Foundations Launch New Collaborative Fund To Strengthen Democracy In West Africa

The Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Luminate, and Open Society Foundations have launched a $20 million West Africa Democracy Fund (WADF) to reimagine, renew and strengthen democracy across the region. The fund, targeted at supporting West African states currently facing various democratic challenges, will, over a period of three years, support activities to increase citizens’ engagement with democratic and political transitions in the respective countries.

Darren Walker, President of Ford Foundation stated, “I am grateful for the collaboration of our philanthropic, civil society, and government partners, as we launch the West Africa Democracy Fund, which follows the lead of the people of West Africa as they work to strengthen the foundations of democracy and build a more resilient future.”

“Research has shown the inextricable link between the rising decline of democracy across West Africa and rising inequality, therefore these issues must be addressed simultaneously. Greater citizen participation in democratic processes is needed to fully realize a peaceful, inclusive democracy that empowers citizens to build a society that is more just, and that contributes to greater prosperity and stable economy.”

“As an organization focused on the advancement of social justice, the Ford Foundation is matching our commitment with action with this Fund, which we envision will propel our collective efforts in expanding democratic and civic spaces for citizens’ voices to be included in defining the norms for the governance of their countries,” Walker added.

“In West Africa, the demand for democracy is not matched by the supply of democracy. Opposition to military rule has weakened across the continent, and citizens bear the brunt of abuses of power by ruling classes,” said Dr. Kole Shettima, Director, Nigeria Office of the MacArthur Foundation. “The new Democracy Fund will support the realization of aspirations of West Africans for ‘democracy dividends’ and a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.”

Brian Kagoro, Managing Director of Programs at the Open Society Foundations, stated, “Democracy in West Africa is an ideal embedded in the traditions and cultures of the people. It is an aspiration ingrained in the vision of the young people. The fight for a more democratic West Africa is a fight for a West Africa that is free from imperial domination, neo-colonial political mortgaging, and external manipulation. True democracy in West Africa requires governments that are accountable to their citizens and systems that deliver equitable outcomes for all. The democracy fund provides an opportunity to leverage the current momentum for democratic advancement in the region.”

According to Dr. ChiChi Aniagolu-Okoye, Regional Director, Ford Foundation Office of West Africa (OWA), “It is important to emphasize that the West Africa Democracy Fund is the result of deep engagement and listening across the region with local leaders and Civil Society Organizations. Therefore, the solutions we seek through this Fund will be homegrown, rooted in the needs and aspirations of the people of the sub-region and driven by the people themselves” she concluded.

Through grantmaking to national consortia, the Fund will support activities that promote a more inclusive approach to democracy including multi-stakeholder dialogues, regional engagements with the Economic Community of West African States and the African Union, joint learning and the strengthening of key state institutions, including the judiciary. Luminate is focusing its contributions on supporting tech accountability efforts.

------------THE FORD FOUNDATION

Are some human rights more important than others? Religious freedom advocates often put it first

BY LAURA E. ALEXANDER

Every year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) releases a report on religious oppression around the world, recommending that the State Department designate specific countries as especially severe violators. In this year’s report, released May 1, 2023, Iran came in for particular criticism after months of protests and arrests sparked by headscarf laws. Sri Lanka, Cuba and Nicaragua were also singled out as areas of concern; Nicaragua is specifically accused of persecution against Catholics.

Created through the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the commission exemplifies how the right to freedom of religious expression has come to play a significant role in U.S. discussions about human rights – and not just abroad. Legislation and recent Supreme Court rulings have created a new legal landscape in which religious freedom claims have become more likely to prevail at home, including well-known court cases like the Hobby Lobby ruling on contraception.

Underlying many debates about how courts and policies treat religion is an often-unspoken question: Is any human right – religious freedom in particular – more important than another? And what happens when human rights claims come into conflict?

As a scholar of human rights and religion, I believe it’s important to unpack those questions – and to unpack the difference they make in the lives of people affected by U.S. policies around the world.

For one, for all

For the last several decades, the United Nations has been careful to describe all human rights as interdependent. In this view, protecting any human right requires protecting all human rights.

As an example, think of two distinct rights recognized in the Declaration of Human Rights: the right to adequate food and the right to protest. A person who doesn’t have enough food to live on is unlikely to have the health and energy to protest, and someone deprived of food because of government policies may find it necessary to protest in order to claim their right to food.

The U.N. and many human rights advocates have also argued that all rights are equal: No human right outweighs another.

According to this view, the only permissible reason one right could ever be temporarily suspended is to protect some other right. Even then, restricting the first right should be a last resort, and it should be restored as soon as possible.

For instance, a person with active tuberculosis or some other contagious disease might be ordered to quarantine for a period. Forced quarantine restricts the individual’s right to freedom of movement, but it is considered more urgent to protect other people’s rights to life and health.

In other words, rights might sometimes conflict, but they all depend on each other and are of equal importance in principle. No human right can be ignored or downplayed.

Picking and choosing?

International discussion of human rights has not always reflected this view.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, after the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II. It captured a general international consensus that rights protection should shape international humanitarian policy. However, when the U.N. General Assembly attempted to make the rights in the declaration enforceable in international law, disagreements about the importance of different types of rights led to not one but two treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Some countries have not ratified the first, including China and Saudi Arabia; others have not ratified the second, including the United States.

Today, too, many political leaders do not view all rights as equally weighty. For example, the Chinese government is known to regularly invade citizens’ privacy and has brutally repressed minority groups. Chinese leaders and state-owned media have insisted that advancing people’s social and economic rights, such as peace and the right to basic subsistence, takes priority over pursuing civil and political rights.

In the United States, the opposite is true. U.S. leaders and influential thinkers have often argued that civil and political rights, like the right to vote or to a fair trial, are more fundamental than economic and social rights, that they are more practical to uphold, or that they fit more neatly into the country’s history of political thought. For example, some Republican politicians, such as Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, have argued that health care is a privilege, not a right.

Two-tier rights?

Questions about how U.S. foreign policy should balance protections for different kinds of rights came under a spotlight in 2019, when then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo created the “Commission on Unalienable Rights.” This commission’s stated goal was to advise the U.S. government on human rights, drawing on both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the founding documents of the United States.

USCIRF was not involved in the Commission on Unalienable Rights, but put out a statement in support of its work. At the time, USCIRF’s president was Tony Perkins, best known for his leadership of the evangelical nonprofit Family Research Council. In the statement, Perkins referred to religious freedom as the “most foundational” fundamental right.

The commission’s report received both praise and criticism from advocates and scholars for its attempt to distinguish “unalienable” rights, which all individuals have by nature, from “positive” rights, which are based in custom and written law. The report contends that, “from the founders’ point of view,” property rights and religious liberty are most essential, and governments should promote economic rights only insofar as those rights do not infringe on property and religious liberty rights.

The report also describes a few types of rights claims as matters of debate rather than settled law, such as the right to same-sex marriage, which it calls one of several “divisive social and political controversies” where “it is common for both sides to couch their claims in terms of basic rights.” Two sentences later, the writers argue that an “increase in rights claims, in some ways overdue and just, has given rise to excesses of its own.”

In short, the commission prioritized property rights and religious freedom claims. Pompeo’s State Department acted in line with these priorities, holding two summits on religious freedom with civic and religious leaders from around the world. The State Department also created an “International Religious Freedom Alliance” with more than two dozen nations, without similar initiatives around other human rights.

The course ahead

Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the Commission on Unalienable Rights was shelved. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has argued that all human rights are “co-equal” and has criticized the commission’s report for seeming to create a “hierarchy” of rights.

The State Department under Biden has expressed its intent to advance rights claims of LGBTQ+ individuals. Recently, it threatened sanctions on Uganda over a new bill that would impose punishments as severe as death for same-sex relationships.

The latest International Religious Freedom report demonstrates that the right to religious freedom is threatened in many places. The entire world has a long way to go in ensuring it is meaningfully protected. At the same time, debates remain heated over whether protecting this right should ever mean violating others.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

What’s at stake as protests rock Israel: 3 essential reads on democracy, security and human rights

BY NAOMI SCHALIT, BOAZ ATZILI, DAN ARBELL AND DOV WAXMAN

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, after 12 weeks of growing protest against his proposed judicial reforms, said he will order a temporary halt to the changes that aimed to rein in the power of Israel’s judiciary and grant virtually unaccountable power to politicians.

Netanyahu’s announcement came after massive protests had spread throughout the country, turbocharged by his firing the day before of Israel’s defense minister, who had called on the government to postpone the judicial reform.

City services and universities were shut down. The Histadrut, the country’s largest and most powerful labor organization, went on strike. Doctors walked out; Israel’s consul general in New York resigned; planes were grounded at the national airport. And tens of thousands of people demonstrated outside of the Knesset, the country’s parliament, as members of the country’s [far-right groups] called for violence – using “gasoline, explosives, tractors, guns, knives” as a member of one group put it – against the protesters.

Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president – a largely ceremonial post – had earlier in the month unveiled a proposed compromise on judicial reform that aimed to protect Israel’s democratic character. At the time, Herzog warned: “Israel is in the throes of a profound crisis. Anyone who thinks that a real civil war, of human life, is a line that we will not reach has no idea. The abyss is within touching distance.”

The Conversation has followed the growing crisis in Israel since the beginning of 2023. Here are three stories that will help you understand what’s at stake.

1. ‘A major threat to democracy’

Political scientist Boaz Atzili at American University wrote that “democracy is not just about holding elections. It is a set of institutions, ideas and practices that allow citizens a continuous, decisive voice in shaping their government and its policies.” Netanyahu’s far-right-wing government, sworn in on Dec. 29, 2022, “presents a major threat to Israeli democracy, and it does so on multiple fronts,” he wrote.

Atzili described the four ways the new government put Israeli democracy at risk, from “hostility to freedom of speech and dissent” to plans to “allow discrimination against the LGBTQ community and women” to “West Bank annexation and apartheid” and “erasing the separation of powers.”

The courts in Israel, wrote Atzili, “are the only institution that can check the power of the ruling parties.” The judicial reform would erase that separation of power and, he wrote, “as in Turkey, Hungary or even Russia, Israel could become a democracy in form only, devoid of all the ideas and institutions that underpin a government that is actually of the people and by the people.”

Read more: Israel's Netanyahu facing off against the supreme court and proposing to limit judicial independence - and 3 other threats to Israeli democracy

2. ‘A very dangerous period’

Scholar Dov Waxman, an Israel expert at UCLA, said that he initially thought the warnings of an impending civil war or strife “were exaggerated and unnecessarily alarmist.”

But by mid-February, as the protests grew from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands participating, Waxman changed his mind. “I think now those warnings are well founded. Israel is really entering a very dangerous period.”

The protests, Waxman wrote, “are driven by concerns over this judicial overhaul, but I think they speak to a broader anxiety, a fear among many Israelis about the future of democracy in Israel and the future of the country.”

But while Israelis are taking to the streets to defend their democracy, they have not included Palestinians in their protests.

“I can certainly understand why many Palestinians would be feeling that all of this sudden anxiety and concern for Israeli democracy ignores the fact that almost 50% of the population that Israel effectively rules over lacks equal rights and lacks the ability to vote in Israeli elections,” he wrote. “I think the fact that most Israelis don’t seem to connect these two issues suggests that they only see democracy as this internal domestic issue without any relevance to the Palestinian question.”

The crisis may also harm Israel’s interests outside of the state. “If the perception takes hold that Israel is no longer a democracy or not a liberal democracy,” wrote Waxman, “that could further weaken support for Israel in Congress and in the Democratic Party. It might even make it harder for them to continue to approve U.S. aid for Israel.”

3. A political crisis could become a security crisis

American University scholar Dan Arbell, who served in the Israel Defense Forces and as a member of the country’s foreign service, took note of an unprecedented aspect of the demonstrations: “It’s not simply the persistence and size of the protest that is evidence of the crisis,” he wrote. “It’s who is protesting.”

Arbell wrote that while the protests over the past three months have brought together people from a range of professions and interests, among the protesters is “a group of individuals rarely seen at anti-government protests over the country’s almost 75-year history: Israel Defense Forces reservists.” Those reservists, he wrote, “announced they will not volunteer for reserve duty service if the legislation passes in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.”

That’s a sign that “the crisis’s implications extend far beyond the domestic political arena.” That means the crisis doesn’t just have meaning for the civic realm. “Besides threatening to undermine the economy and deepen societal divides,” wrote Arbell, “it threatens to erode Israeli national security and provoke a constitutional crisis that could ensnare the military as well.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

What Was Humanity’s First Cultural Revolution?

We live in a fast-moving, technology-dominated era. Happiness is fleeting, and everything is replaceable or disposable. It is understandable that people are drawn to a utopian vision. Many find refuge in the concept of a “return” to an idealized past—one in which humans were not so numerous, and animals abounded; when the Earth was still clean and pure, and when our ties to nature were unviolated.

BY DEBORAH BARSKY

But this raises the question: Is this nothing more than a utopian vision? Can we pinpoint a time in our evolutionary trajectory when we wandered from the path of empathy, of compassion and respect for one another and for all forms of life? Or are we nihilistically the victims of our own natural tendencies, and must we continue to live reckless lifestyles, no matter the outcome?

Studying human prehistory enables people to see the world through a long-term lens—across which we can discern tendencies and patterns that can only be identified over time. By adopting an evolutionary outlook, it becomes possible to explain when, how, and why specific human traits and behaviors emerged.

The particularity of human prehistory is that there are no written records, and so we must try to answer our questions using the scant information provided for us by the archeological record.

The Oldowan era that began in East Africa can be seen as the start of a process that would eventually lead to the massive technosocial database that humanity now embraces and that continues to expand ever further in each successive generation, in a spiral of exponential technological and social creativity. The first recognizable Oldowan tool kits start appearing 2.6 million years ago; they contain large pounding implements, alongside small sharp-edged flakes that were certainly useful for, among other things, obtaining viscera and meat resources from animals that were scavenged as hominins (humans and their close extinct ancestors) competed with other large carnivores present in their environments. As hominins began to expand their technological know-how, successful resourcing of such protein-rich food was ideal for feeding the developing and energy-expensive brain.

Stone tool production—and its associated behaviors—grew ever more complex, eventually requiring relatively heavy investments into teaching these technologies to successfully pass them onward into each successive generation. This, in turn, established the foundations for the highly beneficial process of cumulative learning that became coupled with symbolic thought processes such as language, ultimately favoring our capacity for exponential development.

This had huge implications, for example, in terms of the first inklings of what we call “tradition”—ways to make and do things—that are indeed the very building blocks of culture. Underpinning this process, neuroscientific experiments carried out to study the brain synapses and areas involved during toolmaking processes show that at least some basic forms of language were likely needed in order to communicate the technologies required to manufacture the more complex tools of the Acheulian age that commenced in Africa about 1.75 million years ago. Researchers have demonstrated that the areas of the brain activated during toolmaking are the same as those employed for abstract thought processes, including language and volumetric planning.

When we talk about the Acheulian, we are referring to a hugely dense cultural phenomenon occurring in Africa and Eurasia that lasted some 1.4 million years. While it cannot be considered a homogenous occurrence, it does entail a number of behavioral and technosocial elements that prehistorians agree tie it together as a sort of unit.

Globally, the Acheulian technocomplex coincides generally with the appearance of the relatively large-brained hominins attributed to Homo erectus and the African Homo ergaster, as well as Homo heidelbergensis, a wide-ranging hominin identified in Eurasia and known to have successfully adapted to relatively colder climatic conditions. Indeed, it was during the Acheulian that hominins developed fire-making technologies and that the first hearths appear in some sites (especially caves) that also show indications of seasonal or cyclical patterns of use.

In terms of stone tool technologies, Acheulian hominins moved from the nonstandardized tool kits of the Oldowan to innovate new ways to shape stone tools that involved comparatively complex volumetric concepts. This allowed them to produce a wide variety of preconceived flake formats that they proceeded to modify into a range of standardized tool types. Conceptually, this is very significant because it implies that for the first time, stone was being modeled to fit with a predetermined mental image. The bifacial and bilateral symmetry of the emblematic Acheulian tear-shaped handaxes is especially exemplary of this particular hallmark.

The Acheulian archeological record also bears witness to a whole new range of artifacts that were manufactured according to a fixed set of technological notions and newly acquired abilities. To endure, this toolmaking know-how needed to be shared by way of ever more composite and communicative modes of teaching.

We also know that Acheulian hominins were highly mobile since we often find rocks in their tool kits that were imported from considerable distances away. Importantly, as we move through time and space, we observe that some of the tool making techniques actually show special features that can be linked to specific regional contexts. Furthermore, population densities increased significantly throughout the period associated with the later Acheulian phenomenon—roughly from around 1 million to 350,000 years ago—likely as a result of these technological achievements.

Beyond toolmaking, other social and behavioral revolutions are attributed to Acheulian hominins. Fire-making, whose significance as a transformative technosocial tool cannot be overstated, as well as other accomplishments, signal the attainment of new thresholds that were to hugely transform the lives of Acheulian peoples and their descendants. For example, Acheulian sites with evidence of species-specific hunting expeditions and systematized butchery indicate sophisticated organizational capacities and certainly also suggest that these hominins mastered at least some form of gestural—and probably also linguistic—communication.

All of these abilities acquired over thousands of years by Acheulian peoples enabled them not only to settle into new lands situated, for example, in higher latitudes, but also to overcome seasonal climatic stresses and so to thrive within a relatively restricted geographical range. While they were certainly nomadic, they established home-base type living areas to which they returned on a cyclical basis. Thus, the combined phenomena of more standardized and complex culture and regional lifeways led these ancient populations to carve out identities even as they developed idiosyncratic technosocial behaviors that gave them a sense of “belonging” to a particular social unit—living within a definable geographical area. This was the land in which they ranged and into which they deposited their dead (intentional human burials are presently only recognized to have occurred onward from the Middle Paleolithic). To me, the Acheulian represents the first major cultural revolution known to humankind.

So I suggest that it was during the Acheulian era that increased cultural complexity led the peoples of the world to see each other as somehow different, based on variances in their material culture. In the later Acheulian especially, as nomadic groups began to return cyclically to the same dwelling areas, land-linked identities formed that I propose were foundational to the first culturally based geographical borders. Through time, humanity gave more and more credence to such constructs, deepening their significance. This would eventually lead to the founding of modern nationalistic sentiments that presently consolidate identity-based disparity, finally contributing to justifying geographic inequality of wealth and power.

Many of the tough questions about human nature are more easily understood through the prism of prehistory, even as we make new discoveries. Take, for instance, the question of where the modern practice of organized violence emerged from.

Human prehistory, as backed by science, has now clearly demonstrated that there is no basis for dividing peoples based on biological or anatomical aspects and that warlike behaviors involving large numbers of peoples, today having virtually global effects on all human lives, are based on constructed imaginary ideologies. Geographical boundaries, identity-based beliefs, and religion are some of the conceptual constructs commonly used in our world to justify such behaviors. In addition, competition buttressed by concepts of identity is now being accentuated due to the potential and real scarcity of resources resulting from population density, consumptive lifestyles, and now also accelerated climate change.

On the question of whether or not the emergence of warlike behavior was an inevitable outcome, we must observe such tendencies from an evolutionary standpoint. Like other genetic and even technological traits, the human capacity for massive violence exists as a potential response that remains latent within our species until triggered by particular exterior factors. Of course, this species-specific response mode also corresponds with our degree of technological readiness that has enabled us to create the tools of massive destruction that we so aptly manipulate today.

Hierarchized societies formed and evolved throughout the Middle and Late Pleistocene when a range of hominins coevolved with anatomically modern humans that we now know appeared in Africa as early as 300,000 years ago. During the Holocene Epoch, human links to specific regional areas were strengthened even further by the sedentary lifestyles that developed into the Neolithic period, as did the inclination to protect the resources amassed in this context. We can conjecture the emergence of a wide range of sociocultural situations that would have arisen once increasing numbers of individuals were arranged into the larger social units permitted by the capacity to produce, store, and save sizable quantities of foodstuffs and other kinds of goods.

Even among other animals, including primates, increased population densities result in competitive behaviors. In this scenario, that disposition would have been intensified by the idea of accumulated goods belonging, as it were, to the social unit that produced them.

Bringing technology into play, we can clearly see how humans began to transform their know-how into ingenious tools for performing different acts of warfare. In the oldest tool kits known to humankind going back millions of years, we cannot clearly identify any artifacts that appear adequate to be used for large-scale violence. We don’t have evidence of organized violence until millions of years after we started developing tools and intensively modifying the environments around us. As we amplified the land-linked identity-based facet of our social lives, so did we continue to develop ever more efficient technological and social solutions that would increase our capacity for large-scale warfare.

If we can understand how these behaviors emerged, then we can also use our technological skills to get to the root of these problems and employ all we have learned to finally take a better hold of the reins of our future.

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The Future Of Humanity?

BY MARTIN LEFEVRE-MEDITATIONS

With America moribund and slouching toward dictatorship, and the international order collapsing, awakening human beings need to move to fill the vacuum at the global level, or all manner of authoritarianism will fill it at national levels.

Most people now realize that humankind is facing an unparalleled ecological and historical crisis, demanding a new way of thinking and feeling in a de facto global society. Politically, the United Nations, founded on the separate sovereignty of now around 200 nation-states, is imperiled, even as the necessity for effective global governance grows more urgent each month.

In the past, survival was the only issue. For billions of people today, it still is. But in rich countries like America, many have simply quit caring about anything except themselves. They don't count.

Though it has been said many times, it's unconscionable that there's so much poverty in a world of such wealth. The chasm between the haves and have-nots has to close, or humankind will descend into unending conflict.

Given new and rapidly emerging technologies, is the flow of insights and ideas radically changing thinking across the globe, or are people becoming even more tribal? The latter, obviously.

Boundaries truly do not matter anymore, but at this juncture of perilous transition, the future of humanity has never been in more doubt. And though it's a deep feature of human nature to believe there's always more time, Homo sapiens does not have an infinite number of chances to change course. Man is decimating the earth, and the earth will have the last say.

Obviously people can only survive and thrive in social settings, which are becoming dysfunctional all over the world. Our spiritual and intellectual potential for insight is eroding through unrestrained consumerism and a spreading cynicism about the human prospect.

In 50 years or less, computers will be able to run many of the functions of government that are now so susceptible to the corruption of venal politicians. Even so, contrary to creepy Elon Musk, who hates the earth and says, "I want to die on Mars," technology will not save us.

A true worldview, which looks out from one's locality and sees and feels for the earth and humanity as a whole, is the indispensable transformation each serious person has to bring about within.

Putting the local before the global, as so many privileged people in the West are doing, is increasing the fragmentation of the earth and humanity. What is the alternative? Counter-intuitively, seeing and acting first in terms of humanity as a whole enhances local flourishing, because diversity flows from wholeness, not particularity.

Do enough people emotionally perceive their inextricability from humanity as a whole over their nation, ethnic group or party? If so, a psychological revolution changes the disastrous course of humankind will ignite.

There has to be a practical political manifestation as well however. With the disintegration of the international order, the United Nations, based on the defunct premise of the supremacy of separate nation-states, is totally inadequate to meeting mounting global challenges.

The United Nations is necessary, especially in terms of its humanitarian agencies, but it certainly isn't sufficient. The UN can only be salvaged and radically reformed into a genuine institution of global governance if it is superseded by a new, genuinely global body, declaring and upholding the sovereignty of humanity.

Africa is the ultimate homeland of every human being, since both ancient and modern humans first emerged on that continent. Global citizens of the South and the North can now build a global polity of world citizens in Africa, in the evolutionary birthplace of humankind.

A Global Consultum will, first and foremost, signify and manifest a revolution in human consciousness. It will be a non-power-holding body, and will mark the end of the atavistic identification with particular groups as the source of security and basis of political organization.

A global polity will not serve or be founded on personal, particular or parochial interests. It will serve humankind by helping to fill the dangerous vacuum of leadership in the world, and function by holding national governments and international institutions accountable to the human prospect as a whole.

It isn't too late for the United Nations, but a Global Consultum needs to supersede in principle and complement in practice the UN, providing impetus to radically reform the General Assembly into an effective institution of international law and governance.

Building a Global Consultum of world citizens on the diverse, beleaguered continent of Africa will signify humankind coming full circle. Such a body of world citizens is not some distant dream. As nationalism and military/coercive power near their inevitable dead end, it's a tangible, essential and realizable vision.

The future does not belong to homogenized humans, 'virtual' prisoners of consumeristic mind control, but to awakening human beings. The future belongs to everyone who can look up from the muck and mire of the present world and still see the horizon that beckons for human beings.

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Ukraine/Russia: As War Continues, Africa Food Crisis Looms

Provide Aid, Expand Social Protection to Prevent Hunger

A man holds bread being sold at a high price in a supermarket at Ketu in Lagos, Nigeria on March 15, 2022. © 2022 PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images

NAIROBI, KENYA(HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH) – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has worsened the food security crisis in many African countries, Human Rights Watch said today. Many countries in East, West, Middle, and Southern Africa rely on Russia and Ukraine for a significant percentage of their wheat, fertilizer, or vegetable oils imports, but the war disrupts global commodity markets and trade flows to Africa, increasing already high food prices in the region. Even countries that import little from the two countries are indirectly impacted by higher world prices for key commodities. Governments and donors should ensure affordable food access in Africa by scaling up economic and emergency assistance and social protection efforts. Otherwise, millions of people across the African continent may experience hunger.

“Many countries in Africa were already in a food crisis,” said Lena Simet, senior researcher on poverty and inequality at Human Rights Watch. “Rising prices are compounding the plight of millions of people thrown into poverty by the Covid-19 pandemic, requiring urgent action by governments and the international community.”

Under global and African human rights law everyone has the right to sufficient and adequate food. To protect this right, governments are obligated to enact policies and initiate programs to ensure that everyone can afford safe and nutritious food. Social protection systems that implement the right to social security for all can be key instruments for realizing the right to food.

Before the war in Ukraine, countries in East, West, Middle, and Southern Africa, including Angola, Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria, were already grappling with soaring food prices due to extreme climate and weather events such as floods, landslides, and droughts, and the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted production efforts and global supply chains. Since Russia’s invasion, global food prices have reached new heights. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, increased 12.6 percent from February to March. The March index is the highest it has been since the measure was created in the 1990s.

Russia and Ukraine are among the top five global exporters of barley, sunflowers, and maize, and account for about a third of the world’s wheat exports. Nigeria, the world’s fourth largest wheat importer, receives a fourth of its imports from Russia and Ukraine. Cameroon, Tanzania, Uganda, and Sudan source more than 40 percent of their wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) buys half of the wheat it distributes around the world from Ukraine. With the war, supplies are squeezed, and prices rise, including for fuel, increasing the cost for transporting food in and to the region.

Human Rights Watch research on the food situation in Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria confirms that the rising food prices exacerbated by the war severely affect people’s livelihoods and food security in many African countries, especially where adequate social protection is lacking. The United Nations defines food insecurity as “a lack of consistent access to food, which diminishes dietary quality, disrupts normal eating patterns, and can have negative consequences for nutrition, health and well-being.” In situations of severe food insecurity, people have a higher likelihood of running out of food and experiencing hunger, sometimes going days without eating.

In Cameroon, where more than half of the population was food insecure before the war, the cost of imported food is driving local food inflation, with bread and other staple foods increasingly out of reach to those with low incomes. In Kenya, where nearly 7 out of 10 people were food insecure before the war but only 1 out of 10 are covered by at least one form of social protection, the cost of cooking oil increased by 6.5 percent between February and March alone. In Nigeria, where food insecurity affected nearly 6 out of 10 before the war, year to year food inflation was 17.2 percent in March, with prices of bread, rice, and yams rising even faster, by more than 30 percent.

The WFP warned that if the war lasts beyond April, acute hunger may increase by 17 percent globally, with the sharpest increases expected in countries in East, West, and Southern Africa. They said that the total number of people in these regions experiencing acute food insecurity may rise by 20.8 percent, affecting 174 million people.

Before the war, the cost of nutritious foods and high rates of poverty and inequality kept healthy diets out of reach for 66.2 percent of people in the region, according to FAO estimates for 2020. Approximately 323.2 million people in Africa, or 29.5 percent of the population, ran out of food or went without eating that year. In West Africa and Middle Africa, the share of food insecure populations is even higher, 68.3 percent and 70 percent, respectively. The number of people affected by food insecurity continued to increase under the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Data by the World Bank suggest that the Nigerian adult population suffering from moderate or severe food insecurity increased from 48.5 percent in 2019 to 75.5 percent in 2021. A Gallup World Poll before the war found that in Nigeria, 71 percent of the population lacked money for food in 2020, and in Kenya 69 percent. The poll also noted that the two countries imported approximately 31 percent and 34 percent of wheat from Russia and Ukraine, respectively, and with disruptions occasioned by the war, the situation can only become worse, with the risk of people being pushed into destitution, starvation, and premature mortality.

Food inflation particularly affects people in poverty, who spend more of their income on food even when consuming the lowest-cost options. The World Bank reported that in African cities food accounts for 60 percent of total expenditures for the bottom 20 percent of urban households and 35 percent for the wealthiest, making it hard to absorb price hikes. People forced to spend more on basic staples have to adapt by purchasing lower quality food, eating less, and reducing essential nonfood expenditures like health or education.

To prevent a hunger crisis, a rights-centered response is vital, Human Rights Watch said. Governments should act to protect everyone’s rights to an adequate standard of living, and in particular the right to food, by scaling up emergency food aid and expanding social protection systems. Investing in social protection might be a tall order for many African governments facing high debt levels and stretched fiscal positions after two years of the pandemic. A Global Fund for Social Protection should be set up to increase the level of support to low-income countries, helping them to establish and maintain social protection floors in the form of legal entitlements. Many social protection systems in African countries are at least in part financed and supported by the World Bank, which should ensure that support reaches everyone in need.

International financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank should refrain from pressuring countries to adopt fiscal consolidation measures that could further raise the cost of food or cut social spending.

Preventing a worsening food crisis requires international cooperation. Food exporting governments should carefully balance export restrictions to protect the right to food domestically while minimizing to the extent possible impacts on food supply and prices for other countries. The World Trade Organization (WTO) estimates that 40 percent of the increase in global wheat prices during the 2011 food crisis resulted from hoarding. Importing governments should work to ensure that nutritious food is affordable and accessible to everyone. In the long run, importing countries in Africa should boost local food production to increase food sovereignty and make food systems more sustainable. This requires support for climate change adaptation and resilience in the region.

“The war in Ukraine has led to more people across Africa going hungry. Governments should do everything in their power to mitigate the impact of rising food prices and avert a hunger crisis,” Simet said. “Expanding social protection and ensuring the supply of affordable food is critical to protecting the right to food for everyone.”

Food Insecurity and Social Protection

Social protection systems that implement the right to social security for all can be key instruments for strengthening people’s access to healthy foods and realizing the right to food. The WFP and academic research find social protection to be critical in emergency responses to acute situations of food insecurity and malnutrition, including during the Covid-19 pandemic.

To fulfill the right to social security, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR), has said that states are required to ensure a minimum essential level of benefits to all individuals and families that will enable them to acquire at least essential food and other fundamental necessities of an adequate standard of living. Although the right to social security is not explicitly protected in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which is responsible for interpreting the Charter, has said that the right is “derived” from the joint reading of a number of other rights, including the right to food. The Commission has further said that the right requires states to “establish social safety nets to ensure that members of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups are able to survive even in times of severe resource constraints, including in periods of economic recession.”

Social protection also brings about longer-term improvements in access to healthy diets as it addresses poverty and inequality. Research by Human Rights Watch and other organizations found that universal social protection systems, designed to benefit everyone in a certain group, are more effective than means-tested targeted programs in reducing poverty and inequality and, by extension, to realizing people’s rights.

But food insecurity is increasing in many African countries in a context of minimal social protection. In 2020, 8 out of 10 Africans were not covered by any form of social protection, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). Cameroon, where 55.8 percent of the population is food insecure, has no comprehensive social protection system. Only 7.1 percent of the population, and 2.2 percent of children, are covered by at least one social protection benefit, leaving most people in need without any support. Human Rights Watch research of Covid-19 relief measures in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda found that the support governments expanded or introduced during the pandemic was temporary, insufficient, or prone to corruption.

On April 12, Oxfam International warned that over a quarter of a billion more people could experience extreme poverty in 2022 because of Covid-19, rising global inequality, and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine. On April 13, the heads of WTO, World Bank, IMF, and WFP, warned that “The fallout of the war in Ukraine is adding to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that now enters its third year, while climate change and increased fragility and conflict pose persistent harm to people around the globe. Sharply higher prices for staples and supply shortages are increasing pressure on households worldwide and pushing millions more into poverty. The threat is highest for the poorest countries with a large share of consumption from food imports....” On April 24, the African Development Bank Group President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina warned the rising costs of fertilizer, energy, and food could further worsen food access in Africa in the coming months.

Spikes of commodity prices in the early 2000s pushed millions of people into extreme poverty and prompted social unrest in many parts of the world, including in several African countries. Sudan’s cuts in wheat subsidies in 2018, part of economic reforms in line with IMF recommendations, doubled bread prices and sparked the protests that brought down the administration of Omar Al Bashir in April 2019. In Kenya, people took to the streets in 2021 to protest rising food prices and increases in the value added tax on cooking gas, fuel, and food, another IMF recommendation. In March 2022, Cameroon’s government expressed concern that the 60 percent reduction of wheat imported from Ukraine and Russia may cause a social crisis.

Governments have removed food or fuel subsidies in recent years and those that still maintain them, such as Nigeria, are under pressure by the IMF to reduce or cut them. The current crisis underscores the risks that such changes, by raising the price of food, can exacerbate food insecurity, particularly if they are not coupled with robust social protection that ensures an adequate income to all to purchase food.

The heads of the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and WFP recently urged the international community to support “financing of immediate food supplies, safety nets to address the needs of the poor, and for small farmers facing higher input prices.” They also urged governments to “avoid restrictive measures such as export bans on food or fertilizer that further exacerbate the suffering of the most vulnerable people ... [and it is] especially important not to impose export restrictions on humanitarian food purchases by the UN’s World Food Program.”

Food Imports

Several countries in Africa rely on imported grains like wheat to meet the food needs of growing populations. The WFP and other organizations measure the extent to which countries rely on imported goods by calculating the share of a country’s supply of commodities that came from imports, referred to as Import Dependency Ratios. Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, and Tanzania have wheat ratios above 90, indicating that almost all their wheat supply came from imports, with the rest from local production. In 2019, the share of the supply from the Black Sea region ranged from 30 percent in Nigeria and Uganda, to 60 percent in Tanzania.

The war between Russia and Ukraine revealed that global food and energy markets are highly concentrated. US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data suggest that for wheat, seven countries provide 86 percent of supplies to the global market, while three countries hold 68 percent of the world’s wheat reserves. For maize, just four countries account for 85 percent of export supplies while two countries hold 82 percent of the world’s maize reserves.

Cameroon

Cameroon relies on imports to meet local demands for food and other essential goods. At the same time, local food production decreased with small farmers unable to compete with imported goods.

According to the Observatory for Economic Complexity, a data visualization site for international trade data created by the MIT Media Lab, wheat was the fifth most imported product in Cameroon in 2020. Cameroon imports wheat primarily from: Russia (US$81.8M), France (US$56.6M), Canada (US$42.1M), and Lithuania (US$2.48M). Russia is one of Cameroon's main trading partners, occupying the 8th place in imports, which have been growing steadily over the past decade, increasing from 11.5 billion CFA in 2010 to 96.7 billion CFA in 2020. Wheat accounts for 65 percent of all imports from Russia, fertilizers follow with 17 percent, hydrocarbons with 8 percent, and iron, cast iron, and steel products with 4 percent.

Food price inflation is significant, averaging 7.6 percent between February 2021 and February 2022. According to Cameroon’s National Institute of Statistics (Institut National de la Statistique, or INS for short), the rise in food prices was spurred by rising costs of imported products, which increased by 10.5 percent. On March 21, Cameroon’s government said Russia's war on Ukraine is responsible for a wheat shortage that has led to a 40 percent increase in the price of bread. The government said that close to half of its 26 million citizens who consume bread daily no longer have a regular supply, with the government encouraging local substitutes like cassava and yams to replace the wheat usually imported from Russia and Ukraine. However, bread made of cassava or yam flour is often unavailable for consumers.

On February 9, Cameroon's association of millers, which represents 70 percent of the country’s market for flour, suspended deliveries of flour and wheat bran throughout the country due to the rising price of wheat. The price of a 50-kilogram bag of flour increased almost 16 percent from 19,000 CFA (US$32.97) to 22,000 CFA (US$38.18) in the major cities of Douala and Yaoundé and even higher in other parts of the country.

More than half of the people living in Cameroon (55.8 percent) are food insecure, and 26.7 percent are severely food insecure, according to data from FAO. Nearly 1.7 million people more people became acutely food insecure between 2019 and 2020, according to the latest analysis by Cadre Harmonisé, a tool to analyze food and nutrition situations in countries around the world. This was primarily due to Boko Haram violence in the Far North region, sociopolitical unrest in North-West and South-West regions, and the Covid-19 economic shocks, which disrupted trade flows and agricultural practices, deteriorated livelihoods, and displaced people.

Social protection coverage is very low in Cameroon, with 7.1 percent of the population covered by at least one benefit, and 2.2 percent of children. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the government extended the main social protection program, the Caisse Nationale de Prévoyance Sociale (National Social Security Fund), but Human Rights Watch found widespread corruption and a lack of transparency in the government’s use of funds intended to address the health and economic impacts of Covid-19.

Nigeria

Nigeria has among the highest number of people experiencing food insecurity, according to WFP. The organization projected that parts of the population in conflict affected areas are likely to experience starvation in the coming months. The global food and fuels supply chain disruption as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is expected to aggravate the situation, with food inflation at 17.2 percent year-on-year in March 2022, caused by wide-ranging price increases across items such as cereals, yam, meat, fish, and fruit.

The National Bureau of Statistics’ Selected Food Price Watch for February 2022 shows that the average price of 1 kilogram of beans (white, black eye, sold loose) rose on a year-on-year basis by 50.1 percent, bread increased by 34.11 percent, and yam tuber rose by 39.92 percent.

In 2021, Russia and Ukraine accounted for 31 percent of wheat imports into Nigeria. The constraints that the war has placed on these supply channels will most likely lead to an increase in the prices of by-products such as bread, which, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, millions of people consume.

Even before the Ukraine war, Nigerians were already experiencing fuel shortages which led to a surge in food prices. This began in February as a result of the importation of low-quality fuel with high levels of methanol, which had to be recalled as the authorities tried to import and distribute standard quality volumes. Nigeria received refined petroleum products from Russia, and the disruption in the global fuel supply chain as a result of the war has left the authorities struggling to bridge this gap as commodity prices in the country continue to soar.

These inflationary pressures are looming within the context of an economy that is on the rebound from a significant downturn as a result of the Covid‑19 pandemic, which contributed to about 13 percent inflation between 2020 and 2021 and left many people struggling to meet basic needs.

While the pandemic brought into focus Nigeria’s inadequate social protection system to help citizens through economic shocks, the authorities have made little or no effort to guarantee the right to social security and increase investments in this area to ensure citizens have a measure of protection from impending economic constraints.

Kenya

The year-on-year inflation rate, as measured by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, was 5.56 percent in March 2022. The rise in overall inflation was mainly due to an increase in prices of food and nonalcoholic beverages (9.92 percent). The food items that increased most are: wheat (17.68 percent), cooking oil (35.15 percent), spinach (19.96 percent) and kale (20.15 percent).

In February 2022, people took to social media to protest against the increasing cost of food and high cost of living using the hashtag, #Lower Food Prices.

Kenya is a net importer of food, with cereal commodities such as wheat being one of the largest food imports in terms of both volumes and value. In 2020, Kenya produced 405 thousand tons of wheat, and imported 1.9 million tons. The Agriculture and Food Authority of Kenya reported that 90 percent of wheat consumed in the country is imported from Russia and Ukraine. Another input cost is the price of fertilizers, which increased by 70 percent compared with last year. The rise, which started in 2021, was mainly attributed to supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic. In 2020, Russia accounted for 17 percent of fertilizer imports to the country.

Oxfam and other international humanitarian organizations reported in March 2022 that “Kenya has suffered a 70 percent drop in crop production and has declared a national disaster with 3.1 million people in acute hunger, now in need of aid. Nearly half of all households in Kenya are having to borrow food or buy it on credit.”

Rights Group: Canada Blocking Return Of Citizens From Syria

FILE - Kimberly Gwen Polman, a Canadian national, poses for a portrait at camp Roj in Syria, April 3, 2019. Canadian authorities are preventing Polman and a child under age 12, who is not related to Polman, who are detained in a camp in Syria from returning home for life-saving medical treatment, contradicting policies that allow such repatriations, Human Rights Watch, a prominent rights group said Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

BY ZEINA KARAM

BEIRUT (AP) — Canadian authorities are preventing a Canadian woman and a child detained in a camp in Syria from returning home to get life-saving medical treatment, contradicting policies that allow such repatriations, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch identified the two “gravely ill” Canadians as Kimberly Polman, 49, and a child under age 12. It withheld further details about the child, who is not related to Polman, including the name and medical condition, to protect their privacy.

There are nearly 50 Canadian nationals stuck in camps in northeastern Syria. Some of them have been held since even before the Islamic State group lost the last sliver of land in its self-declared caliphate in March 2019. More than half of the Canadians are children, most under age 7, HRW said.

They are among tens of thousands of women and children from about 60 countries being held by U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters in the camps. Many of them are wives, widows and children of IS fighters,

A few countries have agreed to repatriate their citizens but many others, including Canada, have refused to do so.

The Associated Press met with Polman earlier this month at Roj Camp, where she has been for three years. She looked tired and said she was suffering from kidney disease, high blood pressure and other problems. She said there is one doctor for almost 1,000 women and 3,000 children and no facilities to deal with specific illnesses.

“Women walk around here with conditions that would normally be hospitalized,” she said. “You just get used to being sick here all the time and you just kind of keep going with life, because it’s either that or a huge depression.”

“One day you will come into my tent (and) I will be rocking in a corner … and I am trying not to do that,” she said.

HRW said a former American ambassador who has taken several foreigners out of northeast Syria on behalf of their home countries told the rights group that in days of exchanges ending on Feb. 15, Canadian authorities refused his offer to escort Polman and the child to a Canadian consulate in neighboring Iraq.

“How close to death do Canadians have to be for their government to decide they qualify for repatriation?” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.

A message seeking comment from Canada’s embassy in Beirut was not immediately returned.

The families of the two Canadians have repeatedly implored government authorities to repatriate the woman and child and have sent them medical records attesting to their need for life-saving care.

“Canada should be helping its citizens unlawfully held in northeast Syria, not obstructing their ability to get life-saving health care,” Tayler said.

Despite the fact that Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria have called on countries to repatriate their citizens, Canada considers the repatriation of its nationals from Syria a security threat.

However, the Canadian government has said that if its citizens reach a consulate, it will assist them, including if they request repatriation, HRW said.

On Feb. 10, more than a dozen U.N. independent experts called on Canada to urgently repatriate Polman to treat life-threatening illnesses, including hepatitis, kidney disease, and an autoimmune disorder, HRW said.

Polman told the AP she contracted hepatitis four times while in the camp, as well as pneumonia, adding that her kidney disease was probably a result of dirty water.

___

Associated Press writer Samya Kullab contributed from Hassakeh, Syria.

EU Agrees To End Med Anti-Smuggler Mission Off Libya

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, centre, talks to Italy's Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio, left, and Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva during an European Foreign Affairs meeting at the Europa building in Brussels, Monday, Feb. 17, 2020. A number of European Union countries are blocking a decision to resume a naval operation in the Mediterranean Sea over concerns that it might encourage migrants to set out from the Libyan coast in search of better lives in Europe, the EU's top diplomat said Monday. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

BY LORNE COOK

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to end Operation Sophia, the bloc’s naval mission in the Mediterranean Sea, and launch a new maritime effort focused more on enforcing the U.N arms embargo around Libya.

Operation Sophia was set up in 2015 as tens of thousands of migrants headed across the sea from North Africa to Europe. Its aim was to crack down on migrant smugglers, but also to enforce the arms embargo, which is routinely being flouted.

But tensions over how to distribute migrants picked up at sea and claims that the naval presence encouraged people to leave led Italy to block the deployment of naval vessels last year. Austria, too, opposed the return of warships and the operation has been functioning for months exclusively using aircraft and pilot-less drones.

“We agreed to launch a new operation in the Mediterranean and Operation Sophia will be closed,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters after chairing the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. He said that Sophia would end on March 20 when its mandate expires.

A legal text defining the exact terms of the new mission must still be thrashed out by experts and submitted for the ministers’ next meeting, in March. The idea is to shift the new operation further east, away from the usual waters used by migrants leaving Libya in search of better lives in Europe.

The new, as yet unnamed, operation will have as its aim the implementation of the arms embargo and comprise aerial, satellite and maritime assets, Borrell said. He said several countries had offered to take part, but that military commanders must yet work out how much equipment is needed.

Sophia operated along the length of the Libyan coast out to sea, but Borrell said the new operation would have to move closer to Egypt. “If we want to control the arms embargo, we have to concentrate our surveillance on the east part where the arms are coming from,” he said.

Should commanders signal that migrants are being drawn toward the mission in hopes of being picked up, the ministers have the possibility to decide that the “maritime assets will be withdrawn from the relevant area.” This is meant to satisfy the objections of Austria and Italy.

Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when a civil war toppled long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. Fighting between the country’s factions has intensified over the past year.

A weak U.N.-recognized Libyan government that now holds the capital, Tripoli, and parts of the country’s west is backed by Turkey, which recently sent thousands of soldiers to Libya, and to a lesser degree Qatar and Italy, as well as local militias.

On the other side is a rival government in the east that supports self-styled Gen. Khalifa Hifter, whose forces launched an offensive to capture Tripoli last April. They are backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France and Russia.

“What’s important is that Sophia is history. Now comes a new mission, with a clear focus on the arms embargo,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg told reporters after the agreement was reached.

Asked whether Operation Sophia’s ships really did attract migrants, Borrell said: “the figures show clearly during the first year of Operation Sophia the number of migrants continued to climb ... but then it went down, a lot.”

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn underlined the importance of focusing on the embargo.

“If there are no weapons, there’s no war. There are thousands of thousands of weapons in Libya,” Asselborn said. “We in Europe are the ones who will suffer if anarchy spreads in Libya.”

But taking aim at Austria — a landlocked country far from the Mediterranean but which many migrants crossed in 2015 and 2016 trying to get to Germany — for blocking the deployment of ships, he said: “It’s too much, to abandon or break with our consensus just to avoid having to save a few people.”

Kirsten Grieshaber and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Rights Group Says China Is Trying To Silence Critics Abroad

In this Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018 file photo, Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch's executive director, speaks during a news conference in Seoul, South Korea. Human Rights Watch says Hong Kong authorities have barred its executive director from entering the territory. The move Sunday, Jan. 12, 2020 follows China's pledge last month to sanction organizations which it said had “performed badly" in relation to anti-government protests that have roiled Hong Kong for more than seven months. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

BY EDITH M. LEDERER

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The head of Human Rights Watch said Tuesday the Chinese government has not only constructed “an Orwellian high-tech surveillance state” at home but is using its growing economic clout to silence critics abroad.

Kenneth Roth accused China of carrying out “the most intense attack on the global system for enforcing human rights since that system began to emerge in the mid-20th century.”

He warned that if human rights aren’t defended, the world could face “a dystopian future in which no one is beyond the reach of Chinese censors” and a global rights system so weakened that it can no longer serve “as a check on government repression.”

Roth held a news conference at the United Nations Correspondents Association in New York after being denied entry to Hong Kong, where he had been scheduled to release the rights group’s annual report. It begins with his keynote essay entitled, “China’s Global Threat to Human Rights.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Monday: “It is China’s sovereignty to allow one’s entry or not.”

He indicated that Human Rights Watch is among organizations that support and instigate “anti-China activists ... to engage in radical violent crimes, and incite separatist activities hyping Hong Kong independence.” He added: “These organizations deserve sanctions and must pay a price.“

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, asked Tuesday about Roth’s denial of entry to Hong Kong, said: “In principle, we support the rights and work of human rights defenders around the world.”

Chinese diplomat Xing Jisheng, who attended the U.N. press launch, spoke at the end calling the report “very prejudicial,” saying it has “fabrications” and telling journalists “we completely reject the content.”

Xing said the government has made every effort to advance human rights in China and any human rights report that doesn’t mention that 700 million Chinese people have escaped from poverty over the last 40 years “fails to be balanced and neutral.”

Roth responded saying the report does mention “the emancipation of the Chinese people” and asked: “What did we get wrong? If there’s something wrong we will change it.”

In the essay, Roth said the Chinese Communist Party is “worried that permitting political freedom would jeopardize its grasp on power” and “is running scared of its own people.”

“The consequence under President Xi Jinping is China’s most pervasive and brutal oppression in decades,” he said.

Roth pointed to the closure of the “modest opening” that existed briefly in recent years for Chinese people to express themselves, civic groups shut down, independent journalism gone, online conversations curtailed, ethnic and religious minorities facing severe persecution, and severe challenges to Hong Kong’s limited freedoms under “one country, two systems.”

To avoid a global backlash against its surveillance, internet censorship and oppression at home, Roth said the government is trying to undermine international institutions designed to protect human rights.

It is increasingly targeting critics of rights violations, “whether they represent a foreign government, are part of an overseas company or university, or join real or virtual avenues of public protest.”

Using its economic clout and influence and sometimes its veto in the U.N. Security Council, Roth said, China has sought to block United Nations measures “to protect some of the world’s most persecuted people.”

He cited China’s failure to support Syrian civilians facing indiscriminate airstrikes by Russian and Syrian planes, Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims who faced murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar’s army, Yemen’s civilians facing bombardment by a Saudi-led coalition, or Venezuelans suffering “economic devastation due to the corrupt mismanagement of Nicolas Maduro.”

Human rights organizations say up to 1 million ethnic Uighur Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region have been detained in camps where they are subjected to political indoctrination and pressured to give up their religion. The Associated Press reported last year that some are forced to work in factories, and tracked clothing made in one camp to an American sportswear company.

Roth criticized U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, saying despite the U.N.’s central role in promoting human rights, he has been “unwilling to publicly demand an end to China’s mass detention of Turkic Muslims, while heaping praise on Beijing’s economic prowess” and its “Belt and Road” infrastructure construction initiative for Asia and beyond.

Roth stressed that “no other government is simultaneously detaining a million members of an ethnic minority for forced indoctrination and attacking anyone who dares to challenge its repression.”

“And while other governments commit serious human rights violations, no other government flexes its political muscles with such vigor and determination to undermine the international human rights standards and institutions that could hold it to account,” he said.

Roth said the report shows that China isn’t the only threat to human rights, pointing to serious violations by the warring parties in Syria and Yemen..

He also cited “autocratic populists” who come to power by demonizing minorities and retain it by attacking independent journalists, judges and activists who try to provide checks and balances on their rule.

“Some leaders, such as U.S. President Donald Trump, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, bridle at the same body of international human rights law that China undermines, galvanizing their publics by shadow boxing with the `globalists’ who dare suggest that governments everywhere should be bound by the same standards,” Roth said.

He lamented that some governments that once could be counted on to sometimes defend human rights “have largely abandoned the cause.”

But even against this backdrop, Roth said, China stands out.

“The result for the human rights cause is a `perfect storm’ — a powerful centralized state, a coterie of like-minded rulers, a void of leadership among countries that might have stood for human rights, and a disappointing collection of democracies willing to sell the rope that is strangling the system of rights that they purport to uphold,” he said.

Nonetheless, Roth said “much can still be done to defend human rights worldwide from Beijing’s frontal attack.”

He urged governments, companies, universities, international institutions and others to stand with people in China and from China who are struggling to secure their rights.

Roth said governments and international financial institutions should offer human rights-respecting alternatives to China’s “no strings” loans and development aid. He said government should “deliberately counter China’s divide-and-conquer strategy for securing silence about its oppression.” And he said universities and companies should promote “codes of conduct” with strong standards for dealing with China

At The Door Of The New Decade, We Must Strive A Better Legacy For Human Rights

Boko Haram Islamic Group based in Northern Nigeria

BY EWELINA U. OCHAB

We closed the last decade with a very poor human rights record. It was a decade which saw two genocides, several instances of crimes against humanity and multiple cases of severe violations of human rights.

What should we do to ensure that this does not continue into the new decade? Among others, we must ensure that international crimes and human rights violations do not happen again. Prevention is key. However, we must also ensure an effective response to the crimes that were left unaddressed from the previous decade. What does this involve?

We need to make sure that crimes against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, Myanmar, are duly investigated, the crimes are recognized for what they are and that the perpetrators are brought to justice. The events of the last decade in Myanmar have attracted attention from two international actors. The world awaits the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on provisional measures requested in the case brought before the court by the Gambia. Furthermore, the situation is also being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The victims and survivors of the Daesh atrocities must see justice being done. Daesh fighters need to be prosecuted in countries where Daesh perpetrated its genocide and crimes against humanity, or in other countries by way of the universal jurisdiction, or at an ad-hoc tribunal. Furthermore, the perpetrators must be prosecuted for the litany of crimes Daesh fighters were involved in, including murder, rape and sexual violence, torture, enslavement, forced labor, outrages upon personal dignity, forced displacement, using, conscripting and enlisting children; whether they amount to genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. The last decade has secured very few convictions. This is far from any sense of justice.

Boko Haram members in Northern Nigeria and beyond need to be brought before courts. The last decade triggered a preliminary examination at the ICC only and no further developments, a weak response to such a tragedy. Furthermore, the atrocities of the Fulani herdsmen in the Middle Belt, Nigeria, must not be dismissed as consequences of the climate change, but treated as crimes that need to be stopped, investigated and prosecuted. The last decade has not secured any developments in this direction.

Practices such as the so-called “re-education camps” and incarcerations of thousands (if not millions) of Uighur Muslims and forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners must be investigated and addressed. Other human rights abuses in China must be brought to light as well.

Considering only the above mentioned cases, it is clear that the last decade has left us with a legacy of crime and impunity. This vicious circle of violence and impunity must be put to an end once and for all. The new decade we are entering must bring hope in the international justice system and human rights frameworks - something that the international community aimed to achieve since the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century.

However, it is also important to emphasize that the above examples are only the tip of an iceberg. The last decade has seen violent attacks against those who exercise their right to a peaceful protest, be it in Hong Kong, Cameroon, Nicaragua, India and many more.

The last decade has seen severe censorship of those speaking up against injustice.

The last decade has seen severe limitations of the right to freedom of religion or belief, targeting numerous minorities as the scapegoat.

Again, only the tip of an iceberg.

The last decade has seen severe attacks on human dignity that cannot be ignored anymore. We must seek new ways to improve human rights records all over the world, and so strengthen the protection of human dignity for everyone everywhere. Time for reflection was yesterday. Time for action is now. Otherwise, there will be no tomorrow.

SOURCE: FORBES