Her hands loaded with crates, Susan Quintanilla, a union leader of agro-export workers in the department of Ica in southwestern Peru, gets ready to collect different vegetables and fruits for foreign markets. She has witnessed many injustices, saying the companies “made you feel like they were doing you a favor by giving you work, they wanted you to keep your head down." CREDIT: Courtesy of Susan Quintanilla

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, May 31 2023 (IPS)

Peru’s agro-export industry is growing steadily and reached record levels in 2022. But this has not had a favorable impact on human development in this South American country, where high levels of inequality, poverty, childhood anemia and malnutrition persist, as well as complaints about the poor quality of employment in the sector.

Exports of agricultural products such as blueberries, grapes, tangerines, artichokes and asparagus generated 9.8 billion dollars in revenue in 2022 – 12 percent higher than the 2021 total, as reported in February by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism.“The increase in revenue from agricultural exports has not brought human development: anemia and tuberculosis are at worrying levels and now dengue fever is skyrocketing.” -- Rosario Huallanca

Agricultural exports represent four percent of GDP in this Andean nation, where mining and fishing are the main economic activities.

“The increase in revenue from agricultural exports has not brought human development: anemia and tuberculosis are at worrying levels and now dengue fever is skyrocketing,” Rosario Huallanca, a representative of the non-governmental Ica Human Rights Commission (Codeh Ica), which has worked for 41 years in that department of southwestern Peru, told IPS.

Ica and two other departments along the country’s Pacific coast, La Libertad and Piura, are leaders in the sector, accounting for nearly 50 percent of agricultural exports in this country of 33 million people, which despite this boom remains plagued by inequality, reflected by high levels of poverty and informality and precariousness in employment.

Monetary poverty affected 27.5 percent of the country’s 33 million inhabitants in 2022, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics. This is a seven percentage point increase over the pre-pandemic period. The number of poor people was estimated at 9,184,000 last year, 600,000 more than in 2021.

Ica, which has a total of 850,765 inhabitants, is one of the departments with the lowest monetary poverty rates, five percent, because it has full employment, largely due to the agro-export boom of the last two decades.

Huallanca said the number of agro-export companies is estimated at 320, with a total of 120,000 employees, who come from different parts of the country.

What stands out, she said, is that 70 percent of the total number of workers in the sector are women, who are valued for their fine motor skills in handling fruits and vegetables.

Although a portion of the workers of some companies are in the informal sector, there are no clear numbers, the expert pointed out.

But there are alarming figures available: more than six percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, and anemia affects 33 percent of children between six and 35 months of age.

“With the type of job we have, we cannot take our children to their growth checkups, we can’t miss work because they don’t pay you if you don’t show up, we cry in silence because of our anxiety,” 42-year-old Yanina Huamán, who has worked in the agro-export sector for 20 years to support her three children, told IPS.

The two oldest are in middle and higher education and her youngest is still in primary school. “I am both mother and father to my children. With my work I am giving them an education and I have manged to secure a home of my own, but it’s precarious, the bedrooms don’t have roofs yet, for example,” she said.

Huamán is secretary for women’s affairs in the union of the company where she works, a position she was appointed to in November 2022. From that post, she hopes to help bring about improvements in access to healthcare for female workers, who either postpone going to the doctor when they need to, or receive poor medical attention in the social security health system “where they only give us pills.”

Ica currently has the highest number of deaths from dengue fever, a viral disease that led the government of Dina Boluarte to declare a 90-day health emergency in 13 of the country’s 24 departments a couple of weeks ago.

Not only that, it has the history of being the department with the highest level of deaths from Covid-19: 901 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, exceeding the national average of 630 per 100,000. “The health system here does not work,” trade unionist Huamán said bluntly.

Yanina Huamán, a worker in the agro-export sector in the department of Ica in southwestern Peru, explains at a meeting in Lima the problems that affect labor rights in the sector, particularly for women who make up 70 percent of the workers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Working conditions more difficult for women

The lack of quality employment and the deficient recognition of labor rights, exacerbated by the pandemic, prompted a strike in November 2020 that began in Ica and spread to the northern coastal area of ​​La Libertad and Piura.

Their demands included a minimum living wage of 70 soles (19 dollars) a day, social benefits such as compensation and raises for length of service, and recognition of the right to form unions.

Grouped together in the recently created Ica Workers’ Union Agro-exports Struggle Committee, which represents casual and seasonal workers, they went to Congress in Lima to demand changes in the current legislation.

Susan Quintanilla, 39, originally from the central Andean department of Ayacucho, is the general secretary of the union. She arrived in Ica in 2014 after separating from her husband. She came with her two children, a girl and a boy, for whom she hoped for a future with better opportunities.

After working as a harvester in the fields, and cleaning and packing fruit at the plant, she decided to work on a piecework basis, because that way she could earn more and save up for times when the companies needed less labor.

“It was incredibly hard,” she told IPS. “I would leave home at 10 in the morning and leave work at three or four in the wee hours of the next morning to be there to get my kids ready for school. I was 29 or 30 years old, I was young, but I saw older women with pain in their bodies, their arms and their feet due to the postures we had at work, but they continued because they had no other option.

“I saw many injustices in the agro-export companies,” she added. “They made you feel that they were doing you a favor by giving you work, they wanted you to keep your head down, they shouted at and humiliated people, they made them feel miserable. I protested, raised my voice, and they didn’t fire me because I was a high performance worker and they needed me. The situation has changed a little because of our struggles, but it hasn’t come for free.”

The late 2020 protests led to the approval on Dec. 31 of that year of Law No. 31110 on agricultural labor and incentives for the agricultural and irrigation sector, aimed at guaranteeing the rights of workers in the agro-export and agroindustrial sectors.

But in Quintanilla’s view, the law discriminates against non-permanent workers who make up the largest part of the workforce in the sector, since the preferential right to hiring established in the fourth article of the law is not respected.

“Nor have they recognized the differentiated payment of our social benefits and they include them in the daily wage that is calculated at 54 soles (a little more than 14 dollars): it’s not fair,” she complained.

At the same time, she stressed that the agro-export work is harder on women because they are the ones responsible for raising their children. “We live in a sexist society that burdens us with all of the care work,” Quintanilla said.

She also explained that because several of the companies are so far away, it takes workers longer to get to work, which means they are away from home for up to twelve hours a day. “We go to work with the anxiety that we are leaving our children at risk of the dangers of life, we cannot be with them as we would like, which damages us emotionally.”

Added to this, she said, are the terrible working conditions, such as the fact that the toilets are far from the areas where they work, as much as three blocks away, or in unsanitary conditions, which leads women to avoid using them, to the detriment of their health.

Workers sort avocados for export in Peru. Agro-exports account for four percent of the country’s GDP, but the prosperity of the sector has not translated into better human development for its workers, and diseases such as anemia and tuberculosis are alarmingly prevalent in agroindustrial areas. CREDIT: Comexperu

Agro-export companies and human rights

Huallanca said that Codeh Ica was promoting the creation of a space of diverse stakeholders so that the National Business and Human Rights Plan, a public policy aimed at ensuring that economic activities improve people’s quality of life, is fulfilled in the department. Five unions from Ica and the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Tourism participate in this initiative.

“We have made an enormous effort and we hope that on Jun. 16 it will be formally created by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, the governing body for this policy,” she said.

In the meantime, she added, “we have helped bring together women involved in the agro-export sector, who have developed a rights agenda that has been given shape in this multi-stakeholder space and we hope it will be taken into account.”

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)’s latest interest rate hike comes before the ink of the much-awaited review of the RBA, released on 20 April, has dried. The threat of more increases to come is a clear sign of an emboldened RBA as the government accepts all of the panel’s utterly disappointing 51 recommendations.

Anis Chowdhury

The recommendations of the three-person panel, charged with reviewing the structure, governance, and effectiveness of the RBA, range from creating a separate board to make decisions on interest rates, to giving the Bank a simpler dual mandate to pursue both price stability and full employment.

Utter disappointment
The Review report fails to question the long-held taboos about inflation and Central Bank’s role in a social democracy. While the Review panel leaves the RBA’s 2-3% inflation target unchanged, it outrageously recommends dropping from the RBA’s mandate “economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia” and the removal of government’s power to intervene in the RBA’s decisions.

This will make the RBA more inflation hawkish, and more aggressive in its use of the blunt interest rate tool without much regard for the consequences on jobs, especially when the RBA’s full employment mandate is left vague.

Without the power to intervene in the RBA’s decisions, such hawkish interest rate hikes will force the government to cut its expenditure as it has to pay more on interest for its debts while its tax revenue shrinks when the economy slows.

Thus, the well-being of ordinary citizens, especially those who will lose jobs, will worsen as the government struggles to find money for targeted budget support. No wonder the Treasurer termed the latest RBA interest rate decision as “Pretty brutal”.

Voodoo of 2-3% inflation target
In accepting the RBA’s current 2-3% inflation target, the Review panel ignores the fact that the 2-3% inflation target has become a “global economic gospel” without any empirical or theoretical basis.

The 2-3% target was plucked out of the air and it became a universal mantra after a chance remark by the then Finance Minister of New Zealand in a television interview followed by relentless preaching.

The recommendation ignores the changed circumstance since the 2-3% inflation target was first adopted. In the wake of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis, many, including the then IMF’s Chief Economist, Olivier Blanchard suggested a 4% inflation target would be more appropriate.

The inflation-unemployment trade-off relationship (i.e., the Phillips curve) has become flatter over the years due to labour market deregulations, off-shoring and other developments. This means trying to dogmatically achieve such a low inflation target would require a much higher unemployment rate as recognised by the former Fed Chair and current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. That is, the interest rate must rise more steeply inflicting serious damages to the business finances, household spending and government budget.

Full employment, a poor cousin
The Review panel recommends “full employment” mandate along with inflation target. However, while the inflation target has a numerical figure (2-3%), there is no such specific target mentioned for unemployment that may be consistent with the concept of full employment. When asked during a press conference, the Treasurer said, “It’s a contested concept”.

The report mentions full employment 100 times! But does not say what it means; instead, the panel accepts the current RBA’s definition and measure of full employment based on a contestable concept of a “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment” (NAIRU). That is, full employment is consistent with an unemployment rate below which inflation will accelerate.

There is general consensus that models based on NAIRU are basically wrong. An article in the RBA Bulletin acknowledged, “Model estimates of the NAIRU are highly uncertain and can change quite a bit as new data become available”. Thus, James Galbraith argued for ditching the NAIRU. And an op-ed in The Financial Times concluded, “The sooner NAIRU is buried and forgotten, the better”.

Social democracy sacrificed
The panel thinks, there are too many factors that affect prosperity and welfare. So, it recommends removal of the RBA’s third mandate “economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia”, enshrined in the 1959 RBA Act.

Furthermore, the panel seeks to remove the government’s ability to overrule an RBA decision because it “undermines the independent operation of monetary policy”.

With these recommendations implemented, the RBA will not be bound to the commitment to build a fairer society, although economic prosperity and people’s welfare can remain as an “overarching purpose”.

The Winner
A super independent RBA will have all the power it needs to use its sole weapon, interest rate rises, to keep inflation at 2-3%. The emboldened RBA will declare the consequences to its actions on the job markets as consistent with a vaguely defined full employment, and economic prosperity and welfare of the people.

It can simply assert that job and income losses are short-term pains for long-term gains, without having to provide any evidence. There are no such things as short-term pains.

For many, job loss may cause permanent damages to their mental health, self-esteem and social life often leading to suicides. IMF research shows that the scarring effects of recessions can be permanent.

Thus, the clear winner of the recommended reforms, is the RBA, not the ordinary people struggling to find decent jobs to enable them to put a roof over their heads and two square meals on their tables.

Meanwhile, the RBA’s ideological anti-inflationary fight with a blunt interest rate tool benefits the big four banks. They are “tipped to rake in record $33 billion” in profits from rising interest rates when everyday Aussies and small businesses battle rising bankruptcies and job losses.

Anis Chowdhury is Adjunct Professor, School of Business, Western Sydney University. He held senior United Nations positions in the area of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and Bangkok.

IPS UN Bureau

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According to the United Nations, the world’s population is more than three times larger than it was in the mid-twentieth century. The global human population reached 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950, adding 1 billion people since 2010 and 2 billion since 1998. The world’s population is expected to increase by nearly 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from the current 8 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 10.4 billion in the mid-2080s.

By Nandita Bajaj
ST PAUL, Minnesota USA, May 10 2023 (IPS)

India’s population has just reached 1.4 billion people, surpassing China as the world’s most populous nation four years earlier than projected. Spurring this growth is a traditional patriarchal culture in which women’s identity is constrained by the social expectation they bear children.

Across the globe, pronatalist forces undermine women’s autonomy and self-determination. Pronatalism is an underlying driver of the global population growing to 8 billion and counting, with 80 million added each year.

The new UNFPA State of World Population Report is wrong to dismiss “population anxiety” as groundless and assert that “population sizes are neither good nor bad.” Population growth is not good for people or the planet, and anxiety is not an unwarranted response to how it affects us.

Population growth deepens social and economic inequality and has negative impacts on unemployment, housing costs, inflation, infrastructure, resource scarcity, pollution, and well-being. It even fuels resource conflicts and wars.

It’s also one of the key variables determining overall consumption and pollution levels, which are jeopardizing planetary life support systems on which we and Earth’s remaining biodiversity depend.

Population growth is a significant factor in climate change according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Over the past three decades, it has cancelled out most climate gains from renewables and efficiency.

Going forward, population growth will be concentrated in the developing world. Dismissing its environmental impacts betrays an assumption that low-income populations in the Global South will stay that way.

This is false as well as unjust. Across the globe, the middle class is the fastest-growing segment of the population, projected to grow another billion to reach 5 billion by 2030. This will bring better living standards for a billion of today’s poor. But we must recognize that it will also bring more peril to an already overburdened planet.

Beyond its impacts on GHG emissions and the climate, population growth also drives broader “overshoot,” meaning that human demands are exceeding Earth’s regenerative capacity.

Currently, we consume 75 percent more than the Earth can provide sustainably, resulting in unprecedented biodiversity loss and an extinction crisis, dwindling freshwater supplies, ocean acidification, expanding desertification, and resource scarcity.

Much of this damage comes from our global food systems, which are directly tied to population growth, and which have already transformed at least 40 percent of the planet’s ice-free land area. They are the primary threat to 86 percent of endangered species.

Much of agriculture’s negative impact is due to the Green Revolution, which is often invoked to inspire confidence that human ingenuity can solve the problems associated with population growth.

But the Green Revolution has posed wicked problems of its own, including deforestation, damaging soil health and the nutritional content of food, and agrochemical pollution. In the Global South, where these problems are especially acute, it has failed to improve health and well-being.

Similarly, faith in green technology, including the unfounded belief renewable energy will somehow decouple growth from environmental damage, ignores real-world negative impacts which disproportionately affect poor people and frontline communities.

Scaling up massive clean energy infrastructure without working to downsize demand wreaks environmental devastation. So does mining toxic rare earth metals, dirty and dangerous work which is done in slave-like conditions by people in the Global South.

The UNFPA report displays this kind of misplaced faith in technology and human ingenuity. Such faith is rooted in a bias toward endless economic growth, propagated by those who have most benefited from the current economic system and who are already wealthy. It ignores the ecological unraveling of continued human expansionism, and the massive toll it takes on human well-being.

According to the IPCC, the climate crisis will lead to increased death and illness from extreme weather and heat waves, growing agricultural losses, destruction of small island states, debilitating drought, declining freshwater supplies, and escalating losses of marine and terrestrial biodiversity.

Over a billion people are expected to be climate refugees by 2050.

From climate change, violence, and conflict to decreased economic opportunity, population growth’s impacts are felt most acutely by women, whose status in developing countries is already low, and by children, including those yet to be born. UNICEF calls the outlook for a billion children in climate-vulnerable countries “unimaginably dire.”

In a time when no government climate plans are on track to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and we are witnessing a human-driven mass extinction event, dismissing the profound impacts of population growth is shockingly irresponsible.

The UNFPA makes this mistake. It seeks to champion reproductive rights, yet dismisses the importance of population growth, which is driven by patriarchal pronatalist forces that pressure women into obsolete gender roles and abrogate their rights.

Failure to make this connection between rights and growth is the report’s most disappointing aspect.

Population deceleration and human rights go together; we need to advocate both. They are both achievable by the same set of human rights-based policies: universal education, women’s empowerment, children’s rights, and free, state-of-the-art family planning for all.

Truly advancing the causes of human rights and ecological sustainability requires humanity to shrink our population and our economies. It’s our only chance to achieve a high standard of living for all while staying within planetary boundaries.

Nandita Bajaj is the executive director of Population Balance and co-host of The Overpopulation Podcast. She also teaches the first graduate course of its kind: Pronatalism, Overpopulation, and the Planet, through the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Victor Drachev/AFP via Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, May 5 2023 (IPS)

Where will you be in 2040? For Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the answer is: in the Kuksaroy Presidential Palace. That’s the chief consequence of the referendum held in the Central Asian country on 30 April.

With dissent tightly controlled in conditions of closed civic space, there was no prospect of genuine debate, a campaign against, or a no vote.

Repression betrays image of reform

Mirziyoyev took over the presidency in 2016 following the death of Islam Karimov, president for 26 years. Karimov ruled with an iron fist; Mirziyoyev has tried to position himself as a reformer by comparison.

The government rightly won international recognition when Uzbekistan was declared free of the systemic child labour and forced labour that once plagued its cotton industry. The move came after extensive international civil society campaigning, with global action compensating for the inability of domestic civil society to mobilise, given severe civic space restrictions.

While that systemic problem has been addressed, undoubtedly abuses of labour rights remain. And these are far from the only human rights violations. When one of the proposed constitutional changes announced last July sparked furious protests, the repression that followed belied Mirziyoyev’s reformist image.

Among the proposed changes was a plan to amend the status of Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan region. Formally, it’s an autonomous republic with the right to secede. The surprise announcement that this special status would end brought rare mass protests in the regional capital, Nukus. When local police refused to intervene, central government flew over riot police, inflaming tensions and resulting in violent clashes.

A state of emergency was imposed, tightly restricting the circulation of information. Because of this, details are scarce, but it seems some protesters started fires and tried to occupy government buildings, and riot police reportedly responded with live ammunition and an array of other forms of violence. Several people were killed and over 500 were reported to have been detained. Many received long jail sentences.

The government quickly dropped its intended change, but otherwise took a hard line, claiming the protesters were foreign-backed provocateurs trying to destabilise the country. But what happened was down to the absence of democracy. The government announced the proposed change with no consultation. All other channels for expressing dissent being blocked, the only way people could communicate their disapproval was to take to the streets.

Civic space still closed

It remains the reality that very little independent media is tolerated and journalists and bloggers experience harassment and intimidation. Vague and broad laws against the spreading of ‘false information’ and defamation give the state ample powers to block websites, a regular occurrence.

Virtually no independent civil society is allowed; most organisations that present themselves as part of civil society are government entities. Independent organisations struggle to register, particularly when they have a human rights focus. New regulations passed in June 2022 give the state oversight of activities supported by foreign donors, further restricting the space for human rights work.

It’s been a long time since Uzbekistan held any kind of recognisably democratic vote. The only presidential election with a genuine opposition candidate was held in 1991. Mirziyoyev certainly hasn’t risked a competitive election: when he last stood for office, to win his second term in 2021, he faced four pro-government candidates.

A flawed vote and a self-serving outcome

The referendum’s reported turnout and voting totals were at around the same levels as for the non-competitive presidential elections: official figures stated that 90-plus per cent endorsed the changes on a turnout of almost 85 per cent.

Given the state’s total control, voting figures are hard to trust. Even if the numbers are taken at face value, election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe pointed out that the referendum was held ‘in an environment that fell short of political pluralism and competition’. There was a lack of genuine debate, with very little opportunity for people to put any case against approving the changes.

State officials and resources were mobilised to encourage a yes vote and local celebrities were deployed in rallies and concerts. State media played its usual role as a presidential mouthpiece, promoting the referendum as an exercise in enhancing rights and freedoms. Anonymous journalists reported that censorship had increased ahead of the vote and they’d been ordered to cover the referendum positively.

Mirziyoyev is clearly the one who benefits. The key change is the extension of presidential terms from five to seven years. Mirziyoyev’s existing two five-year terms are wiped from the count, leaving him eligible to serve two more. Mirziyoyev has taken the same approach as authoritarian leaders the world over of reworking constitutions to stay in power. It’s hardly the act of a reformer.

The president remains all-powerful, appointing all government and security force officials. Meanwhile there’s some new language about rights and a welcome abolition of the death penalty – but no hint of changes that will allow movement towards free and fair elections, real opposition parties, independent human rights organisations and free media.

The constitution’s new language about rights will mean nothing if democratic reform doesn’t follow. But change of this kind was always possible under the old constitution – it’s always been lack of political will at the top standing in the way, and that hasn’t changed.

Democratic nations, seeking to build bridges in Central Asia to offer a counter to the region’s historical connections with Russia, may well welcome the superficial signs of reform. A UK-based public relations firm was hired to help persuade them. But they should urge the president to go much further, follow up with genuine reforms, and allow for real political competition when he inevitably stands for his third term.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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Soledad Arnedo is head of the La Negra del Norte cooperative textile workshop, which works together with other productive enterprises of the popular economy in the Argentine municipality of San Isidro, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 5 2023 (IPS)

Nearby is an agroecological garden and a plant nursery, further on there are pens for raising pigs and chickens, and close by, in an old one-story house with a tiled roof, twelve women sew pants and blouses. All of this is happening in a portion of a public park near Buenos Aires, where popular cooperatives are fighting the impact of Argentina’s long-drawn-out socioeconomic crisis.

“We sell our clothes at markets and offer them to merchants. Our big dream is to set up our own business to sell to the public, but it’s difficult, especially since we can’t get a loan,” Soledad Arnedo, a mother of three who works every day in the textile workshop, told IPS.

The garments made by the designers and seamstresses carry the brand “la Negra del Norte”, because the workshop is in the municipality of San Isidro, in the north of Greater Buenos Aires.“In Argentina in the last few years, having a job does not lift people out of poverty. This is true even for many who have formal sector jobs.” -- Nuria Susmel

In Greater Buenos Aires, home to 11 million people, the poverty rate is 45 percent, compared to a national average of 39.2 percent.

La Negra del Norte is just one of the several self-managed enterprises that have come to life on the five hectares that, within the Carlos Arenaza municipal park, are used by the Union of Popular Economy Workers (UTEP).

It is a union without bosses, which brings together people who are excluded from the labor market and who try to survive day-to-day with precarious, informal work due to the brutal inflation that hits the poor especially hard.

“These are ventures that are born out of sheer willpower and effort and the goal is to become part of a value chain, in which textile cooperatives are seen as an economic agent and their product is valued by the market,” Emmanuel Fronteras, who visits different workshops every day to provide support on behalf of the government’s National Institute of Associativism and Social Economy (INAES), told IPS.

Today there are 20,520 popular cooperatives registered with INAES. The agency promotes cooperatives in the midst of a delicate social situation, but in which, paradoxically, unemployment is at its lowest level in the last 30 years in this South American country of 46 million inhabitants: 6.3 percent, according to the latest official figure, from the last quarter of 2022.

Women work in a textile cooperative that operates in Navarro, a town of 20,000 people located about 125 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires. Many of the workers supplement their income with a payment from the Argentine government aimed at bolstering productive enterprises in the popular economy. CREDIT: Evita Movement

The working poor

The plight facing millions of Argentines is not the lack of work, but that they don’t earn a living wage: the purchasing power of wages has been vastly undermined in recent years by runaway inflation, which this year accelerated to unimaginable levels.

In March, prices rose 7.7 percent and year-on-year inflation (between April 2022 and March 2023) climbed to 104.3 percent. Economists project that this year could end with an index of between 130 and 140 percent.

Although in some segments of the economy wage hikes partly or fully compensate for the high inflation, in most cases wage increases lag behind. And informal sector workers bear the brunt of the rise in prices.

“In Argentina in the last few years, having a job does not lift people out of poverty,” economist Nuria Susmel, an expert on labor issues at the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research (FIEL), told IPS.

“This is true even for many who have formal sector jobs,” she added.

On five hectares of a public park in the Argentine municipality of San Isidro, in Greater Buenos Aires, there is a production center with several cooperatives from the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (UTEP), which defends the rights of people excluded from the formal labor market. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) estimates that the poverty line for a typical family (made up of two adults and two minors) was 191,000 pesos (834 dollars) a month in March.

However, the average monthly salary in Argentina is 86,000 pesos (386 dollars), including both formal and informal sector employment.

“The average salary has grown well below the inflation rate,” said Susmel. “Consequently, for companies labor costs have fallen. This real drop in wages is what helps keep the employment rate at low levels.”

“And it is also the reason why there are many homes where people have a job and they are still poor,” she said.

Social value of production

La Negra del Norte is one of 35 textile cooperatives that operate in the province of Buenos Aires, where a total of 160 women work.

They receive support not only from the government through INAES, but also from the Evita Movement, a left-wing social and political group named in honor of Eva Perón, the legendary Argentine popular leader who died in 1952, at the age of just 33.

The Evita Movement formed a group of textile cooperatives which it supports in different ways, such as the reconditioning of machines and the training of seamstresses.

“The group was formed with the aim of uniting these workshops, which in many cases were small isolated enterprises, to try to formalize them and insert them into the productive and economic circuit,” said Emmanuel Fronteras, who is part of the Evita Movement, which has strong links to INAES.

“In addition to the economic value of the garments, we want the production process to have social value, which allows us to think not only about the profit of the owners but also about the improvement of the income of each cooperative and, consequently, the valorization of the work of the seamstresses,” he added in an interview with IPS.

The 12 women who work in the Argentine cooperative La Negra del Norte sell the clothes they make at markets and dream of being able to open their own store, but one of the obstacles they face is the impossibility of getting a loan. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The high level of informal employment in Argentina’s textile industry has been well-documented, and has been facilitated by a marked segmentation of production, since many brands outsource the manufacture of their clothing to small workshops.

Many of the workers in the cooperatives supplement their textile income with a stipend from the Potenciar Trabajo government social programme that pays half of the minimum monthly wage in exchange for their work.

“Economically we are in the same situation as the country itself. The instability is enormous,” said Celene Cárcamo, a designer who works in another cooperative, called Subleva Textil, which operates in a factory that makes crusts for the traditional Argentine “empanadas” or pasties in the municipality of San Martín, that was abandoned by its owners and reopened by its workers.

Other cooperatives operating in the pasty crust factory are involved in the areas of graphic design and food production, making it a small hub of the popular economy.

The six women working at Subleva Textil face obstacles every day. One of them is the constant rise in the prices of inputs, like most prices in the Argentine economy.

Subleva started operating shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, so it had to adapt to the complex new situation. “They say that crisis is opportunity, so we decided to make masks,” said Cárcamo, who stressed the difficulties of running a cooperative in these hard times in Argentina and acknowledged that “We need to catch a break.”

Construction workers in Chile are among those who will benefit from the gradual reduction of the workweek from the current 45 hours to 40, within five years. A 40-hour workweek already exists in countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela, but in most of the region the workweek is longer. CREDIT: Camila Lasalle/Sintec

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 4 2023 (IPS)

The reduction in the workweek recently approved by the Chilean Congress forms part of a trend of working fewer hours and days that is spreading in today’s modern economies, but also highlights how far behind other countries in Latin America are in this regard.

Latin America “has legislation that is lagging in terms of working hours and it is imperative that this be reviewed,” said the director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the Southern Cone of the Americas, Fabio Bertranou, after Chile’s new law was passed."Non-human work, that of artificial intelligence, can massively reduce employment and make 40 hours a week seem like an immense amount of work." -- Francisco Iturraspe

The workweek in Chile will be gradually reduced from 45 to 40 hours, by one hour a year over the next five years, according to the bill that a jubilant President Gabriel Boric signed into law on Apr. 14.

“After many years of dialogue and gathering support, today we can finally celebrate the passage of this bill that reduces working hours, a pro-family law aimed at improving quality of life for all,” said Boric.

The law provides for the possibility of working four days and taking three off a week, of working a maximum of five overtime hours per week, while granting exceptions in sectors such as mining and transportation, where up to 52 hours per week can be worked, if the worker is compensated with fewer hours in another work week.

Chile is thus aligning itself with its partners in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in some of which, such as Australia, Denmark and France, the workweek is less than 40 hours, while in others, such as Germany, Colombia, Mexico or the United Kingdom, the workweek is longer.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric (L) celebrates the modification of the labor law by the Chilean Congress to reduce the workweek, as an achievement aimed at “improving quality of life for all,” with the understanding that workers will have more time to rest and for family life. CREDIT: Presidency of Chile

The range in Latin America

According to ILO data, until the past decade two countries in the region, Ecuador and Venezuela, had a legal workweek of 40 hours, while, like Chile up to now, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Guatemala were in the range between 42 and 45 hours.

Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay had a workweek of 48 hours.

According to national laws, the maximum number of hours that people can legally work per week under extraordinary circumstances for specific reasons is 48 in Brazil and Venezuela, and between 49 and 59 in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay.

In Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras the maximum is 60 or more hours, and in El Salvador and Peru there is simply no limit.

But in practice people work less than that, since the regional average is 39.9 hours, more than in Western Europe, North America and Africa (which range between 37.2 and 38.8 hours), but less than in the Arab world, the Pacific region and Asia, where the average ranges between 44 and 49 hours per week.

ILO figures showed that in 2016 in Latin America, male workers worked an average of 44.9 hours a week and women 36.3, 1.7 hours less than in 2005 in the case of men and half an hour less in the case of women.

Among domestic workers, the decrease was 3.3 hours among men and more than five hours among women (from 38.1 to 32.9 hours a week), which is partly attributed to the fact that after 2005 legislation to equate the workweeks of domestic workers with other workers made headway.

A teacher connects from her home with her students in an online class. This trend expanded in different sectors in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic and allows workers more freedom to organize their time, although sometimes it leads to longer working days. CREDIT: Marcel Crozet/ILO

Health and telework

A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the ILO attributes the death of some 750,000 workers each year to long working hours – especially people who work more than 55 hours a week.

The study showed that in 2016, 398,000 workers died worldwide from stroke and 347,000 from ischemic heart disease – ailments that are triggered by prolonged stress associated with long hours, or by risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol and eating an unhealthy diet.

María Neira, director of the WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, said in this regard that “working 55 hours or more per week poses a serious danger to health. It is time for all of us – governments, employers and employees – to realize that long working hours can lead to premature death.”

On the other hand, the telework trend boomed worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 23 million workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly formal wage- earners with a high level of education, stable jobs and in professional and administrative occupations.

Access to telework has been much more limited for informal sector and self-employed workers, young people, less skilled and lower-income workers, and women, who have more family responsibilities.

ILO Latin America expert Andrés Marinakis acknowledged in an analysis that “in general, teleworkers have some autonomy in deciding how to organize their workday and their performance is evaluated mainly through the results of their work rather than by the hours it took them to do it.”

But “several studies have found that in many cases those who telework work a little longer than usual; the limits between regular and overtime hours are less clear,” and this situation is reinforced by the available electronic devices and technology, explained Marinakis from the ILO office in Santiago de Chile.

This means that “contact with colleagues and supervisors is possible at any time and place, extending the workday beyond what is usual,” which raises “the need to clearly establish a period of disconnection that gives workers an effective rest,” added the analyst.

Artificial intelligence, for example with robots that work with great precision and speed, favors the technological development of countries and increases productivity by reducing costs in the production of goods or services, but it can lead to significant reductions in employment. CREDIT: IDB

The other face

Argentine labor activist Francisco Iturraspe told IPS by telephone that on the other hand, in the future it appears that “non-human work, that of artificial intelligence, can massively reduce employment and make 40 hours a week seem like an immense amount of work.”

Iturraspe, a professor at the National University of Rosario in southeastern Argentina and a researcher at the country’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, said from Rosario that the reduction in working hours “responds to criteria typical of the 19th century, while in the 21st century there is the challenge of meeting the need for technological development and its impact on our countries.”

He argued that “to the extent that abundant and cheap labor is available, and people have to work longer hours, business owners need less investment in technology, which curbs development.”

But, on the other hand, Iturraspe stressed that investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence reduces the cost of producing goods and services, evoking the thesis of zero marginal cost set out by U.S. economist Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The End of Work” and other books.

This translates into a reduction in the workforce needed to produce and distribute goods and services, “perhaps by half according to some economists, a Copernican shift that would lead us to a situation of mass unemployment.”

The quest to reduce the workday walks along that razor’s edge, “with the hope that the reduction of working time can give working human beings new ways of coping with life,” Iturraspe said.

Fish farmers harvest genetically improved farmed tilapia. Credit: Shandy Santos

By Jharendu Pant
PENANG, Malaysia, May 3 2023 (IPS)

For Timor-Leste, as with most other islands in the Pacific, fortunes are to be found in fish – an equity food available to all regardless of status.

Nevertheless, the island is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change, hampering domestic food production and contributing to Timor-Leste’s ranking of 110th out of 121 countries for malnutrition. Meanwhile, the country is highly dependent on imported foods – including aquatic foods.

But a national strategy to prioritise the sustainable growth of fish production, particularly through farming of Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia (GIFT), is helping not only to reverse these trends, but also to provide new economic and livelihood opportunities throughout the entire aquaculture value chain.

And its successes offer economies of scale for development agencies and donors looking to maximise impact by replicating the strategy across other Pacific states with similar environments and challenges.

Jharendu Pant

Timor-Leste is on track to double fish consumption between 2010 and 2030, with all the benefits for improving nutrition this holds, having already generated returns by tripling productivity while reducing culture period by half. Timor-Leste’s farmers are now able to produce more nutritious aquatic food in less time.

The ripple effects of these successes are already spreading in the region: representatives from the Solomon Islands travelled to Timor-Leste for training in 2018 and 2019 to learn from the model, which offers a blueprint for addressing similar challenges faced by other island nations.

Small island developing states (SIDS) are collectively among the countries most affected by malnutrition, with 75 per cent of adult deaths in the Pacific caused by non-communicable disease – many of them diet-related. At the same time, small island states are among the most exposed to climate risk, which impacts the production of nutritious, indigenous foods.

But based on Timor-Leste’s learnings, other small island nations can also boost nutrition security and livelihoods through a similar dedicated strategy for aquaculture.

The approach starts with prioritising and deploying locally adapted solutions and technologies. WorldFish, working together with the Government of Timor-Leste, helped to introduce a public-private partnership (PPP) model for Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia (GIFT) hatcheries across the country, ensuring that farmers have access to high quality fish fingerlings in their local area.

Senor Robiay, cluster coordinator of Laubonu. Credit: Silvino Gomes

This improved breed of tilapia is ideal for addressing nutrition gaps for protein, essential fatty acids and micronutrients, while also minimising the burden on the environment, due to its relatively lower carbon footprint. The hatcheries were also established following rigorous environmental standards, which limits the release of effluence and observes biosecurity measures.

However, one of the challenges remaining for Timor-Leste and other resource-poor countries is the development of effective regulations and compliance monitoring. Alongside greater capacity for upholding environmental standards, subsequent phases of the strategy would also look to ensuring the benefits of increased production are shared equitably. This includes addressing issues of gender equality as well as youth employment opportunities.

Secondly, other countries with similar contexts can learn from Timor-Leste’s example of prioritising growth in production to drive increased consumption. Timor-Leste’s new fish hatcheries have helped increase production threefold between its first and second phase, paving the way for the successful scaling of aquaculture across the country.

And by prioritizing the production of monosex (all male) tilapia – which grow faster than female tilapia – Timor-Leste’s approach allowed the country’s farmers to maximize growth and the rate at which domestic production could meet the nutrition needs of the population. This resulted in increased availability and accessibility of nutritious fish to support higher levels of consumption.

Finally, Timor-Leste’s commitment to an ongoing aquaculture strategy over a decade and counting has also allowed the initiative to evolve over time. Such a long-term approach has also enabled the testing and validation of technologies and practices, making the scaling and replication elsewhere comparatively straightforward.

But ongoing funding is critical, both to develop the long-term capacity needed to maintain economic and nutritional gains in Timor-Leste, and to jumpstart similar initiatives elsewhere. The Partnership for Aquaculture Development in Timor-Leste (PADTL2) has been funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) New Zealand since 2014, with complementary financing from USAID in recent years, offering more solid and lasting gains than ad hoc interventions that last just a couple of years.

The sustainable growth of aquaculture production offers many benefits for small island nations. Over the last decade, Timor-Leste’s aquaculture strategy has become a model for developing more inclusive and secure food systems for all, helping to combat the challenges of malnutrition and exposure to climate change that impact Pacific Islands.

Partners including WorldFish are standing by to replicate this success and support other island governments to sustainably increase fish production and consumption to unlock blue fortunes for all.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Matiullah Wesa worked with community and tribal leaders in remote areas in Afghanistan to advocate for education and bring learning closer to communities.

By David Kode
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 19 2023 (IPS)

Matiullah Wesa’s crime was to try to ensure young people got an education in Afghanistan. His recent forceful abduction by the Taliban offers the latest stark reminder that global solidarity and coherent action from the international community are needed to prevent the complete loss of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Matiullah has been at the forefront of advocating for access to education as a co-founder and leader of Pen Path. For more than a decade, Pen Path has worked with community and tribal leaders in remote areas in Afghanistan to advocate for education and bring learning closer to communities. It works to enlighten communities about the importance of education, particularly girl’s and women’s education, organises book donations, runs mobile libraries in remote areas and reopens schools closed by years of conflict and insecurity. Pen Path has reopened over 100 schools, distributed more than 1.5 million items of stationery and provided education facilities for 110,000 children – 66,000 of them girls. This is what Matiullah is being punished for.

The abduction of Matiullah and many others advocating for the rights of education point to a concerted effort by the Taliban to try to restrict women’s and girls’ access to education and silence those advocating for education and an inclusive society.

There are sadly many other instances. In November 2022 around 60 Taliban members stormed a press conference organised to announce the formation of Afghan Women Movement for Equality. They arrested conference participants and deleted all images from their phones.

Immediately after taking power in August 2021, the Taliban instructed women to stay at home and avoid travelling. In December 2022, the Ministry of Higher Education announced it had suspended university education for women until further notice. Taliban officials argued that female students did not wear proper clothing on campus and announced it was enforcing gender segregation in schools. These decisions have been accompanied by others that force thousands of female workers to stay at home and prevent women and girls entering public spaces such as parks.

In December 2022 the Taliban banned women from working for international and national civil society organisations. This was a move that could only be counter-productive, since women play a vital role in providing essential services that people need. Banning women from working for civil society organisations affects millions in dire need of humanitarian assistance and services to women and children, as well as further increasing unemployment. The Taliban urged organisations to suspend female staff under the pretence that workers did not adhere to the regime’s strict dress code.

Most recently, women have been banned from working for United Nations agencies that are operating in Afghanistan. The United Nations may have to pull out.

It has taken just months for the Taliban to reverse the gains made over the years before their return that saw Afghan women claim visibility in public life and work such roles as broadcasters, doctors and judges.

Women in Afghanistan are fighting but can’t succeed alone

These restrictions on women’s rights should be seen in the context of the closing of civic space and attacks on other fundamental rights. As a result, Afghanistan’s civic space rating was recently downgraded to closed, the worst category, by the CIVICUS Monitor, a research partnership that tracks civic space conditions in 197 countries.

Despite the ongoing restrictions against women, the brave women of Afghanistan refuse to back down. They continue to organise what protests they can against restrictions and women human rights defenders continue to advocate for the rights of all women and girls to access education and participate in decision-making processes.

When women protest against restrictions, they risk harassment, physical and psychological torture and detentions. Some have been forcefully abducted from their homes. In January 2022, Taliban gunmen raided the homes of women human rights defenders Parwana Ibrahimkhel and Tamana Zaryab and abducted them.

No society can reach its real potential without the participation of women. The international community must double its efforts to support women and girls in Afghanistan. States should respond proactively to the United Nations 2023 appeal for Afghanistan. Aid should however be made conditional on guarantees to uphold the fundamental rights of women and girls. The international community should accompany aid with a strategy to build a more inclusive and open society.

Not to do so would be to abandon the likes of Matiullah Wesa, the many others like him penalised for standing up for education and rights, and the women of girls of Afghanistan being forced into silence.

David Kode is the Advocacy and Campaigns Lead at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance.

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The 1.23 billion people working in agrifood systems belong to households made up of an estimated 3.83 billion people. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Apr 17 2023 (IPS)

New research by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has revealed that almost half the world’s population of around eight billion people belong to households whose livelihoods depend to some degree on agrifood systems (AFS).

The findings are important as farming and the food system as a whole is central to the multiple challenges humankind faces to feed a global population forecast to rise to 10 billion by 2050, while meeting the Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, hunger and malnutrition, combat the climate crisis and preserve natural resources for future generations.

So the research offers precious information for decision makers, and FAO is aiming for it to be the start of an ongoing statistical data series.

Agrifood-system transformation offers the promise of new jobs in both agriculture and the off-farm segments of agrifood systems, particularly in low income countries with large, young populations. Deliberate policies, however, are needed to ensure the quantity and quality of these jobs

The report said that around 1.23 billion people worked in agrifood systems in 2019, including 857 million in primary agricultural production (agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing, aquaculture, hunting) and 375 million in the off-farm segments of agrifood systems.

The 1.23 billion people working in agrifood systems belong to households made up of an estimated 3.83 billion people.

FAO says there is evidence of a high degree of exploitation of labour in agrifood systems, including harmful conditions, precarious job security, low wages, disproportionate burdens on women, and coercive use of child labour.

So statistics on the number of people employed in AFS can be useful to monitor for violations of human rights and to develop and target policies to regulate working conditions in the sector.

Agrifood systems also present opportunities though, as they can offer many new jobs, a factor that is especially important in lower-income countries with lots of young who need employment.

So the data can help to shape policies to develop these opportunities.

For example, better understanding of the existing workforce could reveal entry points for programmes to increase skills and entrepreneurship.

“Identifying and quantifying the number of agrifood-system workers is essential for several reasons, particularly for low- and middle-income countries of the Global South,” Ben Davis, the Director of FAO’s Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division, told IPS.

“In low-income countries, the largest number of workers are employed in agrifood systems, and agrifood systems are a key economic motor of growth and poverty reduction,” added Davis, the lead author of the study, which is entitled Estimating Global and Country Level Employment in Agrifood Systems.

“Agrifood-system transformation offers the promise of new jobs in both agriculture and the off-farm segments of agrifood systems, particularly in low income countries with large, young populations.

“Deliberate policies, however, are needed to ensure the quantity and quality of these jobs.

“Statistics on the number of people employed in agrifood systems would also help regulate working conditions and develop and target appropriate policies and programmes to support livelihoods”.

The three challenges facing agrifood systems – feeding a growing population, providing a livelihood for farmers, and protecting the environment – must be tackled together because, given the many interconnections, taking a single-issue perspective on any objective can lead to unintended impacts on others. Market in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS

The new report said that the continent with the largest number of people employed in agrifood systems is Asia with 793 million, followed by Africa with almost 290 million

It said the majority of the economically active population in low-income countries, particularly in Africa, had at least one job or activity in agrifood systems.

It said that 62% employment in Africa is in AFS, when relevant trade and transportation activities are included, compared to 40% in Asia and 23% in the Americas.

The study said that, of the 3.83 billion people belonging to households reliant on agrifood systems for their livelihoods, 2.36 billion live in Asia and 940 million are in Africa.

The study is the first to give a systematic, documented global estimate of the number of people involved in AFS.

It said the number of people engaged in the sector has been undercounted in the past due to three factors.

The first is that many people, especially those living in poverty, work several jobs and lots are involved in AFS, even if this is not their primary activity.

The second is that many AFS jobs are seasonal or intermittent and so easily missed by surveys.

Finally, many people are engaged in household farming for their own consumption on top of their primary occupation.

The report gives the example of a full-time schoolteacher who grows produce for sale on their land.

Agrifood systems produce some 11 billion tonnes of food worldwide each year, the FAO says.

But they also have a big environmental footprint.

The IPCC’s recent Synthesis Report, which completed its Sixth Assessment cycle, said that 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions currently stem from agriculture, forestry, and land use.

Without radical change, the world is set for a future of persistent food insecurity and the destruction and degradation of natural resources.

Building sustainable, resilient agrifood systems, on the other hand, can help tackle the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and food insecurity.

FAO has presented a Strategy on Climate Change, which argues that a holistic approach is needed.

It says the three challenges facing agrifood systems – feeding a growing population, providing a livelihood for farmers, and protecting the environment – must be tackled together because, given the many interconnections, taking a single-issue perspective on any objective can lead to unintended impacts on others.

By External Source
Apr 1 2023 (IPS-Partners)

 
This is David.

He is becoming an exceptional chess player.

This is Mai.

She loves beaches and the ocean.

This is Kwame.

He is a passionate architect.

The only thing these people have in common…

…is that they all identify as Autistic.

Autistic people have a wide range of talents and challenges that are often not recognized by the world they are born into.

They continue to face discrimination and other challenges.

Levels of awareness and acceptance vary dramatically from country to country.

In recent years, however, major progress has been made in increasing awareness and acceptance.

Thankfully, we are moving away from the narrative of curing or converting autistic people.

We now focus much more on education, support and inclusivity.

This is a major transformation for all autistic people, their allies, and neurodiversity.

It enables autistic people to claim their dignity and self-esteem.

And to become fully integrated as valued members of societies.

Without stigma.

This year, we celebrate World Autism Awareness Day with a pivotal theme:

Transforming the narrative: Contributions at home, at work, in the arts and in policymaking

Together, we must transform the narrative around neurodiversity to overcome barriers and improve the lives of autistic people.

IPS UN Bureau

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Dr. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim

By Ameenah Gurib-Fakim
PORT LOUIS, Mauritius, Mar 30 2023 (IPS)

On 12th March 2023, The Republic of Mauritius celebrates 55 years of post-independence history. It would be an understatement to just say that there has been a lot of water under the bridge on our journey to self-determination!.. Indeed, we have made massive progress since we lowered the Union Jack and unfurled our own flag. It was and remains a moment of great pride whenever I see our flag in any international event, I participate in.

We are a small vulnerable island, deprived of natural resources and at the time of independence, we were flanked with a monoculture economy, high unemployment, low education and low income were amongst the major challenges. We had been relegated to being a basket case. Even by Nobel prize winners concluded that because of our isolation from the then major capitals; climate challenges etc. we were doomed at a time when our per capita income hovered around 200USD.

We were more a recipe for disaster than that of a success story. Still over time, with leadership and vision, we proved to the world that another outcome was feasible, but more importantly, that profound transformation was possible, and we succeeded within one single generation.

We became the shining star especially South of the Sahara and our experience brings useful insights into the dynamics and pitfalls of an economic transformation journey. Nonetheless, this transformation has been conducted in such a manner that the economic landscape, society and institutions were modernised simultaneously, albeit at various speeds, taking into consideration the political, human, institutional and economic realities and constraints of the time. The approach was largely inclusive because the major asset then and now remains our diverse, talented population.

Our story had been based on the following foundational stones: political leadership, strong institutions, ethnic diversity, a class of versatile indigenous entrepreneur and a well-structured private sector engaged in dialogues on policy matters. Coupled with this, the balance has been between economic and social objectives, with a strong focus on the human capital, through free education since 1976, free health care, and a minimum basic social safety net for the most vulnerable.

Still the strength of our institutions were a key guarantee for investment, entrepreneurship and innovation. While acknowledging that significant progress has been achieved in the last 50+ years, the global dynamics call for more and more reforms if our country wants to avoid the middle-income trap and join the club of high-income countries within the realm of a changing climate. There are already indications of worrying signals: the average growth rate has been stabilizing at less than 5%, necessary to enable incremental changes, but insufficient to steam up the engine to the next level. Beyond the redesigning and re-engineering of the economic landscape, some implementable reforms will have to be addressed.

The main weaknesses are found in our education system. While we have a 99% enrolment rate at the primary level, but what comes next is disappointing. Let’s take the hypothetical 100 children entering our primary school, 80 will manage to pass their primary school exam to enter secondary school; only 60 will manage to succeed after the first 3 years, 40 will pass the Grade 5 (O-level) exams and with only 20-30 will reach the end of the secondary school cycle. This is in total contradiction to the requirements of a high-income country; one that ambitions to attract High Tech investment. The curriculum needs to move away from being too academic and with little openings for technical and vocational training.

Also, labour market reforms need to ensure flexibility. A diversified economic base only makes sense if it is possible for people to move across sectors. Currently, the stiffness of labour market and employment schemes that go with it, makes it difficult for people to move around. The basic principle must remain the protection of the people as opposed to jobs.

Finally, Mauritius must step up efforts to plug into regional and global value chains. We must continue to build on the regional market and must upgrade our participation in the global value chains, by capturing activities with higher value addition. Our regional market penetration remains weak. In the last decade it has been estimated that Mauritius export to the SADC region amounted to only 1.3% while its imports from the SADC region amounted to 2.5%. Similarly, we still have too big a bias towards our traditional markets to export low value added products.

Competition over concepts rather than over processes will be increasingly necessary to have a meaningful role. To achieve this, increased investment in quality education, innovation, research and development and technology, the appropriate ecosystem for start-ups, is crucial. We are at a crossroad in our economic transformation. The latter can remain a continuous process as we have had a good track record so far. The challenge for our country now lies in combining sustained domestic reforms with efforts required to keep up with international trends to become a global player. This demands that we align all our talents, competence and resources.

Next door to us, a giant is waking up – The African continent and the AfCFTA presents a huge opportunity, for, inter alia, our manufacturing sector, provided we engage with her, like in any relationship, seriously, and not just pay lip service. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the world we embraced in 1968, is now fast mutating. We were born in a bipolar world and now living in an increasingly multipolar world. Our foreign policy must remain agile as it is going to be a rocky road especially as we will have to count the presence of new emerging African middle-income countries that are increasingly catching up with their economic trajectory.

We will only succeed if we manage to navigate through competition, build trust and strengthen our institutions, acknowledge our diversity as strength, ensure meritocracy and by turning challenges into potential opportunities as ONE people and ONE Nation, in Peace, Justice and Liberty.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

The Puente Madera community, in the municipality of San Blas Atempa in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, is opposed to the sale of land to an industrial park in that town, one of the 10 projects in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor, as demonstrated at a February 2022 protest. CREDIT: APIIDTT

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 28 2023 (IPS)

In March 2021, the community assembly of the municipality of San Blas Atempa, in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, approved the sale of 360 hectares for the creation of an industrial park. But part of the community opposed the initiative due to irregularities, such as the falsification of signatures of supposed attendees, including those of people who had already died.

The facility is one of 10 planned within the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor (CIIT), which in turn is part of the Program for the Development of the Tehuantepec Isthmus that the Mexican government has been implementing since 2019 with the aim of developing the south and southeast of this country of 1,964,375 square kilometers and almost 130 million inhabitants."It is the replica of the maquiladora model, jobs that exploit workers and cheap labor. There are legitimate concerns, like water, and what kind of industries will be installed. The isthmus is not an industrial zone.”
-- Geocomunes

Mario Quintero, a member of the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT), said the plan is plagued by “land grabbing, exploitation, dispossession, and displacement of peoples.”

“It is a large-scale geopolitical project in a geostrategic region. The system is corrupt. The way this is being carried out is obscene. The government agrees to the lease, but then says it is going to expropriate,” the activist told IPS from the municipality of Juchitán, in Oaxaca, some 480 kilometers south of Mexico City.

The 200-km wide isthmus is the narrowest area in Mexico between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, in the Gulf of Mexico, which has a large indigenous population and is abundant in biodiversity, hydrocarbons and minerals.

In addition to the 10 industrial sites of 360 hectares each in size, called “Development Poles for Well-being” and focused on exports, the CIIT includes the renovation of the ports of Salina Cruz, on the Pacific Ocean in Oaxaca, and Coatzacoalcos in the state of Veracruz.

It also includes the reconstruction of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Railroad, which links Chiapas, in the state of the same name, with Dos Bocas, in Tabasco.

In addition, it involves the upgrade of the Salina Cruz and Minatitlán refineries, in the state of Veracruz, the laying of a gas pipeline and the construction of a gas liquefaction plant off the coast of Salina Cruz.

But this industrial model is criticized for the few benefits it brings the host communities and the fact that the largest economic benefits go to exporters, and due to its environmental impacts. For example, the municipality of Coatzacoalcos is one of the most polluted in the country.

The non-governmental organization Geocomunes, dedicated to building maps for the defense of common goods, provided IPS with a list of effects such as the pollution of rivers and aquifers, as well as poor working conditions.

“Except for the promise of jobs, it’s business as usual. It is the replica of the maquiladora model, jobs that exploit workers and cheap labor,” the organization said. “There are legitimate concerns, like water, and what kind of industries will be installed. The isthmus is not an industrial zone, it implies a change in the traditional economy. It’s important to look at what kind of employment it will bring. Construction means precarious employment.”

The organization also anticipates that the industries will not arrive as soon as promised, since industrial production does not only consist of the installation of companies.

The Interoceanic Corridor seeks to connect both coasts of Mexico, the Pacific and the Atlantic, through highways and a refurbished railway, to promote industrial development in the south-southeast of the country and foment exports. CREDIT: Fonadin

Appetite for exports

Mexico, the second largest economy in Latin America, is home to more than 500 industrial parks on more than 51,000 hectares, which swell the automotive, electronic, food and beverage, metallurgical, medical, textile and aerospace industries.

Altogether, more than 3,700 companies generate some three million jobs in these industrial parks.

The trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – ​​in force between 1994 and 2020, when it was replaced by the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) – fomented the installation of export assembly plants or maquilas.

They mainly set up shop in northern Mexico, the area closest to the United States, drawn by tax benefits, lower wages and more lax environmental regulations than in their nations of origin.

The northern state of Nuevo León and the central states of Mexico and Guanajuato are home to the largest number of maquilas.

But the socioeconomic conditions in these places have not improved, as demonstrated by the available statistics.

Figures from the government’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) indicate that poverty and extreme poverty increased in Nuevo León, home to some 150 industrial poles, between 2018 and 2020.

Overall poverty rose from 1.07 million people to 1.34 million (from 19.24 percent to 24.3 percent of the population) while extreme poverty climbed from 40,000 to 124,000 people (0.7 percent to 2.1 percent).

In Nuevo León, one of the states with the highest levels of income per person and social development in the country, home to 5.78 million people, the unemployment rate stood at 3.57 percent in 2022, and 35.8 of the workforce was in the informal sector of the economy.

In the state of Mexico, adjacent to Mexico City and home to 113 industrial facilities, poverty grew from 7.04 million to 8.34 million people (from 41.8 percent to 48.9 percent of the population), while extreme poverty rose from 783,000 to 1.4 million people (from 4.7 percent to 8.2 percent).

The state of Mexico, population 17 million, had 4.46 percent unemployment in 2022 while 56.8 percent of the workforce was in the informal sector.

The results are similar in other states where industrial parks have been built.

In contrast, in the southern state of Oaxaca, poverty and extreme poverty declined, from 2.75 million to 2.58 million people (from 64.3 percent to 61.7 percent) and from 868,000 to 860,000 (from 21.7 percent to 20.6 percent), respectively.

Oaxaca, which so far has only one industrial pole, is home to 4.13 million people, with an unemployment rate of 1.28 percent in 2022 and 81 percent of the labor force in the informal sector.

The Interoceanic Corridor is part of the Program for the Development of the Tehuantepec Isthmus, covers the southern state of Oaxaca and the southeastern state of Veracruz, and has drawn opposition from local communities who consider it an imposition by the government and a threat to their culture and territory. The photo shows a Mar. 21, 2023 protest against the megaprojects, outside the United States Embassy. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

More hydrocarbons

The Program for the Development of the Tehuantepec Isthmus covers 46 municipalities in Oaxaca and 33 in Veracruz, forming an area where 11 of the country’s 69 indigenous peoples live, totaling 17 million native people.

The Corridor revives a set of similar projects that then President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) proposed in 1996 but which never were carried out. Now President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office since December 2018, is recycling them.

The CIIT budget, under the Ministry of the Navy, grew from 162 million dollars in the first year, 2020, to 203 million in 2021 and to more than double that, 529 million, in 2022. But in 2023 it has shrunk to 374 million.

The Corridor divides the 10 projected industrial poles equally between Oaxaca and Veracruz. On Mar. 21 López Obrador announced that the tender for four locations in Oaxaca would be held in early April.

The Tehuantepec isthmus is a region already impacted by the presence of other infrastructure, such as 29 wind farms, most of them private. That installed capacity, plus new wind and solar fields, will fuel the new industrial facilities.

The Mexican government also projects the laying of a 270-km gas pipeline with a transport capacity of 500 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), between the towns of Jáltipan and Salina Cruz.

The pipeline will complement the 247-km Jáltipan-Salina Cruz gas pipeline that has been operating since 2014 and transports 90 Mmcf/d.

The new pipeline, at a cost of 434 million dollars, will carry 430 MMcf/d to the planned liquefaction plant near Salina Cruz and between 50 and 70 MMcf/d to the industrial parks.

The Federal Electricity Commission, responsible for the project, calculates that it will supply gas to 470 plants and 30 industrial parks.

The communities are fighting it and will seek to build autonomy through local self-management projects, according to Quintero.

“The project is not going to improve the lives of the communities, just as the railroad in the 20th century or the hydroelectric plants failed to do, or the refinery (in Salina Cruz) or the wind farms, because their promises translate into belts of marginalization,” said the activist. “Development and benefits for whom?”

Geocomunes doubts the promise of development. “The land, the water, basic things that are at risk. Who will bear the costs? What is the government going to demand?”

The median ages of populations are expected to continue rising over the coming decades. East Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

Yes, lower the retirement ages! That is the key message that workers worldwide are conveying to their governments.

Rather than increasing retirement ages as many governments are now proposing, men and women worldwide want to stop working well before they reach old age, which is approximately 60 years.

After toiling for years in factories, offices, shops, backrooms, vehicles, fields, etc., most workers around the world want to stop working before they reach old age. That desire translates into exiting the labor force and receiving a government pension at approximately age 55 years.

Government officials, economic advisors, business leaders and many others calling for raising retirement ages will no doubt consider lower retirement ages to be preposterous, verging on financial blasphemy and leading to an economy’s doom. Some have argued that lowering retirement ages places an unaffordable and unfair burden on taxpayers.

The number of young women and men available to work is the largest ever. Whereas the proportion of the world’s population between ages 18 to 59 was 52 percent in 1950 and numbered 1.3 billion, that proportion increased to 56 percent in 2022 and numbered 4.5 billion

On the contrary, rather than leading to an economy’s ruination, a retirement age of 55 years may usher in a “retirement renaissance” resulting in untold benefits to societies worldwide.

The renaissance will enhance and extend the quality of life for those in retirement. It is also expected to decrease unemployment rates, lead to increased motivation among younger employees to continue working until retirement, provide businesses with energetic, healthy, well-trained youthful workers as well as foster cross generational interactions, recreation, hobbies and cultural activities.

In addition, the renaissance may contribute to raising low fertility levels by making childcare more readily available. Today two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a country where the fertility rate is below the replacement level of about 2.1 births per woman.

The retirement renaissance will permit retired men and women with adult children to assist with childcare and related activities. With grandparents available for childcare, young working mothers and fathers can be expected to be more favorably disposed to having additional children.

The protests, demonstrations and objections in Asia, Europe, North America and elsewhere reflect the public’s resistance to working until, as they claim, broken-down and close to near death. Large majorities of workers have clearly conveyed their opposition to their respective government proposals requiring people to work well into old age before they are entitled to receive their promised retirement pensions.

The various projected insolvencies of government pension systems, often cited as justification for raising retirement ages to record breaking high levels, are often dismissed by workers and their supporters as irrelevant. The insolvencies, workers contend, are simply financial excuses concocted by government officials and their wealthy supporters, who object to paying their fair share of taxes, to justify their goal of raising retirement ages and cutting pension benefits.

In addition to higher taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, workers argue that governments have plenty of financial resources at their disposal to permit lowering retirement ages and financing pension programs. Some contend that countries could substantially reduce their defense spending and redirect the substantial savings to retirement pension programs.

Admittedly, it is certainly the case that on average people are living longer than in the recent past and the proportions of elderly are increasing. However, those increases in longevity have not been shared equally across populations.

In general, those with high incomes have experienced longevity gains, while low earners have seen little gain in longevity. Moreover, workers contend that living longer should not translate into working longer and receiving reduced retirement pension benefits.

Both men and women spend decades working at jobs that they don’t particularly enjoy and for bosses they loathe. Many would argue that it only seems fair and reasonable to have several decades available to workers permitting them to do what they desire before they eventually face death. People are largely opposed to working until they are tired, bed ridden and unable to enjoy the remaining years of their life.

It is also the case that women on average live several years longer than men. At age 65, for example, at the global level women live close to three years longer than men. Even larger differences in life expectancy at age 65 between women and men are observed in other countries, such as France and Japan at nearly four and five years, respectively (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

Taking into account those well documented sex differences in longevity, the retirement age for women could be several years greater than that for men, perhaps 57 and 54 years, respectively. Such a difference between women and men would help to ensure gender equality in the number of retirement years.

In addition, neither men nor women should be forced to work beyond the recommended lower official retirement ages for men and women. Of course, exceptions should be permitted and lower official retirement ages should not bar individuals from working in old age if they choose to do so.

Some heads of state, elected officials, government bureaucrats, investors, business owners, academics, the wealthy, entertainers as well as many others are choosing for personal reasons it appears to work beyond official retirement ages. Some current heads of state, for example, are well beyond the official retirement ages of their respective countries with few of their constituents objecting (Figure 2).

Source: Author’s compilation.

With the world population reaching a record-breaking 8,000,000,000 people, the number of young women and men available to work is the largest ever. Whereas the proportion of the world’s population between ages 18 to 59 was 52 percent in 1950 and numbered 1.3 billion, that proportion increased to 56 percent in 2022 and numbered 4.5 billion.

There’s no denying the fact that the world’s population is older than in the past. Over the past 70 years, the proportion of the world’s population aged 60 years and older has nearly doubled, from 8 percent in 1950 to 14 percent in 2022. However, the increase in the proportion elderly is offset by the decrease in proportion of children below age 18 years from 40 percent in 1950 to 30 percent in 2022 (Figure 3).

Source: United Nations.

Also, some believe that rapidly improving technologies, including robots, androids and artificial intelligence, can complement and broaden a country’s labor supply. Those technologies are expected to offset reductions in the size of the labor force as people retire at around 55 years of age.

Many governments have enacted or are seriously considering raising retirement ages. Increases in today’s retirement ages are viewed by workers as nothing more than pension benefits cuts.

Proposals for raising retirement ages are viewed by workers as relying on faulty actuarial analyses of bankruptcy, dire warnings of pension insolvency and catchy phrases such as “Vivre plus longtemps, travailler plus longtemps” (“live longer, work longer”).

Moreover, conservative government officials in general are resistant to raising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations. However, many of those officials are favorably disposed to raising retirement ages, which would result in reductions in pension benefits. Also, some government officials have rejected calls to return retirement ages back to 60 years.

In sum, in addition to meeting the wishes of billions of working men and women who want to retire well before reaching old age, lower official retirement ages of approximately 57 years for women and 54 years for men may usher in a “retirement renaissance” that could result in untold benefits to societies worldwide.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

Delegates at the Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights forum held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. Credit: APDA

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

With more than 600 million youth aged between 18 and 24 in the Asia and Pacific region, putting their issues front and center is crucial. Speakers at a recent forum, Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia, agreed that policy development and implementation should be youth-centered.

Professor Keizo Takemi, MP (Japan) and Chair of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD), reminded parliamentarians of the work ahead when he noted in his opening address that while youth were “innovative thanks to global digitalization, half are unemployed or underemployed. Therefore parliamentarians have a vital role to play.”

The extent of the challenges emerged during the discussions. Raoul Danniel A Manuel, MP Philippines, said teenage pregnancy was higher in rural areas than urban, and there was also an education differential.

“The rate is 32 percent among teenagers without education, 14% among teenagers with primary education, and 5% among teenagers with a secondary education,” Manuel said, noting that the Philippines was the only country in Southeast Asia where the teenage pregnancy rate is increasing in girls aged 10 to 14.

“It is important to raise awareness among young people so that they know how to take care of themselves before they marry. We also need to continue to strengthen services, especially user-friendly services, by focusing on vulnerable groups and young women who do not go to school because this group is at a very high risk of pregnancy, and pregnancy can be risky.”

Lisa Chesters, MP (Australia), reminded conference delegates that “comprehensive sexual education has a positive impact on young people. It has been credited with delaying sexual debut can reduce unwanted pregnancies and STDs.”

Benefits included preventing intimate partner violence, developing healthy relationships, and preventing sexual abuse.

Australia learned after an online petition went viral in 2021 the extent to which students had been subjected to sexual harassment at schools. Following this, ministers for education throughout the country agreed on sexual education at school.

Chesters said it was crucial to include comprehensive, well-planned engagement of young people at the center of any advertising and social media campaigns.

The discussion also centered around employment. Felix Weidenkaff, the Youth Employment Expert for the ILO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific, told the conference that while digitalization was a key strategy to increase youth employment, it wasn’t a one-off. Aspects lawmakers should consider would include TVET and skill development (including understanding the needs of those with disability), infrastructure, connectivity, and equipment to create an inclusive system.

Delegates at the Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights forum held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. Credit: APDA

Sophea Khun, Country Program Coordinator of UN Women, said changing gender norms required comprehensive and sustained strategies that engage multiple stakeholders at all levels: households, communities, institutions, and governments.

Girls and young women needed to be given the opportunity for training in STEM (science, technology, and mathematics) to close the digital divide.

“In addition, harmful social norms that contribute to controlling women and girls’ access to communications and technology also need to be tackled,” Khun said.

Hun Many, MP (Cambodia) and Chair of the Commission, reiterated in his closing remarks that to create a more elaborate and innovative policy, “youth need to be able to be part of the decision-making process and the discussions.”

Ahead of the conference, IPS interviewed Cambodian MP Lork Kheng, chair of the commission on public health, social works, vocational training, and women’s affairs. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Lork Kheng, Cambodian MP and chair of the commission on public health, social works, vocational training, and women’s affairs.

IPS:  A tremendous amount of work is to be done to improve SRHR for all and youth-friendly services. How can young MPs play an enhanced role in developing policy, ensuring services are adequately financed and delivered to the communities where required?

LK: With regards to the role of Parliament, we can oversee the implementation of policies related to education, the provision of safe counseling on sexual and reproductive health, family planning, abortion, HIV/AIDS prevention and care, and local monitoring of child marriages, which are challenges for our Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the National Assembly always provides opportunities for development partners to contribute ideas and proposals for consideration through close cooperation in organizing educational forums and disseminating discussions and exchanges at national and sub-national levels (in their constituencies). We can establish effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and coverage of the actual implementation of practitioners and service providers and the effectiveness of policies to ensure that they are providing the anticipated outcomes. Working with think tanks and civil society organizations to conduct research, assessment, and evaluation that informs policymaking and improves service delivery from all stakeholders’ perspectives.

Another important role is to communicate directly with the people and sub-national authorities in the constituencies where they are based. Young MPs and MPs often use the forum to meet and visit local administrations, etc., to mainstream the information and raise awareness of the importance of youth and family life planning, as well as to share good local and global political experiences and best practices that can be implemented within the existing framework of national and sub-national policies to stakeholders, especially local authorities who work directly with the youth.

In particular, in overseeing the financing, every year, MPs actively participate in the discussion of the draft budget law, in which the whole House closely monitors the progress and changes in the budget allocation according to each program. Furthermore, MPs also provide feedback to the executive branch during the initial consultation phase until the full house passes the draft budget. In this regard, the review of budget allocations for youth health care, such as increased attention to the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, tobacco control, food safety and diet in general, and sexual issues in particular, has been addressed frequently and has been noted and considered by the relevant ministries as well as the Government.

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications has prioritized students who pass the upper secondary national examination with good grades to study digital skills with the support of a student loan that must be repaid when they get a job. This is to strengthen human resources with digital capabilities.

IPS: While Asia and the Pacific are home to more than 60% of the world’s youth aged between 15 and 24, the COVID-19 pandemic acted to disadvantage youth in poorer and rural communities, especially where schooling was interrupted, and children did not have access to the technologies for remote learning. How can youth MPs ensure that those children (who may even now be young adults) are given the opportunities to complete their education? Secondly, how should policy, infrastructure, and finance be directed at children still disadvantaged by a lack of technology?

LK: We all truly recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic is an extraordinary challenge that has plagued all socio-economic sectors, requiring the Government and authorities to respond with unusual means in these difficult circumstances. In developing countries like Cambodia, when schools were closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in its early stages, we did not have the right digital infrastructure for teaching and learning. Students in rural areas and those considered to be disadvantaged groups were the ones who faced barriers to accessing education at that stage. But if we look at the immediate solution of the Head of the Royal Government of Cambodia, we can measure the outcome of solving the challenges with this decision. The Government quickly rolled out vaccinations, especially prioritizing vaccinations for front-line medical workers and educators. That ensured that these two environments gained immunity as soon as possible so that students could return to class quickly with a high sense of security.

IPS: Youth are considered a vital resource for the country’s economic development, but they face high unemployment. What are young MPs working on to ensure that youth can get decent jobs and support young entrepreneurs? What are the policy directions needed to foster youth employment?

LK: Specifically in Cambodia, the unemployment rate for youth may be slightly lower than 14 percent. Nevertheless, youth are also facing other major challenges, such as skill mismatches with the job markets and vulnerabilities of international labor migration, which are the major concerns of the Parliament and the Government. As Cambodia is riding high on development in all areas, the labor market has expanded, especially in areas that benefit youth. In response to such demands, the Government has paid close attention to education and vocational training by prioritizing promoting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to encourage young people to acquire high-demand skills.

In this new academic year, the Government has encouraged youth to pursue vocational skills at the primary and secondary levels by giving monthly allowance to approximately 1.5 million students, in addition to their free tuition.

To support the promotion of young entrepreneurship, we have also established a number of mechanisms – both under state supervision and public-private partnerships – that have created entrepreneurship and incubation centers. In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, these mechanisms also played an important role in providing much-needed assistance to those businesses through loans and free training to the entrepreneurs so that they could utilize the technology for their businesses against the backdrop of a changing lifestyle in the new normal.

Note: Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD), Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), and the Japan Trust Fund supported the hybrid conference.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By External Source
Mar 7 2023 (IPS-Partners)

From the earliest days of computing to the present age of virtual reality and artificial intelligence…

…women have made untold contributions to the digital world in which we increasingly live.

Their accomplishments have been made against all odds, in a historically unwelcoming field.

Today, a persistent gender gap in digital access keeps women from unlocking technology’s full potential.

Underrepresentation in STEM education and careers remains a major barrier to their participation in tech design and governance.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, women are still underrepresented in the technology sector.

They make up only 17% of the core technology workforce.

And the pervasive threat of online gender-based violence forces them out of the digital spaces they occupy.

A survey of women journalists from 125 countries found that 73% had suffered online violence in the course of their work.

Exclusion extends in more subtle forms as well:

Women make up only 22% of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) workforce.

And a global analysis of 133 AI systems across industries found that 44.2 per cent demonstrate gender bias.

However, there is some progress being made.

Women’s participation in the technology sector has increased by 10% since 2014.

According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology…

…the number of women in executive positions in the technology sector has increased from 11% in 2012 to 20% in 2019.

There is still a long way to go in terms of achieving gender equality in the technology sector.

International Women’s Day is a global celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

It is a call to action to continue to strive for progress.

This year, let’s celebrate our International Women’s Day theme: “DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality”.

IPS UN Bureau

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Miguel Barraza, secretary of the Chigualoco fisherpersons union in northern Chile, leans against a pile of Chilean kelp that has been drying in the sun for three days. The kelp used to fetch 1.5 dollars per kg, but the price has collapsed. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Feb 28 2023 (IPS)

Management areas in Chile for benthic organisims, which live on the bottom of the sea, are successfully combating the overexploitation of this food source thanks to the efforts of organized shellfish and seaweed harvesters and divers.

Benthic organisms are commercially valuable marine species that live at the lowest level of a body of water, including sub-surface layers, such as molluscs and algae.

The most widely harvested molluscs in Chile include the Chilean abalone (Concholepas concholepas), razor clam (Mesodesma donacium) and Chilean mussel (Mytilus chilensis), and the most harvested algae is Chilean kelp (Lessonia berteorana).“When there is free unregulated access, the resources do not recover, they tend to be overexploited and in the end there is nothing left. The only places where you can see these resources is in the management areas because fisherpersons are obliged to take care of them and help them recover.” -- Luis Durán Zambra

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The Undersecretariat for Fisheries and Aquaculture told IPS that in this country with a long coastline on the Pacific Ocean there are currently 853 Benthic Resources Management and Exploitation Areas (AMERB), with a total combined surface area of ​​close to 130,000 hectares.

The areas vary in size from one to 4,000 hectares, although 91 percent are under 300 hectares and the average is 150 hectares. They range from beaches and rocky coastal areas to places that are a maximum of five nautical miles offshore.

They were created in 1991, when geographical sectors were established within reserve areas for artisanal fishing in order to implement management plans, which set closed seasons, regulated catches and outlined recovery measures, and which are only assigned to organizations of legally registered artisanal fisherpersons.

The aim is to regulate artisanal fishing activity, restricting access to benthic organisms, under the supervision of the authorities.

Leaders of three local fishing coves or inlets that operate as production units where artisanal fisherpersons extract and sell marine resources told IPS about the efforts made to prevent poaching, and underscored the benefits of sustainable exploitation of these resources.

They said they managed to make a living from their work but expressed fears about the future.

This South American country of 19.2 million people has 6,350 km of coastline along the Pacific ocean and is among the world’s top 10 producers of fish.

Luis Durán Zambra presides over the Association of Guanaqueros Fisherpersons in Chile, which brings together 170 members, 70 of whom are registered for the assigned management area. Durán poses in his boat where he drives up to 20 tourists around the bay, an activity with which he earns extra income during the southern hemisphere summer. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

It has 99,557 registered artisanal fisherpersons, of whom 25,181 are women. There are 13,123 registered artisanal fishing vessels and 403 industrial fishing vessel owners. The country also has 456 fishing plants that employ 38,014 people, according to data provided by the Undersecretariat of Fisheries in response to questions from IPS.

As of October 2022, there were 1,538 aquaculture centers and 3,295 aquaculture concessions, 69 percent of which involved companies that employ a total of 10,719 people.

The Undersecretariat said it is in the process of creating 516 new AMERBs, and that in more than 30 years under the system 435 proposals have been rejected and the status of 34 sectors has been canceled.

Leaders of fisherpersons unions describe different realities

Luis Durán Zambra, president of the Fisherpersons Association of Guanaqueros, a town in the Coquimbo region, 430 kilometers north of Santiago, said that these areas have been very successful.

“When there is free unregulated access, the resources do not recover, they tend to be overexploited and in the end there is nothing left. The only places where you can see these resources is in the management areas because fisherpersons are obliged to take care of them and help them recover,” he told IPS during an interview in his cove.

Durán, 64, is the fifth generation of fishermen in his family.

The unions, advised by marine biologists, analyze each management area, its conditions, the reproduction of resources and then inform the Undersecretariat of Fisheries to authorize the size of the annual harvest.

Tasting seafood and fish ceviches – a local dish – in the market of the Tongoy resort town, in the Coquimbo region in northern Chile, is also an opportunity to educate tourists on the flavor and nutritional value of these products fresh from the sea. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Miguel Tellez, president of the Mar Adentro de Chepu Artisanal Fisherpersons Union, on the island of Chiloé, 1,100 kilometers south of Santiago, told IPS that they have worked for 20 years in four 300-hectare management areas that start at the Chepu River, where they harvest different molluscs.

The main species they harvest is the Chilean abalone, although there are also mussels, sea urchins (Echinoidea) and red seaweed (Sarcothalia crispata) that is harvested in the southern hemisphere summer. The production of Chilean abalone varies, but in a good year 400,000 are caught.

“We are 34 active members, half of us divers, who monitor the entire year, with four people taking turns overseeing day and night for six days,” Tellez said from his home in the town of Chepu.

He explained that poaching “has been our main problem, especially when we just started.”

He was referring to illegal fishermen and divers who enter the management zones, affecting the efforts of those legally assigned to exploit and protect them.

His union installed surveillance booths on the coast of Parque Ahuenco, a reserve belonging to some fifty families that preserve 1,200 hectares along the sea.

Tellez is worried about the future because the average age of union members is 40 years old.

“I don’t know how much longer we can do this. There are very few young people and because of their studies they are involved in other things,” he said.

In Chepu, fisherpersons sell Chilean abalone in the shell to a factory in the nearby town of Calbuco where they are cleaned and packaged for sale within Chile or for export. The price depends on the market. It has now dropped to 60 cents of a dollar per abalone.

“This is a low price given that we have to oversee the shellfish year-round, paying dearly for fuel, motors and boats and making a tremendous investment. An outboard motor, like the ones we use, costs 40 million pesos (about 50,000 dollars),” said Tellez.

At the pier in Tongoy, a seaside resort in northern Chile, shellfish divers prepare piures (a kind of sea squirt), which they try to sell to tourists by explaining how to eat them. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

He is dubious about moving towards industrialization, asking “How much more could we harvest and how much more would we have to invest?”

Proudly, he said his was “one of the best unions in the country. Partly because we are from the same area,” since all of the members live in Chepu or nearby towns.

In the Coquimbo region, Miguel Barraza, secretary of the Chigualoco fisherpersons union, 248 kilometers north of Santiago, is enthusiastic about transforming his cove.

At the cove, he told IPS that “1.1 billion pesos (1.37 million dollars) are going to be invested to make this a model cove. A new breakwater will be built, along with a bypass on the freeway and facilities to serve tourists.”

The new breakwater will protect boats from waves as they enter and exit the cove.

Thirty members and their families, including shellfish divers, fisherpersons and kelp harvesters, live in Chigualoco.

They have three management areas, the largest of which is 5000 square meters in size. From these areas they harvest 100,000 Chilean abalones and 300 tons of Chilean kelp a year.

“We earn enough to live year-round,” Barraza said, adding that they were not interested in processing their catch because “fishermen like to come ashore and sell.”

“We have overseers, but poachers come in from various sides. They are stealing a lot. We won a project to buy a drone to monitor the shore to find them,” he said.

In Guanaqueros, where Durán’s union is located, despite their seniority they have only now registered a management zone in their overexploited fishing area.

“We have an area that is not yet well developed. It has been difficult for us because most of us are fisherpersons. But the area is going to recover. The marine biologist says that 100,000 abalones could be harvested annually,” said Durán, looking for a shady spot to chat in his cove.

Today the area is looked after. It is about three kilometers in size and before it began to be regulated, people harvested abalone there for more than half a century without any limits.

“People are used to just harvesting without regulations and it is difficult to change that behavior. It’s a constant struggle and a problem to prevent disputes between fisherpersons…Many do not understand that the resources are there because other people take care of them,” he said.

As soon as fisherpersons and divers unload their products at the Tongoy pier, in the northern Chilean region of Coquimbo, crowded with tourists during the southern hemisphere summer, they are approached by customers seeking to buy products directly, without the need for intermediaries. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Low consumption of seafood, a public health problem

Durán lamented the low levels of consumption of fish and shellfish in Chile, despite the country’s abundant seafood.

“We don’t have culinary habits like in Peru (a country on Chile’s northern border) and we eat what we shouldn’t. There is no government promotion or policy that calls for consumption and it is a public health issue,” he said.

“I can’t conceive of the fact that there is a plant making fishmeal from Chilean jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi) and that children are eating tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus),” a farmed fish, he added.

The Undersecretariat informed IPS that the annual consumption of seafood in 2021 was 16.6 kg per inhabitant, below the global average of 20 kg.

In Chile, fishing is the third largest economic activity, contributing around five billion dollars a year to the economy.

Chile is among the 10 largest fish producing countries in the world and is the global leader in aquaculture, second in salmon production and first in mussel exports.

The Undersecretariat is currently drafting a new law on the exploitation and conservation of seafood, for which it organized 150 meetings with artisanal fishermen and another 22 with representatives of industrial fishing and sector professionals.
The Undersecretariat told IPS that the objective is to promote and diversify the activity not only as a development strategy but also as a resource conservation strategy.

It is estimated that about a hundred thousand migrants work in the greenhouses, scattered throughout the area. Credit: Floris Cup/IPS

By Floris Cup and Arnaud De Decker
ALMERIA, Spain, Feb 24 2023 (IPS)

Chances are that the fruits and vegetables sold in European supermarkets have been picked and packed by a migrant worker in southern Spain. By the tens of thousands, they work there, in sweltering hot plastic greenhouses – often underpaid and without residence permit – in the vegetable garden of Europe. “Cheap vegetables, yes. But at what price?”

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon, warm and dry, when we leave the city of Almería, in the southern province of Andalusia, to drive towards the countryside. Leaving the freeway, the lane narrows and turns into a dirt road. The hot desert breeze blows a dusty, brown cloud of sand into the air that completely covers the car in no time. We take a slight turn and drive past impressive mountain ranges.

After ten minutes of driving, in the shadow of a series of imposing rocks, a sea of white plastic appears before us, stretching as far as the eye can see, before merging into the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of greenhouses are neatly arranged in endless straight rows that turn the arid landscape pale. In all, the greenhouses cover an area 30,000 hectares, visible from outer space. 

Spaniards prefer to leave those jobs for migrant workers. They come from North and West Africa, from countries like Morocco, Senegal, Guinea or Nigeria, and in most cases they don't have residence permits, making them easy targets for the local greengrocers

We park the car along the road near the village of Barraquente, a thirty-minute drive east of Almería, and head out into the hot desert. A day earlier we got word of a slum, a “barrio de chabolas”, around here. Undocumented workers picking fruits and vegetables in the greenhouses and working the fields for meager wages are said to have built semi-permanent homes with scrap metal over the years.

Lethal cocktail

Since Spain joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the European Union, in the 1980s, agriculture in the province of Andalusia became increasingly intensified and industrialized. Small farms gave way to agricultural giants as monoculture gradually became the norm and has since then become a very lucrative business, with a total annual export value of twelve billion euros worth of agricultural products, destined for the entire European market.

To meet the ever-growing demand for fruits and vegetables from the rest of Europe, more and more hands are needed in the fields. And although Andalusia is one of the country’s poorest regions, with sky-high unemployment rates, it is mostly underpaid undocumented migrants who perform the ungrateful jobs. Temperatures in the greenhouses soar above 45 degrees Celsius in the summer, drinking water is scarce and, combined with the intensive use of pesticides, the work on that southern outskirt of Europe forms a deadly cocktail.

Estimates vary, but according to union representative José García Cueves, about a hundred thousand migrants work in the greenhouses, scattered throughout the area. Along with his wife, José García represents union SOC SAT, the only organization that exposes and represents the interests of the victims of exploitation in the greenhouses around Almería.

Flat tires

“Spaniards prefer to leave those jobs for migrant workers. They come from North and West Africa, from countries like Morocco, Senegal, Guinea or Nigeria, and in most cases they don’t have residence permits, making them easy targets for the local greengrocers,” he says from behind his cluttered office in an impoverished neighborhood of Almería.

Despite his noble mission, José is not loved by most Andalusians, quite the contrary. “The farmers could drink our blood. The tires of my car get regularly punctured and physical intimidation is also not exceptional.”

“Even the local authorities turn a blind eye to the region’s problems and challenges. All in the name of economic growth,” Garcia said. “Look, there are only 12 inspectors responsible for greenhouse inspections, and that’s in a vast area where you can drive around for hours without running into anyone. Do you think that’s realistic? Workers are reduced to expendable tools, overnight someone can lose their job.”

Thousands of greenhouses are neatly arranged in endless straight rows that turn the arid landscape pale. In all, the greenhouses cover an area 30,000 hectares, visible from outer space. Credit: Arnaud De Decker/IPS

Afraid of the sea

In the slum by the roadside, we speak with one of the workers, Richard, a 26-year-old man from Nigeria. Bathing in sweat, he arrives on his bicycle. His morning shift in the greenhouse is over and he takes us into the village. The sun is at its highest, it is scorching hot.

“The shifts start early in the morning, when the temperature is still bearable,” he points out. “By noon we are entitled to a break, because it is too hot to work then. Around 5 p.m. we return into the greenhouse and pick tomatoes and peppers until after sunset.” He says the hard work earns him about thirty euros a day.

The young man puffs, grabs a bottle of water from a decayed refrigerator and falls down in a dusty seat in the scorching sun. His clothes and worn-out shoes are covered in dust. “I have lived here for two years now,” he says in between large gulps of water. Via Morocco, he crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat. “It was dangerous, I can’t swim and was afraid of falling overboard.” Through a shadowy network of human smugglers, Richard ended up here in Andalusia, undocumented. 

Traces of destruction

We move further into the village, accompanied by Richard, when several residents gather around us. They point to a large pile of sand, one meter high, that has been raised like a wall around one part of the camp. Two years ago, a large fire broke out there, killing one person. “We were able to stop the fire by digging a large moat, preventing it from spreading throughout the camp,” they say. Traces of the fire are still clearly visible; blackened shoes and charred clothes are still scattered throughout the moat.

Fire is the greatest danger for many residents. Unionist José Garcia confirms this. The various homes in the slum have grown intertwined. They are made of wood and recycled plastic from the greenhouses. Combined with the hot weather and dryness of the desert, those neighborhoods form a dangerous cocktail of easily flammable fuels.  

Homemade gym

Still, the residents of the camp try to make the best of it. They take us to a small hut where they stare furiously at an English Premier League football match. Further down the camp, a man is doing his dishes. They illegally tap running water – and electricity – from the regular grid. The atmosphere is good. Boubacar, 24, from Senegal, proudly shows us the gym he was able to cobble together with his own hands using some materials lying around: empty cans filled with concrete have been transformed into homemade dumbbells and a large bag of sand serves as a weight to train his back.

Next to the gym is a vegetable garden where traditional African crops grow. The peace is disturbed when a Spaniard arrives in a red van. Half a dozen men rush up to it and begin negotiating vigorously with the man. It turns out he is selling fish. “Straight from the sea,” he proudly proclaims. The boys don’t care what kind of fish they buy. “We have no choice. Because of our limited budget, we can’t really afford to be picky.”

Many residents of the camps are eager to get out of the area. “Once we have worked for five years, we will become a long-term resident of the European Union, so we can travel freely around Europe,” says Boubacar. How exactly that works out, he does not know. “It depends on my boss and how well I do my job. I hope to live in France or even the Netherlands and build a life there with my family, away from Spain. There is no future here.”

The continuing economic crisis and high women's unemployment have resulted in many underaged girls turning to sex work in Zimbabwe. In the area near Penhalonga, the girls target artisanal miners in the region. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
MUTARE, ZIMBABWE, Feb 23 2023 (IPS)

After other adolescent girls her age have gone to bed at around 10 pm, Kudzai commutes to a shopping centre near her home in Penhalonga, a mining area 25 kilometres outside the third largest Zimbabwean city of Mutare, to look for men to solicit sex.

Clad in a black and white skirt with its hemline well above the knees, the 15-year-old Kudzai, whose first name is being used to conceal her identity, is whispering a prayer to God for her night to pay off in this gold-rich area located in Manicaland Province near the porous border with neighbouring Mozambique.

Zimbabwe’s worsening economic crisis has forced Kudzai into the sex trade, and most of her clients are illegal and artisanal gold miners – they, too pushed into mining by the economic malaise coupled with a high unemployment rate of over 90 percent – to earn a living.

She usually returns home early in the morning the following day after spending the whole night working.

“This is how I survive,” says Kudzai, who stays with her elder sister in Tsvingwe, a peri-urban residential area in Penhalonga.

“I dropped out of school last year during COVID-19. My sister, who has been paying for my school fees all these years, could not afford it anymore.”

There are over 1,000 mining pits in the Redwing Mine concession in Penhalonga, owned by a South African mining firm Metallon Corporation.

The mining rights in this concession were allegedly illegally taken by a gold baron Pedzisai ‘Scott’ Sakupwanya, through his company Betterbrands Mining.

Sakupwanya, a ruling party Zanu PF councillor for Mabvuku Ward 21 in the capital Harare, is also the owner of a gold-buying company, Better Brands Jewellery.

His dealings are exposed in a 35-page report by the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, a local civil society organisation that defends the rights of communities affected by extractive industries in Zimbabwe.

Amid an economic struggle, many girls in Penhalonga and surrounding areas have turned to the sex trade to eke a living.

The artisanal and illegal miners often take advantage of these minors to sexually abuse and exploit them.

Some underage girls trade sex for as little as 1 United States dollar.

Sex work is illegal in Zimbabwe.

In 2015, sex workers got relief after a landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe that a woman could not be arrested for soliciting sex by merely being in a bar or nightclub.

The legal age of consent is currently 16, but this year the Constitutional Court ruled that it should be raised to 18 years.

But underage girls like Kudzai, with no options for other work, have ventured into the trade and mining areas are hotspots.

Zimbabweans have been through tumultuous times.

High inflation induced by a worsening economic crisis due to the shock of COVID-19 and, more recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the cost of living to rise rapidly.

But before this, Zimbabwe was in an economic crisis due to massive corruption and economic mismanagement blamed on the Mnangagwa-led government.

This dire economic reality leaves low-income families like Kudzai’s among those worst affected. Worse because the natural resources, such as gold in Penhalonga, benefit only the elite, and the companies don’t seem to be doing much to give back to the community.

Kudzai sometimes sheds a tear, worrying about her bleak and uncertain future.

“I cannot save much money. This is just hand-to-mouth business,” she says.

With 59,6 percent of women in the country unemployed, many are turning to sex work to earn a living, according to a recent survey by the State-controlled Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat).

According to the CNRG report, illicit financial flows in the artisanal mining sector in Zimbabwe are responsible for leakages of an estimated 3 tonnes of gold, valued at approximately $157 million every month.

Most of the gold is smuggled through the porous borders in Mutare to Mozambique and South Africa.

Weston Makoni, a chairman at Penhalonga Residents and Ratepayers Trust, says the situation of girls turning to sex work in his community is worrisome.

“Mainly the push factors are poverty, lack of food, peer pressure and need of school fees money,” he says.

“They are lured by artisanal miners who have cash at hand regularly to buy them food, valuables such as smartphones, drugs and take them out for entertainment.”

Tapuwa O’bren Nhachi, a social scientist, says it’s unfortunate because disease, abuse and trauma now determine these adolescent girls’ life.

“It also means psychological effects that are associated with the trade.  The same girls are also dropping out of school and engaging in drugs which has a negative impact on their future,” he says.

According to the Centre for Sexual Health, HIV and Aids Research (CeSHHAR), more than 57 percent of female sex workers in the country are HIV positive.

Another 15-year-old girl Tanaka says some of her clients are violent, and they often refuse to pay her.

“We meet different people at work. Some refuse to use protection while others do not even want to pay for the services rendered,” says Tanaka, whose only first name is used to protect her.

Makoni says the companies mining in Penhalonga should give back to the surrounding communities to help the poor.

“I basically believe that the companies would greatly assist the girl child in the community by providing school fees to those that are from poor families and mostly orphans,” he says.

“They could help by engaging the community in livelihood projects, making households self-reliant.”

Betterbrands Mining company and Redwing Mine officials did not respond to questions sent to them by this publication.

Nhachi says companies have unlimited responsibilities to ensure that communities they operate in are not deprived of social and public goods, such as affordable education, health facilities and other important infrastructure.

“Companies should create vocational training facilities to prepare the youths for future employment opportunities not only for them but anywhere around the country,” he says.

“Unfortunately, companies that are operating in Penhalonga are mafia styled. They are looting and thriving in the chaos existing in the country, so we should not expect much from them,”

Kudzai says if given an opportunity to return to school, she is ready and willing.

“I do not intend to spend the rest of my life like this. I hope to train as a nurse,” she says.

Note: IPS approached Pedzisai Sakupwanya and Redwing Mine corporate manager Knowledge Hofisi for comment, but they did not get back to us. We asked them for following questions.

1. Leaders of residents associations in Penhalonga have said adolescent girls surrounding your mine are being driven by poverty to venture into the sex trade. We are just checking with you to see if you are running any programmes to support people, including young girls in Penhalonga and its surrounding areas.
2. What is it that you are doing to give back to the community? Residents have been complaining of poor infrastructure in the area.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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The ageing of populations poses mounting challenges for governments that will require changes in national policy priorities, country institutions and social arrangements. Credit: Maricel Sequeira/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Feb 21 2023 (IPS)

Fear of population ageing is all over the news media and in government offices of country capitals worldwide. Planet Earth is becoming “planet ageing”.

Population ageing is being described as a demographic time bomb, a humanitarian crisis, a growing burden, a national security threat, ticking towards disaster, a significant risk to global prosperity, a silver tsunami, an unprecedented set of challenges, a problem for young and old.

Government officials, business leaders, economists, healthcare providers, social organizations, political commentators and others are increasingly ringing alarm bells over the menacing demographic ageing of populations.

Adding to those alarm bells is the 2022 Japanese film, Plan 75, presented in May at the annual Cannes Film Festival. That dystopian film describes a government program that encourages senior citizens to be euthanized to remedy the burdens of an aged Japanese society.

More recently, a Yale University assistant professor of economics reportedly suggested that to address Japan’s demographic ageing, elderly Japanese people should commit “mass suicide”. After raising objections in Japan and elsewhere, he subsequently explained that his suggestion was taken out of context. He explained that his remark was intended to address a growing effort to revamp Japan’s age-based hierarchies and make room for younger generations in leadership positions in business and politics.

Demographic ageing coupled with population decline and increased human longevity are forcing governments to address mounting financial issues, especially retirement and healthcare benefits. Many government programs for old age benefits are facing insolvency in the near future

Mainstream media regularly reports that government expenditures on retirement and healthcare benefits for the elderly are outpacing tax revenues. Also, many governments are reportedly struggling to find the money to support retirees. Furthermore, current trends, unless they are reversed, indicate that the growing numbers of elderly people on the planet pose a challenge for governments to provide the needed care for them.

People have taken to the streets to protest government proposals to address population ageing by making changes to benefits and official retirement ages. In France people have taken to the streets to protest the government’s intention to raise the current age of 62 years to receive government benefits.

Similarly in China, retirees and their supporters are protesting government proposed cuts in benefits for the elderly. And fearing public backlash at the voting booth, elected government officials in the United States are bending over backwards in their assurances, retreating from possible program cuts, and promising that they “won’t touch” Social Security or Medicare.

The ageing of populations should not really come as a surprise to government officials and their many economic and political advisors and aides.

For decades demographers and many others have been writing articles, publishing books, giving presentations, and advising government officials and others about the demographic ageing of populations resulting from the continued decline in fertility rates and increased life expectancy.

Nevertheless, despite those considerable efforts and clear communication about population ageing, governments have not been paying enough attention.

Apparently, governments mistakenly came to believe that the demographic realities of population ageing could simply be ignored because those realities were largely academic matters as well as concerns for the distant future. In fact, however, those realities were neither largely academic nor concerns for the distant future.

Over the past half century, the median age of the world’s population has increased to 30 years in 2020 from 20 years in 1970, an increase of 10 years. Many countries have attained median ages in 2020 well above 35 years, such as France at 41 years, South Korea at 43 years, Italy at 46 years and Japan at 48 year.

In addition, many countries have seen their elderly population reach unprecedented levels. In the United States, for example, more than 1 in 6, or 17 percent, were 65 or older in 2020. That percentage is relatively low in comparison to many other developed countries. In Italy and Japan, the proportion 65 years and older is 24 and 29 percent, respectively (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

The ageing of populations certainly poses mounting challenges for governments as well for the elderly that will require changes in national policy priorities, country institutions and social arrangements.

Among those challenges are needs for financial aid, caregiving and assistance, medical treatment, healthcare and drugs. Such needs are not only increasingly overwhelming many households, but they are also straining government resources and the capacities of institutions to provide care for the elderly.

In addition to the financial costs, governments are wrestling with major policy issues. Population ageing is competing with national priorities that require financial resources, including defense, economy, employment, education, health care, environment and climate.

Population ageing is also raising vexing questions about the proper role of government and the responsibilities of individuals for their personal wellbeing in old age. Those questions continue to roil government legislatures and heighten concerns about retirement and old age healthcare among their citizens.

Much of the public believes that the government should be primarily responsible to cover the financial costs and provide the needed care and support to the elderly, as has generally been the case over the past decades in many countries.

Others, however, contend that it is not the role of the government to be primarily responsible to provide care and support to the elderly. They argue that the elderly themselves and their families should be primarily responsible for covering the costs and providing the needed care, support and assistance for older persons.

The fear of population ageing is further complicated by population decline. Over the coming years, many countries across the globe are facing declines in the size of their populations due to below replacement fertility rates (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

Demographic ageing coupled with population decline and increased human longevity are forcing governments to address mounting financial issues, especially retirement and healthcare benefits. Many government programs for old age benefits are facing insolvency in the near future.

Possible options to address those financial issues include reducing retirement benefits, limiting eligibility, raising the retirement age and increasing taxes. As would be expected, reducing benefits, limiting eligibility and raising retirement ages are unpopular among most of the public. While many are in favor of increased taxes to fund retirement pensions and healthcare for the elderly, businesses and investors are generally opposed to raising taxes.

The consequences of the demographic realities of population ageing are largely unavoidable and need to be addressed. Governments may continue choosing to avoid addressing those consequences. Perhaps they are hoping that if the demographic realities are ignored, they somehow will magically disappear.

Governments need to stop ringing the alarm bells about population ageing. Instead, they need to adapt to the demographic realities of population ageing. In particular, governments need to address the weighty consequences of population ageing by making the admittedly difficult but necessary policy and program decisions regarding official retirement age, pensions benefits, assistance, and healthcare.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

Nelly García is 65 years old, and for 30 years she has been selling flowers at a market in Lima because she was unable to return to her profession as a nurse technician after taking a break from work to raise her children when they were young. She says sadly that “if the government does not care about children, it cares about us even less. They must think ‘let these old people die because they’re no good for anything anymore’.” CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Feb 6 2023 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean is no longer a young region and it will be one of the regions with the largest aging populations by 2050, which poses great challenges due to the social inequalities the countries face, but also opportunities to overcome them.

“Currently in the region an estimated 8.1 percent of the population is over 65 years of age, and this percentage is projected to increase to 17 percent by 2050, higher than the global average,” said Sabrina Juran, a regional technical advisor on population and development for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

In 2022, the region was home to 658 million people, of whom some 52 million were older adults, creating great challenges for the countries in terms of work, health and pensions, in a context in which according to international organizations the economic slowdown will deepen in the region in 2023.

“I am 65 and employers already saw me as too old to hire at 35, and I did not manage to get another job as a nurse technician,” says Nelly García, who moved to the capital, Lima, with her parents when she was 10 years old from her hometown of Huancayo, a city in Peru’s central Andes highlands.

The case of García illustrates the labor problems faced by many older adults in Latin America, especially women whose job opportunities are often hindered by motherhood and their responsibilities to care for family members.

“Imagine at this age what chance of insurance or pensions exist for people like me or people who are even older and work in the informal sector,” she told IPS with bitterness, adding that “if the government does not care about children, it cares about us even less. They must think ‘let these old people die because they’re no good for anything anymore’.”

García lives in Breña, a working-class district of 75,000 people that is one of the 43 districts in the department of Lima. Since she failed to find work in any hospital 30 years ago, she has been selling flowers.

She had taken a break from her work as a nurse technician to raise her four children. When she sought to return to her profession, the doors of the hospitals slammed shut on her. “I was already seen as old at the age of 35,” she repeated several times.

She has social health insurance from her husband, who is about to retire from a book import company. “But his pension will be less than 200 soles (52 dollars); that will not even cover the electricity bill,” she lamented.

Peru, a South American country of 33 million people, is facing a severe economic, political and social crisis, with a poverty level that climbed during the pandemic to a national average of 30 percent, although in rural areas it is 45 percent.

There are more than four million people over 60 according to official figures, only one third or 35 percent of whom were in a pension system. And although 89 percent have access to public health insurance, coverage and quality do not go hand in hand

“I try to save up for when I’m older, although the truth is I don’t think I’ll reach the age of 75 because in my family we suffer from heart disease. But I’m not going back to the public health insurance system,” García said emphatically.

She talked about her experience of the system: “It’s an ordeal, you have to go to the hospital at dawn to make an appointment, they order tests for several months later and who knows when you’ll get the results back. If I go through the same thing now, I’ll surely die before they call me, so when it’s my time, I hope to leave in peace.”

García is referring to the Social Health Security, a public system that covers 35 percent of people over 60, which draws harsh criticism for its poor facilities, shortage of medical personnel and poor quality of care.

A group of Peruvian women take part in a demonstration for the rights of the elderly in Lima. Latin America and the Caribbean will become one of the regions with the most aging populations by 2050 due to advances in medicine and the decrease in the birth rate. Life expectancy at birth was 72 years in 2022. CREDIT: Wálter Hupiú/IPS

An irreversible path

On Jan. 12, the Division for Inclusive Social Development of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) presented the World Social Report on demographic change, which ratifies the global tendency that the population over 65 is growing faster than younger age sets and that people are living longer.

Greater life expectancy at birth due to the advancement of medicine and the decline in the fertility rate, which stands at 2.1 births per woman, are factors contributing to this trend.

Sabrina Juran of UNFPA told IPS from Panama City, where the U.N. agency’s regional headquarters is located, that the birth rate in Latin America is 1.85 and regional population growth is below 0.67 percent per year, both of which are lower than the global rates.

She said that according to the latest U.N. projections, there would be around 695.5 million inhabitants in the region in 2030 with a peak of 751.9 in mid-2050, after which the population would constantly decrease until reaching 649.2 million in 2100.

Sabrina Juran, a regional technical advisor on population and development for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), poses for a picture at the organization’s headquarters in Panama. By 2050, 17 percent of the regional population will be over 65, the agency projects. CREDIT: UNFPA LAC

Juran explained that further reductions in mortality are expected to lead to a global average longevity of about 77.2 years in 2050 and 80.6 years regionally. Life expectancy at birth in Latin America and the Caribbean was 72.2 years in 2022, three years less than life expectancy in 2019 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This scenario means governments in the region must focus on meeting greater demands for healthcare, employment, housing, and pensions.

Juran said the growth of the working-age population – from 38.7 percent in 1990 to 51 percent today – can help boost per capita economic growth, known as the “demographic dividend”, which offers to maximize the potential benefits of a favorable age distribution.

“But this increase in the working-age population will not remain constant: it will peak in 2040 at 53.8 percent before decreasing,” she said. “This means there is a window of opportunity to be taken advantage of.”

The region faces steep inequalities. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Jan. 18, 22.5 percent of the population – in other words, at least 131.3 million people – were unable to afford a healthy diet.

“Countries must invest in the development of their human capital, guaranteeing access to healthcare, quality education at all ages, and promoting opportunities for productive employment and decent work,” Juran remarked.

She added that they must take measures to adapt public programs to the growing number of older people, establishing universal healthcare and long-term care systems, and improving the sustainability of social security and pension systems.

“At UNFPA we advocate measuring and anticipating demographic changes in order to be better prepared for the consequences that arise,” said the regional advisor.

She said the commitment is “to a world where people have the power to make informed decisions about whether and when to have children, exercise their rights and responsibilities, navigate risks and become the foundation of more inclusive, adaptable and sustainable societies.”

Achieving this demographic resilience, Juran said, starts with a commitment to count not only the number of people, but also their opportunities for advancement and the barriers that stand in their way, which requires transforming discriminatory norms that hold back individuals and societies.

Protesters in Mulhouse, France warn of the dangers of privatisation. The sign reads ‘when everything is privatised, we will be deprived of everything. Credit: NeydtStock / Shutterstock.com

By Océane Blavot, Rodolfo Bejarano and Mae Buenaventura
BRUSSELS / LIMA / MANILA, Feb 2 2023 (IPS)

Last month, we joined more than 1000 representatives from all sectors of civil society who came together in Santiago de Chile to debate the future of – and threats to – public services the world over.

Participants discussed the chronic underfunding which continues to drive economic inequality, injustice and austerity, and the neocolonial policies that maintain the status quo.

Today those debates have resulted in the launch of “Our Future is Public: The Santiago Declaration for Public Services” – a momentous agreement signed by more than 200 organisations vowing to work to “transform our systems, valuing human rights and ecological sustainability over GDP growth and narrowly defined economic gains.”

One of the most damaging initiatives that has deeply affected the delivery of public services and infrastructure projects on all continents is the rise of public-private partnerships, or PPPs.

They have long been promoted by institutions such as the World Bank as a silver bullet to close the so-called gap to finance investments in services and infrastructure. The premise is that the private sector can deliver these services more efficiently and to a higher standard than the public sector, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

We lay the pitfalls of PPPs bare in our new report History RePPPeated II: Why public-private partnerships are not the solution – the second in a series of investigations documenting the impacts of PPPs across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Launched at the Santiago conference with some of the partners responsible for investigating and authoring the case studies, the report not only highlights negative impacts of PPPs, but sets out recommendations for how to better finance infrastructure and public services in the face of false solutions that have been proposed given the context of the current polycrisis.

These narratives wholly reflect red flags that are raised in the Santiago Declaration.

Through these investigations, we discovered failures on multiple levels in PPPs covering infrastructure such as roads and water supplies, as well as vital public services like healthcare and education.

From escalating costs for the stretched public sector to environmental and social impacts, we found time and again that communities had been ignored, displaced, and had their basic rights violated by thoughtless projects designed and implemented in the pursuit of profit.

A prime example is that of the the Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) in Nepal. First announced nearly a quarter of a century ago, the project’s aim was to deliver clean, reliable and affordable water to 1.5 million people in Kathmandu.

And yet, 24 years later, residents are still waiting, while communities at the Melamchi water source are facing scarcity of water and eroded livelihoods. Instead of safe, clean drinking water – an internationally recognised human right – they have witnessed an extraordinary revolving door of private companies and institutional funders, including the World Bank, who have each failed to deliver.

To add to the MWSP’s colossal failure, 80 hectares of farmland have been lost to the project, a heavy blow to local residents, and up to 80 households have been forcibly displaced due to construction.

Who owns and controls our resources and public services became even more vitally important with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in March 2020. Market-based models cannot be relied upon to deliver on human rights or the fight against inequalities as they are accountable only to their shareholders and not to their users.

This resulting focus on profit is overwhelmingly apparent in our case study from Liberia. Here, US firm Bridge International Academies (now NewGlobe) ‘abandoned’ its students and teachers during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, shutting down schools and cutting teachers’ salaries by 80-90 per cent, despite being paid by the government.

And yet, in 2021 the Liberian government indefinitely extended the project, effectively subsidising a US for-profit firm at a cost that is at least double government spending on public schools.

In Peru, the Expressway Yellow Line has emerged as one of the most controversial projects ever carried out. This toll road was supposed to ease congestion issues in the capital city Lima, but instead toll rates have been unreasonably increased on at least eight occasions.

This generated almost $23 million for the private company involved and transpired with the complicity of public officials. Meanwhile, the Peruvian state suffered economic damages of US$1.2 million due to under the table negotiations between public officials and the private company, which led to the incorrect implementation and improper modifications of the contract years after it was initially signed.

Today, questions regarding the project and conflicts surrounding its implementation remain, while Lima residents’ expectations of quality road infrastructure to improve living conditions for those who have been most affected, continue to go unmet.

The human cost of the PPP projects showcased by History RePPPeated II is self-evident, but they are far from the exception. Rather they serve to illustrate common failures with the PPP model that risk compromising fundamental human rights and that undermine the fight against climate change and inequalities.

Their continuing promotion is one of the many reasons why we support the Santiago Declaration. Together with all its signatories, we will strengthen resistance to PPPs with their focus on private-led interests and promote public-public or public-common partnerships for a future that is public.

Océane Blavot is Senior Campaign and Outreach Coordinator, Development Finance, European Network on Debt and Development; Rodolfo Bejarano is Economist and Analyst – New Financial Architecture, Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice; Mae Buenaventura is Debt Justice Programme, Team Manager, Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development

The Santiago Declaration on Public Services, is a global manifesto signed by more than 300 organisations from around the world, and which was launched at the end of last week. The Declaration signals the start of an international movement to move away from the privatisation of public services and towards a future that is publicly funded and controlled. It is also the outcome of a 4-day conference during which several CSOs from around the world launched a report containing a series of investigations highlighting the failures of the PPP model in projects around the world, titled History RePPPeated II.

This OpEd is authored by three of the report’s authors.

IPS UN Bureau

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Few policymakers ever claim credit for causing stagnation and recessions. Yet, they do so all the time, justifying their actions by some supposedly higher purpose.

Now, that higher purpose is checking inflation as if it is the worst option for people today. Many supposed economists make up tall tales that inflation causes economic contraction which ordinary mortals do not know or understand.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Recent trends since mid-2022 are clear. Inflation is no longer accelerating, but slowing. And for most economists, only accelerating inflation gives cause for concern.

Annualized inflation since has only been slightly above the official, but nonetheless arbitrary 2% inflation target of most Western central banks.

At its peak, the brief inflationary surge, in the second quarter of last year, undoubtedly reached the “highest (price) levels since the early 1980s” because of the way it is measured.

After decades of ‘financialization’, the public and politicians unwittingly support moneyed interests who want to minimize inflation to make the most of their financial assets.

War and price
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began last February, with retaliatory sanctions following suit. Both have disrupted supplies, especially of fuel and food. The inflation spike in the four months after the Russian invasion was mainly due to ‘supply shocks’.

Price increases were triggered by the war and retaliatory sanctions, especially for fuel, food and fertilizer. Although no longer accelerating, prices remain higher than a year before.

To be sure, price pressures had been building up with other supply disruptions. Also, demand has been changing with the new Cold War against China, the Covid-19 pandemic and ‘recovery’, and credit tightening in the last year.

There is little evidence of any more major accelerating factors. There is no ‘wage-price spiral’ as prices have recently been rising more than wages despite government efforts ensuring full employment since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Despite difficulties due to inflation, tens of millions of Americans are better off than before, e.g., with the ten million jobs created in the last two years. Under Biden, wages for poorly paid workers have risen faster than consumer prices.

Higher borrowing costs have also weakened the lot of working people everywhere. Such adverse consequences would be much less likely if the public better understood recent price increases, available policy options and their consequences.

With the notable exception of the Bank of Japan, most other major central banks have been playing ‘catch-up’ with the US Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. To be sure, inflation has already been falling for many reasons, largely unrelated to them.

Making stagnation
But higher borrowing costs have reduced spending, for both consumption and investment. This has hastened economic slowdown worldwide following more than a decade of largely lackluster growth since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Ill-advised earlier policies now limit what governments can do in response. With the Fed sharply raising interest rates over the last year, developing country central banks have been trying, typically in vain, to stem capital outflows to the US and other ‘safe havens’ raising interest rates.

Having opened their capital accounts following foreign advice, developing country central banks always offer higher raise interest rates, hoping more capital will flow in rather than out.

Interestingly, conservative US economists Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke have shown the Fed has worsened past US downturns by raising interest rates, instead of supporting enterprises in their time of need.

Four decades ago, increased servicing costs triggered government debt crises in Latin America and Africa, condemning them to ‘lost decades’. Policy conditions were then imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for access to emergency loans.

Globalization double-edged
Economic globalization policies at the turn of the century are being significantly reversed, with devastating consequences for developing countries after they opened their economies to foreign trade and investment.

Encouraging foreign portfolio investment has increasingly been at the expense of ‘greenfield’ foreign direct investment enhancing new economic capacities and capabilities.

The new Cold War has arguably involved more economic weapons, e.g., sanctions, than the earlier one. Trump’s and Japanese ‘reshoring’ and ‘friend-shoring’ discriminate among investors, remaking ‘value’ or ‘supply chains’.

Arguably, establishing the World Trade Organization in 1995 was the high water mark for multilateral trade liberalization, setting a ‘one size fits all’ approach for all, regardless of means. More recently, Biden has continued Trump’s reversal of earlier trade liberalization, even at the regional level.

1995 also saw strengthening intellectual property rights internationally, limiting technology transfers and progress. Recent ‘trade conflicts’ increasingly involve access to high technology, e.g., in the case of Huawei, TSMC and Samsung.

With declining direct tax rates almost worldwide, governments face more budget constraints. The last year has seen these diminished fiscal means massively diverted for military spending and strategic ends, cutting resources for development, sustainability, equity and humanitarian ends.

In this context, the new international antagonisms conspire to make this a ‘perfect storm’ of economic stagnation and regression. Hence, those striving for international peace and cooperation may well be our best hope against the ‘new barbarism’.

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Artisanal miners at work. Credit: Supplied

By Fawzia Moodley
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 23 2023 (IPS)

Mining towns across South Africa have become hostage to a booming but bloody illegal mining economy.

Wealthy kingpins, mainly from neighbouring Lesotho, run criminal syndicates and recruit poverty-stricken workers to go into disused underground shafts to dig for the country’s mineral wealth. Dubbed ‘Zama Zama’, many of them are former mine workers retrenched by the big legal mines and who know the ins and outs of the dangerous but lucrative mining operations.

Paps Lethoko, the chairperson of the National Association of Artisanal Miners (NAAM), says these the Zama Zama spend months in the underground shafts. Their criminal bosses run tuck shops in the dark belly of the earth.

“The tuck shops sell bread for R200 (normal price around R20), tinned fish for R300 (normally about R25). After months of living in the claustrophobic catacombs under hazardous conditions, the miners end up with about R30,000 (about 1800 USD) and paying more than double the normal amount for food and other necessities to the very bosses who employ them,” he told IPS.

Zama Zama miners are seen in an informal settlement in Johannesburg, South Africa. Credit: Fawzia Moodley/IPS

Lethoko says most disused underground shafts in Klerksdorp, a mining town in the North West province, are run by a wealthy politician from Lesotho.

“The Basotho miners are forced to pay the security guards up to R20,000 (about 1700 USD) to enter the mines they are employed at. They are treated worse than slaves, just as they were by mining companies under apartheid.”

Violence is inevitable. Local communities and artisanal miners, who until recently could not become legal, often get caught in the crossfire of territorial battles between rival Zama Zama gangs.

In July 2022, all hell broke loose after the horrific gang rape of film crew members at a mine dump close to West Village in Krugersdorp on the West Rand. Police arrested 80 Zama Zama, 14 of whom were directly linked to the rape incident but were later acquitted.

Artisanal miners, who are already struggling with bureaucracy and lack of a proper legal regime to get licenses to operate legally, say the rape incident has damaged their cause even further.

Lethoko says: “We have been trying to form cooperatives and get permits to operate legally, but the mining companies, the media, and even the police lump us with the criminal Zama Zama.”

An advocate who was assisting them at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) agrees: “People and even the police don’t understand that the artisanal miners, essentially local people who have for centuries been mining in survival mode, want to be law-abiding citizens but are hampered by a broken system every step of the way.”

The LRC published a report in 2016 on the conditions under which artisanal miners operate, and little has changed since then.

In the North West province, NAAM tried negotiating with mining giant Harmony Gold to allow artisanal miners to continue mining on the perimeters of the mine. “The local people know where to find the gold in the abandoned mine dumps. This is indigenous knowledge because they have been doing it for a long time, but we want to be legal, so we formed a cooperative and had a meeting with the company.

“The next thing, Harmony’s security prevented them from mining on the land even though it had long been abandoned, and the company applied for an interdict against me and the miners for trespassing,” says Lethoko.

Worse still, a gold rush followed as news of the abundance of gold in the area spread.

“The Basotho Zama Zama arrived en masse; they have a lot of money, so they bribed the mine security and took over the area from where local artisanal miners had been barred by the mine.”

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) now recognises artisanal mining but getting permits is expensive and onerous.

“Artisanal miners live a hand-to-mouth existence; most of us don’t have data or even money for permits, and DMRE officers at the local level don’t seem to know that artisanal mining cooperatives can now be legally recognised.”

Lethoko says the other problem is a lack of a regulatory framework. “The regional DMRE and most local government officials are unaware that we have the right to be recognised, so they and the police continue to treat us as criminals instead of assisting us to obtain permits.”

Getting permits is literally a “minefield”. So far, only one co-op in Kimberley in the Northern Cape Province has received legal recognition since the law changed in 2017.

Toto Nzamo, a member of the Tujaliano Community Organisation, says xenophobic tension erupts regularly as Zama Zama violence spills into local communities.

It doesn’t help that the Artisanal and Small Scale Mining Policy which recognises the potential of artisanal mining as a livelihood strategy, reserves the permit system for South Africans.

Nzamo works with artisanal miners and Zama Zama in the Makause informal settlement in Germiston near Johannesburg, who are involved in surface gold mining at a disused mine and are struggling to get licenses.

“They have to form co-ops, identify the land they wish to mine on, and have environmental assessments done. These people have neither the skills nor the access to the kind of money required. A geologist’s report costs at least R82000; where are these poor people supposed to get that kind of money?” asks Nzamo.

He says the only way to end the Zama Zama violence and criminality is for the Department of Home Affairs and the DMRE to work together to ensure that foreign nationals who qualify get their papers quickly.

“The tragedy is that between the criminal syndicates, the big mining houses that are returning to mines they once abandoned because now there is technology available to mine profitably again, and the inept DMRE, decent law-abiding people are being prevented from earning a living lawfully,” the advocate said.

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Inflation worries topped Ipsos’s What Worries the World survey in 2022 overtaking COVID concerns. The return of inflation caught major central banks, e.g., the US Federal Reserve (Fed), Bank of England, European Central Bank “off guard”. The persistence of inflation also surprised the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The return of inflation and its persistence exposed the poverty of the economics profession, unable to agree on its causes and required policy responses. It also exposed the profession’s anti-working class biases.

Anis Chowdhury

The US Fed was not alone in failing to see inflation coming. The Governor of Australia’s central bank – the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) – was so confident of low inflation that he declared in March 2021 that the interest rate would remain at a historic low until at least 2024. Inflation in advanced economies during 2021 exceeded the average of forecasters’ expectations by around 5–8 percentage points. The IMF’s forecasts have badly and repeatedly undershot inflation.

There was a widespread view among most central bankers and leading economists that the price increases (or inflation) that began in mid-2021 were temporary, and price increases would slow or inflation would drift downwards in 2022. Some, of course, insisted otherwise, and wanted immediate anti-inflationary measures. Thus, policy confusion ruled.

Inflation phobia and dogma
Soon inflation phobia overtook and central banks were advised to act decisively with interest rate hikes even if it meant slowing the economy or a rise in unemployment. Exaggerated claims were made without evidence that not acting now would be more costly later.
References to rare episodes of hyperinflation were made to justify tough policy stances.

The dogmatic inflation hawks ignored the fact that, in most cases, inflation does not accelerate to become harmful hyperinflation, but remains moderate. They also ignored their own neo-classical macroeconomic model, which suggests small welfare loss from moderate inflation.

Notwithstanding the IMF’s Article IV preamble which provides that economic policies should aim to foster “orderly economic growth with reasonable price stability, with due regard to [country specific] circumstances”, a one-size-fits-all policy of steep interest rate hikes became the only medicine to be applied to achieve a universal inflation target of 2%, a figure plucked from thin air. Yet, central bankers and mainstream economists boast their credibility!

Inflation excuse for class war
Inflation is primarily an expression and outcome of conflicting claims over the distribution of national output and income, e.g., firms’ profit mark-ups vis-à-vis workers’ wages. Thus, no sooner inflation spiked early in the year due to slow adjustment of COVID-induced supply shortages to pent-up demand, exacerbated by war and sanctions, leading central bankers and mainstream economists found an excuse to weaponise economic policies against the working class.

Stoking the fear of wage-price spirals, they advocate the use of an interest rate sledgehammer to create unemployment and, in turn, discipline labour. This is despite research within the IMF and the Reserve Bank of Australia which found no evidence of wage-price spirals since the 1980s due to declines in labour’s bargaining power. Thus, Bloomberg headlined, “Fattest Profits Since 1950 Debunk Wage-Inflation Story of CEOs”.

Research conducted by the IMF also found increases in firms’ or corporations’ market power, resulting in higher prices and profit margins. Yet, the IMF does not think such factors “are contributing in any sizeable way to the current inflationary environment”. Instead, it justifies such fattening of profits on the ground that “they provide flexible buffers between general wage and general price increases” and that it is only a catching-up “after taking a hit in 2020”!

But no such compassion is extended to the working people who have lost their lives and livelihoods. The calls for “front-loaded interest rate hikes simply got louder. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warned, “With the prospect of higher wages as workers look to make up for the purchasing power they lost, inflation could be high for long”.

Labour a clear loser
Labour is a clear loser. Labour’s income share in the GDP has been in decline since the early 1970s. Casualisation, off-shoring, anti-union legislation and technological progress have greatly reduced labour’s bargaining power, while privatisation and dilution of anti-monopoly legislation hugely strengthened corporate power and their collusive anti-competitive behaviour. Meanwhile, CEO compensation packages swelled to obnoxious levels, rising 940% since 1978 in the US as opposed to a 12% rise for workers during that period. Profiting from the pandemic, CEO pay increased by 16% in 2020 when workers suffered, and to a record level in 2021.

Leading central bankers and mainstream economists conveniently created a dogma around a 2% inflation target to justify their anti-labour stance. The 2% inflation target has become a global norm akin to the law of gravity, even though it has no theoretical or empirical basis. The law of gravity differs depending on altitude, but the 2% target is said to be universal regardless of circumstances!

Collateral damage
Meanwhile, the advanced countries’ inflation fight is causing adverse spillover into developing countries. Higher interest rates have slowed the world economy, and triggered capital outflows from developing countries, thereby depreciating their currencies and lowering their export earnings.

Together, these are causing devastating debt crises in many developing countries, similar to what happened in the 1980s. The rating agency S&P estimates that central bank rate rises could land global borrowers with US$8.6t in extra debt servicing costs in the coming years.

Instead of providing genuine debt-relief, the G20 kicked the can down the road. As wealthy nations failed the poor countries during the pandemic, the IMF is moving to debt-distressed countries with conditionality-laden one-size-fits-all austerity packages. Thus, a Foreign Policy op-ed asked, “The International Monetary Fund: Holy Grail or Poisoned Chalice?”

Meanwhile, the chiefs of the World Bank and the BIS urged “supply-side” policies professed to increase labour force participation and investment. These are code words for further labour market deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation.

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The median ages of populations are expected to continue rising over the coming decades. East Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Jan 16 2023 (IPS)

Demography doesn’t care about such things as national strikes over pension retirement ages, public protests about contraception and abortion rights, sexual orientation, habits and preferences, political ideology and party affiliation, dress codes and head coverings, and religious identity, beliefs and practices.

Demography is basically about the mathematics of human populations, i.e., births, deaths, migrations, ageing, morbidity, sex ratios, mobility, size, change, growth, distribution, density, structure, composition, life expectancies, biological, social and economic characteristics, etc.

Demography is relatively straightforward, visible and equitable. For example, in every human population a person is born an infant at age zero, ages one year every twelve months, and eventually over time faces death, too often earlier rather than later unfortunately.

Between birth and death, a wide variety of demographic phenomena or transitions typically occur in human populations. Among them are surviving infancy and childhood, passing through puberty, finding a mate, having offspring, migrating to another place, falling ill or becoming disabled, and experiencing ageing.

Over the many centuries of human history, the interactions of those various demographic phenomena and transitions have resulted in today’s world population of 8,000,000,000. That extraordinary number of human beings now inhabiting planet Earth is due in large part to the record-breaking rapid growth of world population during the 20th century.

World population reached the one billion milestone at the start of the 19th century in 1804. The 20th century then ushered in what turned out to be the century of rapid demographic growth. World population nearly quadrupled from 1.6 billion at the start of the 20th century to 6.1 billion by the century’s close (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

In addition to that unprecedented rapid demographic growth, the world’s annual rate of population growth peaked at 2.3 percent in 1963. Also, by 1990 the world’s annual population increase reached a record high of 93 million.

The unprecedented growth of world population that took place during the 20th century was simply the result of births greatly outnumbering deaths with mortality rates dropping rapidly, especially during the second half of the past century.

The world’s fertility rate in the 1960s, for example, was about five births per woman and births outnumbered deaths by nearly three to one in the 1980s. Life expectancy at birth increased dramatically, increasing from about 45 years in the middle of the 20th century to about 65 years by the end of the century.

The current demographic situation for the world is different from the exceptional rates, levels and changes of the past century. For example, the growth rate of world population in 2021 was about 0.8 percent, or nearly one-third the peak level in 1963.

In addition, the annual increase of world population in 2021 was about 68 million, or about three-fourths the level in 1990. Also, the median age of the world’s population, which was about 20 years in 1970, has increased by 50 percent, reaching 30 years in 2022.

The world’s fertility rate is now about 2.3 births per woman, or about half the level 60 years ago. In addition, approximately 100 countries have a total fertility rate below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman.

Furthermore, the fertility rates of some thirty countries in 2021 were less than 1.5 births per woman. Several of those countries had fertility rates that were approximately half or less than the replacement level, including China at 1.16, Singapore at 1.12 and South Korea at 0.81 (Chart 1).

Source: United Nations.

As a result of below replacement fertility rates, the current populations of some 60 countries are expected to be smaller by 2070. The total population decline of those countries over the next 50 years is projected to be more than a half a billion. Among the countries with the largest declines in their populations are China (-340 million), Japan (-35 million), Russia (-22 million), South Korea (-16 million) and Italy (-15 million).

In addition, many countries are expected to experience substantial declines in the relative size of their populations. Many of those countries are projected to have population declines of 10 percent or more over the coming four decades. For example, the relative decline in population size is expected to be 22 percent for Japan, 21 percent for South Korea and 18 percent for Italy (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

At the other extreme, the populations of two dozen countries, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the world’s population, are expected to more than double by 2060. Those projected population increases by 2060 include 106 percent in Afghanistan, 109 percent in Sudan, 113 percent in Uganda, 136 percent in Tanzania, 142 percent in Angola, 147 percent in Somalia, 167 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 227 percent in Niger (Figure 3).

Source: United Nations.

In addition to the projected decline and growth of national populations, the age structures of countries worldwide are expected to become substantially older. Many countries have attained median ages in 2020 above 40 years, such as France at 41 years, South Korea at 43 years, Italy at 46 years and Japan at 48 years.

The median age for the world is expected to increase from 30 years today to close to 40 years by 2070. In some countries, including China, Italy, Japan and South Korea, the median ages of their populations by 2070 are projected to be 55 years or older

The median ages of populations are expected to continue rising over the coming decades. The median age for the world, for example, is expected to increase from 30 years today to close to 40 years by 2070. In some countries, including China, Italy, Japan and South Korea, the median ages of their populations by 2070 are projected to be 55 years or older.

Demographic ageing in the 21st century constitutes a major challenge for societies and economies. The consequences of the demographic realities of older population age structures and increasing human longevity are likely unavoidable.

In particular, the ageing of populations is contributing to strains on fiscal revenues and spending on pensions and healthcare for the elderly. Despite the ageing of populations and increases in human longevity, official retirement ages for government pension benefits have remained largely unchanged at comparatively low ages.

In France, for example, the official pension retirement age is 62 years, which is well below the retirement ages of many other developed countries. Despite criticisms, protests and a scheduled national strike from worker unions and leftist opponents, the French government has unveiled a pension overhaul that proposes gradually raise the retirement age to 64 years by 2030.

Also, a mounting crisis for a growing number of countries worldwide is illegal immigration. Neither governments nor international agencies have been able to come up with sensible policies and effective programs to address the mounting illegal immigration crisis.

A major factor behind the rise of illegal immigration is the large and growing supply of men, women and children in sending countries who want to migrate to another country and by any means possible, including illegal immigration. The number of people in the world wanting to migrate to another country is estimated at nearly 1.2 billion.

In conclusion, too often many choose to ignore, deny or dismiss today’s demographic realities, such as population growth and decline, demographic aging, declining fertility, rising life expectancy and increasing illegal immigration.

Rather than acknowledging, addressing and adjusting to the challenging consequences of the demographic realities of the 21st century, many are turning to protests, strikes, demonstrations, and balderdash. Demography, however, simply doesn’t care about such things.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Anti-Austerity protests in 2006-2020. Credit: World Protests Platform

By Isabel Ortiz and Sara Burke
NEW YORK, Jan 13 2023 (IPS)

This week world leaders meet in Davos to discuss cooperation to address multiple crises, from COVID-19 and escalating inflation to slowing economic growth, debt distress and climate shocks.

Only three months earlier, finance ministers had gathered in Washington DC for the same reason. The mood was grim. The need for ambitious actions could not be greater; however, there were no agreements, evidencing the fragility of multilateralism and international cooperation.

Isabel Ortiz

A recent global report alerts of the dangers of a post-pandemic wave of austerity, far more premature and severe than the one that followed the global financial crisis a decade ago. While governments started cutting public expenditures in 2021, a tsunami of budget cuts is expected in 143 countries in 2023, which will impact more than 6.7 billion people or 85% of the world population.

Analysis of the austerity measures considered or already implemented by governments worldwide shows their significant negative impacts on people, harming women in particular. These austerity policies are: targeting social protection, excluding vulnerable populations in need of support by cutting programs for families, the elderly and persons with disabilities (in 120 countries); cutting or capping the public sector wage bill, this is, reducing the number and salaries of civil servants, including frontline workers like teachers and health workers (in 91 countries); eliminating subsidies (in 80 countries); privatizing public services or reforming state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in areas such as public transport, energy, water; reforming hard-earned pensions by adjusting benefits and parameters, resulting in lower incomes for retirees (in 74 countries); (6) labor flexibilization reforms (in 60 countries); reducing employers’ social security contributions, making social security unsustainable (in 47 countries); and even cutting health expenditures despite COVID-19 is not over.

Sara Burke

In recent years, citizens have protested austerity all around the world. A recent study on world protests shows that nearly 1,500 protests in the period 2006-2020 were against austerity. Citizens demand better public services, social protection, jobs with decent wages, tax and fiscal justice, equitable land distribution, and better living standards, among others. Protests against pension reforms, and high food and energy prices have also been very prevalent. Recently, the jobs and cost-of-living crises have been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in more protests despite lockdowns.

The majority of global protests against austerity and for economic justice have manifested people’s indignation at gross inequalities. The idea of the “1% versus the 99%,” that emerged a decade ago during protests over the 2008 financial crisis, has spread around the world, feeding grievances against elites and corporations manipulating public policies in their favor, while the majority of citizens continue to endure low living standards, aggravated by austerity cuts.

Let’s remember that trillions of dollars have been used to support corporations during the pandemic and to support military spending. Now people are being asked to endure austerity cuts, at a time when they are suffering a cost-of-living crisis. The 2023 meetings in Davos are being faced with new protests and demands to tax the rich.

Unless policymakers change course, we shouldn’t be surprised to see increasing waves of protests all over the world. Clashes in the street are likely to intensify if governments continue to fail to respond to people’s demands and persist in implementing harmful austerity policies. Governments need to listen to the demands of citizens that are legitimately protesting the denial of social, economic and civil rights. From jobs, public services and social security to tax and climate justice, the majority of protesters’ demands are in full accordance with United Nations proposals and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Leaders and policymakers will only generate further unrest if they fail to act on these legitimate demands.

Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, former Director at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF.

Sara Burke is Senior Policy Analyst at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) New York

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Oscar Sosa cooks roast chicken and pork on an artisanal grill set up outside his small restaurant, Comedor Espresso, in the eastern Salvadoran city of San Francisco Gotera. Like many of the returnees, especially from the United States, he set up his own business, given the unemployment he found on his return to El Salvador. More than 10,000 people were deported to this Central American country between January and August 2022. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN FRANCISCO GOTERA, El Salvador, Jan 10 2023 (IPS)

While grilling several portions of chicken and pork, Salvadoran cook Oscar Sosa said he was proud that through his own efforts he had managed to set up a small food business after he was deported back to El Salvador from the United States.

This has allowed him to generate an income in a country where unemployment affects 6.3 percent of the economically active population.

“Little by little we grew and now we also have catering services for events,” Sosa told IPS, as he turned the chicken and pork over with tongs on a small circular grill.

The grill is located outside the premises, so that the smoke won’t bother the customers eating inside.

It’s not easy, he said, to return home and to not be able to find a job. That is why he decided to start his own business, Comedor Espresso, in the center of San Francisco Gotera, a city in the department of Morazán in eastern El Salvador.“You come back wanting to work and there aren’t any opportunities. The first thing they see in you is your age; when you’re over 35, they don’t hire you.” -- Patricia López

In this Central American country of 6.7 million people, “comedores” are small, generally precarious, neighborhood restaurants where inexpensive, homemade meals are prepared.

Sosa’s, although very small, was clean and tidy, and even had air conditioning, when IPS visited it on Dec. 19.

Skills and capacity abound, but opportunities are scarce

Sosa, 35, is one of thousands of people deported from the United States every year.

He left in 2005 and was sent back in 2014. He worked for eight years as a cook at a Mexican restaurant in the city of Pensacola, in the southeastern state of Florida.

A total of 10,399 people were deported to this country between January and August 2022, which represents an increase of 221 percent compared to the same period in 2021, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.

The flow of undocumented Salvadoran migrants, especially to the United States, intensified in the 1980s, due to the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador that left some 75,000 dead and around 8,000 forcibly disappeared.

At the end of the war, people continued to leave, for economic reasons and also because of the high levels of violent crime in the country.

An estimated 3.1 million Salvadorans live outside the country, 88 percent of them in the United States. And 50 percent of the Salvadorans in the U.S. are undocumented.

Despite the problem of unemployment, Sosa was not discouraged when he returned to his country.

“I feel that we are already growing, we have five employees, the business is registered in the Ministry of Finance, in the Ministry of Health, and I’m paying taxes,” he said.

Obviously, not all deportees have the support, especially financial, needed to set up their own business.

The stigma of deportation weighs heavily on them: there is a widespread perception that if they were deported it is because they were involved in some type of crime in the United States.

A government survey, conducted between November 2020 and June 2021, found that 50 percent of the deportees manage to open a business, 18 percent live off their savings, their partner’s income or support from their family, and 16 percent have part-time or full-time jobs.

In addition, seven percent live on remittances sent home to them, two percent receive income from property rentals, dividends or bank interests, and seven percent checked “other” or did not answer.

Apart from some government initiatives and non-governmental organizations that provide training and funds for start-ups, returnees have faced the specter of unemployment for decades.

Many return empty-handed and owe debts to the people smugglers who they hired to get into the United States as undocumented migrants.

In the case of Sosa, his brothers supported him to set up Comedor Espresso.

He also received a small grant of 700 dollars to purchase kitchen equipment.

The money came from a program financed with 87,000 dollars by the Salvadoran community abroad, through the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry.

The initiative, launched in 2019, aims to generate opportunities for returnees in four municipalities in eastern El Salvador, including San Francisco Gotera.

This region was chosen because most of the deportees reside here, according to Carlos Díaz, coordinator of the program on behalf of the San Francisco Gotera mayor’s office.

But the demand for support and resources exceeds supply.

“There was a database of approximately 350 returnees in Gotera, but there was only money for 55,” Díaz told IPS.

More than 200 people benefited in the four municipalities.

David Aguilar and Patricia López (right) set up their own business, El Tuco King Carwash, after they decided to return to El Salvador. Their business is located in the eastern part of the country, a region where more than 50 percent of returnees live. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Hope despite a tough situation

Out of necessity, David Aguilar and Patricia López, 52 and 42, respectively, also set up their own business, in their case a car wash, after deciding to return to El Salvador. It’s called Tuco King Carwash.

Like Sosa, they are from San Francisco Gotera. Aguilar left the country in November 2005 and López three months later, in February 2006.

They made the risky journey to try to give their young daughter – six months old at the time, and today 17 years old – a better future.

One leg of the trip was by sea, on the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico.

“I spent 12 hours at sea, in a boat carrying about 20 people, who were all undocumented like me,” Aguilar said.

He added: “The only thing they gave us as lifesavers were a few plastic containers, in case the boat capsized.”

It was in Houston, in the state of Texas, that Aguilar found work in a car paint shop. The experience has been useful to him back in El Salvador, because in addition to washing cars, he offers paint jobs and other related services.

Aguilar and López were not deported; they decided to return because her father died in 2011. They came back in 2012, without having seen many of their dreams come true.

“You come back wanting to work and there aren’t any opportunities. The first thing they see in you is your age; when you’re over 35, they don’t hire you,” López said.

Before embarking on the trip to the United States, she had finished her degree as a primary school teacher, in 2005. But she never worked as a teacher because she left the following year.

“When I returned I applied to various teaching positions, but no one ever hired me,” she said.

Today, their carwash business, set up in 2014, is doing well, albeit with difficulties, because the couple have found that there is too much competition.

But they do not lose hope that they will succeed.

Former Salvadoran guerrilla David Henríquez, deported from the United States in 2019, shows the quality of the disinfectant he has just produced in his small artisanal workshop in San Salvador. With no chance of finding formal employment after deportation, he worked hard to set up his disinfectant business to generate an income. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

An ex-guerrilla chemist

David Henríquez, a 62-year-old former guerrilla fighter, was deported in 2019.

During the civil war, Henríquez was a combatant of the then insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), but when peace came he decided to emigrate to the United States in 2003 as an undocumented immigrant.

With no hope of finding a formal sector job here, he began to make cleaning products, a skill he learned in the United States.

In the 12 years that he lived there, he worked for two years at the Sherwin Williams plant, a global manufacturer of paints and other chemicals.

“It was there that I began to discover the world of chemical compositions and aromas,” Henríquez told IPS during a visit to his small workshop in the Belén neighborhood of San Salvador, the capital.

Henríquez was producing a 14-gallon (53-liter) batch of blue disinfectant with the scent of baby powder. He also makes disinfectant smelling like cinnamon and lavender, among others. His business is called El Dave de los aromas.

His production process is still artisanal, although he would know how to produce disinfectant with high-tech machinery, if he had it, he said, “as I did at Sherwin Williams.”

He used a baby bottle to measure out the 3.5 ounces (104 milliliters) of nonylphenol, the main chemical component, used to produce 14 gallons.

Henríquez dissolved other chemicals in powder, to get the color and the aroma, and the product was ready.

He produces about 400 gallons a month, 1,514 liters, at a price of 3.50 dollars each.

“The important thing is to have discipline, work hard, to shine with your own effort,” he said.

Over the past fifty years the world’s life expectancy at birth increased by 16 years, i.e., from 56 in 1970 to 72 in 2020. Credit: Maricel Sequeira/IPS

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Dec 23 2022 (IPS)

Despite the objections, resistance and protests taking place in many countries around the world, raising the official retirement age to receive government provided pension benefits is coming soon.

The primary reason for raising the official retirement age is the rapidly rising costs of national old-age pension programs, which are mainly the result of two powerful global demographic trends: population ageing and increased human longevity.

The age structures of populations worldwide are becoming older than ever before. Over the past half century, for example, the median age of the world’s population has increased by 10 years, i.e., from 20 years in 1970 to 30 years in 2020. Many countries have attained median ages in 2020 well above 35 years, such as France at 41 years, South Korea at 43 years, Italy at 46 years and Japan at 48 years (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

Moreover, the median ages of populations are expected to continue rising over the coming decades. The median age for the world, for example, is expected to reach close to 40 years by 2070. Also in some countries, including China, Italy, Japan and South Korea, the median ages of their populations by 2070 are projected to be 55 years or older.

Even with the ageing of populations and increases in human longevity, official retirement ages in order to receive government pension benefits have remained largely unchanged at relatively low levels, typically below 65 years

The pace of changes in the population age structures of China and South Korea are particularly noteworthy. In 1970 their populations had a median age of 18 years, i.e., half of their populations were children. By 2070 the median ages of China’s and South Korea’s populations are expected to triple to 55 and 61 years, respectively, with the proportion of children declining to 12 and 10 percent, respectively.

Many countries will see their elderly population increase rapidly, reaching about one-third of their total populations by midcentury. In addition, by 2070 the proportion aged 65 years and older in some countries, such as China, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Spain, are expected to be approximately 40 percent.

In addition to markedly older population age structures, life expectancies have increased significantly during the recent past with both men and women living longer than ever before. For example, over the past fifty years the world’s life expectancy at birth increased by 16 years, i.e., from 56 in 1970 to 72 in 2020.

The gains in life expectancies at birth for some countries were even more impressive, with increases of more than 20 years during the past five decades. Again, the gains in life expectancy achieved by China and South Korea are particularly noteworthy. China’s life expectancy at birth increased by 21 years, i.e., from 57 years in 1970 to 78 years in 2020, and South Korea’s increased by 22 years, i.e., from about 62 years in 1970 to 84 years in 2020.

Moreover, the life expectancies of the elderly have also increased over the recent past. At age 65, for example, the world’s average life expectancy increased by four years, from 13 years in 1970 to 17 years in 2020. And in many developed countries, including Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, life expectancies at age 65 years have reached 20 years or more (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

Some of the largest gains in life expectancies at age 65 years have been in East Asia. For example, gains in China, South Korea and Japan were 7, 8 and 9 years, respectively, resulting in life expectancies at age 65 of 18, 22 and 23 years, respectively. In other words, people in those countries on average can expect to live to ages 83, 87 and 88 years, respectively.

Despite the recent setbacks in life expectancies due to deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancies of the elderly are expected to continue rising throughout the remainder of the 21st century. For example, by 2070 the world is projected to have an average life expectancy at age 65 of 21 years. Also, many developed countries by that time are expected to have life expectancies at age 65 of 25 years or more, i.e., people surviving on average to age 90.

Even with the ageing of populations and increases in human longevity, official retirement ages in order to receive government pension benefits have remained largely unchanged at relatively low levels, typically below 65 years. For example, the official retirement age in France and South Korea is 62 years and in Brazil and Russia the retirement age is also 62 for men, 57 years for women (Figure 3).

Source: OECD.

However, some countries are now proposing to raise their retirement ages. China, for example, recognizing its rapidly ageing population, shrinking labor force and its national pension’s expected insolvency by 2035, has said that over the next five years it would gradually delay the legal retirement ages, which have been unchanged for more than 70 years.

Despite public objections in the past, China took an initial step several months ago to raise its current retirement age, which is 60 for men and 55 for white-collar women workers and 50 for blue-collar women workers. In one of its eastern provinces people were permitted to start voluntarily applying for delayed retirement.

Also, the French government, remarking “vivre plus longtemps, travailler plus longtemps”, has proposed that beginning in 2023 the minimum retirement age to receive a full pension be gradually increased from today’s 62 to 65 by 2031. Although previous proposals were shelved due to nationwide strikes, the French government has said that without those proposed changes a decrease in the size of pensions would be needed.

One OECD country, the United States, was among the earliest in legislating an increase in the official retirement age to 67 years to receive full benefits, which is above the current average age for OECD countries. Also, seven OECD countries have introduced linkages between life expectancy and retirement age.

In addition to being unpopular among the general public, raising the official retirement age is an issue that governments are not eager to address. Typically, government officials remain silent on the issue and postpone making decisions regarding projected financial shortfalls in national retirement programs.

In the United States, for example, the Social Security Board of Trustees in its 2022 annual report concluded that if no changes are made, the program will not be able to meet its financial responsibilities by 2035. Although various political statements have been made by government officials, the U.S. Congress has yet to propose the needed legislation to address Social Security’s projected insolvency in a dozen years.

In general, the three major options available to governments to address pension insolvency are: reduce benefits, increase taxes and raise retirement age. Reducing benefits, however, would create financial difficulties for many of the elderly. Increasing taxes is also unlikely to be well received by today’s workers and business communities. Consequently, raising the retirement age may be the least objectionable option to address projected pension insolvencies.

The consequences of the demographic realities of older population age structures and increasing longevity are unavoidable. In particular, those consequences include: decreasing numbers in the labor force per retired person: increasing proportions in old age who are living longer; and rising costs for old age retirement benefits that threaten the solvency of the national programs.

In sum, raising the retirement age addresses many of the consequences of those seismic demographic changes as well as expands the size of the labor force, provides additional years for workers to save for retirement, and deals with the projected insolvencies of government pension programs.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Children working and travelling on India’s vast rail network need to be educated about the perils of trafficking. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Karnataka, India, Dec 2 2022 (IPS)

Deeepti Rani (13) lives with her mother in a dilapidated dwelling near a railway track in India’s southern state of Karnataka. The mother-daughter duo sells paperbacks on trains for a living.

Four months ago, a man in his mid-fifties visited them. Masquerading as a businessman hailing from India’s capital, Delhi, he first expressed dismay over the family’s dismal conditions. Then he offered help.  The man asked Deepti if she wanted to accompany him to Delhi, where he could find her a decent job as a sales clerk or a housemaid. He also told Deepti’s mother that if allowed to go to Delhi, her daughter would be able to earn no less than 15 to 20 000 rupees a month—about 200-300 USD.

The money, Deepti’s mother, reasoned, would be enough to lift the family out of abject poverty and deprivation, enough to plan Deepti’s wedding and bid farewell to the arduous job of selling paperbacks on moving trains.

On the scheduled day, when the man was about to take Deepti, a labourer whose family lives adjacent to her hut informed the police about the possible case of trafficking. The labourer had become suspicious after observing the agent’s frequent visits to the mother-daughter.

When police reached the spot and detained the agent, it was discovered during questioning that he was planning to sell the little girl to a brothel in Delhi.

Ramesh, a 14-year-old boy from the same state, shared a similar predicament. He narrates how a man, probably in his late 40s, offered his parents a handsome sum of money so that he could be adopted and taken good care of.

“My parents, who work as labourers, readily agreed. I was set to go with a man – who we had met a few days before. I was told that I would get a good education, a good life, and loving parents. I wondered how an unknown man could offer us such things at such a fast pace. I told my parents that I smelled something suspicious,” Ramesh recalls.

The next day, as the man arrived to take the boy, the locals, including Ramesh’s parents, questioned him.  “We called the government helpline number, and the team arrived after some 20 minutes. When interrogated, the man spilt the beans. He was about to sell the boy in some Middle East country and get a huge sum for himself. We could have lost our child forever,” says Ramesh’s father.

According to government data, every eight minutes, a child vanishes in India.

As many as 11,000 of the 44,000 youngsters reported missing each year are still missing. In many cases, children and their low-income parents who are promised “greener pastures” in urban houses of the wealthy wind up being grossly underpaid, mistreated, and occasionally sexually molested.

Human trafficking is forbidden in India as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is nonetheless an organised crime. Human trafficking is a covert crime that is typically not reported to the police, and experts believe that it requires significant policy changes to stop it and help victims recover.

Activists and members associated with the Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society (BDSSS) run various child protection programs for children from poor backgrounds.

One such program is ‘Childline 1098 Collab’. A dedicated helpline has been established to help out children in need. The helpline number is widely circulated across the city so that if anyone comes across any violation of child rights, they can dial the number.

A rescue team will be dispatched and provide immediate help to the victim.

Fr Peter Asheervadappa, the director of a social service called Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society, provides emergency relief and rescue services for children at high risk. Children and other citizens can dial toll-free 1098, and the team reaches within 60 minutes to rescue the children.

“The cases handled are of varied nature: Sexual abuse, physical abuse, child labour, marriages, and any other abuse that affects children’s well-being,” Asheervadappa told IPS.

He adds that India’s railway network, one of the largest in the world, is made up of 7,321 stations, 123,542 kilometres of track, and 9,143 daily trains, carrying over 23 million people.

“The vast network, crucial to the country’s survival, is frequently used for trafficking children. For this reason, our organisation, and others like it, have argued that key train stops require specialised programs and attention. Such transit hubs serve as important outreach locations for finding and helping children when they are most in need,” he said.

But not only have the trafficking cases emerged at these locations. There are child marriages, too, that concern the activists.

Rashmi, a 13-year-old, was nearly sold to a middle-aged businessman from a nearby city.  In return, the wealthy man would take good care of the poverty-stricken family and attend to their daily needs. All they had to do was to give them their daughter.  They agreed. “Everyone wants a good life, but that doesn’t mean you barter your child’s life for that greed. It is immoral, unethical, and illegal,” says an activist Abhinav Prasad* associated with the Child Protection Program.

He says many people in India are on the lookout for child brides. They often galvanise their efforts in slums and areas where poor people live. It is there that they find people in need, and they take advantage of their desperation for money.

While Rashmi was about to tie the nuptial knot with a man almost four times her age (50), some neighbours called the child rescue group and informed them. The team rushed to the spot and called in the police to stop the ceremony from happening.

“Child marriages are rampant in India, but we must do our bit. It is by virtue of these small efforts that we can stop the menace from spreading its dreadful wings and consuming our children,” said Prasad.

*Not his real name.
IPS UN Bureau Report

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Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after rebranding itself by dropping ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.

Rebranding, not reform
Instead of learning from experience and changing its approach accordingly, AGRA’s new strategy promises more of the same. Ignoring evidence, criticisms and civil society pleas and demands, the Gates Foundation has committed another $200 million to its new five-year plan, bringing its total contribution to around $900 million.

Timothy A. Wise

Stung by criticism of its poor results, AGRA delayed announcing its new strategy by a year, while its chief executive shepherded the controversial UN Food Systems Summit of 2021. Following this, AGRA has been using more UN Sustainable Development Goals rhetoric.

Hence, AGRA’s new slogan – ‘Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems’. Likewise, the new plan claims to “lay the foundation for a sustainable food systems-led inclusive agricultural transformation”. But beyond such lip service, there is little evidence of any meaningful commitment to sustainable agriculture in the $550 million plan for 2023–27.

Despite heavy government subsidies, AGRA promotion of commercial seeds and fertilizers for just a few cereal crops failed to significantly increase productivity, incomes or even food security. But instead of addressing past shortcomings, the new plan still relies heavily on more of the same despite its failure to “catalyze” a productivity revolution among African farmers.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The name change suggests the 16-year-old AGRA wants to dissociate itself from past failures, but without acknowledging its own flawed approach. Recently, much higher fertilizer prices – following sanctions against Russia and Belarus after the Ukraine invasion – have worsened the lot of farmers relying on AGRA recommended inputs.

It is time to change course, with policies promoting ecological farming by reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers as appropriate. But despite its new slogan, AGRA’s new strategy intends otherwise.

Last month, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa rejected the strategy and name change as “cosmetic”, “an admission of failure” of the Green Revolution project, and “a cynical distraction” from the urgent need to change course.

Productivity gains and losses
Despite spending well over a billion dollars, AGRA’s productivity gains have been modest, and only for a few more heavily subsidized crops such as maize and rice. And from 2015 to 2020, cereal yields have not risen at all.

Meanwhile, traditional food crop production has declined under AGRA, with millet falling over a fifth. Yields actually also fell for cassava, groundnuts and root crops such as sweet potato. Across a basket of staple crops, yields rose only 18% in 12 years.

Farmer incomes have not risen, especially after increased production costs are taken into account. As for halving hunger, which Gates and AGRA originally promised, the number of ‘severely undernourished’ people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 31%!

A donor-commissioned evaluation confirmed many adverse farmer outcomes. It found the minority of farmers who benefited were mainly better-off men, not smallholder women the programme was ostensibly meant for.

That did not deter the Gates Foundation from committing more to AGRA despite its dismal track record, failed strategy, and poor monitoring to track progress. Judging by the new five-year plan, we can expect even less accountability.

The new plan does not even set measurable goals for yields, incomes or food security. As the saying goes, what you don’t measure you don’t value. Apparently, AGRA does not value agricultural productivity, even though it is still at the core of the organization’s strategy.

Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s other founding donor and a leader of the first Green Revolution from the 1950s, announced a reduction in its grant to AGRA and a decisive step back from the Green Revolution approach.

Its grant to AGRA supports school feeding initiatives and “alternatives to fossil-fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides through the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices such as cultivation of nitrogen-fixing beans”.

Business in charge
AGRA’s new strategy is built on a series of “business lines”, e.g., the “sustainable farming business line” will coordinate with the “Seed Systems business line” to sell inputs. Private Village Based Advisors are meant to provide training and planting advice in this privatized, commercial reincarnation of the government or quasi-government extension services of an earlier era.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization successfully promoted peer-learning of agro-ecological practices via Farmer Field Schools after successfully field-testing them. This came about after research showed ‘brown hoppers’ thrived in Asian rice farms after Green Revolution pesticides eliminated the insect’s natural predators.

China lost a fifth of its 2007-08 paddy harvest to the pest, triggering a price spike in the thinly traded world rice market. Seeking help from the International Rice Research Institute, located in the Philippines, a Chinese delegation found its Entomology Department had lost most of its former capacity due to under-funding.

Earlier international agricultural research collaboration associated with the first Green Revolution – especially in wheat, maize and rice – seems to have collapsed, surrendering to corporate and philanthropic interests. This bitter experience encouraged China to step up its agronomic research efforts with a greater agro-ecological emphasis.

Empty promises?
The new strategy promises “AGRA will promote increased crop diversification at the farm level”. But its advisers cum salespeople have a vested interest in selling their wares, rather than good local seeds which do not require repeat purchases every planting season.

AGRA is not strengthening resilience by promoting agroecology or reducing farmer reliance on costly inputs such as fossil fuel fertilizers and other, often toxic, agrochemicals. Despite many proven African agroecological initiatives, support for them remains modest.

The new strategy stresses irrigation, key to most other Green Revolutions, but conspicuously absent from Africa’s Green Revolution. But the plan is deafeningly silent on how fiscally strapped governments are to provide such crucial infrastructure, especially in the face of growing water, fiscal and debt stress, worsened by global warming.

It is often said stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Perhaps this is due to the technophile conceit that some favoured innovation is superior to everything else, including scientific knowledge, processes and agro-ecological solutions.

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Credit: Qatar Tourism Authority

By Myles Benham
DOHA, Qatar, Nov 25 2022 (IPS)

The sun is shining, and the temperature sits at an idyllic 28 degrees Celsius. The Uber driver taking me to work is from Pakistan and devastated about the recent loss to England in the T20 Cricket World Cup final in Australia.

On route to the office, I stop to get a coffee and the barista is from Gambia, the server from Uganda and the cashier from Nigeria. They all smile and greet me as I travel through the line. As I enter the office, I am greeted by the Indian and Bangladeshi security guards and then pass the Filipino, Togolese and Algerian cleaning staff who are preparing for the rush of staff on what will undoubtedly be a busy morning.

The world’s real melting pot is not London, Melbourne or Los Angeles. It’s here in the Middle East. The representation of cultures here in Doha dwarfs anything outside of the Arab Gulf and many are here for the prospect of work and the opportunity brought about by the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Qatar’s open door

As an underlying groundswell of xenophobia has permeated through much of the world – the Global West has shut its borders, limited migration and made the process of entering, let alone working, more difficult – Qatar has opened its doors. The people working here are searching for a way to improve the situation for their families.

Many are from some of the poorest places on the planet where the people are most in need. The media have filled newspapers and TV screens with negative stories about Qatar, a country they have never visited and a culture they have never experienced.

When the majority have turned their backs on these poorer countries, could the conversation surrounding workers for this World Cup not have been about opportunity? About the incredible impact and lasting legacy, the jobs generated here will have on families and communities across the globe? About the dissemination of wealth back to the areas and communities who really need it?

For decades the world has shifted industry towards regions that can provide cheaper labour. The movement of whole sectors to Asia and the sub-continent have kept many organizations afloat. This was seen as a creative way to save money, drive higher dividends for shareholders and keep prices low for consumers despite the effect it would have on local jobs.

This paradigm is alive and well. Salaries and wages are much lower in Eastern European countries like Poland, Hungary or Bulgaria than in countries like Germany, Austria or France. In many cases, this has led companies based in Western Europe to build subsidiaries in Eastern Europe to take advantage of lower labour costs. Western European economies heavily depend on working migrants from the East earning low wages and working in poor, unregulated conditions. That isn’t particularly controversial in Europe.

The same can be said for Eastern European countries who replace the workforce that has departed with workers from Central Asian countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. So, for all the outrage and condemnation that has been aimed at Qatar, a quick google search would show the very thing they are advocating against is happening under their own nose.

Uniting instead of dividing

However, hypocrisy is not limited to Europe. Australia, for example, became the first 2022 World Cup team to release a collective statement against Qatar’s human rights record, compiling a video message critiquing the World Cup host’s treatment of migrant workers. It may surprise those individuals to learn that Australia’s track record on human rights is not exactly squeaky clean.

More than 40 nations at the UN Human Right Council, including Germany, South Korea and the USA, have questioned Australia’s policies toward asylum seekers and refugees. Among the issues raised are Australia’s continued use of offshore processing and prolonged detention for asylum seekers.

The council accuses the Australian government of not following through on some of its key past pledges and of still subjecting refugees to immense harm.

The World Cup in Qatar is the 22nd iteration of the international tournament which was first held in Uruguay in 1930. In the 92 years since, the ‘world game’ – despite its interest across the globe – has held 15 out of 20 World Cups in Europe and South America.

Five nations have already hosted the event on more than one occasion. An incredible concentration given the participation and interest. This time things are different. The world game is branching out and reaching a new audience.

The World Cup in Qatar represents the first major sporting event in the Arab and Muslim world. The impact will not just be felt amongst the 2.7 million population of Qatar, or even across the 475 million people who call the Middle East home. This event will resonate with the 1.9 billion Muslims across the globe.

From Indonesia to Morocco, the Maldives to Egypt, roughly one quarter of the world’s population, who in almost 100 years of World Cup football have been in the background, will be front and centre.

If the focus of the next four weeks can be the incredible football played on the pitch, the generosity and kind-hearted nature of the hosts and the collective joy that bringing cultures, religions and people together – not just those from Europe and South America – this World Cup may end up being a turning point for a truly world game.

They say that World Cups are a life-changing experience for the players and teams that compete in them, and even more so for the winner. However, for this World Cup, for the first time in history, the real winners won’t be on the pitch at Lusail Stadium on December 18.

They’ll be behind the scenes, in the Ubers, coffee shops and security points across the country, taking the opportunity, the generational-altering opportunity, only the World Cup in Qatar was offering them.

Myles Benham is a Freelance Event Manager with 15 years’ experience working in Global Mega Events and is currently in Doha for the World Cup.

Read more on the debate around the FIFA World Cup.

Source: International Politics and Society, Brussels, Belgium

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In the armed services, African Americans make up 23 percent of enlisted soldiers, which is approaching nearly double their proportion of the U.S. population. Among officers, however, the percentage of African Americans is considerably lower at 11 percent. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Nov 23 2022 (IPS)

Countries worldwide, and as different as India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Ireland, Israel and Italy, are struggling with the issue of how best to balance diversity and meritocracy across disparate ethnic, racial, caste, linguistic and religious subgroups in their populations.

In a growing number of areas, including politics, employment, careers, education, armed forces, immigration, the judicial system, entertainment and sports, countries are making far-reaching decisions regarding when to strive for diversity and when to stress meritocracy.

Some may consider the goals of diversity and meritocracy to be noncontradictory. In practice, however, the two goals are often difficult to reconcile, especially with imprecise definitions, differing concepts and lack of reliable measures.

Promoting diversity certainly poses a variety of challenges for societies. However, the pursuit of meritocracy also faces unrecognized risks and biases as well as discrimination behind efforts to reward merit.

The rewards ascribed to meritocracy are often simply the result of privilege, legacy and entitlement. In addition, some have argued that the pursuit of meritocracy actually produces inequality, stifles social mobility and increases unhappiness.

Admittedly, diversity and meritocracy across country populations are varied and differ considerably globally. Nevertheless, useful insight may be gained from considering the experience of a country that exemplifies a nation attempting to find the appropriate balance between diversity and meritocracy: the United States.

U.S laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of race. At the same, however, policies and practices, such as affirmative action, aim at countering discrimination against certain racial groups by increasing their chances for employment, promotion, higher education and other opportunities.

Since the first U.S. census in 1790, the U.S. Census Bureau has been tasked to gather information on the racial composition of America’s population. In the 1790 census an estimated 81 percent of the U.S. population was identified as white with the remaining 19 percent enumerated as black, with 92 percent of them being slaves.

The white proportion of the U.S. population rose to 90 percent in 1920, where it remained until 1950 when it began declining and reached 80 percent in 1990. At the start of the 21st century the proportion white declined further to approximately 75 percent where it has remained. The proportion white is projected to continue declining, reaching 68 percent of the U.S. population by 2060 (Figure 1).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

The methods employed by the Census Bureau to collect race data over the past 230 years have evolved, reflecting changes in American society. Based on the 1997 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards on race, the Census Bureau gathers self-identified responses to the race question, with respondents permitted to select more than one race.

OMB requires five minimum categories: White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Those categories reflect a social definition of race and do not define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically.

The race categories and their proportions of America’s 2021 population of 332 million are: White at 75.8 percent, Black or African American at 13.6 percent, Asian at 6.1 percent, American Indian or Alaska Native at 1.3 percent, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander at 0.3 percent, and two or more races at 2.9 percent (Figure 2).

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Reviewing a number of examples from different areas of life in the United States is useful in illustrating the various aspects of the country’s efforts to balance racial diversity and meritocracy.

In professional basketball African Americans represented 20 percent of league players in 1960. Today African Americans account for approximately 75 percent of basketball players in the National Basketball Association.

Among the country’s orchestras, in contrast, African Americans account for less than 2 percent of the players. Nearly a half century ago, the selection of musicians for orchestras was changed to blind auditions in which candidates performed behind a curtain. As blind auditions have not led to making orchestras more diverse, some have called for ending blind auditions and taking race into account so orchestras reflect the communities they serve.

In professional football African Americans represent 58 percent of the players. However, they account for 9 percent of the head coaches, or five head coaches in the 32-team league of the National Football League (NFL).

Nearly 20 years ago after accusations of discriminatory head coach hiring practices, the NFL team owners agreed to policy changes to address those accusations. Among those changes was the so-called Rooney Rule, which said, “Any club seeking to hire a head coach will interview one or more minority applicants for that position.”

In the armed services, African Americans make up 23 percent of enlisted soldiers, which is approaching nearly double their proportion of the U.S. population. Among officers, however, the percentage of African Americans is considerably lower at 11 percent.

The U.S. military has taken a number of initiatives to promote racial diversity at the higher ranks. The Army, for example, has removed photos of officers from personnel files so promotion boards are less aware of race and they have more minority officers choosing combat assignments, which is a critical stepping stone to high-star officer ranks.

With respect to higher education, the racially conscious admissions practices of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are being challenged in cases currently before the Supreme Court. The court is being asked to consider the constitutionality of racial preference in college admissions of those two universities.

Asian Americans admissions to Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are 25 and 22 percent, respectively. Those percentages are approximately four times the proportion of Asian Americans in the U.S. population.

Nevertheless, the racially conscious admissions practices of those two universities are being considered by the court. After its initial hearing of the cases on 31 October, the Supreme Court appeared ready based on its questioning and comments to rule that the admissions programs of Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful.

Those admission practices, which allegedly discriminate against Asian Americans and effectively cap Asian matriculation numbers, have drawn comparison to the past efforts by Harvard and other elite universities to limit the enrollment of Jewish Americans. If only academics were considered, internal research by Harvard University suggests that Asian Americans would make up 43 percent of an admitted class.

In four Gallup polls from 2003 to 2016, at least two-thirds of Americans said college admissions should be solely on the basis of merit. A more recent national Washington Post survey in October found a majority of Americans, 63 percent, supported a ban on the consideration of race in college admissions. At the same time, however, a majority in that survey, 64 percent, endorsed programs to boost racial diversity on campuses.

Imbalances in achieving racial diversity are also reflected in the composition of America’s professions. For example, while Asian Americans represent 17 percent of active physicians, the proportion for African Americans is 5 percent.

Similarly in science and engineering occupations, the proportions for Asian Americans and African Americans are 21 and 5 percent, respectively. Among U.S. lawyers, the proportions are relatively low for both Asian Americans and African Americans at 2 and 5 percent, respectively.

The personal views of Americans concerning workplace diversity also reflect the difficulties in balancing racial diversity and meritocracy. One national PEW survey in 2019 found that a majority, 75 percent, value workplace diversity. However, a majority in that survey, 74 percent, also felt that only the qualifications and not an applicant’s race should be taken into account in hiring and promotions even if it results in less diversity.

The issue of how best to balance diversity and meritocracy remains a major challenge for America as well as for many other countries. That challenge has become more difficult in the United States. with the puzzling and prejudicial use of racial, ethnic, linguistic, ancestry and origin categories that increasingly make little sense.

In sum, with a growing world population of eight billion, the shifting demographic landscapes of national populations and the fundamental need to ensure human rights for all, the challenge of how to balance diversity and meritocracy can be expected to become even more critical and consequential for countries in the years ahead.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

The ongoing plunder of Africa’s natural resources drained by capital flight is holding it back yet again. More African nations face protracted recessions amid mounting debt distress, rubbing salt into deep wounds from the past.

With much less foreign exchange, tax revenue, and policy space to face external shocks, many African governments believe they have little choice but to spend less, or borrow more in foreign currencies.

Ndongo Samba Sylla

Economic haemorrhage
After ‘lost decades’ from the late 1970s, Africa became one of the world’s fastest growing regions early in the 21st century. Debt relief, a commodity boom and other factors seemed to support the deceptive ‘Africa rising’ narrative.

But instead of long overdue economic transformation, Africa has seen jobless growth, rising economic inequalities and more resource transfers abroad. Capital flight – involving looted resources laundered via foreign banks – has been bleeding the continent.

According to the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, the continent was losing over $50 billion annually. This was mainly due to ‘trade mis-invoicing’ – under-invoicing exports and over-invoicing imports – and fraudulent commercial arrangements.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) and criminal networks account for much of this African economic surplus drain. Resource-rich countries are more vulnerable to plunder, especially where capital accounts have been liberalized.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Leonce Ndikumana and his colleagues estimate over 55% of capital flight – defined as illegally acquired or transferred assets – from Africa is from oil-rich nations, with Nigeria alone losing $467 billion during 1970-2018.

Over the same period, Angola lost $103 billion. Its poverty rate rose from 34% to 52% over the past decade, as the poor more than doubled from 7.5 to 16 million.

Oil proceeds have been embezzled by TNCs and Angola’s elite. Abusing her influence, the former president’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos acquired massive wealth. A report found over 400 companies in her business empire, including many in tax havens.

From 1970 to 2018, Côte d’Ivoire lost $55 billion to capital flight. Growing 40% of the world’s cocoa, it gets only 5–7% of global cocoa profits, with farmers getting little. Most cocoa income goes to TNCs, politicians and their collaborators.

Mining giant South Africa (SA) has lost $329 billion to capital flight over the last five decades. Mis-invoicing, other modes of embezzling public resources, and tax evasion augment private wealth hidden in offshore financial centres and tax havens.

Fiscal austerity has slowed job growth and poverty reduction in ‘the most unequal country in the world’. In SA, the richest 10% own over half the nation’s wealth, while the poorest 10% have under 1%!

Resource theft and debt
With this pattern of plunder, resource-rich African countries – that could have accelerated development during the commodity boom – now face debt distress, depreciating currencies and imported inflation, as interest rates are pushed up.

Zambia’s default on its foreign debt obligations in late 2020 has made headlines. But foreign capture of most Zambian copper export proceeds is not acknowledged.

During 2000-2020, total foreign direct investment income from Zambia was twice total debt servicing for external government and government-guaranteed loans. In 2021, the deficit in the ‘primary income’ account (mainly returns to capital) of Zambia’s balance of payments was 12.5% of GDP.

As interest payments on public external debt came to ‘only’ 3.5% of GDP, most of this deficit (9% of GDP) was due to profit and dividend remittances, as well as interest payments on private external debt.

For the IMF, World Bank and ‘creditor nations’, debt ‘restructuring’ is conditional on continuing such plunder! African countries’ worsening foreign indebtedness is partly due to lack of control over export earnings controlled by TNCs, with African elite support.

Resource pillage, involving capital flight, inevitably leads to external debt distress. Invariably, the IMF demands government austerity and opening African economies to TNC interests. Thus, we come full circle, and indeed, it is vicious!

Africa’s wealth plunder dates back to colonial times, and even before, with the Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans. Now, this is enabled by transnational interests crafting international rules, loopholes and all.

Such enablers include various bankers, accountants, lawyers, investment managers, auditors and other wheeler dealers. Thus, the origins of the wealth of ‘high net-worth individuals’, corporations and politicians are disguised, and its transfer abroad ‘laundered’.

What can be done?
Capital flight is not mainly due to ‘normal’ portfolio choices by African investors. Hence, raising returns to investment, e.g., with higher interest rates, is unlikely to stem it. Worse, such policy measures discourage needed domestic investments.

Besides enforcing efficient capital controls, strengthening the capabilities of specialized national agencies – such as customs, financial supervision and anti-corruption bodies – is important.

African governments need stronger rules, legal frameworks and institutions to curb corruption and ensure more effective natural resource management, e.g., by revising bilateral investment treaties and investment codes, besides renegotiating oil, gas, mining and infrastructure contracts.

Records of all investments in extractive industries, tax payments by all involved, and public prosecution should be open, transparent and accountable. Punishment of economic crimes should be strictly enforced with deterrent penalties.

The broader public – especially civil society organizations, local authorities and impacted communities – must also know who and what are involved in extractive industries.

Only an informed public who knows how much is extracted and exported, by whom, what revenue governments get, and their social and environmental effects, can keep corporations and governments in check.

Improving international trade and finance transparency is essential. This requires ending banking secrecy and better regulation of TNCs to curb trade mis-invoicing and transfer pricing, still enabling resource theft and pillage.

OECD rhetoric has long blamed capital flight on offshore tax havens on remote tropical islands. But those in rich countries – such as the UK, US, Switzerland, Netherlands, Singapore and others – are the biggest culprits.

Stopping haemorrhage of African resource plunder by denying refuge for illicit transfers should be a rich country obligation. Automatic exchange of tax-related information should become truly universal to stop trade mis-invoicing, transfer pricing abuses and hiding stolen wealth abroad.

Unitary taxation of transnational corporations can help end tax abuses, including evasion and avoidance. But the OECD’s Inclusive Framework proposals favour their own governments and corporate interests.

Africa is not inherently ‘poor’. Rather, it has been impoverished by fraud and pillage leading to resource transfers abroad. An earnest effort to end this requires recognizing all responsibilities and culpabilities, national and international.

Africa’s veins have been slit open. The centuries-long bleeding must stop.

Dr Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist working at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Dakar. He authored The Fair Trade Scandal. Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich and co-authored Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story. He also edited Economic and Monetary Sovereignty for 21st century Africa, Revolutionary Movements in Africa and Imperialism and the Political Economy of Global South’s Debt. He tweets at @nssylla

IPS UN Bureau

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Ann Potokri, a nurse and service provider working with ICW, and Queen Kennedy, a community pharmacist and mentor mother. Maararaba, Nasarawa State, North Central Nigeria, June 2020. Photo courtesy of International Community of Women Living with HIV West Africa.

By Jaime Atienza and Charles Birungi
GENEVA, Nov 21 2022 (IPS)

In this moment of profound challenge in international relations, it was understandable that the conclusion of the G20 meeting left leaders feeling relieved that the meeting took place without a breakdown. Leaders were justifiably proud too of important steps forward they made including the launch of the new pandemics fund.

But G20 leaders did not manage to resolve the fiscal crisis that threatens many low-and middle-income countries, and which risks undermining global health security because it is driving countries to slash investments in essential health services.

As the world approaches the end of 2022, no resolution mechanism to properly resolve the debt crisis has been established by either the IMF or the G20. In 24 months, the “G20 common framework” has delivered a debt relief agreement for just one country, Chad.

UNAIDS report “A pandemic triad” shows how growing debt burdens across developing countries are impairing their ability to fight and end AIDS and COVID, and their readiness for future pandemics. Half of the low-income countries in Africa are already in debt distress or at high risk of being so.

Across the world, the 73 countries which are eligible for the Debt Service Suspension Initiative have been recorded as spending on average four times as much on debt servicing as they have been able to invest in the health of their people. Only 43 of those countries have seen even a temporary suspension – totalling less than 10% the money they continued to pay back.

Two thirds of people living with HIV are in countries that received absolutely no support from the Debt Service Suspension Initiative at all during the critical 2020-2021 period. The seven Debt Service Suspension Initiative eligible countries with the largest population of people living with HIV – Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia – saw their public debt levels grow from 29% in 2011 to 74% in 2020.

According to the World Bank, “interest payments will constrain the capacity of low-income countries to spend on health, on average by 7%, and in lower middle-income countries by 10%, in 2027.”

110 out of 177 countries will see a drop or stagnation in their health spending capacity and are not set to be able to achieve pre-COVID spending levels by 2027.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, deficits increased worldwide, and debt accumulated much faster than they did in the early years of other recessions including the Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis. The scale is comparable only to the twentieth century’s two world wars.

Government expenditure cuts are expected to take place across 139 countries in the coming years. In the case of the 73 countries that were eligible to the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, primary expenditures are expected to decline an average of 2.8% of GDP between 2020 and 2026.

This comes at a moment when economic forecasts have been downgraded by the IMF for a fourth time in a year. Austerity will mean dangerous reductions in health expenditure. To even restrain the damage will require a systemic reprioritization of public resources towards health systems.

There is a direct correlation between deepening fiscal problems and worsening health outcomes.

The COVID-19 crisis is dragging on. The impacts of the war in Ukraine on the global economy are making things worse. The HIV response is in danger, with the promise to end AIDS by 2030 under threat.

The world is not prepared today for the pandemics of to come. The international response to resolve the health financing crisis is nowhere close enough. Even as developing countries struggle with the debt crisis, the Ukraine war has led several donors to cut aid.

But there is a way out. With bold action, the health and development financing crisis can be overcome. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Bridgetown Agenda for action on debt, expansion of multilateral finance and effective SDR reallocation sets out the order of magnitude of response required.

There is an urgent need for debt cancellation for countries in fiscal distress, and for an effective and fast mechanism to deal with debt restructuring at scale. Health and education must be central considerations in debt negotiations.

Vital too is an expansion of the use of existing Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from high income countries for investments in lower income countries of at least twice the 100 billion committed.

The G20 leaders’ work has not ended in Bali. The consequences of an unresolved debt crisis, and the lack of additional resources, would be disastrous for lives, livelihoods and health security. We don’t have time. No one is safe until everyone is safe.

Jaime Atienza is the Director of Equitable Financing at UNAIDS. Charles Birungi is the Senior HIV Economics, Finance and Policy Advisor.

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The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, according to World Population Prospects 2022, released on World.

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 2022 (IPS)

The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, signalling major improvements in public health that have lowered the risk of dying and increased life expectancy. But the moment is also a clarion call for humanity to look beyond the numbers and meet its shared responsibility to protect people and the planet, starting with the most vulnerable.

“Unless we bridge the yawning chasm between the global haves and have-nots, we are setting ourselves up for an 8-billion-strong world filled with tensions and mistrust, crisis and conflict,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

A more demographically diverse world than ever before

While the world’s population will continue to grow to around 10.4 billion in the 2080s, the overall rate of growth is slowing down. The world is more demographically diverse than ever before, with countries facing starkly different population trends ranging from growth to decline.

Today, two-thirds of the global population lives in a low fertility context, where the lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman. At the same time, population growth has become increasingly concentrated among the world’s poorest countries, most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Against this backdrop, the global community must ensure that all countries, regardless of whether their populations are growing or shrinking, are equipped to provide a good quality of life for their populations and can lift up and empower their most marginalised people.

“A world of 8 billion is a milestone for humanity – the result of longer lifespans, reductions in poverty, and declining maternal and childhood mortality. Yet, focusing on numbers alone distracts us from the real challenge we face: securing a world in which progress can be enjoyed equally and sustainably,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. “We cannot rely on one-size-fits-all solutions in a world in which the median age is 41 in Europe compared to 17 in sub-Saharan Africa. To succeed, all population policies must have reproductive rights at their core, invest in people and planet, and be based on solid data.”

Complex linkages between population, sustainable development and climate change

While the Day of 8 Billion represents a success story for humanity, it also raises concerns about links between population growth, poverty, climate change and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex.

Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combatting hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult. Conversely, achieving the SDGs, especially those related to health, education and gender equality, will contribute to slowing global population growth.

Relatedly, although slower population growth–if maintained over several decades–could help to mitigate environmental degradation, conflating population growth with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions ignores that countries with the highest consumption and emissions rates are those where population growth is already slow or even negative.

Meanwhile, the majority of the world’s population growth is concentrated among the poorest countries, which have significantly lower emissions rates but are likely to suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change.

“We must accelerate our efforts to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement as well as achieve the SDGs,” said Li Junhua, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “We need a rapid decoupling of economic activity from the current over-reliance on fossil-fuel energy, as well as greater efficiency in the use of those resources, and we need to make this a just and inclusive transition that supports those left furthest behind.”

The need for a sustainable future built on rights and choices

In order to usher in a world in which all 8 billion people can thrive, we must look to proven and effective solutions to mitigate our world’s challenges and achieve the SDGs, while prioritising human rights. In order to pursue these solutions, increased investment from member states and donor governments is needed in policies and programmes that work to make the world safer, more sustainable and more inclusive.

Key facts and figures at a glance

● It took about 12 years for the world population to grow from 7 to 8 billion, but the next billion is expected to take approx 14.5 years (2037), reflecting the slowdown in global growth. World population is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100.
● For the increase from 7 to 8 billion, around 70 per cent of the added population was in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. For the increase from 8 to 9 billion, these two groups of countries are expected to account for more than 90 per cent of global growth.
● Between now and 2050, the global increase in the population under age 65 will occur entirely in low income and lower-middle-income countries, since population growth in high-income and upper-middle income countries will occur only among those aged 65 years or over.

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