Credit: Yan Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 9 2023 (IPS)

Nothing was more predictable than repression. Merely for holding candles and flowers, people were taken away by Hong Kong’s police.

The occasion was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, 4 June 1989. Hong Kong was until recently home to mass annual vigils where thousands gathered to keep alive the memory of that day. But that’s all gone now in the crackdown that followed large-scale protests for democracy that erupted in 2019.

Hong Kong’s authorities are evidently determined to erase any form of acknowledgement that the massacre ever happened. Memorials and artworks commemorating it have been removed. Books that mention the tragedy have disappeared from libraries. Shops selling the LED candles commonly used to mark the occasion were visited by the authorities in the run up to this year’s anniversary.

The organisation behind the vigil, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Movements in China, closed itself down in 2021 following a police investigation. Several of its leaders were jailed in March.

Instead of hosting the usual vigil, this year Hong Kong’s Victoria Park was home to a carnival celebrating Chinese rule. People wanting to mark the occasion had to do so in private.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. People are mourning not only the many who died on 4 June 1989 but also the Hong Kong vanishing before their eyes.

Further than ever away from democracy

When Hong Kong was handed over to China by the UK in 1997, China agreed to maintain the country’s distinct political and economic structures for the next 50 years, under the banner of ‘one country, two systems’.

Hong Kong’s Basic Law guaranteed civic rights, including freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression. China committed to move towards universal suffrage for the election of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, the head of government.

But following the democracy protests that burst out in 2019, China has unilaterally torn up that agreement. Three years ago, the government passed the National Security Law, a sweeping piece of legislation that criminalises criticism of the authorities. It’s been used alongside existing laws, such as the law on sedition, to jail leaders of the democracy movement.

China never made good on its promise of universal suffrage. It’s gone in the opposite direction. Current Chief Executive John Lee – who as security chief led the violent crackdown on democracy protests – was chosen last year by a hand-picked 1,500-member Election Committee, which duly endorsed him as the sole candidate.

The Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s parliament, had already been neutered. The number of directly elected seats has been slashed and people are disqualified from standing if they question China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong.

Now the District Councils are in the firing line. When the last elections for the municipal bodies were held, in the thick of democracy protests in November 2019, pro-democracy parties triumphed.

Such a result is now impossible. In 2021, a law was passed requiring all district councillors to swear an oath of allegiance affirming their ‘patriotism’ for China. Most of the pro-democracy candidates elected in 2019 were disqualified or resigned.

Now when new district councillors are chosen in November, only 20 per cent of seats will be directly elected. The authorities will fill the rest with their supporters, all vetted to ensure their ‘patriotism’. Little wonder that the Civic Party, one of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy parties, recently announced it was closing down.

A hollowed-out Hong Kong

Hong Kong was once a country where people felt safe to protest. It had a flourishing media and publishing industry. Now journalists are criminalised and key independent media have shut down.

Civil society organisations and trade unions have done the same. The remaining organisations are scattered, practising self-censorship. Protests continue to be heavily restricted: this year a planned International Women’s Day march was cancelled after police threats.

People continue to try to find ways to express dissent, but any small gesture can attract the state’s ire. The death of Queen Elizabeth II gave people an opportunity to use public mourning to express at with the regression since handover. But when a vigil was held during the Queen’s funeral, a harmonica player was arrested for daring to play the tune Glory to Hong Kong, associated with the democracy protests.

Last year five speech therapists were convicted of producing ‘seditious publications’. Their crime was to produce children’s books in which sheep defend their villages from wolves. This was taken to be an allegory of China’s control of Hong Kong.

Everyday repression is making Hong Kong a hollowed-out country, its population falling. Some schools face closure due to falling student numbers. Many have fled, not wanting their children to grow up in a country where education is indoctrination. The curriculum has been reworked to teach students loyalty rather than independent thought. Many teachers are leaving the country or taking early retirement.

With the legal system facing increasing interference and political pressure, lawyers are also among those fleeing.

A key test will be the trial of Jimmy Lai, former media owner and democracy campaigner. He’s already been found guilty on numerous counts. His newspaper, Apple Daily, once Hong Kong’s most widely read pro-democracy paper, shut down in 2021. He faces trial under the National Security Law, which could mean a life sentence.

The judges who will try Lai have been handpicked by John Lee. Meanwhile the authorities have tried to prevent Lai’s defence lawyer, UK barrister Tim Owen, representing him in court. In March they passed a law giving Lee the power to ban foreign lawyers working on national security cases. It isn’t looking promising.

Lai is one of Hong Kong’s 1,508 political prisoners. Even as the population shrinks, the imprisoned population just keeps getting bigger. The candles that commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the yearning for democracy will continue to flare around the world in exile – but those lights are being extinguished in Hong Kong.

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

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 5 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Children are not targets. Children are not soldiers. Children are not weapons. As we commemorate the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression, we call on leaders everywhere to embrace the commitments outlined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Safe Schools Declaration to ensure girls and boys everywhere are able to reach their full potential without fear, without intimidation and without violence.

As the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) is firmly committed to ensuring children everywhere are guaranteed their human rights.

Education is a game changer in protecting these innocent young lives from the grave violations associated with armed conflict, including recruitment and use of children in war, killing, sexual violence, abduction, attacks on schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access.

In countries with high numbers of documented grave violations against children – such as Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Iraq, the State of Palestine, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Ukraine – education is the most powerful and most transformative tool in our global efforts to save lives and build towards a lasting peace.

On my recent mission to the border region between Chad and Sudan, I met with vulnerable and desperate children and women traveling alone through a bleak desert land with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Without the safety, protection and hope that quality education provides, these innocent girls and boys face incredible and unimaginable risks. Girls will be forced into child marriage and sexually abused, boys will be forcibly recruited as child soldiers. And the cycle of displacement, poverty, violence and human rights violations will continue.

We can do better. We must do better. As nations worldwide have committed through the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: “Every child has the right to life. Governments must do all they can to ensure that children survive and develop to their full potential.”

Please join Education Cannot Wait, donors and partners across the UN system in ensuring all children – especially those caught in armed conflicts – are guaranteed their human rights.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 1 2023 (IPS)

Turkey’s election hasn’t produced the change many thought was on the cards. Now women’s groups, LGBTQI+ people and independent journalists are among those fearing the worse.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has led the country for two decades, first as prime minister and then as president, prevailed in the 28 May runoff poll, taking around 52.2 per cent of the vote, with his opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, on 47.8 per cent.

The election represented Erdoğan’s biggest-ever electoral test. The run-up was dominated by a cost-of-living crisis. Many pointed the finger at highly unorthodox economic policies insisted on by Erdoğan – of lowering rather than raising interest rates in response to inflation – for making them worse off.

Anger was also sparked by devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria in February, leaving over 50,000 people dead and an estimated 1.5 million people homeless in Turkey. The government was accused of being slow to respond and of overlooking building regulations.

Erdoğan has overcome these hurdles, albeit with a narrow victory. The close vote shows that many Turks wanted change. But after a deeply polarised election, there’s no hint Erdoğan plans to moderate the way he governs.

 
Media dominance tells

Erdoğan prevailed despite facing a united opposition in which six parties put aside their differences. Their aim was to bring to an end Erdoğan’s hyper-presidential form of government and turn Turkey back into a pluralist democracy where parliament can act as a check on excessive presidential power.

A similar approach was tried in Hungary last year, when parties came together to try to oust authoritarian hardman Viktor Orbán, and also failed. Some of their challenges were similar. Both were forced to work in a severely unequal media landscape where media – state media and private media owned by business leaders closely connected to the government – focused almost entirely on the incumbent and starved the challenger of airtime. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers concluded that while the election was competitive, the playing field wasn’t level, with freedom of expression restrictions and media bias giving Erdoğan ‘an unjustified advantage’.

Over his 20 years, Erdoğan has concentrated power on himself and moved to suppress dissent. In 2017, Erdoğan pushed through changes that turned a parliamentary system into an intensely presidential one, placing virtually unlimited powers in his hands.

And he’s used those powers. Turkey is now the world’s fourth-largest jailer of journalists, with terrorism charges commonly applied, and the number of trials and length of sentences increasing.

The deteriorating climate for dissent could be seen in the wake of the earthquakes, when people were detained for criticising the government’s response. There were several reports of attacks on and obstruction of journalists during the election campaign.

A race to the bottom

In past elections, Erdoğan campaigned on his economic record. But this time, with the economic crisis and earthquake destruction leaving him unable to press those points, he fell back on another weapon, deploying a tactic nationalists and populists are using the world over: culture war rhetoric.

The opposition was consistently smeared for allegedly supporting LGBTQI+ rights, with Erdoğan positioning himself as the staunch defender of the traditional family. This messaging persisted even though the opposition had little to say on reversing Erdoğan’s attacks on women’s and LGBTQI+ people’s rights.

The culture war strategy was blended with a strongly nationalist appeal. Political opponents were portrayed as extremists and allies of terrorists. This was reinforced by fake campaign videos – one of many examples of campaign disinformation – that claimed to show members of a banned terrorist organisation supporting Kılıçdaroğlu.

Syrian refugees were also targeted. There are 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. They’ve crossed the border to escape the brutal, 12-year civil war and grotesque human rights abuses. But Turkey’s economic decline has seen growing xenophobia, which has fuelled violence, inflamed by political rhetoric.

Whoever won the election promised to be bad news for refugees. The opposition reacted to Erdoğan’s attacks by pledging to be even tougher in returning refugees. In the last leg of the campaign, both sides hurled discriminatory and inflammatory language at each other.

Erdoğan’s more authentic appeal to nationalism and socially conservative values ultimately won the day. Erdoğan seems to have convinced enough people he’s the only person who can navigate the current crisis. As in several other countries, including Hungary and El Salvador, a majority of voters embraced authoritarianism.

What next?

Undoubtedly Turkey’s heavily restricted civic space and deeply skewed media landscape played a major role. But even acknowledging these barriers, the opposition will need to do some soul searching ahead of municipal elections next year if they hope to keep control of major city governments. The strategy of imitating Erdoğan’s rhetoric on migrants and terrorism having failed, they must find a way to connect with voters with a more positive message.

There are immediate challenges ahead for Erdoğan too, not least the state of the economy. Erdoğan was able to offer some pre-election enticements such as a minimum wage increases and temporary free gas supplies, buttressed by support from non-democratic states including Russia, with which he has developed warmer relations. The government has significantly depleted its foreign currency and gold reserves to try to prop up the Turkish lira – which still hit a record low after Erdoğan’s victory was confirmed.

Erdoğan can be expected to react to further economic difficulty by deepening his authoritarianism to try to silence critics. Those already targeted – refugees, LGBTQI+ people, women, Kurdish activists and the civil society that defends their rights and independent journalists who report their stories – will remain in the firing line.

But the 25.5 million people who voted against Erdoğan deserve a voice. Erdoğan needs to change the habits of a lifetime, show some willingness to listen and build consensus. Turkey’s democratic allies must encourage him to see it’s in his best interest to do so.

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

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, May 22 2023 (IPS)

Thailand’s voters have spoken. In the 14 May general election, they overwhelmingly backed change. Two major opposition parties won 293 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives.

The party that unexpectedly came first, Move Forward, quickly announced it had formed a coalition with the runner-up, Pheu Thai, and six others, accounting for 313 seats. So if democracy is respected, when parliament next meets, the Move Forward-headed coalition should become the government and its leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, prime minister.

But there’s a problem: Thailand’s powerful military. Over the past century, Thailand has had 13 military coups, most recently in 2014. At the last election in 2019, widely considered neither free nor fair, junta head Prayut Chan-o-cha donned a civilian suit and held onto power.

But this time, voters made it abundantly clear they don’t want the military in power. Now Thailand stands at a fork in the road: will a new, democratically elected government be allowed to take power? Or, as before, will the military intervene to stop it happening?

A biased system

There’s a powerful tool at the military’s disposal. Under the new constitution it introduced in 2017, the prime minister needs to win the approval of a majority vote of the combined House of Representatives and Senate. The Senate has 250 members – all appointed by the military.

This means 376 votes are needed across the two houses, leaving the new coalition short. The military minority might still be able to retain its grip, using Senate votes to disregard the reality of its lack of support.

The appetite for renewal Move Forward spoke to has been expressed on the streets for years – despite the government unleashing violence and criminalising protesters. Young people have been at the forefront of protests, demanding democracy, military reform and – challenging a long-held social taboo – stronger limits on the monarchy’s power.

Royal reform has historically been kept off the political agenda. In part this was because the previous king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, reigned for over 70 years and was broadly respected. But the same doesn’t go for his successor, Maha Vajiralongkorn, a billionaire playboy who spends much of his time in Germany. Vajiralongkorn expects a bigger say in government, and the military has been happy to comply. He insisted that clauses to protect royal power be included in the 2017 constitution and in 2019 took control of two army regiments. One of his first acts was to assume direct control of the crown property bureau, with a reported value of US$40 billion.

But Vajiralongkorn is buttressed from criticism by Thailand’s notorious lèse majesté law, which makes it illegal to defame, insult or threaten the monarch. The government has used this law extensively against protesters. At least 242 people have been charged with lèse majesté offences since 2020. Altogether over 1,800 people are estimated to have been detained under Thailand’s suite of repressive laws, with hundreds of child protesters criminalised.

Spotlight on political parties

Move Forward directly reflects the concerns of the youthful protest movement. Its proposals include reform of the lèse majesté law and closer scrutiny of royal spending. It wants to ‘demilitarise’ Thailand, including by scrapping military conscription, cutting military budgets and making the army more accountable and transparent.

These are ideas that break new ground in Thai politics, and many of the electoral roll’s three million new voters embraced them. Move Forward compensated for its lack of resources through intensive social media use and by encouraging its young supporters to engage with their older family members. Through such means, Move Forward went beyond the youth vote: it won almost every seat in Bangkok, traditionally held by pro-military and pro-royal parties, and also performed well in areas that usually back Pheu Thai.

Runner-up Pheu Thai is a more established force, dominated by the economically powerful Shinawatra family, which has long been at odds with the military. Both parties have relatively youthful figureheads – Limjaroenrat is a 42-year-old and Paetongtarn Shinawatra is 36 – offering a sharp contrast with the old military order, represented by 69-year-old Prayut. But beyond that, it isn’t the most natural of alliances, with the two brought together more by what they oppose than anything else.

Having expected to win the election, Pheu Thai may face the temptation of cutting some other deal that excludes Move Forward – although an alliance with pro-military parties would anger many supporters. Even if the two stick together, they might have to come to an arrangement with some pro-military parties, notably Bhumjaithi, which came third. But Move Forward ruled out any deals with parties involved in the current government, while Bhumjaithi has made clear its opposition to any lèse majesté law changes. The cost of compromise would likely involve dropping this, disappointing voters who invested their hopes in change and confirming continuing military and monarchical influence.

Time for democracy

Beyond the Senate, there are other challenges. The military establishment dominates supposedly independent institutions such as the electoral commission and constitutional court.

Both Move Forward and Pheu Thai may face attempts to close them down. There’s a history of this. Pheu Thai is the third version of a Shinawatra family-led party, while Move Forward is the successor to Future Forward, which picked up support from many young voters to finish third in the flawed 2019 election only to be dissolved. Already a complaint has been filed against Limjaroenrat.

But the military should accept that the political landscape has completely changed. It must stop trying to hold back the tide, whether by parliamentary manoeuvrings, abuses of the law or an outright coup. It can’t keep denying the democratic will of a clear majority, because this risks turning Thailand into another Myanmar, where the military can only retain power through the ultimately self-defeating exercise of ever-increasing brutality.

Instead, Thailand has the opportunity to offer a shining regional example by going the other way. It’s time for the military to understand this and act accordingly.

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

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: Martín Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 19 2023 (IPS)

On 7 May, Chileans went to the polls to choose a Constitutional Council that will produce a new constitution to replace the one bequeathed by the Pinochet dictatorship – and handed control to a far-right party that never wanted a constitution-making process in the first place.

This is the second attempt at constitutional change in two years. The first process was the most open and inclusive in Chile’s history. The resulting constitutional text, ambitious and progressive, was widely rejected in a referendum. It’s now far from certain that this latest, far less inclusive process will result in a new constitution that is accepted and adopted – and there’s a possibility that any new constitution could be worse than the one it replaces.

A long and winding road

Chile’s constitution-making process was born out of mass protests that erupted in October 2019, under the neoliberal administration of Sebastián Piñera. Protests only subsided when the leaders of major parties agreed to hold a referendum to ask people whether they wanted a new constitution and, if so, how it should be drafted.

In the vote in October 2020, almost 80 per cent of voters backed constitutional change, with a new constitution to be drafted by a directly elected Constitutional Assembly. In May 2021, the Constitutional Assembly was elected, with an innovative mechanism to ensure gender parity and reserved seats for Indigenous peoples. Amid great expectations, the plural and diverse body started a one-year journey towards a new constitution.

Pushed by the same winds of change, in December 2021 Chile elected its youngest and most unconventional president ever: former student protester Gabriel Boric. But things soon turned sideways, and support for the Constitutional Assembly – often criticised as made up of unskilled amateurs – declined steadily along with support for the new government.

In September 2022, a referendum resulted in an overwhelming rejection of the draft constitution. Although very progressive in its focus on gender and Indigenous rights, a common criticism was that the proposed constitution failed to offer much to advance basic social rights in a country characterised by heavy economic inequality and poor public services. Disinformation was also rife during the campaign.

The second attempt kicked off in January 2023, with Congress passing a law laying out a new process with a much more traditional format. Instead of the large number of independent representatives involved before, this handed control back to political parties. The timeframe was shortened, the assembly made smaller and the previous blank slate replaced by a series of agreed principles. The task of producing the first draft is in the hands of a Commission of Experts, with a technical body, the Technical Admissibility Committee, guarding compliance with a series of agreed principles. One of the few things that remained from the previous process was gender parity.

Starting in March, the Commission of Experts was given three months to produce a new draft, to be submitted to the Constitutional Council for debate and approval. A referendum will be held in December to either ratify or reject the new constitution.

Rise of the far right

Compared with the 2021 election for the Constitutional Convention, the election for the Constitutional Council was characterised by low levels of public engagement. A survey published in mid-April found that 48 per cent of respondents had little or no interest in the election and 62 per cent had little or no confidence in the constitution-making process. Polls also showed increasing dissatisfaction with the government: in late 2022, approval rates had plummeted to 27 per cent. This made an anti-government protest vote likely.

While the 2021 campaign focused on inequality, this time the focus was on rising crime, economic hardship and irregular migration, pivoting to security issues. The party that most strongly reflected and instrumentalised these concerns came out the winner.

The far-right Republican Party, led by defeated presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, received 35.4 per cent of the votes, winning 23 seats on the 50-member council. The government-backed Unity for Chile came second, with 28.6 per cent and 16 seats. The traditional right-wing alliance Safe Chile took 21 per cent of the vote and got 11 seats. No seats were won by the populist People’s Party and the centrist All for Chile alliance, led by the Christian Democratic Party. The political centre has vanished, with polarisation on the rise.

 
What to expect

The Expert Commission will deliver its draft proposal on 6 June and the Constitutional Council will then have five months to work on it, approving decisions with the votes of three-fifths of its members – meaning 31 votes will be needed to make decisions, and 21 will be enough to block them. This gives veto power to the Republican Party – and if it manages to work with the traditional right wing, they will be able to define the new constitution’s contents.

 
The chances of the new draft constitution being better than the old one are slim. In the best-case scenario, only cosmetic changes will be introduced. In the worst, an even more regressive text will result.

People will have the final say on 17 December. If they ratify the proposed text, Chile will adopt a constitution that is, at best, not much different from the existing one. If they reject it, Chileans will be stuck with the old constitution that many rose up against in 2019. Either way, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand the recognition of rights will have been lost, and it will fall on civil society to keep pushing for the recognition and protection of human rights.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Protestors in Peshawar gather to voice their objection to former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s arrest. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 15 2023 (IPS)

The arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan on alleged corruption charges has led to the deterioration of law and order with attacks on army offices for the first time since the country came into being in 1947.

The 70-year-old former cricket star was taken into custody by paramilitary Rangers while appearing in Islamabad High Court for bail in multiple cases on May 9, 2023. His arrest triggered a spontaneous response from the activists of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (Movement for Justice) party, who took to the streets in protest, during which buildings were burnt, vandalized and ransacked.

Imran Khan was released two days later by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on May 12, but only after the deaths of 40 PTI activists and several government and army offices were reduced to ashes. Not only were protests held across Pakistan, but PTI’s supporters also marched in New York, Washington DC, France, the UK, Germany, Australia and other European countries to show their anger over his arrest.

“The protesters set on fire a radio station in Peshawar and ransacked army installations in Lahore, Mianwali District and other districts of the country, which is unprecedented in Pakistan’s 75-year history,” political analyst Abdul Jabbar Shah told IPS.

Abdul Jabbar Shah, a political science professor at a private university, said that violent protests by PTI activists were unprecedented because no one had ever dared to touch the army’s offices or the replicas of former soldiers on display in garrison cities.

Writing in The Conversation, Ayesha Jalal, Professor of History at Tufts University, says Khan has a strong support base, “but the country is very fragmented politically. So it is a dangerous situation.

“My fear is that the arrest will only pour more fuel on a combustible situation. Pakistan has been simmering since Khan’s ouster in 2022, with the very real threat of political tensions giving way to widespread violence.

“What was needed was for all involved to try to lower the temperature, but the circumstances of Khan’s arrest have only served to heighten tensions.”

Imran Khan took to social media because the TV channels didn’t air his speech after his release demanding an independent probe into vandalism and violence during protests.

“I want an independent and complete investigation on the burning of state buildings and firing at unarmed youth protesters,” he said. “But I want the chief justice of Pakistan to make a panel under him for this probe.”

More than 1,400 PTI supporters, including male and female leaders, have been arrested.

Khan has alleged that the army chief was behind the end of his government, and his supporters targeted the military’s offices after his arrest.

Muhammad Suhail, an International Relations lecturer at an Islamabad-based university, told IPS that the storming of the General Headquarters and other sensitive installations was regarded as unimaginable before this.

“PTI seemed to be the first political party in the country to have directly challenged the powerful army,” he said. Suhail added that there could be political repercussions for the party in future, too.

For the time being, the PTI has emerged victorious, he said.

Jalal says this “may be a precursor for an attempt to disqualify Khan from public office – which I believe would be a very dangerous move in an election year.

“And this all comes while the incumbent government is facing severe challenges, having been unable to control soaring inflation or make progress on a crucial International Monetary Fund loan to dig the country out of its economic woes.”

Pakistan’s Army on May 13 warned that the armed forces “will not tolerate any further attempt of violating the sanctity and security of its installations or vandalism” as it resolved to bring to justice all the “planners, abettors, instigators and executors of vandalism on the Black Day of the 9th of May”.

The media reported that Chief of Army Staff Gen Asim Munir visited the Corps Headquarters in Peshawar and emphasized the evolving threats to national security. He condemned the PTI leaders for inciting its supporters against the armed forces.

Though Khan’s supporters consider this a victory, for many, taking the law into their hands had set a bad precedent in the country.

Analyst Muhammad Javid says that targeting government and army offices is undemocratic, and the PTI should have adopted a peaceful path to release their leader.

“It has sent out a message that PTI believes in violence, which isn’t a good omen for its political future. Opponents will exploit this against the PTI in the election, which is around the corner,” Javid says. Setting ablaze the army’s offices also suggests people were sick of their army, which isn’t correct as most people regard the army as the defender of the country’s frontiers against the enemy, especially neighbouring India.

PTI activists say that Imran Khan is their “red line”, and those crossing that line will result in protests.

“Because of our aggressive protests, the government released Imran Khan; otherwise, he could have been killed in custody,” said Naveed Shah, 31, in Peshawar. “Imran Khan is an honest leader, and his arrest on corruption charges isn’t acceptable.”

He claimed that PTI’s government was dismissed due to a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly in April 2022, that they had been asking for an election. “Since then, we have been holding agitations for a general election,” Naveed Shah said.

However, he claimed that PTI supporters aren’t involved in violence because they had been struggling for democracy for the past 27 years to establish the rule of law in the country. “How can a party (which is) demanding an election resort to violence,” he asked.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told the media that those involved in acts of terrorism in the garb of democracy would be tried as per the law of the land.

Sanaullah said that Imran Khan had been holding protests to placate enemies of Pakistan.

“If PTI does not change its attitude, the government will be forced to ban it,” he told a press conference on May 13 in Islamabad.

Pakistan suspended internet services to disrupt PTI’s communication network for at least 72 hours. PTI has the largest social media network in the country.

Imran Khan has the largest Twitter following in Pakistan. When the internet resumed operations, PTI activists posted hundreds of videos and pictures to substantiate their claims of non-involvement in acts of burning the national installations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, May 8 2023 (IPS)

A civilian student named Saber was caught in the crossfire in Khartoum. He had two choices: either flee and lose everything; or die. But within a moment his option to choose was violently denied: he died.

As a result of the brutal internal armed conflict in Sudan right now, UNHCR projects that 860,000 people will flee across the borders as refugees and returnees into the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea and South Sudan. About 50% will be children and adolescents below 18.

Will they arrive alive? They can’t choose. They can only hope.

Making it worse, none of the neighboring countries has the financial and structural capacity to manage such influx, and yet they too, have no choice.

Indeed, an enormous international response will be required to support the Refugee Response Plan developed by 134 partners, including UN agencies, national and international NGOs and civil society groups, and launched on 4 May 2023.

Fleeing children and adolescents will need immediate psycho-social support and mental health care to cope with the stress and trauma of the conflict and perilous escape. They will need school meals. They will need water and sanitation. They will need protection. In the deep despair of their young lives, they will need a sense of normalcy and hope for their future. They need it now and a rapid response to establishing education can meet these needs.

Or to paraphrase ECW’s new Global Champion, the world-renowned journalist, Folly Bah Thibault – who reaffirms the need for speed and quality: the humanitarian-development nexus in action – in her high-level interview in this month’s ECW Newsletter, “We need to deliver with humanitarian speed and development depth.”

The choice is ours.

ECW is now traveling to the region to support host-governments, UN and civil society colleagues who jointly produced the Refugee Response Plan and who are on the ground working day and night in difficult circumstances. ECW will provide support both through an initial First Emergency Response investment and through our global advocacy.

We all have a choice to act now. Our choice is not between losing everything or die. Our choice is between action or inaction. Between humanity and indifference.

Prior to the breakout of the internal armed conflict in Sudan, Samiya*, a 17-year-old refugee student, wrote in her recent Postcard From the Edge: “Education is our future dream. Education is one of the most important factors to progress in life. Through education, people can thrive in their lives; they can also develop their skills and improve their life quality.”

We can help make Samya’s dream come true at the hardest, darkest moment of her life. Samiya does not have that choice. Only, we have that choice. Let us recognize it for what it is: as a privilege or blessing of choosing responsibility and humanity.

Yasmine Sherif is Director of Education Cannot Wait.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Dr. Daisaku Ikeda. Credit: Seikyo Shimbun

By Daisaku Ikeda
TOKYO, Japan, May 8 2023 (IPS)

The Ukraine crisis, which in addition to bringing devastation to the people of that country has had severe impacts on a global scale—even giving rise to the specter of nuclear weapons use—has entered its second year. Against this backdrop and amid urgent calls for its resolution, the G7 Summit of leading industrial nations will be held in Hiroshima, Japan, from May 19 to 21.

In February of this year, an emergency special session of the UN General Assembly was held, where a resolution calling for the early realization of peace in Ukraine was adopted. Among the operative paragraphs of the resolution was one that urged the “immediate cessation of the attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine and any deliberate attacks on civilian objects, including those that are residences, schools and hospitals.”

With that as a first essential step, all concerned parties must come together to create a space for deliberations toward a complete cessation of hostilities. Here I would like to propose that, as negotiations advance through the cooperative efforts of the concerned countries, they be joined by representatives of civil society, such as the physicians and educators who work in schools and hospitals to protect and nurture people’s lives and futures, participating as observers.

In March, the leaders of Russia and China issued a joint statement following their summit meeting which reads in part: “The two sides call for stopping all moves that lead to tensions and the protraction of fighting to prevent the crisis from getting worse or even out of control.” This is aligned with the resolution adopted by the emergency special session of the UN General Assembly.

The G7 Hiroshima Summit should develop concrete plans for negotiations that will lead to a cessation of hostilities.

I also urge the G7 to commit at the Hiroshima Summit to taking the lead in discussions on pledges of No First Use of nuclear weapons. The current crisis is without parallel in the length of time that the threat of use and the fear of actual use of nuclear weapons have persisted without cease.

Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hibakusha of those cities, in coordination with the larger civil society movement, have stressed the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons; non-nuclear-weapon states have engaged in continuous diplomatic efforts; and the states possessing nuclear weapons have exercised self-restraint. As a result, the world has somehow managed to maintain a seventy-seven-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons.

If international public opinion and the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons were to fail to provide their braking function, nuclear deterrence policy will compel humankind to stand on a precipitous ledge, never knowing when it might give way.

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis, I have written two public statements. In both, I referenced the joint statement by the five nuclear-weapon states (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France and China) made in January 2022, which reiterated the principle that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” and called for it to serve as the basis for reducing the risk of nuclear weapons use.

Also of important note is the declaration issued by the G20 group in Indonesia last November, which stated: “The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.”

The G20 member countries include nuclear-weapon states as well as nuclear-dependent states. It is deeply significant that these countries have officially expressed their shared recognition that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is “inadmissible”—the animating spirit of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

It is vital that this message be communicated powerfully to the world from Hiroshima.

As the G7 leaders revisit the actual consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation and the bitter lessons of the nuclear era, I urge that they initiate earnest deliberations on making pledges of No First Use so that their shared recognition of the inadmissible nature of nuclear weapons can find expression in changed policies.

If agreement could be reached on the principle of No First Use, which was at one point included in drafts of the final statement for last year’s NPT Review Conference, this would establish the basis on which states could together transform the challenging security environments in which they find themselves. I believe it is vital to make the shift to a “common security” paradigm.

Commitment to policies of No First Use is indeed a “prescription for hope.” It can serve as the axle connecting the twin wheels of the NPT and TPNW, speeding realization of a world free from nuclear weapons.

For our part, the SGI has continued to work with the world’s hibakusha, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which arose from its parent body IPPNW—and other organizations first for the adoption and now the universalization of the TPNW. As members of civil society, we are committed to promoting the prompt adoption of policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons, generating momentum to transform our age.

The author is Peace builder and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda, who is President of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI). https://www.daisakuikeda.org/ Read full statement here full statement.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

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.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By External Source
May 3 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Niloofar Hamedi, Elaheh Mohammadi and Narges Mohammadi have been named as the laureates of the 2023 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, following the recommendation of an International Jury of media professionals. The awards ceremony took place on the evening of May 2 in New York, in the presence of Audrey Azoulay, Director General of UNESCO.

Now more than ever, it is important to pay tribute to all women journalists who are prevented from doing their jobs and who face threats and attacks on their personal safety. Today we are honouring their commitment to truth and accountability.
Audrey Azoulay UNESCO’s Director-General

We are committed to honoring the brave work of Iranian female journalists whose reporting led to a historical women-led revolution. They paid a hefty price for their commitment to report on and convey the truth. And for that, we are committed to honoring them and ensuring their voices will continue to echo worldwide until they are safe and free.
Zainab Salbi Chair of the International Jury of media professionals

The three laureates

Niloofar Hamedi writes for the leading reformist daily newspaper Shargh. She broke the news of the death of Masha Amini following her detention in police custody on 16 September 2022. She has been detained in solitary confinement in Iran’s Evin Prison since September 2022.

Elaheh Mohammadi writes for the reformist newspaper, Ham-Mihan, covering social issues and gender equality. She reported on Masha Amini’s funeral, and has also been detained in Evin Prison since September 2022. She had previously been barred from reporting for a year in 2020 due to her work.

Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi are joint winners of both the 2023 International Press Freedom Award by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), and Harvard’s 2023 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. They were named as two of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023.

Narges Mohammadi has worked for many years as a journalist for a range of newspapers and is also an author and Vice-Director of the Tehran-based civil society organization Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC). She is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence in Evin Prison. She has continued to report in print from prison, and has also interviewed other women prisoners. These interviews were included in her book “White Torture”. In 2022, she won the Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) Courage Prize.

Women journalists under threat

Globally, women journalists and media workers face increasing offline and online attacks and are subject to disproportionate and specific threats. The gender-based violence they are exposed to includes stigmatization, sexist hate speech, trolling, physical assault, rape and even murder. UNESCO advocates for the safety of women journalists and collaborates with partners to identify and implement good practices and share recommendations with all parties involved in countering attacks against women journalists, as recognized by numerous UN resolutions.

In 2021, UNESCO published The Chilling, a study on global trends in online violence against women journalists, which demonstrated the extent of attacks against women journalists and the impact on their well-being, their work and press freedom at large. UNESCO works with partners to develop practical tools for journalists, media managers and newsrooms to respond to online and offline abuse. UNESCO also partners with specialized organizations to train women media workers on the ground and through online training courses, and works with security forces to sensitize them on freedom of expression with a gender focus.

About the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize

Created in 1997, the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize honours a person, organization or institution which has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger. It is the only such prize awarded to journalists within the UN System.

It is named for Guillermo Cano Isaza, the Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá, Colombia, on 17 December 1986, and funded by the Guillermo Cano Isaza Foundation (Colombia), the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (Finland), the Namibia Media Trust, Democracy & Media Foundation Stichting Democratie & Media (The Netherlands), and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

About UNESCO’s action to protect journalists

UNESCO is the United Nations agency with a mandate to ensure freedom of expression and the safety of journalists around the world. It coordinates the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, which marked its 10th anniversary with a global conference in Vienna, Austria this year.

The Organization condemns and monitors judicial follow up to every journalist killing. It also trains journalists and judicial actors, works with governments to develop supportive policies and laws, and raises global awareness through events such as World Press Freedom Day (3 May) and the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (2 November) held annually.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By External Source
May 2 2023 (IPS-Partners)

World Press Freedom Day was inaugurated by the United Nations in 1993.

The 3rd of May will mark its 30th anniversary with the theme of:

“Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights”.

The impetus to establish such a day came out of Africa with the Windhoek Declaration of 1991.

Political optimism gripped much of the continent as apartheid unraveled in South Africa.

Namibia shook off colonial rule and Ethiopia’s murderous dictator resigned.

In the decade that followed, independent journalism blossomed globally.

But after the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, regression began anew.

The Swedish-based V-Dem Institute, which monitors political freedoms globally, says the gains of the past 35 years have been wiped out.

It estimates that 72% of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – now live in autocracies.

“The decline is most dramatic in the Asia-Pacific region, which is back to levels last recorded in 1978,” it says in its 2023 Democracy Report.

U.S. watchdog Freedom House suggests Global freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year.

85% of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in just the last 5 years.

Mis- and disinformation has contributed to years of declining trust in media worldwide.

News services have been blocked online, journalists illegally spied on, and media sites hacked.

The limits of the U.N. mechanisms to keep journalists safe were clearly on display after the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

But there is still a lot the U.N. can do with its existing authority and structure.

Supportive member states need to invest in strengthening UNESCO’s plan on journalist safety.

They also need to do and say more against those states that ignore or violate human rights.

The key to opening freedom of expression is to move beyond the day itself, and to demand it day after day after day.

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: UNESCO
 
2023 year marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day. The UN says three decades have passed since it was proclaimed in 1993, in which “we have seen substantial progress towards achieving a free press and freedom of expression around the world.”
 
The proliferation of independent media in many countries and the rise of digital technologies have enabled the free flow of information. However, media freedom, safety of journalists and freedom of expression are increasingly under attack, which impacts the fulfillment of other human rights, according to the UN.

By Khadija Patel
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, May 2 2023 (IPS)

There’s a now familiar groan every time the lights go out in South Africa. Due to a critical shortage of electricity, the national power utility institutes a daily regimen of scheduled power cuts.

Some areas in large cities experience up to ten hours of blackouts per day. The damage to businesses and a general sense of safety and security is yet to be properly calculated.

But it has also had profound implications for how community radio stations can continue broadcasting through the darkness. Most community radio stations have simply gone silent. Bush Radio, the country’s oldest community radio station, found itself off air for several hours per day.

In the townships of Cape Town’s sprawling Cape Flats district, Bush Radio has a special relationship of solidarity and belonging with the communities it serves.

Through its talk shows, training programmes and social engagement campaigns, it acts as a sounding board for communities who often struggle to find representation and recognition beyond daily reports of gang violence.

Khadija Patel. Credit:: Syracuse University

And they have an impact on more than whether Bush Radio can remain on air. What is at stake is the avenues available for their audience to communicate with each other, to take part in decisions that affect their lives, and to celebrate their own cultures.

This week, as the United Nations celebrates World Press Freedom Day – also 30 years old – it’s time to get serious about stopping what’s been labelled a media extinction event.

Until June 2020, I was the editor of the Mail & Guardian newspaper in South Africa. I’d hoped to restore the start-up rigour of one of Africa’s most cherished independent news institutions.

However, my experience of trying to run a newsroom, to keep public interest journalism alive in the face of broken business model, revealed the grave structural crisis facing news media today.

Advertising revenue was already in free fall as so much of it had migrated to the social media platforms, but it was the pandemic that sent us over the edge.

We were forced to issue an urgent appeal to our readers to keep the paper afloat and while this allowed us to meet our most pressing commitments at the time, it did not resolve the deeper problem of quickly finding a consistent revenue stream that would allow the institution to be relevant in new ways.

My experience is replicated across Africa – and beyond. Media outlets are trying to innovate but cannot do so quickly enough to defy the harsh economic headwinds.

Independent journalism faces an existential economic crisis: traditional business models have broken down; new ones will take time to emerge. Economic levers are being used to silence critical voices, and private and political interests are capturing economically weak media.

So, what do we do?

In this moment of profound crisis, we must assert the value of news media. This is a moment for the world to come together to recognise that something drastic must be done to ensure independent journalism is supported as a public good.

So, when so much of the discourse around news media is steeped in despair – for good reason – working on the founding team of International Fund for Public Interest Media, as Journalist-in-Residence, has been energising.

Launching today [May 2] at the UN’s World Press Freedom Day conference, the International Fund is the first multilateral body dedicated to helping independent media in low and middle-income countries to weather the storm.

Bush Radio is one of its pilot grantees. It will use its small grant to supplement salaries and update its computer systems. It has also used its grant to purchase a generator to power the studio during blackouts.

So far, the International Fund has received support from world leaders such as Presidents Biden and Macron, with pledges from over a dozen governments and corporate entities, raising US$50m.

But its ambition is to emulate the success of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria or the GAVI Alliance, bodies which transformed the level of treatments and vaccines available to fight deadly disease. In the coming years we want to raise $500m, a sum more commensurate with the scale of the problem facing media today.

A free, independent media is what underpins freedom of expression, human rights and all our development goals. Its decline will have a profound impact on democracy – for the fewer stories journalists are able to get to, the less we understand what is happening around us, the more we lose of our understanding of each other.

Khadija Patel is Journalist-in-Residence, International Fund for Public Interest Media, and Chairperson of the International Press Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Peak oil was first up, followed by peak gas, gold and others, as if the world was draining natural resources like toilet roll panic buying in a lockdown supermarket. But should we now be worried about Peak Press?

Farhana Haque Rahman

World Press Freedom Day, child of the UN General Assembly, marks its 30th birthday on May 3 – still relatively young, but definitely showing signs of wear and tear.

Measuring the state of its vital organs is not an exact science. The Paris-based non-profit media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) compiles an annual and thorough medical bulletin, and the latest check-up, country-by-country, makes for mostly alarming reading.

There are common denominators in all the ailments afflicting press freedom around the world, but with each region or continent seeming to specialise in certain characteristics.

Asia is particularly worrying, with the common theme of muscle-flexing autocrats vying for absolute control of information and exercising what RSF calls a dramatic deterioration of press freedom. Post-coup Myanmar and China are the world’s biggest jailers of journalists. Afghanistan back under the Taliban is brutally repressive. North Korea brings up the rear of the rankings, again.

Hong Kong, under China’s imposition of the draconian national security law, fell 68 places in the RSF league table. Vietnam and Singapore also tightened their grip on the media.

Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of The Kashmir Times recently wrote in The New York Times that his newspaper “may not survive Mr. Modi. His repressive media policies are destroying Kashmiri journalism, intimidating media outlets into serving as government mouthpieces and creating an information vacuum in our region of about 13 million people.”

This year Pakistan was placed at 157 among 180 countries on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index list. The country has been ruled by the military for more than half of it’s 75 years of independence since 1947. In a report last year, along with a list of global leaders who suppressed opposing voices, RSF named former Prime Minister Imran Khan as one of the “predators of press freedom”.

Repression is dressed up in legislation as seen in Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, passed in 2018 and applied to journalists, activists and others.Two days after a journalist with Prothom Alo was detained, the UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called on Bangladesh to suspend application of the DSA immediately.

Where Asia can be ruthless and draconian, it is lawlessness and societal fragmentation that make parts of Latin America the most dangerous place for journalists. Mexico and Haiti lead the way. At least 67 journalists and media workers were killed in 2022, an increase of almost 50 percent on 2021, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Research published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 30 to 42 media workers were killed in Latin America in the line of duty.

Rocío Gallegos, a journalist and co-founder of La Verdad Juárez, an investigative journalism outlet in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, was quoted as saying the situation is desperate and complex, not just due to growing conditions for violence, but because there is “less and less support from society towards journalists and journalism.”

Courageous reporters like Gallegos and the underground citizen journalists covering Myanmar’s horrific civil war inspire us, and lend hope to the survival of the ideals of a free press.

But it is in the West, the cradle of a free media, that we can feel most cynicism over the frightening erosion of media credibility led by its very own moguls and conglomerates.

The wanton and deliberate peddling of conspiracy theories over the 2020 US election results by Fox News (among others) was laid bare by the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox settled out of court for $787 million in damages. Its lies were not trivial as we know. Five people died as a result of the January 2021 storming of the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters.

Democracies need truth-telling media to flourish, and it was telling that much of the media coverage focused instead on 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch and his family succession machinations.

Fox News was – and quite possibly will remain — the ultimate mainstream player in the theatre of performance media, where facts don’t get in the way of a good conspiracy.

The recent demise of BuzzFeed News and its Pulitzer-prize winning department can also be seen as marking the end of an era. The suggestion by its founder, Jonah Peretti, that there may not be a sustainable business model for high-quality online news should be ringing alarm bells everywhere.

To add to this potentially toxic mix, where social media platforms become a blurry cauldron of conspiracy theories and state-sponsored disinformation, we now have to contend with the new disruptive age of ChatGPT.

The polarisation of the press in the West and its weaponisation in superpower conflicts are highly damaging trends. Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and China’s detention of Taiwan publisher Li Yanhe are the most recent examples. A possible Biden-Trump rematch in the 2024 US elections, and the dangerous deterioration in Sino-US relations threaten to exacerbate both polarisation and weaponisation of the media.

As for Peak Oil – the world may have passed that point already, and economists are debating whether 2019 was when overall fossil fuel demand reached its zenith. There are many reasons for this historic shift, not least that the alternatives, such as renewable energy, are becoming cheaper.

But what is the substitute for a free and healthy press – the lifeblood of free and healthy societies? The alternatives are clearly on view all around us and they don’t look good.

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/world-press-freedom-day-2023

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: Pita Simpson/Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Apr 28 2023 (IPS)

It’s been a time of significant change in Fiji following the country’s December 2022 election. A close vote was followed by the formation of a new coalition government. Frank Bainimarama was out as prime minister after 16 years, replaced by Sitiveni Rabuka.

Rabuka was hardly a new face, having been prime minister in the 1990s, and both Bainimarama and Rabuka had previously led military coups. For Fiji’s civil society, the question was whether this political shift would bring improvements in civic and democratic freedoms. Bainimarama’s government had shown itself increasingly intolerant of dissent.

People who criticised the government were subjected to harassment and arrest. In July 2021, nine opposition politicians were arrested, questioned and accused of inciting unrest. In 2020, opposition party offices were raided by police in response to social media posts critical of the government.

The outgoing government used the Public Order Act to restrict protests, including by opposition parties. The Fiji Trade Union Congress was repeatedly denied permission to march and its leader charged with public order offences. Police often used excessive force against protests, with impunity. There was, in short, much room for improvement.

Positive steps on media freedom

The most encouraging move so far is the repeal of the Media Industry Development Act. This law, passed under the Bainimarama government, established a highly interventionist government-controlled media regulator. Journalists could be jailed for two years and media outlets slapped with heavy fines if their reporting was judged to go against the national or public interest – vague terms open to broad interpretation. This encouraged self-censorship.

The law was one of the main reasons Fiji was the lowest-ranking Pacific Island nation on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. Media freedom constraints came from the top, with the government favouring state-aligned media, including by withholding advertising from more critical outlets.

Now the media and civil society will be looking for the government to go further. A sedition law that can bring extensive jail sentences remains in need of reform. And beyond this, the government needs to actively support the development of independent Fijian media, including through the fairer distribution of ad spending.

The new government has also moved to rebuild relationships with trade unions. In February it confirmed it would re-establish an effective tripartite forum that brings together government, trade unions and employers; its predecessor was accused of not taking this seriously. The new government has said it will bring to an end the harassment, intimidation and arrest of union leaders. Unions will work to hold the government to these promises.

A fall from grace

These changes have come against a backdrop of continuing political polarisation. It’s been quite the journey for Bainimarama since losing power. In February he was suspended from parliament. This came after he used his first speech as leader of the opposition to deliver a stinging critique of Fiji’s president, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere.

In his speech, Bainimarama appealed to the military to ‘not forsake their constitutional role’. This seemed a coded plea for military intervention: the 2013 constitution, introduced by Bainimarama, gives the military the power to intervene to ensure the ‘safety and security of the country’. When he was still prime minister, as post-electoral negotiations were taking place, Bainimarama had ordered the military onto the streets.

Bainimarama’s response to his suspension was to resign from parliament. But he made clear his intent to stay politically active and remains party leader.

Last month Bainimarama was charged with abuse of office while prime minister. He was granted bail after pleading not guilty. He’s alleged to have intervened to stop a police investigation into alleged corruption at the University of the South Pacific. Police Commissioner Sitiveni Tukaituraga Qiliho, currently suspended, is also charged with abuse of office for the same case and has also pleaded not guilty.

Dangers ahead

The obvious danger is that Bainimarama, no longer confined by parliamentary niceties, could seek to stir unrest through sensationalism and disinformation, which could offer a pretext for his supporters in the military to intervene. The spectre of military rule is never far away in Fiji. There have been four coups since independence in 1970. Rabuka led two in 1987 and then Bainimarama headed coups in 2000 and 2006. In this context, it’s ominous that in January the head of the army expressed concern about ‘sweeping changes’ being introduced by the new government.

On all occasions the pretext for coups has been ethnic unrest, with Fiji’s population broadly divided between Indigenous Fijians and people of Asian heritage. Civil society and the international community will need to stay alert to any attempts to foster division and mobilise one population group against the other.

At the same time the new government needs to beware of fuelling narratives that it’s being vindictive towards Bainimarama and his party. There’s a need to ensure that diverse points of view can be aired – including from the new opposition. As a former coup leader, Rabuka needs to keep proving his commitment to democracy.

What happens next in Fiji is of concern not just for Fijians but for the region, since the country is a major hub and host of key regional institutions. China and the USA, along with Australia, are trying to build closer relations with Fiji as they compete for influence among Pacific Island nations. So whether Fiji becomes more democratic and opens up civic space matters.

In these early days of the new government there can be no room for complacency. Fiji’s civil society must be supported and enabled as a vital democratic force. And it must keep on engaging constructively to ensure that government promises are followed by deeds that advance rights.

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

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

An activist in Colombia, the deadliest country in the world for human rights defenders in 2022, accounting for 186 killings – or 46% – of the global total registered last year. Credit: Sebastian Barros

By Bibbi Abruzzini and Clarisse Sih, Forus
BRUSSELS, Apr 27 2023 (IPS)

In today’s world, human rights defenders face immense challenges, with threats, attacks, and repression being rampant in many countries. According to the latest report by Front Line Defenders, killings of rights defenders increased in 2022, with a total of 401 deaths across 26 different countries. Despite the adoption of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders 25 years ago, the threats faced by defenders persist globally.

One striking example of the dire situation is in Bolivia, where violations of freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the right to defend rights have been recorded by the Observatory of Rights Defenders of UNITAS, with the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia (APDHB) being a longstanding victim of attacks and delegitimization. A total of 725 violations of the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, democratic institutions and the right to defend rights have been recorded by the Observatory of Rights Defenders.

Gladys Sandova, a human rights and environmental defender in the Tariquía Flora and Fauna National Reserve in Bolivia, reveals how the state often aligns with oil businesses instead of protecting communities. “Tariquía is the lung of Tarija,” Gladys explains, yet this vital source of water for southern Bolivia and home to over 3,000 people, is at risk due to the state-owned Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) seeking to revive oil exploration in the reserve.

“Oil companies are here, we are going to lose our natural richness, they are going to affect the lives of families, and contaminate our water and our air,” says Gladys, reflecting the urgent need to defend human rights and the environment.

Her story is similar to that of several other human rights defenders across the globe : they are victims of hostilities, interference, threats, and harassment. The campaign, ReImagina La Defensa de Derechos, by UNITAS collects the testimonies of human rights defenders and indigenous leaders across Bolivia raising awareness about the challenges they face.

Stories from human rights defenders from across the globe are also featured in the #AlternativeNarratives campaign, which seeks to amplify the voices of civil society organizations and grassroots movements that work towards social justice, human rights, and sustainable development. The campaign encourages the use of storytelling, multimedia tools, and creative expression to highlight alternative perspectives, challenge stereotypes, and advocate for positive chang while fostering a more inclusive and equitable narrative space that reflects the diversity of human experiences and promotes solidarity, empathy, and mutual understanding.

Human rights defenders, including women defenders, continue to mobilize against repressive regimes and occupying forces in countries like Afghanistan, the DRC, El Salvador, Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, and Ukraine. Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, highlights the underreporting of human rights violations against defenders, particularly women, and outlines “disturbing trends” in relation to civic space worldwide.

Repongac, representing over 1,200 NGOs in Central Africa, states that “human rights in Central Africa are no longer guaranteed,” with civil society actors, journalists, and defenders facing repression, prosecution, and arrests. Recent campaigns organized by Repongac in Central Africa and Repaoc in West Africa, supported by Forus and the French Development Agency, brought together diverse stakeholders, including human rights defenders, political parties, parliamentarians, journalists, and security personnel, to initiate a dialogue and protect civic space amnd fundametnal freedoms in the region.

To support activists and defenders globally, the Danish Institute for Human Rights has launched a monitoring tool that assesses whether an enabling environment for human rights defenders exists across five critical areas. Developed in collaboration with 24 institutions and organizations, including the United Nations and civil society networks, the tool not only tracks the number of killings of human rights defenders but also analyzes the presence of appropriate legislation and practices to protect defenders.

As Carol Rask, a representative of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, explains, defending human rights is a crime in some countries and a deadly activity in others. It is a call to action for change, urging individuals, organizations, and governments to prioritize and protect the crucial work of human rights defenders worldwide.

Griselda Sillerico, human rights defender in Bolivia for over 30 years, quotes Ana María Romero and says “human rights are seeds that we continue to plant and that over the years we harvest.” Griselda Sillerico’s quote echoes the enduring spirit of human rights advocacy, where the work of human rights defenders like her is a constant effort to sow the seeds of justice, equality, and dignity for all. Despite the challenges and setbacks, human rights defenders across the world continue to plant these seeds, often at great personal risk, with the hope of reaping a future where human rights are universally respected and protected.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: Shutterstock

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 2023 (IPS)

The United Nations has warned that the February 2022 Rusian invasion of Ukraine has threatened to force up to 1.7 billion people — over one-fifth of humanity — into poverty, destitution and hunger.

Long before the war, Ukraine and Russia provided about 30 per cent of the world’s wheat and barley, one-fifth of its maize, and over half of its sunflower oil. But the ongoing 14th-month-old war has undermined– and cut-off– most of these supplies.

Together, the UN pointed out, their grain was an essential food source for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people, providing more than one-third of the wheat imported by 45 African and least-developed countries (LDCs), described as “the poorest of the world’s poor”.

At the same time, Russia was the world’s top natural gas exporter, and second-largest oil exporter.

The negative fall-out from the war, and the rise in arms spending, are a blessing in disguise for US and Western arms suppliers. The US administration alone has provided an estimated 113 billion dollars in weapons, economic and humanitarian aid and security assistance to Ukraine—and with no end in sight.

As a result of the war, world military expenditures reached a new record high, according to a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The study, released April 24, says total global military expenditure grew for the eighth consecutive year in 2022. And an increase of 3.7 per cent in real terms last year resulted in a new high of $2.24 trillion.

By far the sharpest rise in spending (+13 per cent) was seen in Europe and was largely accounted for by Russian and Ukrainian spending. However, military aid to Ukraine and concerns about a heightened threat from Russia strongly influenced many other states’ spending decisions, as did tensions in East Asia.

Military expenditure in Europe, a new battleground since World War II, is the steepest year-on-year increase in at least 30 years.

The three largest spenders in 2022—the United States, China and Russia—accounted for 56 per cent of the world total.

All three, along with Britain and France, are veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council who are expected to abide by one of the core principles in the UN charter: maintaining international peace and security.

The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender. US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 per cent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender.

The 0.7 per cent real-term increase in US spending in 2022 would have been even greater had it not been for the highest levels of inflation since 1981, according to the SIPRI study.

Dr Nan Tian, Senior Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme, said “the continuous rise in global military expenditure in recent years is a sign that we are living in an increasingly insecure world.’

She said States are bolstering military strength in response to a deteriorating security environment, which they do not foresee improving in the near future.

Ukraine’s military spending reached $44.0 billion in 2022. At 640 per cent, this was the highest single-year increase in a country’s military expenditure ever recorded in SIPRI data.

As a result of the increase and the war-related damage to Ukraine’s economy, the military burden (military spending as a share of GDP) shot up to 34 per cent of GDP in 2022, from 3.2 per cent in 2021, according to the SIPRI study.

“The invasion of Ukraine had an immediate impact on military spending decisions in Central and Western Europe. This included multi-year plans to boost spending from several governments,” said Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, Senior Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

“As a result, we can reasonably expect military expenditure in Central and Western Europe to keep rising in the years ahead,” he said.

Some of the sharpest increases were seen in Finland (+36 per cent), Lithuania (+27 per cent), Sweden (+12 per cent) and Poland (+11 per cent).

‘While the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 certainly affected military spending decisions in 2022, concerns about Russian aggression have been building for much longer,’ said Lorenzo Scarazzato, Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

‘Many former Eastern bloc states have more than doubled their military spending since 2014, the year when Russia annexed Crimea,’ while Russia and Ukraine have raised military spending as war rages on.

Russian military spending grew by an estimated 9.2 per cent in 2022, to around $86.4 billion. This was equivalent to 4.1 per cent of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022, up from 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2021.

Figures released by Russia in late 2022 show that spending on national defence, the largest component of Russian military expenditure, was already 34 per cent higher, in nominal terms, than in budgetary plans drawn up in 2021.

‘The difference between Russia’s budgetary plans and its actual military spending in 2022 suggests the invasion of Ukraine has cost Russia far more than it anticipated,’ said Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, Director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

Ukraine’s military spending reached $44.0 billion in 2022. At 640 per cent, this was the highest single-year increase in a country’s military expenditure ever recorded in SIPRI data.

As a result of the increase and the war-related damage to Ukraine’s economy, the military burden (military spending as a share of GDP) shot up to 34 per cent of GDP in 2022, from 3.2 per cent in 2021.

Other notable developments, according to SIPRI included:

** The real-terms increase in world military spending in 2022 was slowed by the effects of inflation, which in many countries soared to levels not seen for decades. In nominal terms (i.e. in current prices without adjusting for inflation), the global total increased by 6.5 per cent.

** India’s military spending of $81.4 billion was the fourth highest in the world. It was 6.0 per cent more than in 2021.

** In 2022, military spending by Saudi Arabia, the fifth biggest military spender, rose by 16 per cent to reach an estimated $75.0 billion, its first increase since 2018.

** Nigeria’s military spending fell by 38 per cent to $3.1 billion, after a 56 per cent increase in spending in 2021.

** Military spending by NATO members totalled $1232 billion in 2022, which was 0.9 per cent higher than in 2021.

** The United Kingdom had the highest military spending in Central and Western Europe at $68.5 billion, of which an estimated $2.5 billion (3.6 per cent) was financial military aid to Ukraine.

** In 2022, Türkiye’s military spending fell for the third year in a row, reaching $10.6 billion—a decrease of 26 per cent from 2021.

** Ethiopia’s military spending rose by 88 per cent in 2022, to reach $1.0 billion. The increase coincided with a renewed government offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in the north of the country.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Apr 21 2023 (IPS)

The current fighting in Sudan marks the failure of supposed processes for transition to democratic rule. The international community needs to learn the lessons of this catastrophe and work with civil society.

Democracy betrayed

On one side is the army, headed by Sudan’s current leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti. Both sides blame the other and say they will refuse to negotiate.

The two worked together in the October 2021 coup that overthrew a transitional government, put in place in August 2019 after long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted following a popular uprising. They were never committed to democracy. Military forces initially tried to suppress democracy protests with lethal violence. The grimmest day came on 3 June 2019, when the RSF ended a sit-in with indiscriminate gunfire, killing over 100 people. There has been no accountability for the violence.

The October 2021 military coup, which brought mass protests and civil disobedience, was followed by a short-lived and palpably insincere attempt at a civilian-military power-sharing deal that only lasted from November 2021 to January 2022. Protests, and military violence against them, continued. December 2022 saw the signing of a deal between the military and some civilian groups.

This deal was supposed to kickstart a two-year transition to democracy. Some pro-democracy groups and political parties rejected the plan, but the international community urged all sides to get behind it.

The army was already seeking to backtrack on its commitments before the fighting began. Now those who doubted the sincerity of the two forces’ intentions and willingness to hand over power have been proved right.

Civilians in the firing line

Relations between the two military leaders had become increasingly strained, and fighting finally broke out on 15 April. Attempts at a humanitarian ceasefire have so far come to nothing.

Civilians are in the firing line. There’s much confusion on the ground, making it hard to get accurate numbers of casualties, but currently over 300 civilians are reported killed, with thousands injured.

Khartoum’s major sites of contestation, such as the airport and military bases, nestle side by side with civilian housing, leaving people vulnerable to airstrikes. People are stuck in their homes and at workplaces with limited supplies of food, and water and electricity have been cut. Some have had their homes seized by RSF soldiers. Thousands have fled.

Many hospitals have been forced to evacuate or are running out of vital supplies, and there are reports of attacks on health facilities. There are also reports that UN staff and other aid workers are being targeted and offices of humanitarian organisations have been looted.

A battle for power

The origins of the current crisis lie in al-Bashir’s deployment of paramilitary forces, the Janjaweed, to brutally crush a rebellion in Darfur in 2003. The violence was such that al-Bashir remains subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In recognition of its brutal effectiveness, al-Bashir formally reorganised the Janjaweed into the RSF. It suited him to have two forces he could play off against each other, although ultimately they worked together to oust him. The tensions that have built since partly reflect a clash of cultures between the two leaders and Hemedti’s evident ambition for the top job.

But mostly it’s a competition for political and economic supremacy. The army has always been the power behind the presidency, and it’s said to control major companies, having taken over many businesses once owned by al-Bashir and his inner circle.

Hemedti has his own sources of wealth, including illegal gold mining – something that connects him with Russia, with mercenary forces from the shadowy Wagner Group reportedly guarding goldmines in return for gold exports to Russia. Now Wagner is allegedly supplying the RSF with missiles.

Hemedti had positioned himself as supportive of transitional processes, a ruse that enabled him to dispute the army’s power. Al-Burhan was always a compromised figure, supposedly leading Sudan through transition while also defending the army’s extensive interests. Proposals to integrate the two forces appear to have been the final straw, threatening to erode Hemedti’s power base, making this an existential struggle.

International failure

Democratic states that backed the transition plan wanted to believe in it and basically hoped for the best.

Self-interest has never been far away from the calculations of outside forces either. In recent years, EU funding indirectly found its way to the RSF for its border control role, helping prevent people making their way to Europe; the EU’s preoccupation with controlling migration trumped democracy and human rights concerns.

The Egyptian government, an influential player in Sudan, is meanwhile squarely behind al-Burhan: it wants its domestic model of repressive government by a military strongman applied in its southern neighbour. Russia strongly backs Hemedti, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates might have no strong preference between the two as long as the outcome isn’t democracy.

What all the approaches taken have in common is that they’re largely top-down, investing faith in leaders while failing to address the tensions that led to violence. Now the limitations of that approach should be evident.

Sudan’s democracy movement has been consistently ignored. But people don’t want their futures to come down to a dismal choice of two warlords. This conflict must put an end to any notion that either military head can be expected to lead a transition to democracy.

Democratic states need to hold a stronger line on demanding not only that the conflict ends but that a genuine, civilian-led transition follows. With this must come accountability for violence.

From now on, the outside world must listen to and be guided by Sudanese civil society voices – in restoring peace, and in bringing about democracy.

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

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Activists from Freedom and Roam Uganda launch LGBTQI+ campaigns, My Body is Not a Battlefield and Break the Chains, Stop Violence campaigns. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Apr 21 2023 (IPS)

The mothers of LGBTQ+ individuals in Uganda have taken a stand against Bill passed by the Ugandan Parliament proposing the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality, life imprisonment for the “offense of homosexuality,” and up to 20 years in jail for promoting homosexuality.

This stance is considered rare for Uganda and Africa, where Human Rights Watch says 33 countries still criminalize homosexuality. And there is concern that because of the success of the Ugandan Bill, other African countries could be encouraged to intensify targeting the anti-LGBTQ+ community.

Mawethu Nkosana Nkolomba, the Crisis Response Fund Lead/LGBTI Advocacy Lead at CIVICUS, told IPS that the passing of the Bill in Uganda was not an isolated incident. “There is a threat of LGBTI civil society groups being targeted soon in Kenya, and because of what just happened in Uganda, there are fears of the LGBTI bill coming back in full force. Niger – has a similar bill being tabled.” 

“So is Tanzania – the targeting of LGBTI and feminist groups are under target (anal testing), Ghana – has a similar bill as Uganda, Burundi – (is experiencing) a new wave of arrests of LGBTI groups, the situation of LGBTI groups in Tunisia and Algeria is worsening, in Egypt, police are using queer apps to target the LGBTI community – so definitely there is a trend,” Nkolomba says in an interview with IPS.

Activist Eric Ndaula says the issue is that homophobia is a pervasive mindset – with politicians, religious leaders, and even family taking a stance against it. “They tell us that homosexuality is wrong; it’s an abomination.”

When the Ugandan Parliament passed the Bill on March 21, 2023, without asking for anonymity, Jane Nasimbwa, Sylvia Nassuna, Janet Ndagire, Patricia Naava, Jackie Nabbosa Mpungu, Florence Matovu Kansanze, Josephine Amonyatta, and Shamim Nakamate openly identified themselves as mothers of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Their “Open Letter to President Museveni from Mothers of LGBTQ+ Individuals,” – republished by the Monitor, surprised many.

“As parents of LGBTQ+ individuals, we are not ‘promoters’ of any agenda; we are Ugandan mothers, who have had to overcome many of our own biases to fully understand, accept, and love our children,” reads the letter.

The women expressed fear that their children were likely to be targets of mob violence, which they noted was a direct consequence of living in a country whose legislators are “recklessly” legalizing homophobia and transphobia with the Anti-Homosexuality law.

“We, too, did not choose to be parents of LGBTQ+ children, but we have chosen to love our children for who they are. As parents, we all desire and work to ensure that our children are healthy, well-educated, successful, and fulfilled in both their professional and personal lives.”

The letter was shared on Twitter by Dr Catherine Kyobutungi, a feminist and The Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center, sparking an online debate.

They requested President Yoweri Museveni not to assent to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, saying they could no longer stand on the sidelines and watch as their children continued to be bashed and threatened in such a dangerous and deliberate manner.

Will President Museveni Listen?

There are doubts about whether Museveni, who previously signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law in 2014, will heed the mothers’ call – even though he has sent the Bill back to parliament for amendment.

In a press statement released on April 20, 2023, which quoted him as saying: “Be ready to sacrifice to fight homosexuals,” he also noted: “It is good that you rejected the pressure from the imperialists. Those imperialists have been messing up the world for 600 years, causing so much damage.”

The Bill is to be returned not because of a change in sentiment but because Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka said the Bill in its current form criminalizes even those who voluntarily come out to having “practiced homosexuality” and need to be helped.

He proposed a provision for amnesty for this group.

Museveni has been quoted several times that those behind the criticism of the Bill were associated with Europeans – and he has expressed anti-homosexuality sentiments in several other addresses since then.

“There is some issue with these Europeans. They don’t listen; we have been telling them that this problem of homosexuality is not something that we should normalize and celebrate,” Museveni said. “I told them that there were some few homosexuals before Europeans came here … But now the Europeans want to turn the abnormal into normal and force it on others.”

After the Bill was enacted, Museveni addressed a meeting of members of Parliament from 22 African countries and the UK. He repeated that homosexuality was a deviation, adding that it was more dangerous than drugs.

In February 2014, President Museveni appointed a committee of scientists to determine whether there was a scientific or genetic basis for homosexuality and whether it could be learned and unlearned.

While the committee recommended a further study, it observed that homosexuality existed throughout history.

‘Blatant Violation of Rights’

Dr Zahara Nampewo, a lecturer at the Makerere University’s School of Law and Director of the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), speaking at a debate a day after the Bill was passed, said there were far-reaching implications of the law.

“We have raised our voices of concern over issues such as the blatant violation of rights such as the presumption of innocence, the right to a non-derogable right to a fair trial,” Nampewo says. “We have been calling for laws to protect children against child abuse; we have been calling for the marriage bill. Why now, in a period of a month, has (this) law been passed?”

The mover of the Bill, Asuman Basalirwa, told IPS that they had planned to table the Bill since August 2022, but it was only in late February that the Speaker granted them space on the order paper.

“The issue of recruitment, promotion, and financing of homosexuality. You don’t provoke a community like that. If those people were doing their things quietly, nobody would be bothered, but you see, you are going into our schools, you are attacking our children. And you want us to look on?”

Asked why a particular stance to criminalize LGBTQ+ persons, Basalirwa told IPS that the criminalization of homosexuality is not a new phenomenon. “It is the colonialists who first brought here a law on homosexuality section 145 of the penal code. This is intended to be a penal law. So you want a penal law that doesn’t criminalize it,” he asked.

Timing of Passing the Bill

Some critics have argued that the Bill was rushed by Speaker of Parliament Anita Among and her deputy Thomas Tayebwa because those behind it wanted it to be passed before an Inter-Parliamentary Conference on family values under the theme “Protecting African Culture and Family Values.”

The two-day conference was held on the shores of Lake Victoria from March 31 to April 1, 2023. It was attended by leaders of Family Watch International (FWI) officials. FWI is a US Christian organization described by civil rights activists as a “hate group, which opposes comprehensive sexuality education.” Delegates from FWI included Sharon Slater, who told the conference that: “We are on fire, and we must stop this culture of imperialism that is destroying our children.” Slater and her team, which included Henk Jan van Schothorst, the Executive Director at Christian Council International, and Gregg Scot, a US attorney, met Museveni and his wife, Janet Museveni, at State House Entebbe.

‘Victimless Offense’ 

But Dr Adrian Jjuuko, Executive Director at Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum – Uganda (HRAPF), disagrees with Basalirwa about the timing of the enactment of the Bill.

“This is a campaign that has been going on for years. And it is not just a Ugandan campaign. This is an international campaign,” said Jjuuko, whose organization provides legal aid to LGBTQI+ persons.

Jjuuko, whose organization has allegedly been listed by Uganda’s NGO Bureau among Civil Society groups likely to be closed, told IPS that the offenses suggested in the laws are victimless because the relationships were consensual. “If you have a victimless offense, why do you have to criminalize a victimless offense? Nobody is complaining; there’s no harm. Harm to who? To Hon Basalirwa?”

The Bill limits the offense of homosexuality to sexual acts between persons of the same sex. The offense is punishable by life imprisonment, up to ten years. It also provides for the offense of aggravated homosexuality.

“If you look at the provision on the promotion of homosexuality. It essentially bans what we do as lawyers. So as a lawyer, you cannot represent an LGBTQ+ person because that will be seen as a promotion of homosexuality,” Jjuuko says.

The law suggests several punishments, including the death penalty for being a repeat offender and life imprisonment.

“Repeat offender means if you are convicted of being gay twice, you die for that. Having consensual sex when you are HIV-positive, you die for that; if you have sex with a person of the advanced age of 75 years, you die for that regardless of whether it is consensual.”

Jjuuko observes, “If you wanted to fight pedophilia, sexual orientation is not what you go for. What you go for is the crime that you are interested in fighting.”

NGOs suspected of promoting homosexuality risk a fine of one billion shillings (over $264,000) or face twenty years in prison.

Restrictions, threats, and the vilification of sexual minorities in Uganda preceded the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. In August 2022, the civil society organization Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) was banned by the Ugandan National Bureau (the NGO Bureau for Non-Governmental Organizations) because it was not registered. In 2012 the NGO Bureau rejected an application by SMUG to have it registered because the organization was “undesirable and un-registrable.”

Asuman Basalirwa, the mover of the Bill, and fellow Parliamentarians argued that the country needs the law to protect children from promoters of homosexuality. But Jjuuko, in an interview with IPS, said that it was a misplaced sentiment.

“If you talk about children, the biggest threat to our children is not homosexuality. The biggest threat to children is heterosexuality. Because if you look at the annual police crimes report, over ten thousand cases of defilement of girls by men. And there were only 83 cases of unnatural carnal knowledge (as the offense is described in the bill) against the order of nature.”

The Bill is Retrogressive

Many have observed that the Bill is retrogressive and will worsen the HIV situation in Uganda as it would deny LGBTIQ+ persons, who are key populations, access to HIV services.

The Bill came after PEPFER Uganda, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Uganda, the Uganda AIDS Commission, conducted a legal and environmental assessment of HIV/AIDS and key populations. The evaluation had recommendations to ensure an enabling environment to move the course toward epidemic control.

PEPFAR Uganda Country Coordinator, Mary Borgman, told IPS, “We need to ensure that the human rights of all key populations are respected regardless of who we are. And this is our primary objective to ensure that we provide services to all people. That is stigma and discrimination-free.”

While South Africa’s Constitution is hailed for being the first in the world to prohibit unfair discrimination based on sexual orientation, LGBTQ+ people still experience violence. Human Rights Watch noted that in 2021 at least 24 people were murdered due to their sexual orientation.

More concerning is the decision of an independent expert body within the African Union (AU), the African Commission of Human and Peoples’ Rights, to reject the three NGOs’ observer status to three NGOs.

Frans Viljoen, Director and Professor of International Human Rights Law, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, argues in the Conversation that the rejection of Alternative Côte d’Ivoire, Human Rights First Rwanda and Synergía “casts a shadow over the commission’s commitment to advancing the rights of all Africans. It also seriously erodes its independence from AU states … The denial of observer status means the NGOs will not have a voice before the African Commission. They will not be able to draw its attention to the human rights violations of LGBTQ+ people in Africa.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

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.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Alleged gang members are transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison built by the government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador to house 40,000 detainees accused of belonging to organized crime. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

By Gustavo González
SANTIAGO, Apr 17 2023 (IPS)

Violence involving organized crime has made Latin America the most dangerous region in the world and has helped paved the way for a repressive kind of populism with a dangerous future, whose most visible symbol is Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador.

According to United Nations reports, Latin America, home to eight percent of the global population, accounts for 37 percent of the world’s homicides. (These statistics do not include deaths in wars, accidents and suicides.)

Observers talk about a generalized security crisis, and the Salvadoran president boasted of a 56.8 percent decline in the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, while Ecuador, at the other end of the spectrum, showed an increase of 82 percent.

But comparisons in percentages from one year to the next are misleading if the absolute numbers are not taken into account. For example, the homicide rate in Chile increased 32.2 percent in 2022, although in actual numbers that meant 4.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In El Salvador, the figure for the same year was 7.8 per 100,000.

Statistics in percentages, magnified by the media and by the rise in the degree of violence in the crimes committed, spread a sensation of insecurity and fear among the public.

The terrain of politics

Politics have seized onto the insecurity crisis, which serves in some cases for the opposition to question the government, or in others for those in power to seek to neutralize their opponents. Both sides come up with shortsighted measures that do not attack the roots of the problem and can actually aggravate it in the medium to long term.

The most common reaction is to beef up the police force while providing it with greater means and authority to crack down on criminals. Police officers are given a greater margin of discretion to size up the danger and shoot – in other words, to become “trigger-happy”.

The expression is not new in the region. It became widespread in various countries between the 1960s and 1980s, under military dictatorships, when the law enforcement and armed forces murdered opponents in staged shootouts or brutally cracked down on social mobilizations.

The revival of these practices in the 21st century has required legitimization through laws, such as the so-called “law of privileged legitimate defense”, passed in Chile on Apr. 10, or broader norms that involve the police, the military and the powers of the State, as Bukele has pushed through in El Salvador.

Bukele, the leader of El Salvador’s Nuevas Ideas party, used his majority in the legislature to allow him to be re-elected as president. And on Mar. 22, 2022, he declared a state of emergency, accompanied by various legislative reforms that in practice gave him a free hand in his fight against crime, namely gangs known in Central America as maras.

More than a year after the state of emergency was declared, Amnesty International denounced widespread violations of human rights in the small Central American country:

“This policy has resulted in more than 66,000 detentions, most of them arbitrary; ill-treatment and torture; flagrant violations of due process; enforced disappearances; and the deaths in state custody of at least 132 people who at the time of their deaths had not been found guilty of any crime,” the human rights watchdog said in a statement released on Apr. 3.

“Key to the commission of these human rights violations has been the coordination and collusion of the three branches of government; the putting in place of a legal framework contrary to international human rights standards, specifically with regard to criminal proceedings; and the failure to adopt measures to prevent systematic human rights violations under a state of emergency,” it added.

A member of the carabineros, Chile’s militarized police, is photographed while opening fire on a street in Santiago. CREDIT: Courtesy of El Desconcierto

Repressive populism

Bukele replaced prisons with virtual concentration camps. A total of 1.5 percent of Salvadorans are currently deprived of liberty, which means the Central American country has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

However, opinion polls show that eight out of 10 Salvadorans are satisfied with the current president and want him to be reelected, while some dissident voices warn that the State is replacing the gangs as an agent of intimidation and concentration of power.

The temptation to imitate Bukele with repressive populism that feeds on showy measures is present throughout Latin America. While the “privileged legitimate defense law” was being debated in Chile, Rodolfo Carter, mayor of the municipality of La Florida, in Santiago, demolished houses registered as belonging to drug traffickers, in front of the television cameras.

In Ecuador, President Guillermo Lasso, threatened by impeachment, announced in early April that he was authorizing the “possession and carrying of weapons for civilian use for personal defense” as an urgent measure against the “common enemies: delinquency, drug trafficking and organized crime.”

Delinquency, drug trafficking and criminal organizations are recurring terms when talking about insecurity, but a dangerous drift is often observed where ‘trigger-happy’ laws and measures give way to repression against social protests or empower political persecution under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Criminalizing the poor

Javier Macaya, president of the Unión Demócrata Independiente, a far-right Chilean party that vindicates the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), accused the United Nations of supporting “political violence” when its High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned of the dangers posed by the “law of privileged self-defense”.

The authoritarian scope of “trigger-happy” laws also includes the criminalization of immigrants and poor neighborhoods, classified as gang territories that shelter drug trafficking rings, although large drug traffickers and drug users from high-income sectors are rarely prosecuted in the cities of Latin America.

Political persecution is often disguised as security, as in Nicaragua in February when 222 dissidents were expelled and stripped of their nationality. The government of Daniel Ortega accused them of “treason”, described them as “terrorists” and “mercenaries” and justified the measure in the name of national peace.

Security has been instated as Latin America’s most pressing issue. The latest Amnesty International report documents arbitrary acts in Venezuela that include forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. Haiti, mired in ungovernability, is another country where human rights are a victim of insecurity.

The complexities of the fight against crime involve strengthening the police and also growing vigilante justice on the part of citizens. In Brazil, the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) authorized the police to kill criminals and loosened restrictions on gun ownership for civilians. His successor, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, suspended the measures after taking office on Jan. 1.

Latin America has become a kind of arsenal, with more powerful weapons for the police, and also with the illegal trade that feeds organized crime. A third of the firearms seized in 2017 in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama came from the United States.

Press freedom watchdogs say the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is a sign of the Kremlin’s greater intolerance of independent voices.

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 12 2023 (IPS)

The arrest of a US journalist in Russia has not only sent a chilling warning to foreign reporters in the country but is a sign of the Kremlin’s desire to ultimately stifle any dissent in the state, press freedom watchdogs have warned.

They say the detention at the end of March of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich signals the Russian regime may be tightening its already iron grip on control of information and expanding its repression of critics.

“The scale of this move is enormous. Not only is it the first time since the Cold War that an American journalist has been detained, but very serious charges have been brought against him. This is a big step,” Karol Luczka, Advocacy Officer at the International Press Institute (IPI), told IPS.

“[Cracking down on independent voices] has been the Kremlin policy for some time now and it seems they are targeting more and more people,” he added.

Gershkovich, a US citizen, was arrested in Yekaterinburg on suspicion of spying. He is being held at Lefortovo prison in Moscow pending trial and faces up to 20 years in jail on espionage charges. Among his recent reporting were stories about problems Russian forces faced in their war effort, as well as how Western sanctions were damaging the Russian economy.

The Wall Street Journal has denied the accusations against their reporter and the arrest has been condemned by western leaders and rights campaigners.

Some have seen the detention as a political ploy by the Kremlin and believe Gershkovich is being held to be used as part of a prisoner exchange with the US at some point in the future.

But press watchdogs say that, even if that is the case, the arrest also sends out a very clear message to any journalists not following the Kremlin line.

“I have no doubt that the arrest is a political thing. When I heard about the charges against Evan, the first thing that I thought was, ‘what high-profile Russian do the Americans have in one of their jails at the moment?’” Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

“Foreign correspondents offer a rare glimpse of the real picture in Russia to a global audience. The arrest sends a message to all foreign journalists that they are not welcome in Russia, and they can be charged with a crime at any time. From now on, it’s clear that the situation for them unpredictable and unsafe,” she added.

Independent media in Russia had faced repression even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but it has increased since then.

The regime has moved to block websites of critical newspapers, as well as social media platforms, to stop people from accessing information critical of the war, while military censorship has also been introduced with new draconian laws criminalising the “discrediting” of the military.

This has led to some outlets shutting pre-emptively rather than risk their employees being sent to prison, while others have been forced to drastically slash staff numbers, or move newsrooms out of the country, operating in de facto exile.

But until now, foreign media outlets had been relatively unaffected by this crackdown. At the start of the war, many pulled their correspondents out of the country amid safety concerns. But a number, like Gershkovich, returned and had been able to report on the war with comparatively far greater freedom than their Russian counterparts.

For this reason, Gershkovich’s arrest is so worrying for the future of independent journalism under the current Russian regime, Jeanne Cavelier, Head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said.

“To arrest a foreign journalist for such serious charges is a new critical step in Putin’s information warfare. The aim is to intimidate all the remaining Western journalists on Russian territory who dare to report on the ground and investigate on topics linked to the war on Ukraine,” she told IPS.

“It is a signal that they are no more relatively protected than their Russian colleagues. As usual, [this is] to spread fear and silence them. Dozens of foreign media outlets have already left Russia since March last year, as well as hundreds of local independent journalists. This blow may worsen the situation and further reduce the sources of trustworthy information from Russia.”

Others believe that the arrest could signal the Kremlin is moving towards a goal of almost total control over information in Russia.

“We are still some way off the kind of censorship that existed in the USSR, but Putin and the Russian ruling regime have said for a long time that the system of censorship in the USSR is a role model for them. This is the way it is going in Russia and the way the government wants it to go. It is deplorable but it is the reality of things,” said Luczka.

“Eventually, it could become like the Cold War when all information coming out of Russia was strictly controlled,” added CPJ’s Said.

Meanwhile, some believe that the arrest is also a signal to the wider population.

In recent years the Kremlin has moved to shut down the opposition, both political and in other areas of society. While vocal critics such as opposition leader Alexei Navalny have ended up in jail, many civil society organisations, including domestic and foreign rights organisations, have been closed down by authorities.

This repression has intensified since the start of the war, and Russians who spoke to IPS said that, particularly following the introduction of legislation criminalising criticism of the invasion, many people have grown increasingly wary of what they say in public.

“It’s crazy. There are shortages because of the war, there are supply problems, and we see it at work all the time. We can talk about the shortages as much as we want to at work, but we cannot say what is causing them – the war – because just using the word ‘war’ can land you in jail for years,” Ivan Petrov*, a public sector worker in Moscow, told IPS.

He added that he knew many people who were against the war but were afraid to express even the slightest opposition to it.

“They know it’s wrong but just can’t speak about it. There is so much censorship. You can get jailed for treason just for mentioning its negative effects on the economy,” he told IPS.

Against this backdrop, Gershkovich’s arrest is likely to reinforce fear among ordinary Russians who do not support the war or the government and stop them speaking out, rights campaigners say.

“It’s hard to separate the stifling of all media freedoms from the stifling of all independent voices – they go hand in hand. When [the Russian authorities] arrest such a high-profile reporter on patently bogus grounds, no matter what the true purpose of the arrest may be, they are no doubt fully aware of the chilling message it sends to the broader public,” Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

*Name has been changed

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 31 2023 (IPS)

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an organisation whose motto is ‘For democracy. For everyone’, just held its global assembly in a country with a mock parliament and not the slightest semblance of democracy.

For Bahrain’s authoritarian leaders, the hosting of the IPU assembly was yet another reputation-laundering opportunity: a week before, they’d hosted Formula One’s opening race.

The day after the race, Ebrahim Al-Mannai, a lawyer and human rights activist, tweeted that the Bahraini parliament should be reformed if it was to be showcased at the assembly. His reward was to be immediately arrested for tweets and posts deemed an ‘abuse of social media platforms’.

That same week, the Bahraini authorities revoked the entry visas for two Human Rights Watch staff to attend the assembly.

Rather than opening up to host the event, Bahrain further shut down.

A mock parliament and no democracy

Bahrain is member of the IPU, which defines itself as ‘the global organization of national parliaments’, because, on paper at least, it has a parliament. But its parliament is neither representative nor powerful. Bahrain is an absolute monarchy.

The king has power over all branches of government. He appoints and dismisses the prime minister and cabinet members, who are responsible to him, not to parliament. The two prime ministers the country has had so far – the first served for over 50 years – have been prominent members of the royal family, and many cabinet ministers have been too.

The king appoints all members of the upper house of parliament, along with all judges. Parliament’s lower chamber is elected – but everything possible is done to keep out those who might try to hold the government to account.

Political parties aren’t allowed; ‘political societies’, loose groups with some of the functions of political parties, are recognised. To be able to operate, they must register and seek authorisation, which can be denied or revoked.

In recent years the government has shut down most opposition political societies, arresting and imprisoning their most popular leaders. All members of dissolved groups and former prisoners are banned from competing in elections. And just in case new potential opposition candidates somehow emerge, voting districts are carefully gerrymandered so the opposition can’t get a majority.

In November 2022 Bahrain once again went through the motions of an election. A large number of eligible voters were excluded from the electoral roll as punishment for abstaining in previous elections – a tactic used to ensure any boycott attempts wouldn’t affect turnout. Exactly as it was meant to, the election produced a legislative body with no ability to counterbalance monarchical power.

No space for dissent

In 2018, the king issued a decree known as the ‘political isolation law’. It banned members of dissolved opposition parties standing for election. It also gave the government control of the appointment of civil society organisations’ board members, limiting their ability to operate, and has been used to harass and persecute activists, including by stripping them and their families of citizenship rights.

In 2017, Bahrain’s last independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, was shut down. No independent media are now allowed to operate. The government owns all national broadcast media outlets, while the main private newspapers are owned by government loyalists.

Vaguely worded press laws that impose harsh penalties, including long prison sentences, for insulting the king, defaming Islam or threatening national security encourage self-censorship. Many people, including journalists, bloggers and others active on social media, have been detained, imprisoned and convicted.

This has turned Bahrain into a prison state. It’s estimated that almost 15,000 people have been arrested for their political views over the past decade, at least 1,400 of whom are currently in jail. Most have been convicted on the basis of confessions obtained under torture. Appallingly, 51 people have been sentenced to death.

An advocacy opportunity

Given the IPU’s evident lack of interest in the human rights records of host states, civil society focused its advocacy on parliamentary delegations from democratic states.

Ahead of the assembly, two dozen civil society groups published a joint statement addressed at parliamentarians who would be attending, urging them to publicly raise concerns over Bahrain’s lack of political freedoms, including violations of the rights of parliamentarians, and to ensure their presence wouldn’t be used to legitimise the authoritarian regime.

Civil society’s calls for the freedom of political prisoners were loudly echoed by parliamentary delegations from countries including Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands, among several others.

The director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the event as ‘a PR disaster for the Bahraini regime’, a failure of its image-laundering plan.

The response of the Bahraini authorities was however far from encouraging. They reminded foreign parliamentarians they shouldn’t interfere in Bahrain’s domestic affairs and continued to deny evidence of imprisonment and torture.

Sustained international pressure is needed to urge the Bahraini regime to free its thousands of political prisoners and allow spaces for dissent. That, rather than high-level image-laundering events, is what will fix the country’s well-deserved bad reputation.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

On Mar. 22, 2023, dozens of people watched a live broadcast from San José, Costa Rica, on a large screen at the University of El Salvador, in San Salvador, of the open hearing of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, listening to the testimony of witnesses in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case. The screenshot shows Beatriz's mother giving her testimony. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR , Mar 24 2023 (IPS)

An open hearing in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is raising hopes that this country and other Latin American nations might overturn or at least mitigate the severe laws that criminalize abortion.

That will happen if the Inter-American Court rules that El Salvador violated the right to health of Beatriz, as the plaintiff is known. In 2013 she sought to have her pregnancy terminated because it was high risk and her life was in danger."I hope that in the end my daughter's name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman.” -- Beatriz´s mother

But she was not given an abortion, only a tardy cesarean section, which affected her already deteriorated health and, according to the plaintiffs, eventually led to her death in October 2017.

The hearing on the emblematic case was held Mar. 22-23 at the Inter-American Court in San José, Costa Rica. Beatriz’s case builds on similar ones: the cases of Manuela, also from El Salvador, Esperanza from the Dominican Republic, and Amelia from Nicaragua.

The seven judges heard the arguments of the plaintiffs, the representatives of the Salvadoran State and the witnesses on both sides.

After the hearing, the parties have 30 days to deliver their written arguments and the magistrates will then take several months to debate and reach a resolution.

The open hearing held by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is the first time that the complete ban on abortion has been tried, and the verdict will have implications for Latin America, a region that is especially restrictive in terms of women’s sexual and reproductive rights. CREDIT: Inter-American Court of Human Rights

A historic case

“I hope that in the end my daughter’s name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman,” Beatriz’s mother said when testifying on the stand. Her name was not revealed in court.

The hearing has drawn international attention because it is considered historic for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in a region that is especially restrictive with regard to the practice of abortion.

“This will be the first case where the Court will rule on the absolute prohibition of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, particularly regarding the risk to health and when the fetus is nonviable,” Julissa Mantilla Falcón, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), told the Inter-American Court.

Beatriz turned to the IACHR when the Constitutional Court of El Salvador denied, on Apr. 11, 2013, her request for an abortion.

On Apr. 19, the IACHR issued a precautionary measure in favor of Beatriz, and on May 27, 2013, it asked the Inter-American Court to adopt provisional measures which would be binding on the State.

In its November 2020 Merits Report, the IACHR established that the Salvadoran State was responsible for the disproportionate impact on various rights of Beatriz, by failing to provide her with timely medical treatment due to the laws that criminalize abortion.

The IACHR identified the disproportionate impact of this legislation on Salvadoran women and girls, especially the poor.

The Commission stated that it did not expect full compliance by the State with the recommendations of the report, and therefore referred the case to the Inter-American Court, which now, ten years later, is a few months away from handing down a resolution.

Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case, hopes that the Inter-American Court sentence will set a legal precedent and pave the way for the modification of the 1998 law criminalizing abortion under any circumstances in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

For her part, Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the case, told IPS that she hopes that the Inter-American Court ruling will set a new precedent.

She said her hope is that the court will rule that laws in El Salvador and the region banning abortion under all circumstances must be modified.

In addition to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are the countries in the region where abortion is completely prohibited in their penal codes. It is only legal in five countries in Latin America, while it is allowed only in strict circumstances in the rest.

“Or at least it should be allowed for specific reasons or exceptions, such as safeguarding health and life, or the incompatibility of the fetus’s life outside the womb,” Recinos said.

Twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries recognize the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname and Uruguay.

The IACHR and the Court make up the inter-American human rights system. They are independent bodies and in the case of the Court the sentences are final and binding, although they are not always enforced.

Recinos spoke to IPS at the University of El Salvador, in the country’s capital, where dozens of people gathered to watch the hearing, broadcast live from San José, on a large screen.

The activist added that it is likely that the Court will rule against the Salvadoran State, backing the IACHR’s conclusions.

The Court is made up of judges Ricardo Pérez Manrique (Uruguay), Humberto Sierra Porto (Colombia), Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor (Mexico), Rodrigo Mudrovitsch (Brazil), Nancy Hernández López (Colombia) and Verónica Gómez (Argentina).

In March 2003, Beatriz requested an abortion during her second pregnancy, because she suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy organs, and preeclampsia, a dangerous increase in blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as other health problems.

In other words, her life was at risk. In addition, the fetus had malformations and would not live long at birth.

However, the medical personnel, although they were aware that an abortion was indicated to save Beatriz’s life, did not carry it out due to the fear of prosecution.

Beatriz was forced to continue with a pregnancy that continued to harm her health as the days went by.

But after the Inter-American Court granted provisional measures, Beatriz underwent a cesarean section on Jun. 3, 2013, almost three months after requesting an abortion.

The child, who was born with anencephaly, missing parts of the brain and skull, died just five hours later.

Activists for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in El Salvador demonstrate on Mar. 22 outside the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, during the hearing for the emblematic case of Beatriz v. El Salvador. Many carried green balloons, whose color is a symbol of the fight for the right to abortion in Latin America. CREDIT: Collaborating Organizations

Misogyny on the part of the State

Since 1998 El Salvador, this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, has been the most drastic in the region in the persecution of abortion, punishing women who terminate their pregnancies with sentences of up to 30 years, in all cases, even when the life and health of the pregnant woman is at risk or in cases of rape.

The legislation mainly affects poor women in rural areas. According to data from women’s rights organizations, 181 such cases have been prosecuted since 2019.

Guillermo Ortiz, a gynecologist and obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, testified before the Inter-American Court: “Yes, I saw many women die because they did not have access to a safe abortion, despite my having requested it.”

In her testimony, Beatriz’s mother said that the many doctors who treated her daughter had recommended that the pregnancy be terminated, but did not dare to perform an abortion or c-section to remove the fetus, for fear of going to prison.

“They told my daughter that they couldn’t, because in El Salvador it’s a crime, and if they did, they could go to jail,” said the mother.

“The State failed Beatriz twice,” said the mother, before breaking down in tears.

She was referring to the failure to carry out an abortion promptly, despite her daughter’s serious health conditions. She also was talking about a motorcycle accident that the 22-year-old suffered later.

“She had an accident that shouldn’t have been fatal, she was in stable condition” when she was admitted to the hospital in Jiquilisco, a municipality in the eastern department of Usulután.

But a storm caused a flood in some parts of the hospital, so they transferred her to the hospital in Usulután, the capital of the department.

“The doctor who treated her there didn’t even know what lupus was,” she said. In the hospital, Beatriz caught pneumonia.

The mother’s testimony and that of the other witnesses at the hearing has been closely followed in El Salvador and other nations by feminist and human rights organizations that have been monitoring and criticizing the country’s strict anti-abortion law.

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Mar 20 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Only forty-five days into our new Strategic Plan 2023-2026, Education Cannot Wait secured 55 percent of its total requirement for the coming four years, reaching $826 million at #HLFC2023. This is a significant milestone for education in emergencies and protracted crises, and ECW will continue to pursue fund-raising year-round in the coming four years. The goal is to reach the target of 20 million children and adolescents affected by armed conflicts, climate-induced disasters and forced displacement.

At the Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference, hosted by Switzerland and co-convened by Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway and South Sudan, the education community from around the world came together and, inspired by the UN Secretary-General’s Transforming Education Summit 2022, provided tangible action towards results.

By embracing UN Reform and the New Way of Working, by breaking down silos and by supporting humanitarian-development coherence amidst crises, ECW’s stakeholders recognize and embrace ECW’s added value: the UN’s global fund designed specifically to move with efficiency and effectiveness to collectively deliver quality education in emergencies and protracted crises.

New donors, including Qatar, Italy, the Global Business Coalition for Education and Zürcher Kantonalbank, joined ECW with significant and important new commitments, bringing the total to 24 donors, including governments, foundations and private sector.

ECW’s partners across government, UN agencies, civil society, the private sector and more continue to go above and beyond the call of duty in supporting our global advocacy movement. At the HLFC, we saw these partners unite in key sessions on Spotlight on Afghanistan, A Transformative Agenda, A Proven Model Across the Nexus, Leading During Crisis, Climate Change, Armed Conflict, Better Financing, Support for Teachers, Advancing Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Girls, Championing Early Learning, Addressing Holistic Needs Through Education and more.

This is just the beginning. We need to stay ambitious and hungry, results-driven and passionate about the cause, because the grand total of children and adolescents in urgent need of a continued and inclusive quality education in crises amounts to 222 million. There is indeed scope for more donors, bigger contributions, and even deeper commitment to building a better world.

We cannot forget the girls of Afghanistan and the hundreds of millions of children and adolescents across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America whose education is disrupted and denied due to conflicts and forced displacement. We cannot ignore the world’s forgotten crises as we build back together and work to create a more just, more equal world, as The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the ECW High-Level Steering Group so passionately highlighted in his Opening Session remarks.

One of my favourite quotes is that of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said: “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, crawl, but by all means keep moving!”

Education Cannot Wait is a global movement. We move for the 222 million children and adolescents left furthest behind, holding on to their dreams. For this very reason, and together, we must be unstoppable!

Yasmine Sherif is Director of Education Cannot Wait.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Attacks on the elderly are increasing in Malawi, often under the pretext that witchcraft is at play. Survivor Christian Mphande lived to tell her story, but there is a worrying increase in elder abuse. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Mar 17 2023 (IPS)

In December last year, a video clip went viral of two elderly women surrounded by a charged-up crowd and engulfed in a cloud of dust as they filled up a grave in a village in the Mzimba district in northern Malawi.

As the two elderly sisters laboured in the task, which men in Malawi traditionally handle, someone in the mob kicked one of the women, Christian Mphande, and sent her flying into the open grave.

What was their crime?

A young woman related to the two had died, and people in the village accused Mphande, 77, of killing the young woman through witchcraft.

To punish her, Mphande was forced to bury the dead, helped by the sister. She was assaulted, her belongings, such as livestock, confiscated, and she was banished from the village.

It was yet another incident in the spiralling cases of harassment of older persons in Malawi.

Mphande is alive – now living away from home but within the district, probably to forever grapple with nightmares of her experience and live with the physical evidence of a gap in her gums after she lost some teeth in the assault by the mob.

But several elderly have lost their lives in Malawi at the hands of mobs. Five older women were killed between January and February 2023, according to the Malawi Network of Older Persons Organisations (MANEPO), a coalition of human rights organisations in the country.

In 2022, 15 elderly women were killed and 88 harassed for various reasons, largely on accusations of witchcraft—a rise from 13 killed and 58 harassed in 2021.

MANEPO’s Country Director, Andrew Kavala, describes the abuses of elderly women as a scourge visiting the nation.

“As a society, we have failed our elderly. We have unjustified anger towards them. Whether driven by frustration due to survival failures, we are venting our anger on innocent people. This is a tragedy,” Kavala laments in an interview with IPS.

Top of the factors behind this terror is what he describes as “baseless belief in witchcraft and magic,” which, he says, some people blame for their personal misfortunes.

Colonial Witchcraft Act

Malawi has in force the Witchcraft Act, which came into existence in 1911 under British colonial rule.

According to the Malawi Law Commission, the legislation was enacted with the aim of eradicating what the colonialists considered as dangerous some practices such as trial by ordeal, the use of charms and witchcraft itself.

In effect, the Act assumes that witchcraft does not exist. That being the case, it is, therefore, an offence for anyone to allege that someone practices witchcraft.

It is also an offence for anyone to claim that he or she practices witchcraft.

In 2006, the government set up a Special Law Commission on Witchcraft Act to review the 1911 witchcraft law. It was in response to calls that the law is alien to the common belief in witchcraft among Malawians.

In a report, the Special Law Commission indeed found a common and strong belief in the existence of witchcraft.

“There is witchcraft or, at least, a belief in witchcraft among Malawians,” the report said, concluding, “It is not correct to argue that there is no witchcraft in Malawi for the sole reason that the practice is premised upon mere belief.”

“Consequently, the commission concludes that the existence of witchcraft should not be regarded as a doubtful but conclusive (thing),” said the Commission’s chairperson, Judge Robert Chinangwa, at a presentation of its report in 2021.

But human rights organisations trashed the recommendations of the Commission for the review of the law. In a joint statement, the organisations said by definition, a witch or wizard is someone who secretly uses supernatural powers for wicked purposes.

Assuming that the law is amended to criminalise the practice of witchcraft, there would be the difficult issue of evidence, they argued.

“It is a good law practice that for one to be convicted of a criminal offence, the prosecution must have proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“However, witchcraft involves the use of supernatural powers. Therefore, proving the allegations would be very difficult in a court of law,” they said in a joint statement.

The Majority Believe in Witchcraft

There has been no conclusion since. That is, Malawi’s fight against abuse of the elderly on witchcraft-related accusations finds itself stuck on the rough edges between strong belief in witchcraft on the one hand and, on the other, that there would be no proof for its existence in a court of law if reviewed.

This belief in witchcraft is compromising Malawi Police Service’s efforts to clamp down on the abuses against the elderly, according to national police spokesperson Peter Kalaya.

“Our main challenge is that we work hard to enforce this law [Witchcraft Act] in a society where the majority believes witchcraft exists. As such, there is great resistance [to law enforcement],” Kalaya tells IPS.

The police’s situation is worsened by the fact that, in most cases, incidents of abuse of older women occur in rural locations remote from the nearest police stations. According to Kalaya, this sometimes negatively affects police response to provide a swift rescue of victims and arrest perpetrators.

He further indicates how the police sometimes evade the treachery of the witchcraft law.

“Most of the abuses older persons face fall within the general crime of mob justice such as being beaten, killed, their houses and property being burnt and being subjected to verbal insults,” he explains.

Wycliffe Masoo, Director of Disability and Elderly Rights at the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC), a public body, says witchcraft belief in itself is not to blame; it is what happens as a result of that belief that is of concern.

“The question that remains is that if witchcraft exists, is it being practised by older persons only?” Masoo wonders.

He says while police have at times been swift in arresting and investigating suspects for abusing the elderly, the wheels of prosecution take too long sometimes and give the abuses an edge.

Legislation Already in Place

According to Masoo, whether Malawi sticks with the Witchcraft Act or reviews it and contends with the tricky challenge of proving witchcraft in a court of law, the country already has some legislation in place which, if properly used, would ably curb issues of mob justice on older persons.

For example, the Constitution prohibits discrimination of persons and guarantees “equal and effective protection against discrimination” on whatever grounds.

It guarantees human dignity, stating that “no person shall be subject to torture of any kind or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

What Malawi needs, according to MHRC, Manepo and the police, is to expedite the enactment of the Older Persons Bill into law and invest in a formidable, coordinated mass awareness that brings along traditional, religious and judicial leadership for all Malawians to understand the rights of older persons.

“This will wholesomely protect older women,” Masoo says.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

Last October, Ales Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was one of three winners, alongside two human rights organisations: Memorial, in Russia, and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. The Nobel Committee recognised the three’s ‘outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power’.

But Bialiatski couldn’t travel to Oslo to collect his award. He’d been detained in July 2021 and held in jail since. This month he was found guilty on trumped-up charges of financing political protests and smuggling, and handed a 10-year sentence. His three co-defendants were also given long jail terms. There are many others besides them who’ve been thrown in prison, among them other staff and associates of Viasna, the human rights centre Bialiatski heads.

Crackdown follows stolen election

The origins of the current crackdown lie in the 2020 presidential election. Dictator Alexander Lukashenko has held power since 1994, but in 2020 for once a credible challenger slipped through the net to stand against him. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko after her husband, democracy activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested and prevented from doing so. Her independent, female-fronted campaign caught the public’s imagination, offering the promise of change and uniting many voters.

Lukashenko’s response to this rare threat was to arrest several members of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign staff, along with multiple opposition candidates and journalists, introduce additional protest restrictions and restrict the internet. When all of that didn’t deter many from voting against him, he blatantly rigged the results.

This bare-faced act of fraud triggered a wave of protests on a scale never seen under Lukashenko. At the peak in August 2020, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. It took a long time for systematic state violence and detentions to wear the protests down.

Everything Lukashenko has done since is to suppress the democracy movement. Hundreds of civil society organisations have been forcibly liquidated or shut themselves down in the face of harassment and threats. Independent media outlets have been labelled as extremist, subjected to raids and effectively banned.

Jails are crammed with inmates: currently it’s estimated Belarus has 1,445 political prisoners, many serving long sentences after trials at biased courts.

Lukashenko’s only ally

Lukashenko’s repression is enabled by an alliance with an even bigger pariah: Vladimir Putin. When the European Union and democratic states applied sanctions in response to Lukashenko’s crackdown, Putin provided a loan that was crucial in helping him ride out the storm.

This marked a break in a long strategy of Lukashenko carefully balancing between Russia and the west. The effect was to bind the two rogue leaders together. That’s continued during Russia’s war on Ukraine. When the invasion started, some of the Russian troops that entered Ukraine did so from Belarus, where they’d been staging so-called military drills in the days before. Belarus-based Russian missile launchers have also been deployed.

Just days after the start of Russia’s invasion, Lukashenko pushed through constitutional changes, sanctioned through a rubber-stamp referendum. Among the changes, the ban on Belarus hosting nuclear weapons was removed.

Last December Putin travelled to Belarus for talks on military cooperation. The two armies took part in expanded military training exercises in January. Following the constitutional changes, Putin promised to supply Belarus with nuclear-capable missiles; Belarus announced these were fully operational last December.

Belarussian soldiers haven’t however been directly involved in combat so far. Putin would like them to be, if only because his forces have sustained much higher-than-expected losses and measures to fill gaps, such as the partial mobilisation of reservists last September, are domestically unpopular. Lukashenko has struck a balance between belligerent talk and moderate action, insisting Belarus will only join the war if Ukraine attacks it.

That may be because Belarus’s enabling of Russia’s aggression has made people only more dissatisfied with Lukashenko. Many Belarussians want no involvement in someone else’s war. Several protests took place in Belarus at the start of the invasion, leading to predictable repression similar to that seen in Russia, with numerous arrests.

Crucially, Belarus’s security forces stuck by Lukashenko at the peak of protests; if they’d defected, the story could have been different. Full involvement in the war would likely see even Lukashenko loyalists turn against him, including in the military. Soldiers might refuse to fight. It would be a dangerous step to take. As Russia’s war drags on, Lukashenko could find himself walking an increasingly difficult tightrope.

Two countries, one struggle

It’s perhaps with this in mind that Lukashenko’s latest repressive move has been to extend the death penalty. State officials and military personnel can now be executed for high treason. This gives Lukashenko a gruesome new tool to punish and deter defections.

As well as worrying about their safety, Belarus’s activists – in exile or in jail – face the challenge of ensuring the cause of Belarussian democracy isn’t lost in the fog of war. They need continuing solidarity and support to make the world understand that their struggle against oppression is part of the same campaign for liberty being waged by Ukrainians, and that any path to peace in the region must also mean democracy in Belarus.

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

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele (C) tours the facilities of the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in January, when through a video he showed for the first time the interior of the new mega-prison, built to hold 40,000 gang members. Some 65,000 people accused of belonging to the gangs or maras have been arrested since the state of emergency was declared in March 2022. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Mar 13 2023 (IPS)

Despite serious allegations by the US justice system that two officials of the government of Nayib Bukele reached a secret agreement with the MS-13 gang to keep the homicide rate low, the Salvadoran president seems to have escaped unscathed for now, without political costs.

The MS-13 gang members reached the agreement, according to investigations, in exchange for benefits offered by the Bukele administration after the president took office in February 2019.

One of the benefits was apparently not to extradite to the United States leaders of the gangs who are in prison in El Salvador, according to the criminal indictment filed by the Attorney General’s Office of the Eastern District of New York.

The legal action was filed in September 2022, but it was made public on Feb. 23, and it targets 13 leaders of the fearsome MS-13 gang, who are held responsible for murders and other crimes committed in the United States, Mexico and El Salvador.“I do not believe the legal action in New York will damage Bukele’s reelection prospects.” -- Jorge Villacorta

“The accusation (in New York) merely confirms something we already knew,” analyst Jorge Villacorta told IPS.

Villacorta was referring to investigative journalistic reports by the newspaper El Faro, which since 2021 revealed the secret negotiations that the Bukele administration held with the gangs, which the president has consistently denied.

But it is one thing for a newspaper to report this and quite another for it to come from an accusation from the United States Attorney’s Office, in an investigation in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) participated.

“Because in this case we are talking about legal action” by the U.S. justice system, which could affect the two officials implicated, Mario Vega, an evangelical pastor who studies the phenomenon of gang violence in El Salvador, told IPS.

Since 2012, the United States has considered MS-13 a transnational criminal organization.

A grand jury has reportedly already heard the evidence presented by the prosecution and has endorsed a trial, at an unspecified date.

Three gang members and others who could be captured later could at some point in the trial testify against the two Bukele officials, “and we are going to find out about all the secrecy that has surrounded the negotiations,” Vega added.

The two officials are the director of the General Directorate of Penitentiaries, Osiris Luna, and the head of the Directorate for the Reconstruction of the Social Fabric, Carlos Marroquín.

Neither of them are mentioned by name in the legal action, but they are clearly identifiable by their government positions.

Nor is it mentioned that they reportedly reached an agreement with gang members under the auspices of the Salvadoran president, but that is obvious because given the president’s authoritarian style, no one moves a finger without his consent.

Bukele, a millennial neo-populist who governs with increasing authoritarianism, has been waging a frontal war against gangs since Mar. 27, 2022, which has led him to imprison more than 65,000 members, with the help of a state of emergency in place since then.

However, the war apparently broke out once the pact with the gangs broke down. In the course of the trial in New York it may be verified that the secret negotiations took place since 2019 and were suspended in March 2022.

So far, the crackdown on the gangs, known here as maras, has drawn the applause of the majority of the population in this Central American country of 6.7 million people, according to the opinion polls.

But the president has also come under fire for abuses by soldiers and police, who have arrested people with no ties to the maras.

Around 2,000 suspected gang members were transferred in late February to the mega-prison that the government built to hold a large part of the gang members arrested under the state of emergency, which has suspended some constitutional guarantees since March 2022 in El Salvador, allowing abuses and arbitrary arrests by soldiers and police. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

Immune ahead of the elections

And what could spell a major blow to their credibility for any president and would perhaps shake the foundations of a government would not make a big dent in Bukele’s popularity, said analysts interviewed by IPS.

With regard to the news about the case in New York, “people see it as suppositions or simply do not believe it; I do not see it as generating significant political costs for Bukele,” added Villacorta, a former leftist member of Congress.

It will apparently not affect the president even as he is getting ready to seek reelection in the Feb. 4, 2024 elections. He has already announced that he will run again, but his candidacy has not yet been made official.

Although his campaign has not been launched, Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party are already mobilizing their publicity machine, in the face of an opposition that is keeping its head down.

Most lawyers agree that the Salvadoran constitution prohibits immediate reelection.

In May 2021, a new Legislative Assembly, controlled by Nuevas Ideas, dismissed the five judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court without the proper procedures and appointed five of their allies, who endorsed the right to reelection.

“I do not believe the legal action in New York will damage Bukele’s reelection prospects,” said Villacorta, a critic of the president.

This is due to the high levels of popularity that the president has among the public and the widespread acceptance of the state of emergency, which suspends some constitutional guarantees and has made it possible to capture 65,000 gang members.

Some 2,000 imprisoned gang members were transferred at the end of February to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison that the government built on the outskirts of the municipality of Tecoluca in central El Salvador to hold some 40,000 prisoners.

Villacorta added: “What is perceived in the country and abroad is that Bukele, like some kind of superhero, in a few months has squashed the gangs.”

However, despite abundant evidence of abuses and arbitrary arrests, ordinary Salvadorans are overlooking this because their main problem, gang violence, has been successfully reduced.

“People will tend to forgive his past deeds, due to the fact that now they (gang members) are all imprisoned. This narrative is the one that moves people, and these are the emotions that count when it comes to voting,” commented Pastor Vega, also an opponent of Bukele.

Of the 65,000 incarcerated gang members, 58,000 have had an initial hearing before a judge, Justice and Public Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro said on Mar. 8 in a television interview.

The case brought in New York does not affect Bukele; “on the contrary, it makes Salvadorans mad, because they say ‘do they want us to keep suffering (from the gangs)?’. They are not going to say, ‘Ok they’re right, (the government) has brainwashed us’,” criminologist Misael Rivas told IPS.

Negotiations today and always

But Bukele’s war against the “maras” is now more in doubt than ever, with the investigation and accusation initiated by the US justice system against the 13 leaders of the MS-13.

In the criminal indictment, the US Attorney’s Office states that since 2012 the gangs, including Barrio 18, the other major mara, engaged in secret negotiations with the government and political parties.

In that year, the country was governed by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the guerrilla group that became a political party in 1992, after the end of the 12-year Salvadoran civil war.

The pact or “truce” fell apart in 2015.

Negotiations with the gangs continued in 2019 “in connection with the 2019 elections,” the document continues. That year, in February, Nayib Bukele won the presidency with a large majority of votes.

It adds that several leaders of the MS-13 secretly met “numerous times” with the two officials – Luna and Marroquín, although it does not mention their names, only their posts.

These meetings took place in the Zacatecoluca and Izalco prisons, in the center and west of the country, it adds, which had already been reported by El Faro.

Batman in trouble?

Even when the alleged pact with the Bukele administration fell apart in March 2022, in one of the voice recordings published two months later by the newspaper, Marroquín is heard saying that “Batman” (a pseudonym for the president) was fully aware of the situation.

The MS-13 also agreed to support Nuevas Ideas in the 2021 parliamentary elections, which that party won by a large majority

Of the 13 indicted MS-13 leaders, three were arrested on Feb. 22 in Mexico “by the authorities of that country and extradited to the United States,” the Attorney General’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said a day later, in an official statement.

Those captured are: Vladimir Antonio Arévalo Chávez (nicknamed “Vampiro de Monserrat Criminales”), Walter Yovani Hernández Rivera (“Baxter from Park View”) and Marlon Antonio Menjívar Portillo (“Red from Park View”).

Criminologist Rivas said the outcome of the trial, once it begins, is far from certain.

If prosecutors press for the details of the negotiations with the Bukele government, defense attorneys would have to work hard to undermine the gang members’ credibility when it came to implicating the two Salvadoran officials, he said.

“Thinking as a defense attorney, suppose they gave me the case, I would insist on why they are bringing the case up now, when there is a frontal attack against the gangs and the Salvadoran people are finally happy?” said Rivas, who is also a lawyer and who supports the state of emergency.

Map of Eastern Bloc, 1948.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 6 2023 (IPS)

Putin’s regime recently suspended Russia’s participation in a nuclear arms agreement with Washington. After the decision Putin declared that the move was a retaliation for the US’s, France’s and Britain’s “targeting” of Russia with nuclear weapons. He was forced to take action to “preserve our country, ensure security and strategic stability”:

“the West lied about peace, but was preparing for aggression, and today it admits it openly, no longer embarrassed. And they cynically use Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia.”

Such rhetoric finds fertile ground in Latin America and Africa, which suffer from a long tradition of Western exploitation carried out under the false flag of peace keeping, democratization and progress. On 26 February, Putin added that a:

“new world is taking shape, being built only on the interests of just one country, the United States. […] I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today.”

The statement is part of a recurrent discourse suggesting that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an act of self-defence, an answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization/NATO’s expansion. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were added to NATO; in 2009 they were followed by Albania and Croatia, in 2017 by Montenegro and in 2020 by North Macedonia.

In 2014, after Ukraine’s corrupt president Viktor Yanukovych had been ousted, pro-Russian unrest erupted in eastern and southern parts of the country. Unmarked Russian tanks and troops moved into Crimea, taking over government buildings, strategic sites and infrastructure. Meanwhile, armed pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings in the Donbas region.

In 2014 the Donbas was the industrial heartland of Ukraine with 35 per cent of the country’s mining, 22 per cent of its manufacturing industry, providing 20 per cent of energy supply and 18 per cent of water supply. Recently vast amounts of natural gas have been detected underground.

The separatists received considerable support from Russia and Ukrainian attempts to retake separatist-held areas were unsuccessful. In October 2014, Ukraine’s new government made joining NATO a priority. Putin at once declared that the Russian involvement in Crimea and Donbas was a reaction to NATO’s threatening expansion.

Part of Putin’s discourse, repeated by influencers all over the world, is that during a summit in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachov accepted the reunification of Germany within the framework of NATO, he was given an assurance that NATO would not expand further. The Historian Mary Elise Sarotte has recently tried to disentangle the thorny issue, underlining that no written document of the promise exists. Gorbachov later declared that:

“the topic of NATO-expansion was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. [What was agreed] was that NATO’s military structures would not advance in the sense that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR, after German reunification. Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”

During a 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin declared himself to be a stout defender of democracy, nuclear disarmament and international solidarity. Contrary to the US, which had “promised” that NATO was not going to expand beyond the borders of Germany. Putin stated that:

“unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. […] a situation in which countries that forbid the death penalty even for murderers and other, dangerous criminals are airily participating in military operations that are difficult to consider legitimate. And as a matter of fact, these conflicts are killing people – hundreds and thousands of civilians! […] As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.” […] I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?

The answer is beyond doubt. However, as a proverb states “Evil cannot with evil be defended.” Can Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine actually be defended by alluding to the encroachment and support to brutal dictatorships that “democracies” like the US, France and Britain have been guilty of around the globe?

Putin repeatedly refers to “history”. He labels Ukrainian leaders as Nazis, while stating that Ukraine has always been part of Russia. Glaring exaggerations – if not outright lies.

History tells us that Russia’s past, like that of other nations, has its hidden skeletons. In 1939, the Soviet Union annexed more than 50 per cent of Polish territory. From 1939 to 1941 about one million Polish citizens were arrested, or deported; including approximately 200,000 Polish military personnel held as prisoners of war; 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested and imprisoned of whom approximately 30,000 were executed. The total loss of lives was 150 000.

On 30 November 1939 the Soviet army attacked Finland. The war ended after three months. The Soviets suffered severe losses and made little headway. To avoid more bloodshed Finland ceded 9 per cent of its territory. In spite of superior air force and heavy tanks the Soviet losses had been considerable – 168 000 dead or missing. The Finns lost 26 000 dead or missing.

In the previously independent Baltic States the Soviets had during 1940-41 carried out mass deportations. They became even more extensive after Soviet Union finally conquered the area. In March 1949, Soviet authorities organised a mass deportation of 90,000 Baltic nationals. The total number deported from 1944 to 1955 is estimated at over half a million: 124,000 from Estonia, 136,000 from Latvia, and 245,000 from Lithuania. The estimated death toll among Lithuanian deportees had between1945 and 1958 been more than 20,000, including 5,000 children.

When the Soviet Union fell apart and archives were declassified it was revealed that, between 1921 and 1953, 799,455 executions had been officially recorded. Approximately 1.7 million prisoners had died in Gulag camps, some 390,000 were reported dead during forced resettlements in the 1930s, and during the 1940s at least 400,000 persons died during deportations.

After World War II, the Soviet Union subdued several nations in Eastern Europe, introducing a political system aspiring to gain total control of all citizens and backed by an extensive, repressive apparatus.

Opposition was initially essentially liquidated, while steps towards an authoritative communism were enforced. The General Secretary of a nation’s Central Committee became the most powerful figure, while a Politburo held sway over a party machine lacking a popular foundation, since it in accordance to Leninist ideology favoured a group of three to fourteen per cent of a country’s population. Members of this exclusive group enjoyed considerable rewards, like access to shops with a selection of high-quality foreign goods, as well as special schools, holiday facilities, well-equipped housing, pensions, permission to travel abroad, and official cars with distinct license plates.

Suppression of opposition was a prerequisite for retaining power. Citizens were kept under surveillance by political police with raw power and violent persecution of dissidents. In East Germany were Stasi, Volkpolizei, and KdA, in Soviet Union the KGB, in Czechoslovakia STB and LM, in Bulgaria KDS, in Hungary AVH and Munkásörség, in Romania Securitate and GP, in Poland Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, Słuźba, and ZOMO. Nevertheless, people occasionally revolted.

During one day in 1953 an uprising took place in Berlin. It was violently suppressed by tanks and soldiers of the Soviet German forces. More than 150 persons were killed, or missing.

In 1956, a two day protest in Polish Poznan resulted in more than 100 deaths. About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers under the command of the Polish-Soviet general Popalavsky suppressed the demonstration. Among the dead was a 13-year-old boy, Romek Strzalakowski, eventually hailed as a patriotic martyr.

During two weeks in November 1956, USSR troops killed 2,500 revolting Hungarians, while 200,000 sought political refuge abroad. Some 26,000 Hungarians were put on trial by the Soviet-installed János Kádár government, of those 13,000 were imprisoned.

During the night between 20 and 21 August 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia came to an abrupt end when Eastern Bloc armies under Soviet command invaded Prague. The invasion comported with the Brezhnev Doctrine, compelling Eastern Bloc states to subordinate national interests to a Soviet right to intervene. A wave of emigration followed, with a total eventually reaching 300,000.

The pattern of Soviet invasions of neighbouring states has continued, for example in Georgia and Moldova. In 1991 Tjetjenia declared itself independent and in 1994, 40 000 Russian soldiers invaded the recently proclaimed Tjetjenien Republic. After a year of harsh fighting the capital Grozny was conquered, but another war erupted in 1999. The rebels were vanquished after an effective but exceedingly brutal war. Tjetjenia is now governed by a Moscow-allied clan leader.

Estimated losses of the two wars are 14 000 Russian and 16 000 Tjetjenien soldiers killed, while at least 25,000 civilians were killed and 5,000 disappeared.

One month before the Russian attack on Ukraine, Kazakhstan plunged into political unrest. At the request of President Tokayev, Russian forces headed an intergovernmental Eurasian military alliance, CSTO, which invaded the country. After “pacifying” the protests, CSTO forces evacuated the country after a month.

Considering this history, paired with the Russian destruction of Syrian and Ukrainian towns, it is somewhat difficult to consider Russia as threatened by NATO’s expansion. It is actually not so strange that Russia is feared by its neighbours and that Finland and Sweden are seeking membership in NATO.

The Swedish government is currently supporting an expansion and restoration of Sweden’s once comprehensive, but now neglected network of nuclear shelters, introducing obligatory conscription of youngsters fit for military service, and strengthening the defence of Gotland, a strategically important island located in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

After World War II, the Soviet Union usurped an enclave which actually ought to have belonged to either Poland or Lithuania – Kaliningrad, situated by the Baltic coast and equipped it with the highest density of military installations in Europe. It became headquarter of the large Russian Baltic fleet. In Kaliningrad, Russia has recently built up a formidable military presence encompassing nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of soldiers.

Not being a supporter of policies and actions United States has exercised in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, cannot overshadow the fear that most Europeans nurture while facing the powerful giant of the East, which, admittedly, does not have an impressive record when it comes to protecting human rights.

Some sources: Putin, Vladimir (2007) Speech delivered at the MSC http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/copy/24034 Sarotte, Mary Elise (2022) Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pucci, Molly (2020) Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

While each context has a unique mix of factors contributing to the growth of violent extremism, UNDP research uncovered common denominators that can inform relevant, coherent responses. Credit: UNDP Somalia

By Noura Hamladji and Samuel Rizk
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2023 (IPS)

There is no better environment for the expansion of violent extremist groups than a vacuum in state authority. It provides ideal conditions for these groups to prey on existing and historical grievances, fill the void with promises of financial support, access to services and attention for marginalized, neglected communities.

But, at what cost?

In sub-Saharan Africa, we are witnessing the toll. In the past decade, violence linked to the influence of global violent extremist groups like Al Qaeda and Daesh has spread swiftly across the region. In 2022, new global epicentres of terrorism were found in sub-Saharan Africa.

With thousands killed and millions displaced, this violence threatens the stability of the entire region and hinders development gains on the continent.

To better understand how violent extremist groups proliferate, and how they impact development and social cohesion, UNDP commissioned unique research to find out what gives violent extremists a foothold in particular contexts.

We looked at the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, DR Congo, Somalia and Northern Mozambique. What we found is that while every country – and district – has its own story, there are clear common denominators that help design relevant, coherent responses.

This new study, Dynamics of Violent Extremism in Africa: Conflict Ecosystems, Political Ecology, and the Spread of the Proto-State complements the research we have done into how and why individuals join violent extremist groups in the Journey to Extremism series.

Filling the void

As they expand in size and resources, buttressed by a link to a global ideological orientation, some violent extremist groups organize in ways akin to local government structures. They begin to compete with the state not only by monopolizing the threat/use of violence – in this case, instilling terror – but also by promising some of the most essential local services that people are aspiring to, such as a relative sense of security, sources of income and swift adjudication of disputes.

They may do so cruelly and oppressively, but even that may initially be attractive to communities weary of years of lawlessness, corruption and chaos. Indeed, the more deeply structured local violent extremist groups have evolved from raiding bands and now show many of the characteristics of a “proto-state”, typified by Daesh in Syria.

As the study findings suggest, the modus operandi of these local violent extremist groups is not centred mainly around persuading people to adopt their ideology. Instead – and often coming from the locality itself – they are grievance entrepreneurs, exploiting local development deficits, and forging alliances of convenience with other violent groups and criminal networks, like smugglers or local militias.

Even so, this does not make them one-dimensional opportunists. Their link to global networks helps to give them direction, binds them together and adds to their appeal. They are both global and local, both ideological and economic alternatives that can be appealing to people living in perceived or de facto state vacuum.

One common finding in this study is that violent extremist groups rarely appear in places well served by stable, predictable governments and governance systems. Instead, they operate where there is already poverty and instability, away from capital cities, in marginalized places where public services are thin or non-existent – all of which are often the product of local power-brokers’ interests.

The lack of trust between communities in these remote and crisis-hit areas and their government is also a common factor highlighted in the research. All too often communities suffer acute insecurity, feeling let down, targeted, and abused by the very state that should be protecting them. Violent extremist groups then plug in to fear or anger among communities and local leaders.

The first step to addressing this growing trend is to understand the political economy of violent extremist groups, and the sources of their power, with a view to halt and reverse their stranglehold on society.

The next step requires collaboration by the international community, supporting national partners not only to address the visible manifestations of the problem, but also to reverse years or decades of state fragility, exclusion and insecurity that emboldened these groups over time.

To this end, UNDP’s work on sub-national and local governance and institutions is critical – resilient, responsive, accountable, transparent, linked to national-level reforms that will have the biggest impact on violent extremist groups’ “business models.”

UNDP also works to empower local communities and local leaders towards positive and inclusive governance and improving access to basic services in under-served areas. This is the way to avoid recreating the same conditions that enabled the governance void to exist in first instance.

Gaining a foothold

It is clear that many of the conflicts which give these groups a foothold are over land and water. Desertification, climate change and poor land management have made traditional ways of life difficult in many places where land has degraded and pastures no longer support herds, nor do farms support crops.

But this need not be irreversible. With careful attention to local power politics, social relationships and trust-building, we can help communities to regenerate land and revive livelihoods – and to capture carbon in the soil in the process, offering local solutions to global problems and giving communities agency in shaping their present and future.

We call it “political ecology”, and with this approach we can simultaneously improve lives and undercut the appeal of violent extremist groups.

Also crucial to this approach is understanding how illicit funds flow around an economy, both inside a country and across borders; how power-brokers depend on and manipulate instability and corruption for greater influence; and which actors have a real interest in reform. This knowledge can help identify and interdict income sources of violent extremist groups while sustainably rebuilding local economies.

A human-centred approach

While there is a common thread of misogyny in the narrative and behaviour of violent extremist groups, women’s roles are not homogenous or predestined to victimhood. On one hand, Boko Haram has used women as suicide bombers and al Shabaab as intelligence sources, but on the other hand women form the backbone of many peacebuilding and victim support efforts, and are the engine of cross-border trade in many areas.

This very diversity makes it more important to ensure that both women and men are fully involved in our efforts, from analysis to implementation to evaluation. In the end, where does the study address our collective approach to human security, to people-centred development, justice and peace?

These conflicts, and all the horrors committed by these groups, leave deep scars, and the trauma is long-lasting. Even in contexts that are not impacted by war, political conflict or pervasive violent extremism, we are starting to understand the cost of recent lockdowns and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, in mental health and alienation.

In conflict zones, the depth of trauma needs much more research, but we know it is severe. And people cope with it in ways that can lead to further violence, at a personal, family and community level. Sadly, that often helps to perpetuate cycles of conflict.

So, if we are to address these historical, multigenerational grievances which violent extremists can prey on, while working to heal their ongoing grief, we need to expand our capacity to provide the mental health and psycho-social support that individuals and communities need.

And if we can do so, we can demonstrate in action the positive alternatives to hatred and violence that these groups peddle.

Development first

A new approach is needed – one that first invests in understanding and complex ways in which these violent extremist groups win hearts and minds in different communities, acting as alternatives to state authority.

With this knowledge, we can work together with national and local governments to ensure a developmental, preventive, inclusive approach where people have access to the rights, goods and services they need to live prosperous lives, thus removing the power that these groups wield. Rather than helping people to get by; getting ahead, with hope and dignity, should be the goal.

Through this approach, we can improve the lives of citizens and communities across the region and turn back the tide of violence and despair. The challenge remains complex and urgent, and our collective responses must overcome by being more informed, adaptive, innovative and inclusive to promote and sustain development and peace.

Noura Hamladji is Deputy Regional Director, Regional Bureau for Africa;
Samuel Rizk is Head of Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Responsive Institutions, UNDP

To learn more, visit the UNDP Prevention of Violent Extremism website.

Note: The research study was prepared in a process co-led by the UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA) and the Crisis Bureau (CB) Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Responsive Institutions (CPPRI)/Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE) Team. The study paper was developed by lead researcher Peter Rundell and supporting researchers Olivia Lazard and Emad Badi, under the editorial direction of Noura Hamladji and Samuel Rizk, and coordination by Nika Saeedi and Nirina Kiplagat.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The National Assembly of Venezuela, overwhelmingly pro-government since most of the opposition boycotted the elections, approved in a first reading a draft law that would make it necessary for NGOs to obtain authorization from the executive branch in order to function. CREDIT: National Assembly

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Feb 27 2023 (IPS)

The Venezuelan parliament, in the hands of the ruling party, is moving towards passing a law to control non-governmental organizations (NGOs) so that, in practice, they could not exist independently.

The new law “not only puts at risk the work of helping victims of human rights violations, but also all the humanitarian and social assistance work carried out by independent organizations,” Rafael Uzcátegui, coordinator of the human rights group Provea, one of the oldest and renowned NGOs in the country, told IPS.

Ali Daniels, a lawyer who is the director of the NGO Access to Justice, was also emphatic when he told IPS that the law “is contradictory and, by design, is made to be breached, since it is impossible to meet the 20 requirements and 12 sub-requirements that it imposes on civil society organizations.”

The bill, entitled the Law for the Control, Regularization, Action and Financing of Non-Governmental and Related Organizations, was approved without dissent at first reading as a whole in the single-chamber legislature on Jan. 24. It must now be debated article by article in order to be passed.

In the current legislature – which has 277 members, many more than the 165 provided for by the 1999 constitution – the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its allies hold 256 seats, and the rest are in the hands of groups that refused to take part in the boycott of the 2020 legislative elections called by the main opposition party.

The memorandum for the draft law states that it is inspired by a similar law passed in Bolivia in 2013, and highlights that NGOs “depend almost exclusively on ‘aid’ from Western governments, which generally goes to countries of geopolitical importance and is linked to an interventionist framework.”

Diosdado Cabello, the number two in the PSUV under President Nicolás Maduro and the president of the National Assembly, said that through NGOs opposition groups “conspire against the country. They are not non-governmental organizations. They do not depend on the Venezuelan state, but on the gringo (US) government; they are instruments of imperialism.”

The new law will “put an end to their easy life,” he said.

The PSUV not only has control over the executive and legislative branches, but also the judiciary, the electoral commission, the public prosecutor’s office, the comptroller’s office and the ombudsman’s office. In addition, it has staunch support from the armed forces.

The main opposition parties have been intervened by the judiciary, several of their leaders are in exile or disqualified from running for office, and press, radio and television outlets that provide anything but officially sanctioned news have practically been driven to extinction.

In addition, there are 270 political prisoners in the country (150 members of the military and 120 civilians), according to the daily registry kept by the human rights NGO Foro Penal.

In this context, different NGOs and the bishops of the Catholic Church stand out as critical and independent voices.

NGO programs to assist the needy with food and medicine in Venezuela, a country in the grip of a severe socioeconomic crisis, would be affected if they must meet the numerous requisites laid out in a draft law, warns a statement signed by more than 400 organizations. CREDIT: Alimenta la Solidaridad

Nearly a month after the bill was approved in first reading, it has not yet been officially presented, and the text that was leaked from parliament is setting off alarm bells among civil society organizations.

More than 400 organizations, including several from abroad such as Amnesty International, Civil Rights Defenders, Transparency International, Poder Ciudadano of Argentina, Chile Transparente and the Center for Rights and Development of Peru, produced a document expressing their alarm and rejection of the draft law.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who visited Caracas two days after the preliminary approval of the draft law, said that when he talked to the authorities “I reiterated the importance of guaranteeing the civic space, and I called for a broad consultative process on the law.”

Hands tied

NGOs complain that, first of all, the new law will declare illegal any existing non-profit association, organization or foundation that fails to adapt to the new provisions, even though this violates the principle of non-retroactivity.

In addition to entities defined as NGOs, the law will also apply to charitable or educational foundations, chambers or other business associations and even social clubs – in other words, any kind of civil association.

It creates a long list of requirements and requisites, including mandatory registration and constant renewals, “without setting a time limit or clear evaluation criteria, or providing any guarantee of due process in case of denial.”

Daniels also said the new law requires a sworn statement of assets from the members, representatives and workers of each NGO, together with detailed information on how they obtain and use funds.

In addition, the new law states that organizations must not only register, but also must obtain express authorization from the government, which could thus decide which ones can and cannot operate.

The draft law on NGOS will affect programs carried out by foundations such as the Catholic Fe y Alegría, which for years has run a network of schools in rural areas and poor neighborhoods, as well as a network of educational radio stations. CREDIT: Fe y Alegría

In the event that the authorities suspect any irregularity, it must open an investigation, and by doing so it can suspend operations of the organization, by means of a precautionary measure.

NGOs are generically prohibited from carrying out political activities, which makes it possible to accuse them in cases of defense of rights or criticism of the State.

The sanctions for failing to comply with requirements include fines of up to 12,000 dollars, “which in Venezuela’s current crisis no NGO can comply with without closing down,” Daniels said. Criminal action can also be taken against the organizations.

Carlos Ayala Corao, former chair of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said the new law “violates the national and international legal system, and seeks to control society.”

Why now?

According to Uzcátegui, the law is the result of a years-long government policy of confronting NGOs, “in first place because we have been effective in attracting the attention of international mechanisms for the protection of human rights.”

“An investigation by the International Criminal Court, unprecedented in this continent, has been launched into possible crimes against humanity (by Venezuelan authorities), a major blow to Maduro’s international image,” Uzcátegui said.

The ICC is carrying out a preliminary investigation into accusations against the president and other political and military leaders, after complaints brought by families of their alleged responsibility in the death of demonstrators in protests, of opponents or military dissidents in interrogations, torture and other crimes.

Complaints from human rights groups, which are studied in investigations by entities such as the International Criminal Court, could have influenced the decision to draft a new law to prevent “political” aspects in the activities of NGOs. CREDIT: Civilisv

Venezuela experienced massive protests, some bloodily repressed, in 2014, 2017 and 2019, and so far in 2023 there have been dozens of demonstrations by public sector workers and pensioners, since the minimum wage and millions of pensions are equivalent to less than six dollars a month.

The head of Provea added that so far this year there have been dozens of workers’ protests against low wages and tiny pensions, “and the authorities are trying to curb this scenario of conflict with the actors of democratic society.”

He also said the new law could be another chess piece in the intermittent negotiations between the government and the opposition, “as are the political prisoners,” ahead of the 2024 presidential elections.

The consequences

If the law is passed, “it will prevent the work of critical voices, of support for victims of rights violations, but the most terrible consequences will not be experienced by the organizations but by the people who are the beneficiaries of our activities,” Uzcátegui stressed.

Daniels said the draft law does not cover companies such as banks, for example, but it does cover their chambers, which are civil associations, or the entities that run schools or soup kitchens, many of them in the neediest areas, and which have registered and act as foundations.

“This is the case of the community soup kitchens run by Caritas (a Catholic organization), or free medicine banks run by the NGOs Convite and Acción Solidaria, or the network of community schools run by Fe y Alegría (created by the Catholic Jesuit order),” Uzcátegui added.

More than 90 organizations called on Colombian President Gustavo Petro (L), seen at a border meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro on Feb. 16, to lobby for the NGO bill to be scrapped. CREDIT: Presidency of Venezuela

Consequences at an international level are also likely, given that most NGOs turn to international donors to finance their activities, and because various international entities do not act directly in the country but do so through NGOs that have become their local partners.

It will also influence the regional political game by following the path taken by Nicaragua, which has outlawed thousands of organizations, and “we are alerting neighboring countries that the crisis in Venezuela will expand and with it emigration, including activists from NGOs seeking refuge,” said Uzcátegui.

During Maduro’s 10 years in the presidency, marked by an acute economic crisis, with a drop of up to 80 percent of GDP and prolonged hyperinflation, more than seven million Venezuelans – almost a quarter of the population – have left the country, mainly to neighboring nations.

More than 90 organizations presented a letter to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, asking him to intervene by making an effort to get the law dismissed and to help persuade the government not to undermine free association as a human right.

Uzcátegui says final approval of the draft law will drive the United States and Europe to impose harsher sanctions on Venezuela.

Thus, “the hardships of the populace and the conflict will increase, when what we Venezuelans need are spaces for dialogue and understanding,” argued the head of Provea.

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Feb 24 2023 (IPS)

Over the year since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, on one side of the border civil society has shown itself to be a vital part of the effort to save lives and protect rights – but on the other, it’s been repressed more ruthlessly than ever.

Ukraine’s civil society is doing things it never imagined it would. An immense voluntary effort has seen people step forward to provide help.

Overnight, relief programmes and online platforms to raise funds and coordinate aid sprang up. Numerous initiatives are evacuating people from occupied areas, rehabilitating wounded civilians and soldiers and repairing damaged buildings. Support Ukraine Now is coordinating support, mobilising a community of activists in Ukraine and abroad and providing information on how to donate, volunteer and help Ukrainian refugees in host countries.

In a war in which truth is a casualty, many responses are trying to offer an accurate picture of the situation. Among these are the 2402 Fund, providing safety equipment and training to journalists so they can report on the war, and the Freefilmers initiative, which has built a solidarity network of independent filmmakers to tell independent stories of the struggle in Ukraine.

Alongside these have come efforts to gather evidence of human rights violations, such as the Ukraine 5am Coalition, bringing together human rights networks to document war crimes and crimes against humanity, and OSINT for Ukraine, where students and other young people collect evidence of atrocities.

The hope is to one day hold Putin and his circle to account for their crimes. The evidence collected by civil society could be vital for the work of United Nations monitoring mechanisms and the International Criminal Court investigation launched last March.

As is so often the case in times of crisis, women are playing a huge role: overwhelmingly it’s men who’ve taken up arms, leaving women taking responsibility for pretty much everything else. Existing civil society organisations (CSOs) have been vital too, quickly repurposing their resources towards the humanitarian and human rights response.

Ukraine is showing that an investment in civil society, as part of the essential social fabric, is an investment in resilience. It can quite literally mean the difference between life and death. Continued support is needed so civil society can maintain its energy and be ready to play its full part in rebuilding the country and democracy once the war is over.

Russia’s crackdown

Vladimir Putin also knows what a difference an enabled and active civil society can make, which is why he’s moved to further shut down Russia’s already severely restricted civic space.

One of the latest victims is Meduza, one of the few remaining independent media outlets. In January it was declared an ‘undesirable organisation’. This in effect bans the company from operating in Russia and criminalises anyone who even shares a link to its content.

Independent broadcaster TV Rain and radio station Echo of Moscow were earlier victims, both blocked last March. They continue broadcasting online, as Meduza will keep working from its base in Latvia, but their reach across Russia and ability to provide independent news to a public otherwise fed a diet of Kremlin disinformation and propaganda is sharply diminished.

It’s all part of Putin’s attempt to control the narrative. Last March a law was passed imposing long jail sentences for spreading what the state calls ‘false information’ about the war. Even calling it a war is a criminal act.

The dangers were made clear when journalist Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to six years in jail over a Telegram post criticising the Russian army’s bombing of a theatre where people were sheltering in Mariupol last March. She’s one of a reported 141 people so far prosecuted for spreading supposedly ‘fake’ information about the Russian army.

CSOs are in the firing line too. The latest targeted is the Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia’s oldest human rights organisation. In January, a court ordered its shutdown. Several other CSOs have been forced out of existence.

In December an enhanced law on ‘foreign agents’ came into force, giving the state virtually unlimited power to brand any person or organisation who expresses dissent as a ‘foreign agent’, a label that stigmatises them.

The state outrageously mischaracterises its imperial war as a fight against the imposition of ‘western values’, making LGBTQI+ people another convenient target. In November a law was passed widening the state’s restriction of what it calls ‘LGBT propaganda’. Already the impacts are being felt with heavy censorship and the disappearance of LGBTQI+ people from public life.

The chilling effect of all these repressive measures and systematic disinformation have helped damp down protest pressure.

But despite expectation of detention and violence, people have protested. Thousands took to the streets across Russia to call for peace as the war began. Further protests came on Russia’s Independence Day in June and in September, following the introduction of a partial mobilisation of reservists.

Criminalisation has been the predictable response: over 19,500 people have so far been detained at anti-war protests. People have been arrested even for holding up blank signs in solo protests.

It’s clear there are many Russians Putin doesn’t speak for. One day his time will end and there’ll be a need to rebuild Russia’s democracy. The reconstruction will need to come from the ground up, with investment in civil society. Those speaking out, whether in Russia or in exile, need to be supported as the future builders of Russian democracy.

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

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

10-year-old Veronica visits the ruins of a high-rise building in the centre of Borodianka, Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF/UN0780457/Filippov

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Feb 24 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Today with heavy hearts we mark 365 days of a brutal against Ukraine.

Through this illegal act of aggression, over 450 children have been killed and another 900 injured. The shelling and bombing has damaged 3,000 educational institutions, and completely destroyed 420 schools and learning centers. As many as 5.7 million children have had their education disrupted, with no end in sight.

Why waging a war and leaving a legacy of so much suffering? This is not leadership. It is a violation of International Humanitarian Law and the UN Charter, deliberately and systematically attacking human beings and therewith their human rights.

Attacks on schools, hospitals and other vital infrastructure are senseless, cruel and inhumane. Why is it so difficult to grasp the basic imperative that every girl and every boy impacted by this war is entitled to safe and protective learning environments? They cannot and must not be targets. These innocent children are entitled to experience hope.

In all an estimated 2 million children have been forced to flee their homes in Ukraine, with the war creating seismic ripple effects across the globe. In Africa, food prices increases are forcing children to go to school hungry, in Europe and North America energy price spikes and inflation are creating growing economic uncertainty, and across the world, resources are diverted from essential services such as education, healthcare and humanitarian relief for forgotten crises in places like the Sahel.

The girls and boys of Ukraine are not alone. Worldwide, the number of children in high-intensity conflict zones has grown in recent years to a total of 230 million. This is more than the total populations of the Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom combined.

We live in a shameful era of human history. We have mismanaged the earth and humankind. The war against Ukraine indicates that we are nowhere close towards greater humanity and decency, peace and security.

With a quality education fit for the 21st Century, we need an education for all that provides proficiency in reading and mathematical skills, psycho-social and mental health services to children and adolescents traumatized by war and disasters, social-emotional skills to advance social cohesion, critical thinking to question harmful practices and poor governance, empathy to feel for their neighbors, society and the world, and an education that encourages an unstoppable will and confidence to change the destiny of our world. Nothing less will do.

Today, we honor the students, their parents, their teachers and school administration in Ukraine, as well as those in sub-Saharan African, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. May they be the ones that one day turn the tide.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 22 2023 (IPS)

On 9 February, Nicaragua’s dictator, Daniel Ortega, unexpectedly ordered the release of 222 political prisoners, including several former presidential candidates, opposition party leaders, journalists, priests, diplomats, businesspeople and former government supporters branded as enemies for expressing mild public criticism.

Also released were several members and leaders of civil society organisations (CSOs) and social movements, including student activists and environmental, peasant and Indigenous rights defenders. Some had been arrested on trumped-up charges for taking part in mass protests in 2018 and stuck in prison for more than four years.

But the Ortega regime didn’t simply let them go – it put them on a charter flight to the USA and before their plane had even landed permanently stripped them of their Nicaraguan nationality and their civil and political rights. The government made clear it wasn’t recognising their innocence; it was only commuting their sentences.

The rise of a police state

Ever since being re-elected in a blatantly fraudulent election in November 2021, Ortega has sought to make up for his lack of democratic legitimacy by establishing a police state. The regime effectively outlawed all civil society and independent media, closing more than 3,000 CSOs and 55 media outlets. It subverted the judicial system to falsely accuse, convict and imprison hundreds of critics and intimidate everyone else into compliance.

Political prisoners have been treated with purposeful cruelty, as though they’re enemy hostages – kept in isolation, either in the dark or under permanent bright lighting, given insufficient food and refused medical care, subjected to constant interrogations, denied legal counsel and allowed only irregular visits by family members, if at all. Psychological torture has been a constant, and many have been also subjected to physical torture.

The release of some prisoners hasn’t signalled any improvement in conditions or move towards democracy, as made clear by the treatment experienced by one political prisoner, Catholic bishop Rolando Álvarez, who refused to board the plane to the USA.

In retaliation for his refusal to leave the country, his trial date was brought forward and held immediately, in the absence of any procedural safeguards. It predictably resulted in a 26-year sentence. Álvarez was immediately sent to prison, where he remains alongside dozens of others.

Stripped of citizenship

The constitutional amendment stripping the 222 released political prisoners of their citizenship states that ‘traitors to the homeland shall lose the status of Nicaraguan nationals’ – even though the constitution establishes that no national can be deprived of their nationality.

It was an illegal act on top of another illegal act. No one can be deported from their own country: what the regime called a deportation was a banishment, something against both domestic law and international human rights standards.

On 15 February, the regime doubled down: it stripped 94 more people of their nationality. Those newly declared stateless included prominent political dissidents, civil society activists, journalists and the writers Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramírez, both of whom had held government positions in the 1980s. Most of the 94 were already living in exile. They were declared ‘fugitives from justice’.

Mixed reactions

By rendering 326 people stateless, the Nicaraguan dictatorship fuelled instant international solidarity. On 10 February, the Spanish government offered the 222 just-released prisoners Spanish citizenship – an offer many are bound to accept. On 17 February, more than 500 writers around the world rallied around Belli and Ramírez and denounced the closure of civic space in Nicaragua.

In Argentina, the Roundtable on Human Rights, Democracy and Society sent an open letter to President Alberto Fernández to request he offer Argentinian nationality to all Nicaraguans stripped of theirs.

But Argentina, alongside most of Latin America, has looked the other way. Its silence suggests that democratic consensus across the region is more fragile and superficial than might be hoped, with willingness to condemn rights violations depending on the ideological leanings of those who carry them out.

Currently all the region’s big democracies – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico – have governments that define themselves as left-wing. But only one of their presidents, Chile’s Gabriel Boric, has consistently criticised Nicaragua’s authoritarian turn. In response to the latest developments he tweeted a personal message of solidarity with those affected, calling Ortega a dictator. The rest have either issued mild official statements or simply remained silent.

Now what?

The Nicaraguan government insisted that releasing the prisoners was its own decision. The fact it was accompanied by further violations of released prisoners’ rights was meant as a demonstration of power.

But the move looks like it was made in the expectation of receiving something in return. The Nicaraguan government has long demanded that US sanctions be lifted; at a time when one of its closest ideological allies, Russia, is unable to provide any significant support, Nicaragua needs the USA more than ever. But the US government has always said the release of political prisoners must be the first step towards negotiations.

Given this, the unilateral surrender of people it considers dangerous conspirators to the state it proclaims is its worst enemy doesn’t seem much like a show of force. And if it isn’t, then it’s a valuable advocacy opportunity. The international community must push for the restoration of civic space and the return of free, fair and competitive elections. The first step should be to support the hundreds who’ve been expelled from their own country, as the future builders of democracy in Nicaragua.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A view of the Security Council Chamber as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (on screen) of Ukraine, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine. April 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine began 24 February 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Arul Louis
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2023 (IPS)

Paralysed by its own Charter and structure, the world organisation that is charged with preventing wars confronts an existential challenge from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

When Security Council Permanent member Russia sent its troops into a smaller neighbour defying the UN Charter and all norms of international relations a year ago next Friday, Antonio Guterres, “This is the saddest moment in my tenure as Secretary-General of the United Nations”.

Beyond sadness from the betrayal and the pain inflicted on nations around the world, especially the poorest, the war drives into the very foundation of the UN built nearly 78 years ago.

Guterres warned this month, “I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war, I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open”.

And the invasion has raised questions about the UN’s resolve “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” as the first sentence of its Charter declares.

Yet the Charter itself has paralysed the UN by conferring veto powers for permanent members at the Security Council, which alone can act,.Russia’s vetoes have mired the Council in the morass of inaction renewing calls for its reform.

Describing the situation, General Assembly President Csaba Korosi said, “The Security Council — the main guarantor of international peace and security – has remained blocked, unable to fully carry out its mandate”.

“Growing numbers are now demanding its reform,” he said noting that at the Assembly’s High-Level Week in September, “one-third of world leaders underscored the urgent need to reform the Council — more than double the number in 2021.”

While the reform process — in which India has a special interest as an aspirant for a permanent seat –that has itself been stymied for nearly two decades has come to the fore, it is not likely to happen any time soon.

But the General Assembly, which does not have the enforcement powers of the Council, has used the imbroglio to set a precedent forcing permanent members when they wield their veto to face it and explain their action.

Russia appeared before the Assembly to answer for its vetoes while facing a barrage of criticism.

The Assembly also revived a seldom-used action under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution of calling for an emergency special session when the Council fails in its primary duty of maintaining peace and security.

It passed a resolution in March demanding that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”.

It received 141 votes – getting more than two-thirds of the votes 193 required for it – while India was among the 35 countries that abstained. This, as well as the subsequent three passed last year ultimately were but an exercise in moral authority with no means to enforce it.

A proposal made by Mexico and France in 2015 calling on permanent members to refrain from using their vetoes on issues involving them also has been getting a re-airing– but to no avail.

India, which was a member of the Council last year was caught in the middle of the polarisation at the UN, both at the Council and the Assembly, because of its dependence on Russian arms and the support it had received at crucial times in the Security Council from its predecessor the Soviet Union.

India abstained at least 11 times on substantive resolutions relating to Ukraine in both chambers of the UN, including resolutions at the Council sponsored by Moscow.

India faced tremendous pressure from the West to join in voting on resolutions against Russia and openly take a definitive stand condemning Moscow.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the Security Council in September, “As the Ukraine conflict continues to rage, we are often asked whose side we are on. And our answer, each time, is straight and honest. India is on the side of peace and will remain firmly there”.

And while keeping the semblance of neutrality while voting, India came closest to taking a stand in support of Ukraine — and by inference against Russia — when he said, “We are on the side that respects the UN Charter and its founding principles”.

Now out of the Council, New Delhi’s profile has been lowered and it also does not have to publicly display its tight-rope walk as often, although it may yet have to do it again this week when the Assembly is likely to have a resolution around the invasion’s anniversary.

The pain of the invasion is felt far beyond the borders of Ukraine.

Guterres said, “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is inflicting untold suffering on the Ukrainian people, with profound global implications”.

The fallout of the war has set back the UN’s omnibus development goals.

More immediately, several countries came to the brink of famine and the spectre of hunger still stalks the world because of shortages of agricultural input, while many countries, including many developed nations, face severe energy and financial problems.

The war shut off exports of food grains from Ukraine and limited exports from Russia, the two countries that have become the world’s food baskets.

Besides depriving many countries of food grains, the shortages raised global prices.

The one victory for the UN has been the Black Sea agreement forged with Russia, Ukraine and Turkey in July to allow safe passage for ships carrying foodgrains from Ukrainian ports.

Guteress’ Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that in about 1,500 trips by ships so far, “more than 21.3 million tonnes of grain and food products have been moved so far during the initiative, helping to bring down global food prices and stabilising markets”.

A UN outfit, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has also made an impact during the war, working to protect nuclear facilities in Ukraine that were occupied by Russia’s forces while shelling around them.

It said that it has managed to station teams of safety and security experts at Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and at Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 disaster “to help reduce the risk of a severe nuclear accident during the ongoing conflict in the country”.

Arul Louis is a New York-based nonresident senior fellow with the New Delhi-based think tank, Society for Policy Studies.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A rural Peruvian woman stands in front of police officers who guard the streets of Lima during the ongoing protests demanding immediate elections to resolve the current political crisis. She is part of the delegations from the country’s southern Andes highlands, one of the rural regions neglected by the overwhelming centralism of Lima and its elites. CREDIT: Walter Hupiú/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Feb 20 2023 (IPS)

The current political and social upheaval in Peru is not a temporary problem, but has to do with deeply-rooted inequality and social hierarchies, according to historian José Carlos Agüero.

In this South American country, 59 people have died in the two months since Dina Boluarte was named president, 47 directly due to the crackdown on the protests that began on Dec. 7. The 60-year-old president has stood firmly behind the armed forces and the police despite the death toll caused by their actions.

Peru has been a republic for 200 years, but due to the acute Lima-oriented centralism deep-seated problems of inequality and discrimination especially affect rural Amazonian and indigenous Quechua and Aymara populations.

“What a social upheaval can bring are not solutions, but momentum that can help combat the most deadly effects of this combination of factors that is so dangerous to people, which is what matters to me above all,” Agüero said in an interview with IPS.

In 2021, according to the latest official statistics, urban poverty stood at 22 percent and rural poverty at 40 percent, especially high in the country’s highlands and Amazon rainforest. Regions such as Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Puno – some of the centers of the current wave of protests – had the highest levels of poverty, ranging from 37 to 41 percent.

Lima is home to more than 10 million people, nearly a third of the total population of 33 million. The capital receives a large influx of people from the provinces, who flock to the city seeking opportunities that do not exist in their places of origin.

Agüero, 48, is a historian, essayist and writer who won the National Literature Award for non-fiction in 2018. In his work he reflects on the country and its past. He himself is the son of two members of the Maoist armed group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), who were extrajudicially executed in the 1980s.

In his analysis of the causes of what is currently happening in Peru, he mentions various aspects raised by other historians such as cultural and ethnic aspects in relation to how the groups that hold power in the capital have not paid enough attention to the regional dynamics of the country’s Andes highlands, and have underestimated the region’s tradition of protests.

He also cites the crisis shaking the political system of parties and representation, which sociologists and political scientists have been pointing to for more than two decades, without managing to bring about any solution.

And he refers to – and disagrees with – anthropological interpretations by observers who argue that the country is in the grip of a process of indigenous, especially Aymara, people demanding and gaining respect for their rights.

Agüero’s explanations are based on his studies of history and racism, which he says reflect the burden of failing to dismantle the social hierarchy still in place in Peru in the 21st century.

“Reactions break out against the caste-like hierarchical relations periodically, not just now. Outbreaks are ready to occur at any time,” he said, referring to the social protests that have been ongoing since Boluarte was sworn in as president on Dec. 7, after President Pedro Castillo was impeached by Congress.

Castillo, a 53-year-old rural schoolteacher and trade unionist, became president in July 2021, thanks to strong support in rural Peru, with the backing of a far-left party, which later turned its back on him. His government was characterized by poor management and a rejection of politicians and the traditional elites.

The impeachment and imprisonment of Castillo sparked mass demonstrations, especially in the central and southern Andes, by people demanding that early elections be held this year and calling for a citizen consultation on a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution. Boluarte finally agreed to bring elections forward to October 2023, but Congress shelved the bill.

“Overt racist interactions are not the only aspect we can talk about, but also the constant belittling and snubs, which are perhaps the most powerful driving force behind our relations when it comes to the moment of truth, when it is either kill or be killed, or when you have to decide on the distribution of wealth, or the legitimacy of a protest or a political proposal,” said Agüero.

He said that according to this logic, there are people who will be left out of the national pact because they are seen as less worthy or less equal. “All of that has been put back into play to explain what is happening right now,” he said.

Rocío Quispe, a 64-year-old indigenous Quechua woman, worked hard to build her house in the hills of the Santa María neighborhood in the working-class Ate Vitarte district in eastern Lima, after her family fled the highlands department of Ayacucho, the epicenter of poverty that was hard-hit by the 1980-2000 internal armed conflict. In the photo she sits with her six-year-old granddaughter and the family pet. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Coming from a ‘forgotten people’

Rocío Quispe, a Quechua woman from the central Andean department of Ayacucho, one of the areas hardest hit by the internal armed conflict that ravaged Peru between 1980 and 2000, lives in the Santa María neighborhood in the Ate Vitarte district in the east of Lima, one of the most populous with just over 700,000 inhabitants, mainly of middle to low socioeconomic status.

She is 64 years old and lives with her 27-year-old daughter and six-year-old granddaughter in a house that she has built little by little in the hilly area of ​​Santa María on the outskirts of the capital. She does not have a steady job and does what she can, selling food for instance, to get by. She is one of the millions of people from other parts of Peru who have come to Lima in search of a better future.

“We came because of terrorism, we dropped out of school, we left everything behind. So many people were shot dead there, they would come in your house and kill you. First my sister came, then I came and we have worked here without stealing, without harming anyone,” she told IPS.

She said her aim was to live in peace, free of the fear she faced in her home region.
Her family had fields in the rural community of Soccos, where a massacre of 32 women, men, girls and boys was committed by a police unit called Los Sinchis in 1983.

“Many of us from Ayacucho came to Lima to have a life because we felt abandoned,” Quispe said. In the capital she worked hard to buy a piece of land and help her parents, and when she got pregnant her top priority became her daughter’s education.

Like many of her neighbors, Quispe protested in December outside the Barbadillo prison where Castillo was initially detained, accused of staging a coup d’état for trying to dissolve Congress and install an emergency government, ahead of an impeachment vote by legislators.

“Because we are protesting they call us terrorists. But the real terrorists are the people who sell out their homeland, who forget about our people, who from their positions in power accuse us just because we want our children to have a good school, a good education,” she said indignantly.

When she speaks there is strength in her voice: “We are a neglected people from Ayacucho where we grew potatoes, corn, wheat and barley, and for them to call us terrorists makes us very angry. They call us terrorists, they call us stinky ‘serranos’ (hillbillies), cholos (a derogatory term for indigenous or mixed-race people), they call us all sorts of things.”

And she complains that Congress, which she sees as a corrupt center of power, conspired to overthrow Castillo.

“These people who they despise elected a president who was a provincial ‘serrano’ schoolteacher. Maybe he didn’t really know how everything worked, but the lawmakers didn’t leave him alone, until they drove him to desperation,” Quispe said.

The protests continue, although with less intensity. There are roadblocks in regions such as Cuzco, Puno, and Arequipa, while Boluarte began a round of talks with political parties on Feb. 15 to address the crisis.

The measure was seen as a grasping at straws to hold onto the office of president, given the documented reports about a number of killings committed by the security forces during the crackdown, which Boluarte has not condemned.

Historian, essayist and writer José Carlos Agüero is photographed at the presentation of his book Persona (Person), in September 2018 in the north Lima district of Los Olivos. In his critical reflection on the current social outbreak in Peru, he says the elites form a network of privilege that is also racist, neglecting the country’s rural indigenous and mixed-race majority. CREDIT: Courtesy Rossana López

Not one, but many Limas

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, in Lima 65 percent of the population consider themselves ‘mestizo’ or mixed-race, 19 percent indigenous, eight percent black and five percent white. Nevertheless, racism is a daily feature of life and has turned many people intensely against those who are protesting in their regions or have come to the capital to make themselves heard.

Why don’t the elites recognize that there are many Limas? Although Agüero said he could not give a definitive answer because there are few studies on the elites in Peru, he said he could talk about their behavior and the way they organized in politics.

He believes that it is not a question of ignorance; it is not that they do not understand. “There are highly educated people who have studied in foreign universities and are part of what we call the elite. They have demographic data, surveys, everything necessary to understand that Lima is a very large metropolis, now made up of several different Limas,” the writer added.

“But they rule like elites in other parts of the world. They maintain the conviction that they are privileged. In Peru, it seems to me that they form a network of privilege in a way that is also racist,” he remarked.

Agüero said that this position isolates them but at the same time puts them in a role of paternalistic control.

“What matters most to me is that the distribution of power, real, economic and symbolic, should stop being a matter of privilege and in the control of an elite network that is also racist. For me that is the issue,” he said.