Tag: Global

  • Africa Taken for Neo-Colonial Ride — Global Issues

    Africa Taken for Neo-Colonial Ride — Global Issues

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    • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury (sydney and kuala lumpur)
    • Inter Press Service

    ‘Shithole’ pots of gold
    US President Donald Trump’s “shitholes”, mainly in Africa, were and often still are ‘pots of gold’ for Western interests. From 1445 to 1870, Africa was the major source of slave labour, especially for Europe’s ‘New World’ in the Americas.

    The ‘scramble for Africa’ from the late nineteenth century saw European powers racing to secure raw materials monopolies through direct colonialism. Western powers all greatly benefited from Africa’s plunder and ruin.

    European divide-and-conquer tactics typically also had pliant African collaborators. Colonial powers imposed taxes and forced labour to build infrastructure to enable raw material extraction.

    Racist ideologies legitimized European imperialism in Africa as a “civilizing mission”. Oxford-trained, former Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson – an unabashed apologist for Western imperialism – insists colonialism laid the foundations for modern progress.

    Richest, but poorest and hungriest!
    A recent blog asks, “Why is the continent with 60% of the world’s arable land unable to feed itself? … And how did Africa go from a relatively self-sufficient food producer in the 1970s to an overly dependent food importer by 2022?”

    Deeper analyses of such uncomfortable African realities seem to be ignored by analysts influenced by the global North, especially the Washington-based international financial institutions. UNCTAD’s 2022 Africa report is the latest to disappoint.

    With 30% of the world’s mineral resources and the most precious metal reserves on Earth, Africa has the richest concentration of natural resources – oil, copper, diamonds, bauxite, lithium, gold, tropical hardwood forests and fruits.

    Yet, Africa remains the poorest continent, with the average per capita output of most countries worth less than $1,500 annually! Of 46 least developed countries, 33 are in Africa – more than half the continent’s 54 nations.

    Africa remains the world’s least industrialized region, with only South Africa categorized as industrialized. Incredibly, Africa’s share of global manufacturing fell from about 3% in 1970 to less than 2% in 2013.

    About 60% of the world’s arable land is in Africa. A net food exporter until the 1970s, the continent has become a net importer. Structural adjustment reform conditionalities – requiring trade liberalization – have cut tariff revenue, besides undermining import-substituting manufacturing and food security.

    Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 24% of the world’s hungry. Africa is the only continent where the number of undernourished people has increased over the past four decades. About 27.4% of Africa’s population was ‘severely food insecure’ in 2016.

    In 2020, 281.6 million Africans were undernourished, 82 million more than in 2000! Another 46 million became hungry during the pandemic. Now, Ukraine sanctions on wheat and fertilizer exports most threaten Africa’s food security, in both the short and medium-term.

    Structural adjustment
    Many of Africa’s recent predicaments stem from structural adjustment programs (SAPs) much of Africa and Latin America have been subjected to from the 1980s. The Washington-based international financial institutions, the African Development Bank and all donors support the SAPs.

    SAP advocates promised foreign direct investment and export growth would follow, ensuring growth and prosperity. Now, many admit neoliberalism was oversold, ensuring the 1980s and 1990s were ‘lost decades’, worsened by denial of its painfully obvious consequences.

    Instead, ‘extraordinarily disadvantageous geography’, ‘high ethnic diversity’, the ‘natural resource curse’, ‘bad governance’, corrupt ‘rent-seeking’ and armed conflicts have been blamed. Meanwhile, however, colonial and neo-colonial abuse, exploitation and resource plunder have been denied.

    While World Bank SAPs were officially abandoned in the late 1990s following growing criticism, replacements – such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers – have been like “old wine in new bottles”. Although purportedly ‘home-grown’, they typically purvey bespoke versions of SAPs.

    With trade liberalization and greater specialization, many African countries are now more dependent on fewer export commodities. With more growth spurts during commodity booms, African economies have become even more vulnerable to external shocks.

    Can the West be trusted?
    Earlier, G7 countries reneged on their 2005 Gleneagles pledge – to give $25 billion more yearly to Africa to ‘Make Poverty History’ – within the five years they gave themselves. Since then, developed countries have delivered far less than the $100 billion of climate finance annually they had promised developing nations in 2009.

    The Hamburg G20’s 2017 ‘Compact with Africa’ (CwA) promised to combat poverty and climate change effects. In fact, CwA has been used to promote the business interests of donor countries, particularly Germany.

    Primarily managed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, CwA has actually failed to deliver significant foreign investment, instead sowing confusion among participating countries.

    Powerful Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development governments successfully blocked developing countries’ efforts at the 2015 Addis Ababa UN conference on financing for development for inclusive UN-led international tax cooperation and to stem illicit financial outflows.

    Africa lost $1.2–1.4 trillion in illicit financial flows between 1980 and 2009 – about four times its external debt in 2013. This greatly surpasses total official development assistance received over the same period.

    Africa must unite
    Under Nelson Mandela’s leadership, Africa had led the fight for the ‘public health exception’ to international intellectual property law. Although Africa suffers most from ‘vaccine apartheid’, Western lobbyists blocked developing countries’ temporary waiver request to affordably meet pandemic needs.

    African solidarity is vital to withstand pressures from powerful foreign governments and transnational corporations. African nations must also cooperate to build state capabilities to counter the neoliberal ‘good governance’ agenda.

    Africa needs much more policy space and state capabilities, not economic liberalization and privatization. This is necessary to unlock critical development bottlenecks and overcome skill and technical limitations.

    IPS UN Bureau


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    © Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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  • Africa Taken for Neo-Colonial Ride — Global Issues

    Both UK & Congo Think They’re Climate Leaders COP26s Fallout Shows How Far Adrift They Are — Global Issues

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    • Opinion by Irene Wabiwa Betoko (kinshasa)
    • Inter Press Service

    Meanwhile households are battling a cost of living crisis while the climate crisis is raging on, threatening lives and livelihoods everywhere – from north to south.

    After oil demand and prices briefly fell during the lockdowns of 2020, we’re seeing Big Oil enjoying unprecedented war-time profits, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drives up prices. Recall BP’s boss Bernard Looney crassly comparing his company to a “cash machine”.

    This latest boon for fossil fuel companies makes the pledges from last year’s COP26 climate talks in Glasgow seem like a distant memory. Indeed, a £420m ($500m) deal for the Democratic Republic of Congo has become increasingly useless in protecting its forests, with oil companies set to cash in and eventually paved the way for more forest destruction.

    The DRC, home to most territory of the world’s second largest rainforest, prides itself in being a “solution country” for the climate crisis. However, the country, which already sees deforestation rates second only to Brazil, has already stated last year its intention to lift a 20 year ban on new logging concessions.

    As of April this year, the DRC is set on trashing huge areas of the rainforest and peatland and – as of this week – it’s set to auction no less than 27 oil and three gas blocks.

    Oil exploration and extraction would not only have devastating impacts on the health and livelihoods of local communities, but the oil driven “resource curse” raises the risk of corruption and conflict.

    This auction also is sacrificing at least four parts of a mega-peatland complex, often labelled a carbon bomb, along with at least nine Protected Areas (contrary to denials by the Congolese Oil Ministry).

    Following the enlargement of the auction this week, it also poses a direct threat (https://www.ft.com/content/5ea6f899-bb55-478f-a14a-a6dd37aae724) to the Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site made famous thanks to a Netflix documentary on a previous campaign to keep the oil industry out of it.

    Instead of steering us into a climate catastrophe,the international community must stop serving as the handmaiden of Big Oil. Instead, let’s see them focus on ending energy poverty by supporting clean, decentralised renewable energies. Whether it’s the cost of living crisis unfolding on our doorsteps or climate destruction sweeping the globe – the solutions are the same.

    Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi must abandon the colonial notion of development through extractivism and look at its legacy in Africa, which has only deepened poverty and hardship for Africans. It has only served to enrich a small and closed circle of local beneficiaries and foreign nations.

    It is telling that Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria, is also the one with the highest number of people suffering extreme poverty (just behind India) and with the highest number of people without access to electricity. Instead of following an economic model that hurts both people and nature, the DRC should resist pressures from greedy multinationals and prioritise connecting 72 million of its people to the grid.

    You can bet Big Oil is salivating at the chance to seize yet more profits from climate destruction. Yet shamefully, none of the eight members who are part of the Central African Forest Initiative that is paying £420m of taxpayers’ money to protect DRC’s forests – the UK, the EU, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea – have uttered one word against this prospective oil auction.

    That’s not surprising, given the “forest protection” deal does nothing to prevent oil activity in peatlands or anywhere else.

    As Boris Johnson approaches his final weeks in office, his own environmental legacy and that of the COP26 risk being all targets, no action. Speeches are made and press releases are disseminated, while the rights of vulnerable people everywhere are being run over by short-sighted extractive industries.

    Instead, I would like to see donor countries like the UK government, as host of the COP26 and one of the chief architects behind the DRC forest protection deal, to work with my country to move beyond the model of destructive extractivism and leapfrog towards a future of renewable and clean energy for all.

    IPS UN Bureau


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    © Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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  • Africa Taken for Neo-Colonial Ride — Global Issues

    Landmark guidelines aim to protect children uprooted by climate change — Global Issues

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    The Guiding Principles for Children on the Move in the Context of Climate Change contain a set of nine principles that address the unique and layered vulnerabilities of boys and girls who have been uprooted, whether internally or across borders, as a result of the adverse impacts of climate change. 

    They were launched by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and the United Nations University (UNU), located in Tokyo, Japan.

    Safeguarding future generations 

    The partners explained that currently, most child-related migration policies do not consider climate and environmental factors, while most climate change policies overlook the unique needs of children. 

    “The climate emergency has and will continue to have profound implications for human mobility. Its impacts will be most severe with particular segments of our communities such as children; we cannot endanger future generations,” said António Vitorino, the IOM Director General.  

    He added that although migrant children are particularly vulnerable when moving in the context of climate change, their needs and aspirations are still overlooked in policy debates.  

    “With these guiding principles we aim to ensure visibility to their needs and rights, both in policy debates and programming. Managing migration and addressing displacement of children in the context of climate change, environmental degradation and disasters, is an immense challenge that we must address now.” 

    Young lives at risk  

    Climate change is intersecting with existing environmental, social, political, economic and demographic conditions that are contributing to people’s decisions to move. 

    Nearly 10 million children were displaced following weather-related shocks in 2020 alone. Additionally, nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion children, or roughly one billion boys and girls, live in 33 countries at high risk of the impacts of climate change.   

    The partners warn that millions more children could be forced to move in the coming years. 

    “Every day, rising sea levels, hurricanes, wildfires, and failing crops are pushing more and more children and families from their homes,” said Catherine Russell, the UNICEF Executive Director.

    “Displaced children are at greater risk of abuse, trafficking, and exploitation. They are more likely to lose access to education and healthcare. And they are frequently forced into early marriage and child labour.”  

    Children walk through the mud in a displaced persons camp in Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria.

    © UNICEF/KC Nwakalor

    Children walk through the mud in a displaced persons camp in Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria.

    Collaboration with young activists 

    The guiding principles provide national and local governments, international organizations, and civil society groups with a foundation to build policies that protect children’s rights. 

    They were developed in collaboration with young climate and migration activists, academics, experts, policymakers, practitioners, and UN agencies.  The principles are based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and are informed by existing operational guidelines and frameworks. 

    David Passarelli of UNU recalled that the international community has been sounding the alarm on climate change and environmental degradation for years, as well as the likelihood of mass displacement.  

    These predictions have come true as climate-related migration has been observed in all parts of the world, with children increasingly affected. 

    “While these children benefit from a range of international and national protections, the subject matter is highly technical and difficult to access, creating a protection deficit for child migrants,” said Mr. Passarelli, Executive Director of the university’s Centre for Policy Research. 

    He added that the partners have stressed the need for concise guidelines that communicate risks, protections and rights, in clear and accessible language. 

    Protection today and tomorrow 

    The Guiding Principles “were developed with this specific objective in mind. This tool helps navigate the complex nexus of migrant rights, children’s rights, and climate change in order to respond more quickly and effectively to the needs of children on the move in the context of climate change.”  

    Governments, local and regional actors, international organizations, and civil society groups are being urged to embrace the principles. 

    While the new framework does not include new legal obligations, they distill and leverage key principles that have already been affirmed in international law and adopted by governments around the world, said Elizabeth Ferris, Director of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration.  

    “We urge all governments to review their policies in light of the guiding principles and take measures now that will ensure children on the move in the face of climate change are protected today and in the future.” 



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  • Monkeypox Symptoms Alert Risk South-East Asia WHO Regional Director Poonam Khetrapal Singh Physical Contact Global Health Emergency

    Monkeypox Symptoms Alert Risk South-East Asia WHO Regional Director Poonam Khetrapal Singh Physical Contact Global Health Emergency

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    New Delhi: The World Health Organisation (WHO) is regularly reviewing available data with its laboratory and other expert groups after Monkeypox cases are being reported from multiple countries, said Dr. PK Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region on Monday. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the current monkeypox epidemic a global health emergency on July 23.  “The transmission of monkeypox appears to be occurring primarily through close physical contact, including sexual contact. Transmission can also occur from contaminated materials such as linens, bedding, electronics, clothing, that have infectious skin particles,” she said. 

    Earlier, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh said that “monkeypox has been spreading rapidly and to many countries that have not seen it before, which is a matter of great concern”. She added that with cases concentrated among men who have sex with men, it is possible to curtail further spread of the disease with focused efforts among at-risk populations. 

    WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a media briefing last week that for the moment, monkeypox is an “outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men”. 

    For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has had to declare a global emergency. This time the reason for this is monkeypox, which has spread to more than 70 countries in a few weeks and has infected thousands of people. 

    Also Read: EXPLAINED: Is Monkeypox A Sexually Transmitted Disease? Know What Experts Say

    WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Saturday over-ruled a panel of advisors that could not reach a consensus, and declared Monkeypox a global health emergency. The term is currently only used by the WHO for two other diseases, Covid-19 and polio.

    WHO has declared an infection or disease a global health emergency for the seventh time since 2009. This is the strongest call to action this agency can take. Earlier in 2020, the WHO declared Covid-19 a global health emergency.

    There are more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox outside Africa, nearly five times the number at the time of the advisory meeting in June. While the countries of Europe have been the most affected, cases have also been reported in America, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, Israel, Brazil, Mexico and India. The infection has spread to more than 70 countries in total.

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  • Signs of Global Sanity? Sharing of Innovative Agricultural Solutions to Help Farmers and Consumers

    Signs of Global Sanity? Sharing of Innovative Agricultural Solutions to Help Farmers and Consumers

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    Agriculture is the direct or indirect livelihood of three quarters of the world’s poor, who live in rural areas.

    The 2008 food crisis and the subsequent global financial crisis, showed the extreme vulnerability of developing countries to fluctuations in food prices and supplies.

    But the impact was not only on developing world farmers – it affected consumers world-wide in food scarcities, eg rice in Thailand, and higher prices.

    In Nov 2008 Egypt – UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organisation) sponsored the first ever international conference on Sharing Innovative Agribusiness Solutions – From Farms to Markets: Providing Know-how and Finance.

    If the conference activities can be sustained it’s an initiative that would potentially benefit small farmers in developing world, consumers everywhere and the planet as a whole.

    “Our vision is sustainable development”

    In his opening speech Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, Founder of SEKEM said that Sustainable development could satisfy our needs and aspirations without decreasing the chances for future generations……but that we need to learn the basic principals of ecology.

    “….. Being ecologically literate means understanding the principles of organisations of ecological communities including our educational com¬munities, political and business communities. So that principles of education, management and politics include the principles of ecology.”

    A little about SEKEM

    In 1977 the economic and social hardship of his countrymen galvanised Social Entrepreneur and medical doctor Dr Abouleish into buying 70 hectares of desert scrubland, 60 km north-east of Cairo and close to the River Nile.

    He called the new experimental farm there SEKEM – from Ancient Egyptian: “vitality from the sun”.

    SEKEM was able to transform the desert into a showcase example of sustainable agriculture and a healthy ecosystem through biodynamic farming methods.

    Its efforts in organic cultivation led to the conversion of the entire Egyptian cotton industry to organic methods.

    Starting off with a dairy and crop farm, SEKEM soon began to produce herbal teas and to market its biodynamic produce in Europe. This initiative helped other farms in Egypt to switch to biodynamic farming. A part of its mix of activities the farm uses bio-fertilizers.

    The 2008 Cairo conference brought together over 400 agribusiness stakeholders from more than 65 countries, including representatives of private and public institutions (technical and financial), international organizations, donor countries, civil society, universities and research institutions to share innovative agribusiness solutions

    Topics covered supply/value chains, market access and linkages, Compliance with standards and conformity assessment, Technology and value addition and Innovative forms of financing

    Participants were enthusiastic about working together to achieve change. central to the debate were “Innovation and opportunity”, “partnerships based on trust” and “the need for commitment”, also the need for a holistic approach to agriculture taking into account the needs of specific groups, and avoiding the mistake of thinking that “one size fits all”.

    Four key issues were identified:

    1. Financial: small producers need finance to bridge the gap between initial costs and eventual benefits to help them enhance their productivity and agricultural product distribution.

    2. Up to date information: small farmers and SMEs need access to up-to-date market information to enable them to compete effectively in local, regional and international markets.

    One example cited was an Indian project, an e-Choupal (“choupal” means gathering place in Hindi) programme that places computers with internet access in rural farming villages; e-Choupals acted as both a social gathering place for exchange of information and an e-commerce hub.

    3. Investment in supply-chain infrastructure: Governments, the food industry, agribusiness and consumer goods retailers need to invesr in supply-chain infrstructures, which have a long economic life.

    e-Choupal had a role here too: Out of an initial effort to re-engineer the procurement process for soy, tobacco, wheat, shrimp and other cropping systems in rural India grew a highly profitable distribution and product design channel for the company – an e-commerce platform and also a low-cost fulfilment system focused on the specific needs of rural India

    4. Use of technology: using technological know-howfor improving yields, includingbio-fertilizers applied as soil or seed inoculants and foliar spray, reduction of post-harvest losses through better product preservation techniques, quality preservation processes and innovative ingredients to reduce microbial and toxin contamination, increased cost-efficiency related to local production, collective brands and quality criteria enhancement to strengthen small-scale producers, packaging technology and efficient logistics.

    A range of follow-up activities was reportedly initiated, including a new project (supported by the Italian Development Cooperation) to extend ETRACE(UNIDO’s Egyptian Traceability Centre for Agro-Industrial Exports) activities and help other developing countries to establish similar centres.

    Further follow-up initiatives will focus on promotional and outreach activities such as the development of an interactive networking and matchmaking platform for agribusiness practitioners, which will allow continuous sharing of more innovative solutions and best practices with more participants and thus foster more business and development partnerships

    If the momentum from this conference can be sustained the future could be brighter for all of us, consumers and farmers alike.

    Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

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  • An Integrated Regional Response for the Sahel Crisis — Global Issues

    An Integrated Regional Response for the Sahel Crisis — Global Issues

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    An Integrated Regional Response for the Sahel Crisis — Global Issues
    Benoit Thierry
    • Opinion by Benoit Thierry (dakar, senegal)
    • Inter Press Service

    However, as vital as it is, humanitarian aid cannot provide a long-term solution. More coordinated responses that address the underlying causes of the crisis are required. For this reason, the three UN agencies specialised in food and agriculture, namely the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), have joined forces with the G5 Sahel, the regional organisation established in 2014 by the five most affected Sahel countries. Together and with the participation of Senegal, they have launched a US$180 million programme to improve the livelihoods and economic means of rural producers in the region and scale up successful pilot activities. Through it, a common approach is implemented, capitalizing on rural development work of past decades, particularly in supporting farmers and herders’ associations.

    At IFAD we have a long experience working with rural producers in the region, however, until now, we tended to implement programmes nationally, in agreement with national governments. Currently, IFAD is financing 20 programmes and projects in G5 Sahel countries plus Senegal for a total of US$1 billion.

    With the existence of regional Sahel organisations, we can now focus our efforts at regional level, knowing that many of the issues cut across national borders, and work in partnership with all the governments and international agencies concerned. This is for the benefit of the poorest, which is the purpose of the joint Sahel programme, known as the Regional Joint Programme Sahel in Response to the Challenges of COVID-19, Conflict and Climate Change (SD3C). In addition to financing, IFAD is contributing its long experience in implementing agricultural projects at local level, FAO is bringing its in-depth knowledge and research in agriculture, and WFP its expertise working in conflict areas.

    An estimated 25 million people in the Sahel are nomadic pastoralists who are increasingly more desperate to find grazing areas for their cattle herds because of the effect of climate change. As they expand grazing areas into farming land, conflicts with sedentary farmers are on the rise leading to a decline in food production, when at the same time the population is increasing. According to UN forecast, population in the Sahel should more than double to 330 million people by 2050. How will they eat if the issue of food production and productivity is not addressed today through agriculture investment and adequate planning?

    The programme looks to increase food production and yields through climate-resilient agricultural practices, a key aspect in a region where 80 percent of agriculture is estimated to be affected by climate change. With climate experts forecasting temperatures in the region, currently averaging 35 degrees Celsius, to rise by at least 3 degrees by 2050, there is even more urgency to implement climate resilient measures today.

    Beyond the key issue of agriculture, the programme is also focussing on promoting cross-border trade and transactions and peace building at community level. Women, who typically have limited access to land and finance, are making up to 50 per cent of the programme’s participants. About 40 per cent are young people, who face high rates of unemployment and receive help in launching productive activities to create jobs and generate decent incomes. Landless people and transhumant pastoralists also benefit. The overall strategy is designed to meet the challenges of emergency, development and peace following a rapid intervention approach based on the scaling up of existing and efficient responses and approaches. Under implementation since 2021, the program will continue up to 2027 and expand to other countries in the Sahel region.

    IPS UN Bureau


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    © Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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  • WHO declares monkeypox a global emergency

    WHO declares monkeypox a global emergency

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    WHO says the expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries now qualifies as a global emergency

    WHO says the expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries now qualifies as a global emergency

    The World Health Organisation has declared the global monkeypox outbreak a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ (PHEIC), one step below that of a ‘pandemic.’

    A PHEIC, according to the WHO, constitutes “…an extraordinary event, which constitutes a public health risk to other States through the international spread, and which potentially requires a coordinated international response..”

    On January 30, 2020, the organisation had categorised COVID-19 as a PHEIC, when about 7,500 cases of novel coronavirus were reported. On March 11 that year, the agency elevated it to ‘pandemic.’

    The latest decision followed a seven-hour meeting on Thursday, July 21, of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee to discuss the monkeypox outbreak in several countries. It is this Committee of the WHO that decides on the seriousness of a public health crisis.

    Also read:Explained | How is Kerala fighting monkeypox?

    Though the Committee didn’t reach a consensus on whether the outbreak constituted a PHEIC, Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, decided that the situation merited such a classification.

    “We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations.

    For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,” he stated.

    The WHO has been criticised in the past for not recognising the incipient threat, soon enough, from COVID-19.

    Guidelines to follow

    As part of the PHEIC declaration which is said to be “temporary” and reviewed every three months, countries are expected to follow guidelines.

    They are grouped into three categories: those with no reported cases or where the last case was from 21 days ago; those with recently imported cases and experiencing human-to-human transmission and finally, countries where cases are being reported and have a history of the presence of the virus.

    The guidelines direct countries to step up surveillance, spread awareness on the pandemic, and ensure that at-risk groups aren’t stigmatised.

    Indian officials are yet to comment on the WHO’s classification. So far three cases have been confirmed in India, all in men, and in Kerala, with a history of travel to the United Arab Emirates. All three are hospitalised and reportedly “stable” according to Kerala health authorities.

    Also read: What drives sustained growth of monkeypox cases?

    The WHO said that so far 14,533 probable and laboratory-confirmed cases (including 3 deaths in Nigeria and 2 in the Central African Republic) have been reported to WHO from 72 countries across six WHO regions; up from 3,040 cases in 47 countries at the beginning of May 2022.

    The transmission was occurring in many countries that had not previously reported cases of monkeypox, and the highest numbers of cases are currently reported from countries in the European region and the region of the Americas.

    The majority of reported cases of monkeypox currently are in males, and most of these cases occur among males who identified themselves as gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM), in urban areas, and are clustered in social and sexual networks. Early reports of children affected include a few with no known epidemiological link to other cases, the WHO stated.

    The Secretariat noted that, although the number of cases and countries experiencing outbreaks of monkeypox appear to be rising, the WHO risk assessment has not changed since the first meeting of the Committee on June 23, 2022, and the risk is considered to be “moderate” at global level and in all six WHO regions, except for European region, where it is considered to be “high.”

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  • Africa Taken for Neo-Colonial Ride — Global Issues

    Guterres condemns missile strikes in Ukranian Black Sea port of Odesa — Global Issues

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    “Yesterday, all parties made clear commitments on the global stage to ensure the safe movement of Ukrainian grain and related products to global markets. These products are desperately needed to address the global food crisis and ease the suffering of millions of people in need around the globe. Full implementation by the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Turkey is imperative”, António Guterres said in a statement published by his spokesperson.

    In Instabul, Russian and Ukrainian Ministers signed on Friday the Black Sea Grain Initiative to resume Ukranian grain exports via the Black Sea amid the ongoing war. The agreement is meant to secure the transit of millions of tons of grain.

    The Russian invasion, which began on 24 February, has sparked record food and fuel prices, as well as supply chain issues, with mountains of grain stocks stuck in silos. 

    According to media reports, at least six explosions were heard in Odesa on Saturday morning, and so far is unclear what the strikes were targeting and whether any grain infraestructure was hit. 

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  • Monkeypox: WHO declares global health emergency over ‘extraordinary’ outbreak

    Monkeypox: WHO declares global health emergency over ‘extraordinary’ outbreak

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    WHO has declared an international health emergency over the monkeypox outbreak, which has affected nearly 17,000 people in 74 countries. 

    The chief of the World Health Organization described the surge in monkeypox infection as “extraordinary”, while triggering the highest level of alert on Saturday.

    “We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in the international health regulations,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.

    Declaring a “public health emergency of international concern”, he said the risk of monkeypox was relatively high across the world, including in Europe and North America, where it is not normally found.  

    This is the first time the chief of the UN health agency has taken such an action.

    An international emergency is the WHO’s highest level of alert, but this designation does not mean a disease is especially lethal or infectious. 

    WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr Michael Ryan, said the organisation put monkeypox in that category to ensure the global community takes the current outbreak seriously.

    “It’s a call to action,” said Dr Ryan, hoping the move would lead to collective action against the disease.

    Dr Ghebreyesus made the declaration without agreement among experts in the WHO’s emergency committee, who remain divided over whether it is necessary to trigger the highest level of alert. 

    Detected in early May, the unusual upsurge in cases of monkeypox, outside the countries of central and western Africa where the virus is endemic, has since spread throughout the world, with Europe as its epicentre.

    The disease has now struck more than 16,836 people in 74 countries, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

    Declaring a global emergency means the monkeypox outbreak is an “extraordinary event” that could spill over into more countries and requires a coordinated global response. 

    This is only the 7th time that the WHO has used this level of alert.

    The UN agency previously declared emergencies for public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, the Zika virus in Latin America in 2016 and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio.

    It only declares a “public health emergency of international concern” in “serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected” situations. 

    Diseases in this category are defined by the UN body as an “extraordinary event” whose spread constitutes a “risk to public health in other states” and may require “coordinated international action”.

    The emergency declaration mostly serves as a plea to draw more global resources and attention to an outbreak. Past announcements have had a mixed impact, since WHO is largely powerless to get countries to act.

    To date, monkeypox deaths have only been reported in Africa, where a more dangerous version of the virus is spreading, mainly in Nigeria and Congo.

    First detected in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than its cousin human smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980

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  • W.H.O. Declares Monkeypox Spread a Global Health Emergency

    W.H.O. Declares Monkeypox Spread a Global Health Emergency

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    For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency. This time the cause is monkeypox, which has spread in just a few weeks to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people.

    Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, on Saturday overruled a panel of advisers, who could not come to a consensus, and declared a “public health emergency of international concern,” a designation the W.H.O. currently uses to describe only two other diseases, Covid-19 and polio.

    “We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria” for a public health emergency, Dr. Tedros told reporters.

    The committee’s inability to come a consensus also highlights the need for a better process to decide which events represent public health emergencies. It is apparently the first time that the director general has overruled his advisers to declare a public health emergency.

    “This process demonstrates once again that this vital tool needs to be sharpened to make it more effective,” Dr. Tedros said, referring to the W.H.O.’s deliberations. Member countries are considering ways to improve the process, he added.

    The W.H.O.’s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response. The designation can lead member countries to invest significant resources in controlling an outbreak, draw more funding to the response, and encourage nations to share vaccines, treatments and other key resources for containing the outbreak.

    It is the seventh public health emergency since 2007; the Covid pandemic, of course, was the most recent. Some global health experts have criticized the W.H.O.’s criteria for declaring such emergencies as opaque and inconsistent.

    At a meeting in June, the W.H.O.’s advisers concluded that while monkeypox was a growing threat, it was not yet an international emergency. The panel could not reach a decision on Thursday, Dr. Tedros said.

    Many experts roundly criticized the process as shortsighted and overly cautious.

    There are more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox outside Africa, roughly five times the number when the advisers met in June. Nearly all the infections have occurred among men who have sex with men.

    The W.H.O.’s declaration is “better late than never,” said Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases physician at Emory University in Atlanta.

    But with the delay, “one can argue that the response globally has continued to suffer from a lack of coordination with individual countries working at very different paces to address the problem.”

    “There is almost capitulation that we cannot stop the monkeypox virus from establishing itself in a more permanent way,” she added.

    Dr. James Lawler, co-director of the University of Nebraska’s Global Center for Health Security, estimated that it might take a year or more to control the outbreak. By then, the virus is likely to have infected hundreds of thousands of people and may have permanently entrenched itself in some countries.

    “We’ve now unfortunately really missed the boat on being able to put a lid on the outbreak earlier,” Dr. Lawler said. “Now it’s going to be a real struggle to be able to contain and control spread.”

    The longer the outbreak goes on, the greater the chances are of the virus moving from infected people to animal populations, where it could persist and sporadically trigger new infections in people. This is one way that a disease can become endemic in a region.

    As of Saturday, the United States had recorded nearly 3,000 cases, including two children, but the real toll is thought to be much higher, as testing is only now being scaled up. Britain and Spain each have about as many cases, and the rest are distributed through about 70 countries.

    Many of the infected in these countries report no known source of infection, indicating undetected community spread.

    The W.H.O. advisers said at the end of June that they did not recommend an emergency declaration in part because the disease had not moved out of the primary risk group, men who have sex with men, to affect pregnant women, children or older adults, who are at greater risk of severe illness if they are infected.

    In interviews, some experts said they did not agree with the rationale.

    “Do you want to declare the emergency the moment it’s really bad, or do you want to do it in advance?” said Dr. Isabella Eckerle, a clinical virologist at the University of Geneva.

    “We don’t have this problem now. We don’t see the virus in children, we don’t see it in pregnant women,” she added. “But we know if we let this go, and we don’t do enough, then it will happen at some point.”

    A similar W.H.O. committee that convened in early 2020 to evaluate the coronavirus outbreak also met twice, deciding only at its second meeting, on Jan. 30, that the spread of the virus constituted a public health emergency.

    Committee members suggested at the time that the W.H.O. consider creating “an intermediate level of alert” for outbreaks of moderate concern. The organization may need such a system as outbreaks become more frequent.

    Deforestation, globalization and climate change are creating more opportunities for pathogens to jump from animals to people. Now, an emerging virus can quickly transcend national boundaries to become a global threat.

    But most public health authorities remain equipped only to handle chronic diseases or small outbreaks.

    The devastation of the Covid pandemic and the surge in monkeypox should serve as a warning to governments to prepare for new epidemics without notice, said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

    “As much as the world is tired of infectious disease crises, they are part of a new normal that is going to demand a lot of ongoing attention and resources,” he said. “We need global vaccine and therapeutics production and stockpiling approaches that don’t yet exist.”

    Monkeypox has periodically flared in some African countries for decades. Experts have sounded the alarm about its potential as a global threat for years now, but their warnings went mostly unheeded.

    Vaccines and drugs are available in large part because of fears of a bioterrorism attack with smallpox, a close relative of the monkeypox virus.

    But access to a drug called tecovirimat has been snarled by time-consuming bureaucracy and government control of the supply, delaying treatment by days or even weeks for some patients.

    Doses of Jynneos, the newer and safer of two available vaccines, have been severely constrained — even in the United States, which helped develop the vaccine.

    As of Friday, New York City had logged 839 monkeypox cases, nearly all of them in men who have sex with men, according to the city’s Department of Health. In late June, the city began offering the monkeypox vaccine, but ran out with just about 1,000 doses available.

    The supply has grown slowly since then to about 20,000 doses. The city offered another 17,000 first-dose appointments on Friday evening, but those, too, were filled quickly.

    “Vaccine supply remains low,” the city’s health department website said on Saturday.

    Containing the virus may be even more challenging in countries with limited or no supply of vaccines and treatments. Without the framework of a global emergency, each country must find its own way to provide tests, vaccines and treatments, exacerbating the inequities between nations.

    A failure to coordinate the response has also squandered opportunities to collect data in large multinational studies, particularly where disease surveillance tends to be spotty.

    “This inability to characterize the epidemiological situation in that region represents a substantial challenge to designing interventions for controlling this historically neglected disease,” Dr. Tedros said about West and Central African countries in a statement on Thursday.

    For example, monkeypox cases in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the virus has been endemic, suggested that a painful body-wide rash can develop in one to two weeks after exposure.

    But many patients in the current outbreak have developed lesions only in the genital area. Some — especially those who develop sores in the throat, urethra or rectum — have suffered excruciating pain.

    “I was scared to use the bathroom actually,” said one recent patient, Gabriel Morales, 27, a part-time model based in New York City. “I can’t even describe it. It feels like broken glass.”

    Many other patients have experienced only mild symptoms, and some have not had the fever, body aches or respiratory symptoms typically associated with the disease.

    It’s possible that only severe cases were detected in the endemic regions of Africa, and the current outbreak offers a more accurate picture of the disease, Dr. Eckerle said. Or it could be that the virus itself has changed significantly, as has the profile of symptoms it causes.

    According to preliminary genetic analyses of samples from infected patients, the monkeypox genome seems to have collected nearly 50 mutations since 2018, more than the six or seven it would have been expected to amass in that period.

    It’s unclear whether the mutations have changed the mode of transmission, severity or other qualities of the virus. But early analysis hints that monkeypox may have adapted to spreading more easily between people than it did before 2018.

    Coordinating the response among nations would help address many of the uncertainties around outbreak, Dr. Eckerle said: “There are so many open questions.”

    Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Otterman contributed reporting.

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