Africa

Lollipop love, kite vendors and marathon paddlers

Can a prisoner beat the president in Niger's election?

Kenya's capital, Nairobi, is on alert after several lions escaped from a nearby national park overnight and strayed into the city.

Deisi N.W. Kusztra, President World Family Organisation & Kristina Sperkova IOGT International President

By Deisi N.W. Kusztra and Kristina Sperkova
NEW YORK, Feb 19 2016 (IPS)

Children of alcoholics are the forgotten victims of someone else’s alcohol use. All too often they do remain invisible and alone, neglected by their parents, overlooked by teachers, down prioritized and ignored by governments and authorities.

But data shows that children of alcoholics (CoAs) do constitute a significant group.

• In Australia 1 million children live in households with at least one adult being addicted.
• In the United States, mothers convicted of child abuse are 3 times more likely to be alcoholics and fathers are 10 times more likely to be alcoholics. More than half of all confirmed abuse reports and 75% of child deaths involve the use of alcohol or other drugs by a parent.
• In the European Union, there are at least 9 million children and young people growing up with alcohol-addicted parents.
• Nacoa UK’s research estimates that there are 2.6 million children of school age living with parental alcohol problems in the UK alone.
• The number of children living in homes that are ravaged by alcohol problems sky-rockets considering the countries around the world that are currently not even measuring the issue.

Children growing up with parents who struggle with alcohol problems are a Human Rights crisis of tremendous proportions.

CoAs are greatly exposed to harm:
• They are five times more likely to develop an eating disorder.
• They are three times more likely to commit suicide.
• They are almost four times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder themselves later on in life.

When we talk about children of alcoholics, we see seven aspects that make up the severity of the Human Rights crisis:
1. The societal stigma, stereotypes and associated taboo that still are attached to alcoholism and to living with parents who have alcohol problems.
2. Authorities’ inability to identify children of alcoholics, for example in schools.
3. Governments on local and national level fail in providing effective and sufficient services to these vulnerable and marginalized children.
4. Governments on local and national level fail in providing treatment for parents with alcohol problems, like programs that help the entire family.
5. Society’s inability to prevent and reduce alcohol harm in general.
6. In general, the lack of enabling, safe environments for children to grow up in.
7. Government shortcomings in implementing the Best interest principle enshrined in Art. 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Also these aspects are interdependent. Their absence from the debate and from effective policy-making processes is hurting children of alcoholics. In fact the they keep fuelling a Human Rights crisis that sees CoAs deprived of the enjoyment of eight Human Rights, such as (for entire list, see Annex I):
– Protection of the family (Art. 16.3),
– The right to social security and realization of economic, social and cultural rights (Art. 22),
– The right to a standard of living conducive to health and well-being (Art. 25.1),
– Special care and assistance for motherhood and childhood (Art. 25.2).

Having on mind the sheer extent of the problem, the severity of the problem and the impact of the problem not just on the present but on the future, we hold that it is essential to understand that Sustainable Development and the achievement of the Agenda2030 is not possible without comprehensive efforts to help and support children of alcoholics and to ensure that their number decreases in the coming years.

The fact that hundreds of millions of children grow up exposed to neglect and abuse due to their parents’ alcohol problems is a Child Rights issue, a public health issue, a social development issue, a poverty eradication and sustainable development issue.
In short, this is a complex and an urgent issue. Sometimes, especially in low- and middle-income countries it is a matter of life and death.

In this spirit, we call on ECOSOC, on WHO, on UNDP, UNDESA and on UNICEF to put the situation of children of alcoholics on their agenda. Using the collaborative synergies of the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda2030, we urge the UN system to exercise leadership and seriously explore ways forward to address and improve the situation of millions of children around the world.

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By Andreas Sieber, Giselle Bernard and Ivo Bantel
BERLIN, PARIS AND BRUSSELS, Feb 19 2016 (IPS)

The day, 12 December 2015 was historic. Following decades of negotiations, countries agreed to sign the first global, legally binding climate agreement.

“Every government seems to recognize now that the fossil fuel era must end and soon”, said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org. Two months after the deal was reached at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties 21 (COP21), it is time to see to which extent these words have translated into concrete action.

World leaders agreed to limit global warming below 2°C and to aim for 1.5°C. They also decided to achieve carbon neutrality in the second half of this century – an obvious blow to the fossil fuel industry.

Brian Ricketts, Eurocoal’s Secretary General, said that his industry will be “hated and vilified in the same way that slave-traders were”.

Since the climate climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, the prices for solar panels droped by about 80%.

“All of a sudden, it is really easy to see what we should do instead of burning oil, gas and coal” McKibben told IPS. But according to him, the Paris agreement is far from enough: “I hope no one came away from Paris with the idea that we’ve won such big victories that we won’t have to do anything anymore”, he told IPS. “The problem of course is that we are way behind.”

This becomes especially clear looking at the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), i.e. the countries’ pledged contributions. They will only bend the warming curve — from 3.6°C with current policies to 2.7°C. But the contributions are far from enough to limit global warming to 2°C or 1.5°C.

According to Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific analysis group, only five countries submitted INDCs fully consistent with the 2°C limit. Major emitters such as the USA, the EU, China or Brazil, especially have to revise their INDCs, since they will most likely cause global warming exceeding 2°C. Globally scaled, the climate pledges of many countries such as Australia, Canada or the Russian Federation would actually lead to global warming of more than 3°C.

Also troubling, is the lack of ambition for climate finance. It is a matter of justice that rich nations provide financial support, especially to developing countries struggling against climate change. Copenhagen set the target of $100 billion to be provided by developed countries. The Paris agreement, in contrast, contains no quantitative target. It merely states that there should be a progression beyond previous efforts, but postpones the revision of the already insufficient $100 bn target to 2025.

Crucially, a framework for accounting and reporting is also missing. Discussions on such a framework were again pushed back to 2018, effectively leaving the intervening years a “Wild West” in climate finance.

The silver lining here is the call for voluntary contributions, to which countries seem to have been responsive. In September 2015 already, China had made a pledge of $3.1 bn to support developing countries in their action against climate change and in terms of greenhouse gas reduction, the Paris agreement already seems to be making an impact.

Until recently, Vietnam had the biggest coal development plans in Southeast Asia — about 70 new coal power stations. This matched the operating coal capacity of Japan. But in January, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung announced the any further coal power projects would be cancelled. In his statement, Nguyen referred to the Paris agreement and assured he would “responsibly implement all international commitments in cutting down greenhouse gas emissions”. China also imposed a moratorium on coal mining for the next three years and US president Barack Obama halted coal mining on public land.

Even if the INDCs are not enough, they should at least be implemented. After all, COP21 is just the beginning, rather than the world’s final attempt at combating climate change.

The Paris agreement is hardly sufficient to meet its own long term goals, but it contains a so called ambition mechanism. Starting in 2020, countries have to update their climate pledges every five years and make new pledges which are more ambitious. Climate Interactive has calculated how much the climate pledges have to be scaled up to limit global warming to 2°C or even 1.5°C: All countries emissions have to peak before 2030 and industrialized countries have to cut their emissions far more deeply than they are currently planning.

Beyond the legal document that COP21 produced, it was also an event which mobilized international civil society. “There was not that much follow-through if you add up all the voluntary pledges countries made. But at least they gave us this tool to work with.” Bill McKibben said.

Civil society’s mobilization is perhaps the component that will bring about more ambitious climate action or, as former United Nations’ Secretary General Kofi Annan put it: “ordinary citizens” can “help bring about the change we need and encourage our leaders to actually lead”.

For Bill McKibben the fight against fossil fuel companies as he calls it has just begun in Paris: “From now on, when anyone wants to propose a new coalmine or a new pipeline, we’re going to say “you can’t do this because you’ve said you’ll try to keep the temperature from going up more than a degree and a half and clearly that’s not compatible.”

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Uganda's main opposition presidential candidate is detained following a raid on his party's Kampala headquarters, one day after tightly contested elections.

More than 6,000 people have fled Mozambique to neighbouring Malawi after being caught up in fighting in the north of the country.

Participants at a recent workshop on South-South Cooperation in Xiamen, China. Credit: Pratyush Sharma/IPS

By Pratyush Sharma
NEW DELHI, Feb 19 2016 (IPS)

China’s strength in South-South Cooperation (SSC) lies in its carrying out big-ticket infrastructure projects in diverse developing countries. It is remarkable in terms of project scale, speed and cost-effectiveness and has been playing a positive role in promoting partner’s nation-building, economic development and social progress. However, the swift completion of China’s infrastructure projects also has its sets of problems like little or no paper-work leading to lack of transparency, oversight and post-project monitoring. The backlash against Chinese labourers employed by Chinese companies in developing countries has been routinely highlighted by the international media with allegations of skirmishes with the local population, corruption coupled with resource theft.

Another important feature is the government-to-government and demand-driven nature of China’s SSC. However, this too has resulted in claims that it dispenses its development projects in partner countries at the behest of political elites rather than the general population. China is conscious of these accusations. It has taken active steps to mend its image and intends to adopt a more inclusive approach for its SSC. These include seeking social appraisal of their infrastructure projects, elucidation of outcomes and not just its output. Chinese projects not only aspire to create local jobs (output) but are also mindful of the nature of jobs (outcome) projects create for local residents in partner countries.

Other outcomes may include gender parity and pay parity of the workforce till the time the management of projects is in Chinese hands. Also, they now pay more emphasis on capacity-building and ‘direct aid’ (scholarships and fellowships), are now more forthcoming in working along with civil society organisations (CSOs) and they now focus on soft resource development. China encourages its state-owned firms to conduct social and environmental impact assessments and shoulder more social responsibility to enhance transparent management. They are now more open to coordinate with international stake-holders for carrying its development work in the global South.

Two cases in point are the coordination of Chinese humanitarian workers with the teams of multilateral humanitarian organisations in the aftermath of Cyclone Komen in Myanmar in 2015 and coordinated efforts of Chinese restoration experts with their French and Japanese counterparts in restoration projects of Ankor temples in Cambodia. Equality and mutual respect are the core values – when providing assistance, China adheres to the principles of non-interference in the internal matters of its partner, non-conditionality (both economic and political) and respecting partner’s right to independently choose their own paths and models of development.

China provides assistance to the best of its ability to other developing countries within the framework of SSC to support and help, especially the least developed countries (LDCs) to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods. For instance, the TAZARA Project, rail link between Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania to Kapiri Mposhi (near Lusaka) in Zambia was constructed by China on demand by the leaders of the respective countries through a turn-key project worth US $500 million. The project was deemed financially unviable by Western lenders when Julius Nyerere of Tanzania approached the West to help reduce Zambia’s economic dependence on Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa (then apartheid-ridden) through this railway line.

At the China-Africa Forum Summit 2015, China identified five major pillars for bilateral cooperation in 10 major areas. These include consolidating political mutual trust, striving for win-win economic cooperation, enhancing exchanges, learning from each other’s cultures, helping each other in security, and cementing unity and coordination on international affairs. While the 10 sectors identified for priority cooperation are wide-ranging, they include the areas of industrialisation, agricultural modernisation, infrastructure, financial services, green development, trade and investment facilitation, poverty reduction, public health, people-to-people exchanges, and peace and security.

Chinese projects, especially in Africa and elsewhere, have been embroiled in different controversies and have attracted a bad press, internationally and locally. China has included justice, openness, inclusiveness and sustainability as new pillars and security and terrorism issues are the new sectors where China’s SSC is venturing for the first time. China, recently brokered reconciliatory talks between the Afghanistan government and the Taliban. Also, the proposed triangular development cooperation between China and France; and between China and UK for Africa’s development is a never-tried-before phenomenon and remains to be seen as to how it would pan out. This particular proposal was received with a lukewarm response from African leaders.

In this regard, the role of platforms like China Agricultural University’s China International Development Research Network assumes special significance as it tries to fill the knowledge gap by sharing knowledge on international development with outstanding individuals and institutions, both within China and abroad. It aspires to develop a knowledge pool on international development in China, to facilitate the exchange between China and the international development community. An Indian counterpart Forum for Indian Development Cooperation set up in 2013 has undertaken a similar inclusive stance.

China’s strengths in SSC include prioritisation to aid payment and delivery over transparency and post-project monitoring. Financing for infrastructure projects is primarily done by China Exim Bank, which also provides concessional loans for infrastructure building and supporting the trade of Chinese goods. The China Exim bank is increasingly making use of a deal structure – known as the “Angola mode” or “resources for infrastructure” – whereby repayment of the loan for infrastructure development is made in terms of natural resources (for example, oil). On average, Chinese loans are offered at an interest rate of 3.6 per cent with a grace period of 4 years and a maturity of 12 years. Overall, this represents a grant element of around 36 per cent, which qualifies as concessional loan according to official definitions. However, the variation around all of these parameters is considerable across countries. The interest rate varies from 0.25 per cent to 6 per cent, grace period from 2 to 10 years, maturities from 5 to 25 years and overall grant element from 10 to 70 per cent.

(End)

The subtle art of insulting a politician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The writer can be reached at thalifdeen@aol.com

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

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

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

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

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

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Feb 17 2016 (IPS)

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

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

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