t a bad thing. The current version does give the vision if not every detail of the targets. However, it is true that Nepal just loves preparing policies, plans and strategies rather than focusing on implementation. We have great policies not actions, unfortunately.

Q: There has been skepticism about net-zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050, especially in relation to the financial contributions that Nepal is committing itself (we are talking only of mitigation measures here) through what are called the unconditional commitment that will amount to $ 3.4 billion, resources that Nepal is pledging to mobilize on its own. Is it feasible?

Raju: The total cost gives at US$ 25 billion for mitigation and Nepal’s own share is arbitrary (don’t know where this is coming from). There is no basis for accounting and detail analysis. Principally, it would have been better if the numbers with commitments from Nepal were not there, after all Nepal’s emission is very low and with no historical responsibility.

However, there is no harm in submitting the second NDCs, it’s great to demonstrate that even a country like Nepal is serious on climate actions and would pressurize the rich responsible countries to come forward. But I do agree that this rush did not help in making the NDC preparation process inclusive and participatory. This is a fundamental drawback. This process would have avoided many of the shortcomings such as finance targets and making it mitigation centric.

Q: Do you think that Nepal’s proposed graduation from the group of LDCs (to the status of a middle income country) in 2024 can have a negative impact for the country’s efforts to find the needed external resources to implement the 2nd NDC?

Raju: When Nepal graduates, it will lose some of the privileges which it enjoyed as a LDC country. However, this may not matter in the short term because there is also transitional period, which it can enjoy for a few more years. Having said that if development process advances to making it a developing country from LDC then it also comes with responsibility and enhanced ability, which it must embrace. It must find other avenues and create opportunities for itself. The good thing is Nepal is often one of the favorites to donors hence, the politics must work on this favorable condition in the short and long run.

Q: Between adaptation and mitigation, how to strike the right balance? In a recent interview, you highlighted that this second NDC should have been more focused on adaptation. Why not being ambitious developing a greener economy as well?

Raju: I am always for developing a greener economy, I would even go further to say that we need much more concrete actions to reduce air pollution, import less fossil fuel and adopt a green development pathway. However, given the global scenario, Nepal is one of the lowest carbon emitting countries but highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This is being clearly seen in the areas of climate induced disasters like landslide and floods. Nepal suffers from food insecurity, poverty, water issues and many other development issues hence in this context- adaptation should not be less prioritize. Nepal’s NDC fails to realize this current reality. NDC is an international document that we submit to international organization (UNFCCC) hence in that context adaptation is always Nepal’s priority. My comment was not that we should not do mitigation but rather give due weightage to adaptation actions reflecting the reality of the county.

Q: What should we expect from the upcoming National Adaptation Plan, NAP?

Raju: There is also a huge adaptation gap in Nepal and we are way behind in fulfilling this gap. NAP should clearly state the current situation of country’s adaptation need and areas of vulnerability. In this context, provide adequate information and focus areas where adaptation is a dire need. It should help prioritize the areas of intervention, partners, identify issues, and ways to address them. Currently, NAP is in the process of making in Nepal, hope this is soon completed and this can be a basis for adaptation actions in the country.

Q: In terms of mitigation in the NDC, there are ambitious forestry targets like maintaining 45% of total area of the country under forest cover in addition to bold announcements on reducing pollution in the transportation sector. Do you remain hopeful the targets will be met?

Raju: It is good that Nepal is having some bold targets but this is not easy for Nepal to meet with the current priorities and enabling environment. There are lots of conflicting aspects when it comes to what is in the policy and what is done in practice. For sure, there is need to maintain our forest cover, address pollution in the cities, manage growing waste and significantly replace the imported fossil fuel by renewable energy. However, this is not possible merely putting it in NDC without actions. Political commitment should ensure partnership between the government, private sectors, financers and other partners to achieve these targets.

Q: Prakriti Resources Centre was one of the leading forces behind the Climate and Development Dialogue in 2019. How useful are such stakeholders ‘meetings?

Raju: We do regular meetings and gathering to share ideas and experiences from the policy to the implementation level. There are about 12 members in the dialogue who regularly exchange information on climate and development issues. We also make policy suggestions and inputs to the government. Many of our inputs have been incorporated into the policy documents. We continue to advocate for the affective implementation of these plans and policies.

Q: With the 2nd NDC being published, what should the government do now? What is the civil society planning to do? Are you going to play a role in shaping the formation of the numerous new “climate” institutions, including the Inter-Ministerial Climate Change Coordination Committee (IMCCCC) and the Climate Change Resource Center? In addition, the NDC says that by 2030, all 753 local governments will prepare and implement climate-resilient and gender-responsive adaptation plans. Is this realistic?

Raju: We will continue to be vigilant on what government does on climate actions – both in terms of policy implementation and raising new issues. We will support where needed but also push on what needs to be done.

There are a lot of things that the government needs to do both in terms of climate adaptation and mitigation. We have not even entered into the debate of loss and damage. A few months back ICIMOD and UNDP produced a report that 25 glacial lake in the Himalayas are at the risk of out-bursting. This is a huge issue for a country like, imagine one lake out bursting and it causing harm in the downstream. This is a case of loss and damage.

Government cannot just make policies and promise, it needs to acts through appropriate institutions, allocating finance and ensuring that the actions are taking place at the local level. Government has promised to make adaptation plans in all the 753 local governments and this cannot merely be an empty promise. It needs to fulfil the promise to meet the expectation of the climate vulnerable communities. But for this high degree of political commitment is a must. It needs to start from awareness building of the local governments and supporting them with technical inputs.

Q: What do you hope Glasgow 2021 will achieve? The Prakriti Resources Centre together with its peers within the Climate Finance Advisory Service, extensively analyzed the disbursement pledge of USD 100 billion goal in annual commitments from the developed countries. Where are we?

Raju: COP26 should help raise the climate ambitions so that the world is in track to achieve 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Currently, we are heading to 3 degree world or beyond. By COP26 every country should submit an ambitious NDCs. In order to achieve this, climate finance will play a major role. Developed countries are falling short in fulfilling their promise of meeting the climate finance targets of US$100 billion per year by 2020. This gap should be filled in only then the developing countries will be able to take climate actions. The money should be balance both for mitigation and adaptation, while also prioritizing loss and damage. Developed countries have been double counting their ODA as climate finance, this should not be the case but sincere effort must be made to support climate vulnerable countries like Nepal.

Q: Last but not the least, what are your suggestions to a young graduate in Nepal that would embrace the work you are doing?

Raju: Working in the area of climate change looks appealing but without perseverance it does not last long. This is a wide open and multisectoral area hence focus is imperative. It is not easy as it sounds otherwise, we would have long back solved the problem, in fact we are nowhere near it. No doubt, more young people should join the movement and work on climate change because this is the issue about their future. However, the work must be backed by keen interest to build one’s knowledge, motivation and dedication.

To have more information about Prakiriti Resource Centre, please visit www.prc.org.np
To have more information about Climate Finance Advisory Service, please visit https://www.cfas.info/en
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A former United Nations staff member, a UN volunteer in New York city, shows medical supplies that were donated to fight COVID-19. Credit: United Nations/Robert Macpherson

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

After the pioneer Global Technical Meeting on Volunteerism last July, a recently-held on-line follow up helped gathering new insights from experts and practitioners from the world on how to move forward with positioning volunteering at the center of development agenda.

The main outcome of the July’s forum, jointly organized by UNV and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, was a new blueprint, the global Call for Action, aimed at boosting and reinvigorating the role volunteerism in promoting a better, more equal and more sustainable world.

We have now a new strategic approach that can truly leverage the power of volunteering by focusing on innovation, inclusion and informal actions, the latter a big breakthrough that recognizes how deeply ingrained the foundations of volunteerism are in so many societies and cultures, especially in less economically developed nations.

There is now also a new momentum to break away with a silos approach that saw volunteering as an “add on” in an already packed development agenda.

Instead, its complementarity role together with balancing local and informal traditions while embracing social innovation, including data driven new technologies, is now going to shape a new volunteering paradigm.

It also recognizes it as a tool for personal and professional development that could benefit those excluded from the benefits of the globalization, for example youth out of the job market and out of education as well as other disenfranchised citizens.

Thanks to the online follow conversation enabled by UNV, we know that on the grounds there are many best practices and such forums help establishing a global community of volunteerism promoters that can learn from each other and move forward the agenda.

Among the insights, many developing countries normally considered as “laggers” are instead pioneers in policies, legislation and institutions focused on volunteerism.

For example, Nigeria, also thanks to the active role of the civil society, has developed a very interesting blueprint to promote volunteerism across the country.

In Togo there is a specific law enacted in 2011 regulating volunteerism and since 2014 the National Agency for Volunteering in Togo, ANVT, is the national enabler of volunteering action within the country.

Always in Western Africa, Sierra Leone has a network of volunteering promoting agencies while Kenya has a national volunteering policy and a national volunteering service program directly promoted by the President of the country.

Young volunteers clean garbage from the Yamuna River banks in India. Credit: UNDP India/Sudhanshu Malhotra

In the Asia Pacific region, the Philippines has one of the strongest volunteering “infrastructures” while Nepal, another country rich in local forms of self-help, is also working on a volunteering policy.

Yet despite these positive stories, volunteering keeps being sidelined and struggles to gain the deserved “notoriety” within the development agenda.

The fact that the Global Technical Meeting was entitled “Re-imagining Volunteerism” is itself heartening because, after all, with the new Decade of Action started, we really need to double our efforts to re-vitalize volunteerism not just as a tool for a better and more effective policy making that is able to involve and engage the citizens, but also as a way of living to be embraced by more and more people.

In a way volunteering or the BIG V as I like to call it, should become a new norm, a new way of living that should be literally become a natural component of our lives.

It is not going to be easy but we have to give a big try not only at policy level but also at grassroots levels, better recognizing what already exists while also conquering new grounds, making volunteerism more attractive and appealing for those who never embraced it in life.

Locally, Alice Chadwick and Bianca Fadel in a paper for the International Association for Volunteer Effort, IAVE, that in the past 6 months held a series of important online discussions, highlight how “community volunteering should not be a means of delivering externally defined agendas, but rather should start from the premise that community-based volunteers are already designing and delivering responses to challenges based upon their community’s priorities and in turn building their own resilience”

They call this approach “supportive solidarity” in which external forms of help, including formal volunteering, strengthen rather than erase localized forms of community centered development.
Galina Bodrenekova, a pioneer of volunteerism in Russia, highlights the importance of volunteering centers that could be run by local NGOs but also by local youth clubs.

Affordability and cost-effectiveness indeed are going to play a big part if we want to expand such local infrastructures to be able to attract, together with new online platforms, new volunteers.

Involving and engaging learning institutions at all the levels is going to be paramount: while universities could do much more to promote a culture of altruism and solidarity, primary and secondary schools have a big role to play as well.

Now we need more awareness, visibility and willingness to do more.

We also need more resources.

Certainly, UNV and the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement have a huge task ahead and hopefully they will receive the much-needed support from the international community to scale up their operations and help making volunteering becoming a natural choice for the majority of world citizens.

Partnerships are going to be key as recognized by the global Call for Action: locally, nationally and internationally, we need more collaborations, we need more synergies and a stronger and better marketing “plan” to attract more people to service.

While harnessing the traditions already on the ground, we need big corporates to step up their game.

Many of them already promote corporate volunteerism but we need to do more to create a global enabling system to strengthen volunteerism everywhere.

The national volunteering awards, often supported by UNV globally, should become the “grand finale” of months of joint activities implemented by networks, formal and informal as well, engaging local actors eager to promote volunteerism.

Perhaps we need some global icons to help leveraging volunteerism as one of the best mechanisms to achieve the SDGs and ensure a more resilient and sustainable planet.

There is no challenge faced by the planet Earth that cannot be addressed by also tapping into volunteers’ skills and creativity.

The ongoing climate action activism is one of the best expressions of this force in action.
Perhaps we need partnerships with national and global social media companies that are now in need to mend many of their practices.

Maybe we could partner with global broadcasters to showcase every 5th of December, the International Volunteer Day, the global best practices and engage the masses.

At policy level, we need to make stronger the case of volunteerism.

If we want to achieve the SDGs, we need more volunteers not to play the role of substitutes of the governments but rather be there on the ground as their allies.

This would be one of the best ways to do what in jargon is called “localizing” the SDGs.

Negotiations are going on to decide the format of the 2021 High Level Political Forum where members of the United Nations will voluntarily disclose their national efforts to achieve the SDGs.

There will be a whopping 44 nations, some of them presenting their results and future plans for the first time while others doing it for a second or even third time.

Would it make sense to make it mandatory in these Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) as these presentations are called, to embed the contributions of volunteerism in their overall efforts?
Some nations are already doing it but without being given the due credit and recognition.

To make the Decade of Action a truly success, we need to have stronger volunteerism enabling and promoting systems everywhere, locally and globally.

It is truly the time to be bold and innovative.

E-mail: simone_engage@yahoo.com
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Only positive discrimination can help persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups to access to the job market. Credit: UNDP, Nepal

By Krishna Gahatraj and Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 4 2021 (IPS)

In Nepal, a dominating culture traditionally representing the elites, the so-called higher castes of the society according to the Hindu culture, still endures and prevails.

As consequence access to power is escaping those who really need a chance to get it most, those disenfranchised and disempowered.

Persons with disabilities, members of the dalits that according to the Hindu mythology are considered lower castes and often treated as ‘untouchable’, together with indigenous communities and certainly women have considerable fewer chances.

The ongoing pandemic is surely exacerbating this divide with even less job opportunities being available, pushing them furthest behind at the bottom of the society. How can we change such inequitable status quo from the perspective of someone so far excluded from power?

A comprehensive quota system applicable also in the job market would offer an important steppingstone towards a truly inclusive and just nation. If you are one of them your chances at getting employment are truly slim.

This is mainly because of structural discrimination that is still prevailing in our society that blocks you from emerging through multiple barriers: lack of quality education and accessibility, a constant sense of not belonging together with other invisible constraints that make your journey towards self-empowerment daunting if not impossible.

If against all odds a person from a disadvantaged group happens to get good education and develop her skills, her chances at getting a well-qualified job will be incredibly small in comparison to others from dominant groups. We should not be surprised after all.

Despite having their rights now enshrined in a new constitution nominally founded on inclusion and equality, persons from such groups are still systematically discriminated on daily basis. As consequence, persons with disabilities like other vulnerable groups are always left behind from accessing the same opportunities comparing to other privileged counterparts.

Credit: UNDP, Nepal

In some cases, the discrimination is overt and consciously made, but in many others, it happens unconsciously, based on old prejudices that fuels peoples’ mindsets. As baffling as it can be citizens from vulnerable groups are never able to meet all the expectations and requirements. The bar is always higher for them.

A major issue is that disability and caste are still viewed as uncomfortable subjects to be dealt with at work place no matter the qualification, skills and potential of candidates from minority groups traditionally discriminated.

Hence, the institutional barriers set by employers, and overall by society, must be challenged, assuring equal access for those citizens whose rights to equality have been systematically discriminated.

The prevailing tokenistic approach for improving works force diversity and inclusion will never bring a transformative change in our structures, systems and behaviors and we cannot just wait for a more sensitive corporate leadership to emerge. When the leadership does consciously discriminate, evidence-based grievances and complaints cannot find a safe channel of readdress.

As consequences many job prospects from marginalized groups stop even applying.
How can we question, challenge and reverse these discriminatory attitudes at work place? A well designed affirmative legislation framework is the only option available together with the right economic and social policies uplifting the economy and the society.

The existing quota for minorities groups are exclusively applicable to public sector and often are not enforced and disregarded.

For example, legal provisions to ensure adequate representations of persons with disabilities in the elected legislatures were never enforced and the mandatory employment quota of five per cent for persons with disabilities as per the Civil Service Act is scarcely implemented.

First, we need to ensure such existing protections are going to be fully applied but this won’t be enough. We also need an affirmative framework for the private sector, including not for profit and developmental work, that rather than been seen as a drag to the recovery, can be a propeller for more dynamic job market.

An economy that will be more open and welcoming to minorities will be a stronger one, that will help the country to graduate to middle income country by 2030. Positive discrimination laws that takes due account of the intersectionality nature of the problem are needed if we want to change the society and ensure that even the most marginalized citizens, can have a fair shot at life.

A more inclusive economy is not a zero-sum game. A stronger and more inclusive economy means that there will be more opportunities for everybody but achieving that also implies a recognition that we need to address and revert the recurrent barriers.
The dominating class must accept their responsibilities and play their part.
It might be hard to believe the fact that the decision to hire someone might at the end depend on your family name or disability.

Turning the country into a more diverse and inclusive nation is choice that will have long term benefits. A stronger quota system enforceable also in the private and not for profit job market can make this happen.

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A 9-year-old girl plays on a seesaw in a new inclusive playground built in her school in Za’atri Refugee Camp in Jordan. Credit: UNICEF/Christopher Herwig

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Dec 4 2020 (IPS)

The 13th session of the Conference of States Parties (COSP) that was initially supposed to be held in New York back in June recently wrapped up with the final session coinciding with the International Day of People with Disabilities, whose theme, this year was on the issue of building back better inclusively.

In the context of Covid -19, this means creating accessible and sustainable post pandemic pathways of self-realization and prosperity for persons with disabilities. More than what it is normally thought, disabilities are not really isolated conditions affecting the few but rather the opposite.

Millions of people worldwide have their lives adversely impacted by them, often with ailments that are apparently invisible, if you think, for example, to all of us suffering of mental health.

The COSP therefore is very important for many of us and is undoubtedly the premier annual event centered on disabilities.

Its focus this year was on three related topics: inclusive job markets, the need to address the needs of older persons with disabilities and the promotion of inclusive environments for the full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

These are big topics that should be find appropriate space on the major news outlets but instead the same COSP is just an “expert” meeting, a niche forum that is very far from receiving the due coverage that it really deserves.

At the moment of writing, no major news outlets have been reporting about it and neither other “powerful” organizations with global outreach seemed to care about it.

For example, on the main homepage of the influential World Economic Forum, I found a vast array of issues from the need to have leadership and trust to fight corruption to an op-ed piece by Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan about leading by doing in climate action.

Yes quite understandably climate change is big for the World Economic Forum together with a focus on work diversity, a consequence of Black Lives Matter protests. Unfortunately, I could not find anything about disabilities.

The problem is the inability to connect the threads of social problems affecting the world.

For example, it is a huge missed opportunity not linking the ongoing debate on how to make working places more diverse and inclusive of minority groups to the wider debate on the rights of persons with disabilities to employment and job security.

After all a global job market that is truly inclusive refers to wide opportunities for all members of minority groups, not just those who are more vocal and loud.

The idea of building back better that normally refers to more sustainable and eco-friendly solutions, from more environmentally friendly means of transportations to more efficient and cleaner energies, is set to play a determinant role if we want to achieve net zero emissions in the decades ahead.

While the 13th COSP focused on its last day on inclusive reconstruction and more accessible environment for persons with disabilities, there is an urgent need to link the rethinking of urban places with the overall prominence disability rights should receive in this global “building back better” movement.

It is not just about redesigning urban spaces that are fully accessible while being eco-friendly and it is not only about better approaches to have more persons with disabilities in the work places everywhere, from developed nations to those still developing.

We need instead to frame one comprehensive and holistic strategy, from transportations to energies to jobs to affordable housing that is truly inclusive for all citizens, especially members of minority groups that have been so far often excluded from the economic gains of this world economic order.

Connecting the dots is the only way to really provide persons with disabilities and, very importantly, members of other vulnerable groups, with the opportunities to have fulfilling and meaningful lives.

Employment is so central in this equation and consequentially, only after achieving it, persons with disabilities and their “invisible” peers will become equal actors in the post pandemic order.

Some examples of disconnected approaches. In relation to better urban patterns, the global network of major global cities, C40 has leading a progressive agenda to reinvent urban spaces but again, accessibility and inclusion of persons with disabilities is not on their radar.

Also, within the United Nations, the New Urban Agenda is promising for its holistic inclusiveness that covers also the economic sphere but again we need major efforts to connecting the dots, including such agenda with broader development priorities, rather than keeping such strategy as standing alone framework in an already very fragmented development agenda.

The Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, should help in this tactical exercise to frame and organize issues according to different priorities and agendas, linking together issues that only apparently seems disconnected.

How many of us are really aware of the New Urban Agenda? How many times did you read about it in the last 6 to 8 months?

As per Joan Clos I Matheu, the former Executive Director of UN Habitat, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development, Habitat III held in Quito in 2016 from where the New Urban Agenda stems from, we were supposed to moving towards “a new sustainable urban paradigm” back then.

Four years forwards, only the most devastating pandemic of the century is forcing us to rethink our priorities and the way we want to live.

Yet no matter how inclusive urban spaces will be, real inclusion will only happen when minority groups without much a voice on world stage, will be able to reclaim their rights to participation and economic prosperity.

Inclusion is only one and multifaceted, let’s not forget it. That’s why events like COSP should have a much stronger visibility on the world stage. That’s why International Disability Alliance should be supported to establish new partnerships with influential business and other lobbying organizations across the sectors.

Disability, after all, should not be just an “UN agenda” targeting diplomats and experts.

For example, the World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society is a unique initiative that should be better resourced and highlighted 365 days a year, not just occasionally.

All of us interested and engaged in the disability sector, we need better public relations and better connections with the international media.

That’s why Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Disability and Accessibility and Professor Gerard Quinn, the recently appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities have their work cut out.

For them to succeed and become visible, they will need support, extensive resources to raise the issues of persons with disabilities on the global stage.

The goal is to make the next COSP a truly big deal for the world.

E-mail: simone_engage@yahoo.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-galimberti-4b899a3/

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International Volunteers Day (IVD) December 5, is an international observance that was mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1985. The Day is an opportunity to promote volunteerism, encourage governments to support volunteer efforts and recognize volunteer contributions to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at local, national and international levels. Credit: UN Volunteers (UNV)

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Nov 19 2020 (IPS)

The International Volunteer Day will approach soon and the 5th of December will become a day to celebrate the actions of millions of volunteers from all over the world, in the south as well in the north of the world.

Paradoxically but also tragically there has never been a greater time for volunteerism than in the last six months of the pandemic.

In Canada, as elsewhere in the world, volunteers have been on the frontlines, providing essential services from health care in hospitals and nursing homes to support for the most marginalized members of the society, offering an indispensable contribution when the country needed it the most.

As highlighted by the UN Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed during the Global Technical Meeting on Volunteering, organized in July by the United Nations Volunteers, UNV and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, “the efforts of 1 billion volunteers is an important foundation at a pivotal moment for development to enable us to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Interestingly, like nowhere else volunteerism in Canada has been under the spotlight recently but unfortunately it was all for the wrong reasons.

A scandal involving a now disbanded high profile not-for-profit called “WE” that was very closely connected to the Government of Prime Minister Trudeau hijacked the entire public debate, overlooking the many essential contributions provided by volunteers during the pandemic.

The ongoing controversy centered on an aborted attempt by the Government to set up a national volunteering scheme called the Canada Student Service Grant, CSSG that would have helped students earn some money to navigate throughout the pandemic.

UN Volunteers celebrating International Volunteer Day in South Sudan where they serve the United Nations in peace-keeping, midwifery and human rights. Credit: UNV, 2018

The ongoing inquiry risks not only to overshadow the essential contributions played by volunteers during the pandemic but could also jeopardize the future of the sector for generations to come.

That would be a shame not only for those nearly 13 million Canadians that, as per data of Volunteer Centers, the real backbones of civic engagement and solidarity in the country, have been contributing their time and energies every single year but also because of the economic contributions the sector provides to the national economy.

According to a paper prepared by Robin Wisener for Volunteer Canada, “the economic value of volunteering contribution are at around $14 billion dollars, equivalent to 1.4% of Canada’s GDP”.

With the Liberal Government hard pressed on resetting its agenda, it is paramount not to lose the focus on the importance of investing on volunteerism in Canada.

The concept of “building back batter” that has been espoused by the Liberal administration is central in rethinking the role volunteerism plays in the society, not only as a means to help disadvantaged groups but also as a platform to reinvigorate grassroots levels of community engagement,

Volunteerism, if properly promoted and supported could be so instrumental in cementing local civic engagement, breaking down the chain of disenchantment many citizens are experiencing with the system not only in Canada but also elsewhere.

This is the reason why the government should include provisions to leverage on the great work being delivered by the volunteerism sector across the country, helping local communities particularly hit by the pandemic and its economic fallout, to re-start functioning with the vibrancy and the dynamism that only volunteers can unleash.

To start with, the Canada Service Corps that initially Prime Minister Trudeau wanted to entrust with the administration of CSSG program should be greatly expanded and turned into a national flagship program with commensurate resources and adequate levels of accountability and transparency.

Because it is essentially based on partnerships with not-for-profit organizations across Canada, strengthening their work on the ground, the program has the potential to be a truly game changer in the way people perceive volunteerism, helping more citizens from all the age groups, rather than just only youth, to embrace service according to the diverse circumstances locally in place.

Expanding the Canada Service Corps will require broad consultations and this should happen as a part of a broader discussion aimed at re-launching and re-energizing volunteerism in Canada.

Surely any effort to build a stronger volunteering infrastructure across the nation should build on the existing endeavors, especially on the work being tirelessly carried out by the Volunteer Centers.

Indeed, one stronger centrally funded and locally delivered program should not come at the expenses of smaller initiatives that are already on the ground that, if provided with the right financial and technical support could expand their outreach and improve their effectiveness.

Partnering with and investing in Volunteer Canada, the not-for-profit national peak body of the sector, would be crucial not only in order to rebuild trust but also to draw on the invaluable expertise of those delivering volunteering programs since decades.

For example, an expanded Canada Service Corps could also thrive if aligned to a better equipped and much more visible and attractive Pan-Canadian Volunteer Management Platform currently managed by Volunteer Canada in partnership with the Volunteer Centers.

Importantly, as also indicated by the Global Technical Meeting on Volunteering, volunteerism should be promoted also in its more informal and part time forms where the vast majority of volunteers serve across the world without any organizational affiliation.

Therefore, the time is ripe for the Government of Canada to embark on a comprehensive, long term strategy formulation of the sector, an exercise that will engage not only the small and big not for profits but the Provinces and Territories as well as the Municipalities.

Very crucially, the representatives of the First Nations should have voice and resources to design locally suitable service programs that build on their ancient traditions of self-help.

In such strategy, schools and universities should be fully involved because they also have a key responsibility in helping creating the foundations of a more engaged society where volunteering, besides being a propeller for personal and professional development, becomes a habit, a truly Canadian way to foster locally owned development solutions and democracy at the same time.

Inclusion and flexible arrangements to fit a diverse constituency should be an essential feature of any new strategy.

For example, a “National Volunteering Mission” translated on the ground through a mix of interventions funded federally, full time as well as part time, could help many disadvantaged and disenfranchised youth, including many First Nations, to find a new meaning at life while learning new skills applicable to the job market.

Certainly, there is a great need.

A recent report released by UNICEF on the 3rd of September, as reported by The Philanthropist, confirms the urgency for the Federal Government to invest on youth wellbeing especially in view of the high number of suicides and the worrying mental health status experienced by many of them.

Easier and more accessible volunteering opportunities even through intergenerational partnerships with retirees could be one of the ingredients that could be offered to all Canadian youth so that they could be better prepared to deal with their emotions and their personal growth.

As a part of a national conversation on volunteerism, the Federal Government could even think of creating a body mandated to promote volunteerism similar to the Corporation for National and Community Service in the USA that works in partnerships with state levels volunteering commissions.

Options to reinvigorate the volunteering sector in Canada are as endless as are the opportunities provided by the transformative power of volunteering to regenerate interest in community engagement while helping solving local problems.

Moreover, Canadian organizations promoting volunteerism overseas like CECI and WUSC that for years have been successfully running the UNITERRA volunteering program in developing nations with federal money and others like CUSO could also contribute to the debate, bringing the expertise and know-how, sharing what they have learned from their local partners.

While volunteering is certainly not a panacea and should not be seen as a cheap alternative to other indispensable public policies interventions, there is more evidence, globally that it can be an effective tool for, as Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres said, “making the world more inclusive for people left farthest behind.”

In Canada, the government and the opposition and civil society should unite in a new common cause that can bring Canadians closer towards a better, fairer and more sustainable future, one that puts the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs at the center of policy making.

The upcoming International Volunteer Day that will be celebrated under the banner “Together We Can through Volunteering” should be a day for some big announcement in Ottawa.

*The author can be contacted at: simone_engage@yahoo.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-galimberti-4b899a3/

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The focus of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which falls on 3 December, is the link between the empowerment of people living with disability, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN’s blueprint for a better future for people and the planet. Credit: UN News

By Shudarson Subedi and Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

The lack of consistency and a patchy approach undermines the Government of Nepal’s credibility in fulfilling the rights of persons with disabilities. One step forward and several steps back.

If we want to describe the current progress being made by the Government of Nepal to promote the rights of persons with disabilities, it is a story of high hope that slowly turns gloomier and gloomier, giving room to frustration and despair.

The optimism stems from the Disability Rights Act that was enacted in 2017 after intense lobbying from thousands of disability rights activists.

It was an important turning point for the country as the new piece legislation replaced the previous Disabled Persons Welfare Act of 1982, shifting from a welfare approach to disabilities to a right based one.

The old legislation was a marked stain in the complex process of national reconciliation and social inclusion undertaken by the country in the aftermath of the civil war.

A new constitution passed in 2015 had turned the country in a federal and nominally pluralistic nation founded on the concept of nondiscrimination, social inclusion and equal opportunities for all.

The premises were all rosy.

The Disability Rights Act had finally aligned the country’s aspirations for a better future for all closer to the principles enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

With a more comprehensive recognition of all types of disabilities, including autism, hemophilia, and an important acknowledgement of mental health, the new act finally met the needs of millions of citizens living with disabilities in Nepal.

Instead, what seemed to be the herald of a new social inclusion era for persons with disabilities, proved to be the beginning of a backsliding of their rights, furthering detaching them from the rest of the society.

Certainly, the new legislation is not perfect itself especially as its wordings still reflect a misplaced medical perspective that was mainstream just few decades ago.

It is a wrong understanding of disabilities, one too much focused on rehabilitation rather than the full integration of persons with disabilities in society.

This approach is in breach of Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006 that claims the right for persons with disabilities to live independently and be included in the communities.

The issue is not just merely conceptual.

At stake is the imperative of ensuring that all barriers existing in the society, physical and also those more imperceptible, fueled by entrenched biases within the society, are removed.

The Convention is founded on certain cornerstones, including ensuring the respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons, non-discrimination and full and effective participation and inclusion in society.

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the toothless international mechanism in charge of monitoring the respect and implementation of the Convention, had questioned many of the provisions of the new legislation.

In its Concluding Observations issued in March 2018, the Committee had taken several exceptions, in particular recommending that “Nepal adopts a human rights model of disability that stresses human dignity of persons with disabilities and conditions arising from interactions with various barriers that may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”.

Nevertheless, despite pitfalls, the act sanctioned important inalienable rights persons with disabilities would enjoy: free quality education, free health care and clear provisions to their right to free movement unconstrained from any physical barriers.

Moreover, the act included clear dispositions to ensure their rights to livelihoods, so fundamental if we want to get rid of the existing status quo where the majority of persons with disabilities remain unemployed.

Millions of citizens in the country were hopeful for a real change.

Unfortunately, the Government showed much less progressive attitudes in drafting the law’s regulations.

Instead of bringing more clarity and helping create an environment supportive of the rights of persons with disabilities, the regulations show a regression.

Approved on 17 August 2020, their focus is almost exclusively on the most severe cases of disabilities where citizens require continuous assistance, depriving, in such way, others citizens with less severe forms of disabilities, from any support.

This is a complete disregard of the rights of millions of remaining citizens living with disabilities struggling every single day to make their ends meet.

Similarly, the same attitudes are visible in relation to the rules regulating monthly allowances for them.

The Social Security Act enacted in 2018 supposedly aiming at translating the inclusive principles of the constitution in concrete actions, mirrored the same approach, contravening the principles of the Disabilities Rights Act.

Also, in this case, only the most severe citizens living with disabilities were allowed to receive a small, almost insignificant monthly financial support.

Only in the first week of October 2020, the regulations of the Social Security Act, after intense lobbying involving thousands of widowers also discriminated by the law, were changed to include better, though still too narrow, provisions.

Again, this forced turnaround is the wrong solution to the problem as it is the Social Security Act that instead should be properly amended.

In general provisions, like the right to free education and free health care together with other essential rights in matter of livelihoods, must be addressed holistically and with determination if we want to uplift the living conditions of persons with disabilities.

Such equity-based measures are indispensable not to create dependency but rather to help leveling the playing field for all, a goal far from being achieved.

The political leaders must be determined to put an end to an approach to disabilities that has become a mockery of the Government of Nepal’s international obligations.

The state must mobilize all its strengths to ensure that citizens with disabilities are not citizens of a lesser nature but are instead recognized for the contributions they can provide to the society if their inalienable rights are protected.

Excerpt:

A delegation of six civil society organizations-- Amnesty International Nepal; Burn Violence Survivors Nepal; Forum for Women, Law and Development (FWLD); Justice and Rights Institute Nepal (JuRI-Nepal); Legal Aid and Consultancy Center (LACC) Nepal; and Women's Rehabilitation Center (WOREC)--- submitted a set of recommendations on the drafting of a new legislation on acid violence to Law to Justice Minister, Shivamaya Tumbahangphe, during a meeting at her office on 16 September, 2020. Credit: Burn Violence Survivors, Nepal

By Simone Galimberti and Sanju G.C.
KATHMANDU. Nepal, Oct 5 2020 (IPS)

After a prolonged lobbying campaign, the Government of Nepal recently took some important actions against perpetrators of acid attacks while offering better provisions to support the process of rehabilitation of their victims.

The turning point was an announcement made by Prime Minister K.P. Oli on the 10th September, 2020 in the aftermath of a meeting with a delegation of six civil society and human rights organizations actively working on the issue.

During the program that also included an interaction with a group of survivors, Prime Minister Oli declared the Government would introduce a new legislation that would curb and prevent acid and burn related crimes.

On the 28th of September, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari issued two ordinances strengthening the legislation against acid attack, a plague that is becoming more and more common in Nepal as elsewhere in the region.

The promulgation comes at a critical juncture when violence against women and girls in Nepal has been on the rise, especially during the Covid induced lockdown and what has now been hailed as the ‘shadow pandemic’.

Through the new measures, perpetrators will have to pay a much heavier price for committing such heinous crimes including an increase in prison term to 20 years and a fine up to approximately 10,000 USD that would be used to compensate the victims.

In addition, the Government will bear the cost of treatment of the victims and also will regulate in a much stringent way the sales of chemicals being used for such attacks.

While there is no doubt that the two ordinances that still must be approved by the Parliament within six months before automatically elapsing, are important milestones to effectively deal with acid attacks, they are falling short of expectations.

The group of civil society organizations (CSOs) working on the issue had recommended a completely new set of legislation rather than amending the Penal Code as done by the Government through the two ordinances.

The rationale for a completely new piece of law is straightforward: stronger punishments together with a resolute commitment for treatment, something that perhaps should be granted elsewhere, and a long due regulation on the sale of acid chemicals, do not go far enough to ensure that the problem will be definitely eradicated.

This is the reason why a comprehensive set of recommendations was submitted during the meeting with Prime Minister Oli, including not only preventive measures but, very importantly, also proposals to fully rehabilitate the victims towards regaining a normal life.

Besides the measures incorporated in the two ordinances, the representatives of the civil society have been demanding for special social protection and compensatory safety net, relief for dependents of the victims, safety, security, and protection from discrimination for the victims and their family.

Twenty-five years after the historic Beijing women’s conference in China – a milestone in advancing equal rights – violence against women and girls is not only common, but widely accepted, a new UN report revealed last week. Credit: UNICEF/Noorani

In addition, the civil society also called for awareness on the issue of burn and acid violence, its effects and treatment. The fact that the Prime Minister Oli followed up on its promise, albeit only partially, is praiseworthy but not enough.

“Though the proposed provisions in the ordinance are very progressive than the existing legal provisions, it will be more comprehensive if the new law addressed issues such as survivor’s safety, treatment and overall well-being” shares Sabin Shrestha, the Executive Director of the Forum for Women, Law & Development (FWLD), one of the organizations engaged in drafting the recommendations.

Moreover, as often happens in countries struggling to reinforce the rule of law, the real issue will now be to wait and see how the new provisions of the Penal Code will be implemented on the ground.

Shrestha shares the concerns: “the new legal provision needs to be translated in reality and focus should be on the implementation of the law. Effective monitoring mechanisms should be ensured ultimately benefiting the victim”.

The demands from the civil society must be taken further into consideration with an even more specialized act for acid and burn related crimes which is comprehensive and addresses the socio-economic, psychosocial, and emotional costs of acid and burn related crimes.

“It is important to ensure that the specific legislation on acid violence adopts a comprehensive approach to focus on all aspects of the crime and its impact on victims/ survivors” Shrestha adds.

While the focus of the two ordinances have been on acid attacks, burn related crimes, a definition broader than narrowed terminology of “acid attacks” should also be fully acknowledged and properly addressed as highlighted by Pratiksha Giri, Executive Director Burns Violence Survivors Nepal, a local not for profit actively working on the reintegration and rehabilitation of the victims.

While the two ordinances have rectified the existing loopholes within the law that prevented fair and swift justice in the past and have been drafted from a victim centered, justice oriented approach as it was explicitly advocated by Muskan Khatun, Jenny Khadka, and Sangita Magar on behalf of the 12 survivors who met Prime Minister Oli, which in itself is an important achievement, more action must follow.

The full eradication of acid and burn attacks requires not only a speedy approval of a dedicated piece of legislation but also a comprehensive approach to prevent any kind of violence against women.

“The education curriculum has incorporated issues of violence, social injustices and inequalities in its curriculum to create awareness around the prevalent issues of contemporary society however, only superficially” says Giri.

She further elaborates, “Educating young children acts as predominant factor to raise awareness and bring about positive changes in the mindset of young children through the knowledge they acquire from schools”. We cannot agree more.

Hopefully the steps taken by the Government will also embolden and encourage civil society activists and the survivors to ask for more.

It is their right and their demands must be heeded to at the earliest.

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Sabina Rimal is the Program Officer at Women's Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC) Nepal, an organization working for the protection and promotion of women’s human rights. In her role, Rimal counsels survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) and manages supervision of psycho-social counseling sessions and coordination of safe houses across WOREC‘s network in Nepal. Currently, WOREC is working in 16 communities in Nepal and has catered to over 800 survivors of GBV during three-months-long COVID-19 lockdown in Nepal. Credit: UN Women

By Sanju G.C. and Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 10 2020 (IPS)

The recent attack on 22 year old Pavitra Karki has yet again stoked the discourse on acid attacks and gender based violence in Nepal. Pavitra is one of the many young women in Nepal who were targeted by young males, a tragic but more and more common occurrence in the country and elsewhere in South Asia.

Within the last 6 years, there have been at least 4 incidents of acid attacks every year and a total of 20 reported incidents from 2014 to 2020 in Nepal.

It is not surprising that the majority of these victims are women with rare instances of males being victims too.

The recently imposed lockdowns have further proved how such violence against women are part of the normal.

While the motives behind most acid attacks are rejection, unrequited love, and ending of romantic relationships by females, the recurring theme from the incidents point to a larger problem of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny that is embedded within our social culture where men feel the need to ‘react’ when they are denied the things they want by women.

The inability to handle and cope with rejection and the troublesome need for retribution points to the fragile male ego that has been condoned for so long and goes unchecked in our society.

Our social norms tolerate and perpetuate patriarchal values where the sense of ‘male privilege’ and ‘male entitlement’ bears a strong foothold in our daily interactions, whereas women have no agency in the matters of love, sex, relationship, marriage, and money among other things.

The message is clear that any form of transgression within the existing gendered norms and power dynamic is not welcome and if challenged, the consequences for women can be lethal.

The ongoing gender dynamics should be understood within the broader and intersecting patterns of oppression and marginalization recurrent in the country.

Just as with the case of caste and race discrimination where we cannot achieve equality unless those in the upper castes understand that the problem as well as a big part of the solution lies within them, it is important for our men and young boys to awaken that gender issues and violence is their issue too and they are a part of the solution.

Acid burn victim Ponleu with wedding photo. Credit: UN Women/ Phil Borges

What is needed is male reckoning, an allyship where men are not passive bystanders to gender norms, discrimination, and violence but partners who actively participate in daily discourse against all forms of social injustice including gender inequality.

Some positive developments are happening.

A new Criminal Code Act entered into effect in August 2018 which criminalizes acid attacks with perpetrators facing up to eight years jail time and a fine.

While human rights activists and organizations are lobbying to formulate a specific legislation against acid and burns related violence, debates on regulating the access, supply, and control of toxic acidic chemicals are ongoing.

No matter how stringent the rules and regulations are, they alone are not the solution and cannot curb gender based violence.

A cultural shift in the way we think about and do gender needs to happen at a structural level.

It is granted that education should play an important role in changing young males’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors but families, schools, teachers and the entire learning process are deeply entrenched in the same beliefs that allow the popular culture to breed gender discrimination and violence.

Forward, progressive thinking and a different, more open perception towards sexuality does not happen overnight.

Activism with grassroots campaigning can also play an important role but we need to think in a more structural and systemic way at solving gender violence for good.

In the short run, bodies like Nepal Women Commission should be strengthened in its role as an advocate and protector of women’s rights.

A better referral system for victims of gender violence is needed as advocated by the World Bank that is already supporting a national helpline.

Acid attacks victims should be encouraged to attain a dignified and productive role in the society even through scholarships and job reservations where the government of Nepal assumes an active role in the rehabilitation process.

On the one hand, efforts must continue in supporting young women to think and act as if only the sky were the limit to their prowess and ambition.

Leadership training, volunteering opportunities are all tools for young women’s self-empowerment equipping them with tools to defy gender norms which are stacked against them.

Now mostly available to girls from middle and upper class families, such programs should be extended and scaled up in order to reach the most vulnerable girls and young women in the most conservative regions.

On the other hand, we have the challenge of finding effective ways to include boys and young male adults in rethinking women’s role in society.

Engaging boys and young males in understanding and fully accepting their female counterparts as equal partners will require a multi-dimensional effort that should start from an education sector emboldened and mandated to re-imagine a society where women have freedoms and lead.

A new generation of educators could make the difference if be equipped to shape the classroom as a space for a new narrative on gender dynamics and power relations.

More meaningful extracurricular activities and volunteering, including mentoring and peer to peer opportunities in partnership with local youth groups could offer pathways to self-growth for both sexes.

Such partnerships would help generate new attitudes and behaviors that will lay the ground for a more just and equitable society where women can thrive.

Ending acid attacks against women and overall stopping the perpetration of violence and abuse towards them will require a mix of short and long term actions by multiple actors working together.

It is in the society’s interest to find ways to muster the necessary willpower and ingenuity to change the status quo, allowing women to develop their potential, gaining the freedom to make decisions on their own without risking their lives.

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