Vaccine Nationalism’s Impact on Developing Countries

Written by Dana Justus

(FrankyDeMeyer / iStockphoto)

Vaccine nationalism, meaning that higher-income countries are buying up disproportionate amounts of vaccine doses for their own populations, has been a concern since the first COVID-19 vaccines entered clinical trial phases in mid-2020. Multilateral solidarity seems to have given way to competitive behaviour in light of what a recent RAND survey called the ‘arms race’ towards global vaccination. This will affect not only poorer regions, but also the global economy with expected losses of trillions (USD) in global GDP. While this behaviour might seem like a logical consequence of self-protection, there is a need for closer examination. For example, Germany alone has ordered at least 323 million doses from six different vaccines for a population of 83 million. The EU seems to find themselves in the middle of a fight of political wills by promoting global value chains and calling for global cooperation. At the same time, they are threatening vaccine manufacturers over ambiguous contractual obligations favouring EU citizens in a row that could threaten vaccine distribution.

Global immunity is seen as the primary means to end the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic and has substantial implications for global health governance. Yet, it would be a misconception to argue that the approval of several vaccines for rollout is equivalent to a cure-all solution. In addition to limited access for developing countries, there are problems of logistics and storage, not to forget widespread hesitancy to get vaccinated due to misinformation. Beyond humanitarian reasons to promote vaccines for all, the phrase “no-one is safe until everyone is safe” is more than just a campaign slogan for COVAX. The pandemic has shown by now that global cooperation is a necessary means for global recovery. More so, the crisis presents the international community with the opportunity to strengthen fragile health systems holistically. The pandemic has already complicated access to health care services around the world, resulting in setbacks for childhood immunisations in 70 developing countries. Additionally, treatments for non-communicable diseases and routine surgeries have become hard to come by with millions of patients affected worldwide.

Continued delays to the global vaccine rollout will result in substantial economic shocks and developing countries will likely see the worst of these effects. Prolonged exposure to physical distancing measures and public disinvestments will not only affect global supply chains but are already inhibiting progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Food insecurity was already rising before the emergence of this virus while continued restrictions and resulting threats to people’s livelihoods are active threats to food systems and efforts to alleviate global hunger. This adds to the problem of infrastructure. India and South Africa have high production capacities (India is home to the largest producer of vaccines worldwide), but also have high exposure and mortality rates, while the poor and rural populations are difficult to reach. The situation in India today is highly problematic; as the country is experiencing new daily totals of over 300,000 infections, immunisation efforts are seriously constrained by the struggling health system. Chile, on the other hand, has been impressively fast to vaccinate its mostly rural population but cases are rising nonetheless, resulting in significant problems for health services and political stability. Middle-income countries may find themselves in the difficult position of being neither too rich, nor too poor for receiving vaccines in the short term, especially problematic considering they are more susceptible to economic shocks than some high-income countries. Competition between buyers – in addition to companies’ manufacturing problems – are actively constraining public health campaigns for widespread rollouts, while resulting issues for health services are likely to induce setbacks for building back societies.

Middle-and lower-income countries not adequately recovering from the pandemic will lead to hundreds of billions in GDP losses for rich countries. Such numbers suggest significant economic incentives for affected nations to commit to equitable vaccinations. In the wordsof the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), ‘a US$ 27.2 billion investment on the part of advanced economies – the current funding shortfall […] – is capable of generating returns as high as 166x the investment’. Thus far, COVAX is set out to distribute 1.8-2 billion doses to 92 lower-income countries. Despite these promising numbers experts claim that COVAX is insufficient, ‘wholly unequipped’ to meet the 70% target for global immunisation. Moreover, World Bank assessments of countries’ vaccination readiness show dramatic shortfalls when it comes to safety systems (68%), trained staff (30%), and social engagement strategies (27%) which are necessary to meet vaccine hesitancy.

Consequently, there is a clear need and opportunity to strengthen public health beyond borders, to invest in human capital and facilitate access to medical tools. Such efforts could build widespread resilience in those regions which are still most susceptible to public health emergencies. Research shows that this is not “just” a humanitarian mission or an ethical motivation; there are significant economic incentives for rich countries to open themselves up to equitable vaccine distribution. Calling on leaders to share unused vaccine doses is a start, but achieving global targets will nonetheless require a more widespread response to expand capacities in poorer regions in order to avoid gaps in time and prevent likely new mutations. If this pandemic has shown us something, it is that there is a clear discrepancy between economically-motivated and public-good policy-making. Given the unequal speed of vaccine rollouts and rapidly rising case rates in countries like Chile, Germany and India in spite of access to high quantities of vaccines, it should become clear that domestic immunisation is not the singular solution for recovery. It is time for global leaders to re-invest in existing global governance mechanisms as it has become obvious that this crisis is truly global – and thus requires a global solution to build capacities beyond national borders.

You can help by calling on pharma companies to donate more of their doses for free. Sign Amnesty International’s petition here.

Read more on COVAX rollout here.

Dana Justus is a Postgraduate student of International Security at Warwick and a volunteer research assistant for WICID. Her key research interests are global health, security, and development. She is currently working on her dissertation discussing how global health governance is framed in security and human rights-based discourse.

Mouzayian Khalil : 11 May 2021 10:36 |  Tags: Covax Covid 19 Global Health Governance Vaccine Nationalism |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Data and Displacement: Collaborative Research at a Time of Uncertainty

(Data and Displacement project website)

Data and Displacement: Collaborative Research at a Time of Uncertainty

Written By: Olufunto Abimbola,Abubakar Adam,Oláyínká Àkànle,Modesta Alozie,Silvia De Michelis,Ewajesu Opeyemi Okewumi,Olufunke Fayehun,Prithvi Hirani,Briony Jones,Kuyang Logo,Hajja Kaka Alhaji Mai,Leben Moro,João Porto de Albuquerque,Vicki Squire,Dallal Stevens,Grant Tregonning,Rob Trigwell,Stephanie Whitehead

Data and Displacement is a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and FCDO (UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office) funded project, working with partners in Nigeria and South Sudan. It provides crucial insights into the impacts of data-driven development on internally displaced communities in conflict situations. The project currently faces uncertainty, due to news that the UK government has decided to cut overseas development aid (ODA) funded projects. While many projects have already been informed of the considerable cuts that they face, others such as Data and Displacement await further news. Despite this, the research remains pressing. Data and Displacement considers how people ‘falling through the cracks’ of protection can be further excluded through the generation and use of large-scale data. The research provides urgent new insights into the ways that humanitarian organisations can work with local partners and with Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) themselves in order to improve knowledge about displacement-related vulnerabilities. This is crucial in order to ensure the effective distribution and use of development aid for vulnerable groups in situations of conflict.

Data and Displacement brings together a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from University of Warwick (UK), University of Ibadan (Nigeria), University of Juba (South Sudan) and the International Organisation for Migration. As a research team, we remain fully committed to continuing our important work and to building equitable partnerships and advancing impactful interdisciplinary research. We are currently conducting fieldwork in northern Nigeria and South Sudan and are also fully committed to meeting the promises that we have made to the project’s research participants. The various partners involved in this project have come together on the basis of the mutual trust that has been built up over time; trust that we remain committed to protecting and enhancing further. In light of this, and given the uncertainties we are currently facing, we have decided to write a blog together in order to highlight the various pressures the current situation puts on us all, both individually and collectively, as well as to emphasise the damaging nature of the ODA cuts.

The importance of projects such as Data and Displacement

Diversity in research really matters. This is a diverse team, and a great team. It has very good representation in each country where the research takes place; it involves a genuine practitioner-researcher partnership where practitioners are included as investigators; it has gender balance (12 women and 6 men) and impressive disciplinary range. The combination of that diversity with the equitable approach to leadership that has been engaged in this project has had very positive results. Everyone brings with them very different experiences, reflecting diverse academic backgrounds (in computer science, data science, ethics, geography, international relations, law, political science and sociology) and geographical contexts (Nigeria, South Sudan, and the United Kingdom), engaging in open discussion and collective reflection about the relevance of these for the design and implementation of the research. This sort of open discussion is what will ultimately lead to the production of knowledge that is able to positively impact the lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged, critically informing the practice of those who make decisions based on data and IDPs. Multi-disciplinary and context-sensitive research of this kind is rare, and its loss would be strongly felt across academic and practitioner communities.

A particular strength of the project lies in its work in differing conflict contexts. This provides a platform for understanding how research is carried out in the different places, plus it helps to shed a light on the specific challenges of doing research in the most fragile and volatile of research contexts. As the project implementation progresses, it has become clear that the same plans and the same actions will not necessarily work in the same way for both northern Nigeria and South Sudan, hence the team has had to think of creative ways to engage with each context. This has created team learning in all directions, and we have realised that remaining flexible and understanding the challenges of each context is one of the most important aspects of successfully delivering research across the different sites.

Partnerships such as those developed by the Data and Displacement project are very important, especially for partners from less resourced countries. Oftentimes, data is produced about people in these countries, without many people from the country itself playing a significant role in the production of the data, especially in the more technical aspects of this process. To an extent, this partnership can address the inequality, by reflecting the ideas and opinions of persons from countries that usually get left out from the production and management of data. The project embeds mutual learning and the exchange of expertise within the research process, and this is valuable for all of us involved.

The Data and Displacement project, in itself, is a unique project given the cutting-edge ideas it is developing and the very innovative and strategic partnership it is building. We are proud of the partnership, which we view as excellent in all respects. It is not only technically sound but also broad-based and inclusive. Every project partner contributes different capacities, enthusiasm, perspectives and positive insights, which we are confident will ultimately advance ground-breaking conclusions and interventions. It is clear that the project is an example of best practice in the way that it is forging its research partnership, because it brings together a range of approaches and develops these in terms that build from the strengths of the team. Importantly, it also supports a group of early career researchers, who have opportunities to explore new ideas, undertake training, gain intellectual support and deepen their networks through working as part of the interdisciplinary collaboration.

Key values and strengths at risk of being undermined

The value of partnerships such as Data and Displacement is that we all learn together and from each other; we work together to find new ways of thinking about things and new ways of doing things. Such partnerships provide opportunities to exchange information, pass on expertise and carry out valuable joint works. Nevertheless, we also face significant challenges as a team. For example, some of us cannot consistently access the internet, our electricity is rationed and there are blackouts that interrupt our participation in the research process. Even as researchers familiar with such contexts, we have to learn new ways of manoeuvring the situation we find ourselves in, while all the time deepening understanding of the wider research team and the different contexts whereby the research is undertaken. In this situation, the flexibility of the research team as a whole is of paramount importance.

Data and Displacement is committed to minimising the impacts of unequal or heavily-skewed power relations, particularly where some of our partners have limited resources and face additional challenges in undertaking research in fragile contexts. However, there is always a risk that partnerships such as ours become exploitative ventures, where those of us from less resourced countries became producers of raw data and those of us from resourced countries use the data to produce knowledge with little more than an occasional thanks to the raw data producers. This risk has become even greater where COVID-19 has perpetuated unequal power relations on a global scale, rendering those of us in more fragile contexts needing additional time and support to contribute to the research process.

The central values of the Data and Displacement partnership are collective learning, the sharing of ideas and epistemic equality. We seek to develop a comprehensive and inclusive project, where each partner’s contribution is equal and valued. We have worked to dismantle power-relations, asymmetries and dichotomies that should not exist in knowledge co-production between the UK and the world. We have done this by avoiding an extractive approach to knowledge production and through ensuring the effective integration of the team through the project design and work packages.

We still have work to do, but feel that success is assured if this team spirit continues. We can achieve excellent outcomes so long as the partnership is sustained. However, the contexts within which we work raise particular challenges, as noted above. Our team has consistently engaged in the challenges involved in working together with positivity, purpose and open minds. This is a collective strength, which also represents a significant investment that renders secure and sustained research funding absolutely essential. After investing so much time in developing the partnership, we hope to see a future funding environment whereby those of us in the Global South can invite those of us from the Global North to act as Co-Investigators, rather than vice versa. This was precisely the direction of travel of the programme by which we were funded and of the raft of ODA projects facing the recent cuts. We still hold out hope that the funding environment will be underpinned by foresight and will become more equitable, rather than less so, over time.

The impact of uncertainty

For those of us outside the UK, uncertainty around our funding makes it hard to plan. This is in addition to the additional uncertainties that we face due to COVID-19. Facing the prospect of cuts is really disappointing for us as partners from less resourced countries, who have fewer options to carry out funded research. Our project aims to expose issues around the ethics of doing research, yet if the funding is terminated this important work will not proceed impacting both our incomes and careers. This leaves some of us worrying each day. The cuts are a major shock, as they create huge concerns around how much effort, positive energy and enthusiasm we should commit in the short, medium and long term given our uncertain future as members of the project team. However, we hope for the best and somehow feel that it will be okay; that reason will prevail on the need not to cut our project’s funds.

Those of us who are early career researchers suddenly face exceptional precarity. The Data and Displacement team currently includes seven early career researchers, offering valuable opportunities for us to take part in a large interdisciplinary research team, develop existing and new research skills, and to learn from experienced colleagues. With the negative effects of COVID-19 on the higher education job market it is not an easy time to be facing uncertainty over whether or not our positions will continue. The entire team benefits hugely from the energy and insights of our early career researchers, whom the project remains committed to supporting.

For those of us in the UK managing other projects already effected by these cuts, we have found ourselves treading a fine line between being transparent and not wanting to worry people. Trying to shield partners from what we have been fearing might come, but which we are determined to avoid, has been hard. Worse still has been dread at the thought of what would happen to those employed by our partners if the funding dropped away, knowing that jobs in those countries are less easy to come by and recognising the extreme stress this has placed on partners. They aren’t just partners, they are people: our colleagues and friends. It is people that these cuts affect, whether it is those carrying out the research or those benefiting from it. Added to that of course is the huge disappointment at the missed opportunities in research that the ODA cuts represent and the irreconcilable damage this is doing to our future ability to form partnerships. We feel ashamed that the British government has taken this decision.

About the Project:

Data and Displacement addresses the practical and ethical questions arising from the increase of data-driven practices of humanitarian protection. It undertakes the urgent task of assessing the production and use of large-scale data, focusing on the impact these have on internally displaced persons (IDPs) in two conflict situations: northern Nigeria and South Sudan. The project advances understanding of the operational and ethical challenges of data-driven humanitarian targeting, while also contributing practical and methodological insights surrounding digital humanitarianism and participatory research. The project involves a large team of researchers from Nigeria, South Sudan and the UK, the full details of which can be found here.

Mouzayian Khalil : 27 Apr 2021 13:18 |  Tags: Migration Collaborative Research Data And Displacement Oda Cuts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mis–/disinformation, social media censorship, and divided societies

Written by Dr Phillip Nelson

"Modern Communication 02" by ChrisM70 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The rise of social media and the echo chambers created by computer algorithms are directly contributing to polarisation and divided societies, in which hard-line views are lauded and compromise is not considered. When confronted with opinions from an outside group, the proponent is labelled a ‘fascist’, ‘left-wing liberal elite’, or ‘woke-<<insert insult>>’. This division can even lead to violence, as seen recently in the US where insurrection was fuelled by social media. All countries may soon see similar shifts toward polarisation, as connectivity rises around the globe.

The issue of divided societies goes hand in hand with the spread of mis-/disinformation online. Misinformation is the unwitting spread of fake news, whereas disinformation is the deliberate spreading of fake news. Several forces, including nation states, have been accused of amplifying extreme voices to shift public opinion. While the deliberate spread of disinformation in this regard may be alarming, it is only a small element of the general shift toward division caused by the rise of social media. Curating or censoring information on social mediais one of the main solutions proffered by civil society commentators to fight mis-/disinformation. A similar suggestion is to train the population through schools in methods of questioning and detecting falsehoods. Consequently, we would weed out the lies and extreme opinions before they can sow the seeds of division. But, I believe, this isn’t going to work.

Indeed, the recent barring of Donald Trump from social media has led many to question whether private companies should have the right to police public platforms. Should US CEOs get to decide what’s in the public interest, not just at home in the US, but also abroad? Societies could end up pushing some views into the dark web, where we would have even less understanding of their reach and motivations. While these concerns are valid, I don’t consider that they get to the real problem –truth itself.

I believe we need to acknowledge as a species – yes, every human around the world – that there is no one truth or factual version of an event/phenomenon. Indeed, it is impossible to present any information without bias – the knowledge and experiences that make us who we are, also shape our interpretation of the world around us. This premise is not new; in fact, much social science research is based on this very premise – ontological relativism. As one definition states:

“The reasonable case for relativism would simply state that since we can only ever consider the existence of ‘the real’ through a specific discourse and that the way human beings have viewed reality has undergone significant changes, then we should not place too much faith in the currently fashionable forms of imagining reality. As Foucault argued, how can we have a history of truth if truth has its own history” (The SAGE Dictionary of Social Research Methods).

This is not to say that stock should be placed in every statement. For example, someone could say that the COVID vaccine will make you grow an extra leg. While I could never say that this is 100% false – because I could never know truth – I can be 99.99 recurring-percent sure that the statement is false. My job is to convince my counterpart of this belief. In order to do this, I must find a way to allay their fear, be it through reasoned or emotive argument. What I should never do, is dismiss the claim out of hand, or label the proponent with any kind of normative term, such as ‘crazy’. Most likely, their assertion is an expression born of legitimate concern for the welfare of themselves and others.

Thus, curating online content is an interesting suggestion, but inevitably a fruitless one. After all, who would do this curating? I don’t believe anyone could do it without bias. Even a computer algorithm would be biased by the ‘truthful’ information it was fed by its biased human programmers. We could teach it to emotionlessly determine fact from fiction, but the tools we would give it to do so would be determined by our own conception of what is and is not likely to be true.

To overcome division in our societies, then, we must first accept that everything in life is shaded in grey and everyone will have their own interpretation of events. For example, one could hold up the low death rate from COVID-19 in New Zealand as a shining example of how to deal with a pandemic. At first, the facts could present a solution as clear as day. But, then consider that, here in the UK, our close economic ties with neighbouring Europe and global connections mean that over 140M people enter the country each year. In New Zealand this figure is only 7M (3M returning homeand 4M tourists). The UK was clearly at greater risk. So, what was once clear as day, is now a little grey. So it is with every ‘fact’.

Once we accept that everything is a little grey, I believe we can move on to engage with our adversaries in a much more productive way, and we will be able to come together as never before, in open, tolerant discussion – no more shouting into the void. Conflict isn’t a bad thing. We just need to find ways to channel conflict into productive discussion and action.

The best way to do this is by trying to understand mis- and disinformation, its sources and mouthpieces: why are individuals and groups interested in spreading it in the first place and why are people interested in listening? Often, this will mean fathoming what fear or concern it speaks to, why that concern exists, and what can be done to alleviate it. All of this must be done without judgement of the individual. If we can do this, then division will become inclusion.

Faced with increasingly divided societies, it may seem easier now to pick a side and hunker down. But, I believe we must do the exact opposite. We must come out of our silos, our trenches, and our echo chambers. We must accept that the world of truth is a multitude of viewpoints, and each individual has the right to hold their own. It is upon youto convince themthat your view is better.

Phillip Nelson is a Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. He holds an MA in Economics and International Relations from the University of St Andrews and an MSocSci in Peace and Conflict Studies from Uppsala University, Sweden. He was awarded his PhD in international relations from the University of Essex in 2019 for his thesis on individual and group motivations for participation in civil conflict, and has so far published work in the journal of Defence and Peace Economics.

Mouzayian Khalil : 24 Mar 2021 10:07 |  Tags: Censorship Divided Societies Fake News Social Media |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Let us Talk about Young Men and their Participation in the Niger Delta Violence

Pollution in the Niger Delta (courtesy: Stakeholder Development Network SDN)

Written by Dr Modesta Alozie

Anjo limped as he walks towards me for an interview, I wondered what had happened to his leg. He had been shot in 2003 in Bayelsa during a violent clash between the military and the local youths, many of whom were men. For months, local youths sabotaged oil pipelines in the region and kidnapped oil company staff for ransom, which led the federal government to send in the military to repress dissidents. Although the National Youth Policy (2019) says the age range of youth in Nigeria as 18-29 years, it is not unusual in the Niger delta to find people as old as 45 years old identify as youths. This is because youth, in this context, is mainly a site of marginalisation and contestation rather than an age category.

The violence was not only happening in Bayelsa but across the other eight states of the Niger delta where Nigeria’s oil production takes place, with a huge consequence for the development of the region. Thousands of people have died and thousands have been displaced. Properties have been destroyed, and between 2007-2008, Nigeria’s oil production decreased by 40%. In a country where 88% of the government earning comes from oil, the economic effect of this violence cannot be understated. Peace was eventually restored in 2009 after the government introduced the Amnesty Programme which promised monthly stipends to the youths if they dropped their arms. But sporadic violence still occurs.

Because Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil exporter, the violence in the Niger delta has huge implications for global oil supply. As such, there is serious interest from academics as well as the media to explain this violence. Economists like Paul Collier tell us that what fuels this violence is greed by young men, and in the media, these young men have been labelled as criminals. Blaming young men for this violence leads to the stigmatisation of young people in the society and obscures the role of the state as well as the oil companies in creating the inequalities that fuel this violence in the first place.

In my doctoral research, I sought to explain this violence from the perspectives of these young men. I spoke with these young men and observed their social environment to understand how their identity as men influence their violent behaviour. Many of the youths I spoke to blame the government and the oil companies, who are in a joint business arrangement with the federal government, for this violence. When Nigeria’s oil revenue surged in the 1970s, the federal government introduced new economic and political structures to monopolise control over oil proceeds. First, a Federation Account was created into which all oil revenues are channelled to be shared subsequently across all the states in the country. Then, the Derivation Principle which regulates the proportion of internally generated revenue to be retained by any state was slashed from 50% to 3% in the 1980s. At the moment, the oil communities retain 13% of the oil profits generated within their region as specified by the Derivation Principle and population size is considered the most important criteria for sharing the revenue collected by the federal government. As such, the majority ethnic groups, especially the Hausa Northerners, have received the largest chunk of the oil proceeds due to their large number. The oil communities see this as distributive injustice. There is a perception amongst the oil communities that their ethnic minority status makes it difficult for them to negotiate a better revenue-sharing arrangement at the federal government level.

Corrupt practices by local politicians and harmful corporate practices by the oil companies further compound the problems of the oil communities. A large chunk of the funds which could have been invested in development projects, such as employment creation is diverted into private pockets, and so the level of unemployment in the region is very high. For decades, oil spills have occurred frequently in the Niger delta often without remediation and compensation to the oil communities. Between 1976-2001, 7000 oil spill incidents occurred in the Niger delta and every year, 240,000 barrels of oil are spilt in the Niger region. This is the highest rate of oil spills recorded anywhere in the world leading the BBC to name the Niger delta ‘the world oil pollution capital’.

Oil spills in the Niger delta occur mainly from operational failures or pipeline vandalisation by youths. By law, the local communities are supposed to be compensated by the oil firms when an oil spill happens due to operational failures. However, compensation rarely happens because the Joint Investigation process (JIV) which is used to determine the cause of an oil spill is seriously flawed. The oil companies provide the equipment and finances required for the JIV, which leaves little room for accountability and transparency in the process. As such, the oil communities believe that most oil spill data from the JIV is unreliable.

In many instances when local residents have gone to the court to challenge the outcome of the JIV, they have been unsuccessful, although a recent court case in which four local farmers won an oil spill case against Shell in a Dutch court brings some glimmer of hope. Because rural livelihood in the Niger Delta is predominantly fishing and farming, local people have watched their future drain away with oil and concern for health continues to rise. It is within this context of exclusion and pollution that young men like Anjo are challenging the oil companies and the institutional structures which they believe do not serve them.

My research found that while women also experience the economic exclusion resulting from oil exploration, men are disproportionately affected by the social consequences of this economic exclusion. Also, some traditional ideas of manhood encourage violent behaviour amongst Ijaw men. Egbesu, the Ijaw god of war commands young men to rise as men and protect their communities against any external danger and injustice. This cultural context normalises violence to a certain extent and many young men who are socialised in this context see the enactment violence as merely a habitualised way of being a male member of the Ijaw community.

Young men in the Niger Delta are expected to provide for their households as well as to marry, but in the Niger Delta, marriage is a long and elaborate process requiring large sums of cash. Without getting married, many young men remain in limbo as junior men and they are not able to participate meaningfully in local community life. Many young men I spoke to saw marriage and the provider role as essential to who they are as men. They explain how unemployment undermines their ability to perform these roles as well as how violence enables them to meet these social roles.

During my interview with Anjo, he explained that before joining violent militancy, he had no money to pay his children’s school fees and to feed his family as a man, which led to regular insults from his wife. After joining one of the well-known militant gangs in the region, Anjo’s economic situation improved significantly. He and his peers were paid hugely by the oil companies to protect oil territories. Consequently, Anjo received enough money to provide for both his immediate as well as extended family.

Many Ijaw men I spoke to justified violence as a normal way of being a good man in the Ijaw community and in a context characterised by injustice. The dependence on Ijaw men’s strength for community protection shifts the responsibility of resistance against military repression and exclusion on young men, who then use violence to resist an equally violent state.

While many unemployed men struggled to become providers and to marry, I observed in the night clubs and in wedding ceremonies that violent men lived a different life. In the clubs, women wanted them for their cash, and in the wedding ceremonies they were invited as ‘Chairmen’, an honourable Nigerian title almost exclusively reserved for older rich men. In this context of exclusion, violence offered young men an opportunity to insert themselves into the mainstream social and economic life, albeit through the back door.

Since young men are the main perpetrators and victims of this violence, addressing this violence and achieving inclusive development in the Niger delta requires that intervention strategies meet the diverse needs of young men (and women) many of whom live at the margins of the oil communities. Finally, it is time to move towards a society where men are humanised and manhood is not linked with violence.

Author Bio

Dr Modesta Alozie is the Lead Research Fellow on the Data and Displacement Project at the Department of Politics and International Relations University of Warwick, UK. She holds a PhD in Development Planning from University College London. Before joining Warwick, Modesta worked as a research consultant at the Urban Institute University of Sheffield in the LO-ACT low carbon project. Her research has focused on climate change and analysing the complex impacts of oil extraction in Nigeria from an intersectional perspective. Recently, her research has expanded geographically beyond Nigeria to include South Sudan focusing on the experiences of internally displaced people in these two contexts.

Mouzayian Khalil : 26 Feb 2021 11:27 |  Tags: Conflict Displacement Gender Inclusion Niger Delta Youth Violence |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

On Victims’ Recognition: Gendered Politics of the FARC’s Forced Recruitment

Written by Dr Sonia Garzon-Ramirez

When the peace talks between ex-Colombian president Santos and the then Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were about to kick off in 2012, the word “forgiveness” started to occupy Colombian social media and newspapers. While some victims were confronted with the dilemma of whether or not to forgive their perpetrators, others expected the FARC guerrilla to make a gesture of peace and ask their victims for forgiveness. However, at the beginning of the peace negotiations, there was a sense of general shock among the population when, instead of offering an apology, the top FARC commander Rodrigo Granda said during an interview with BBC correspondent Sara Rainsford that the FARC were themselves victims of this war.

With the exception of this controversial interview, there have been no further public discussions about whether the FARC as a group has been a victim of war. However, as recently as December 2019, Colombia’s Constitutional Court issued a decision that touches upon interpretations of Colombian transitional justice law with regard to victims. Indeed, with this decision the Court has opened a door to considering whether there might have been some individual victims within the ranks of the FARC. It might well be that, by not taking this debate forward, Colombia is missing an important opportunity to hold FARC leaders accountable, and to know the truth about the patterns of FARC violence and oppression that kept the war going.

The FARC’s Moves Towards a Formal Apology

Colombian victims had to wait until the last moment, when the peace agreement was about to be signed and voted on in a popular referendum, before receiving a gesture of apology from FARC leaders seeking forgiveness. Fortunately, since the approval of the peace agreement in 2016, several acts of public apology have taken place. Despite the FARC’s initial recalcitrance, Colombians have seen the FARC steadily moving towards the recognition of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by their forces. As of today, FARC leaders have offered public apologies for forced displacement, massacres, kidnapping, and political assassinations that they had previously downplayed or denied. It is worth noting that the FARC is not the only armed actor responsible for the more than 7 million victims resulting from 5 decades of internal war. Other guerrilla groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) and paramilitary groups have also contributed to the record of massive human rights violations, and between 2013 and 2016 during the Santos administration, the Colombian government made significant steps towards recognizing the state’s responsibility for human rights violations.

Colombian transitional justice norms as well as the so-called Victims’ and Land Restitution Law of 2011 (hereinafter Victims Act) echo UN principles and guidelines on the “Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law” of 2006. Thus, the Victims Act considers as victims “persons who individually or collectively have suffered damage due to events occurred (..) as a consequence of violations of International Humanitarian Law or of serious and manifest violations of the norms of international human rights violations, which occurred on the occasion of the internal armed conflict.” It also states that there can be direct and indirect victims, as for instance partner or family members, and that victims are also persons who have suffered harm when intervening to assist victims in danger or to prevent victimization. However, the Victims Act explicitly excludes from the victim’s category members of non-state armed actors organized outside the law, such as guerrilla or paramilitary groups, “except in the case when children or adolescents have been separated from the guerrilla when they were minors.”

In 2020 the Colombian government asserted that in the last 20 years, the FARC has recruited 9,000 minors. As academic research has documented, attempts of desertion were severely punished by the FARC regardless of age, even with the death penalty (Gutiérrez 2018; Borch and Stuvøy 2011). Despite the cruelty of these rules and overwhelming evidence, FARC’s top leaders have oftentimes dismissed their use of forced recruitment or have denied the FARC’s responsibility as an organization. Misleading information about the combatants’ recruitment age and the assertion that, if it even occurred, child recruitment was not a policy of the FARC central command (known as the FARC secretariat) have been some of the arguments used by top commanders to avoid assuming responsibility. According to FARC leaders’ elusive discourse, if child recruitment took place, it was undertaken by the guerrilla frontline on the ground, over which the FARC secretariat could not always have control.

Given the above and by providing this exception, it is worth considering whether the Victims Act was creating a legal vacuum. Might the Colombian state have left without protection persons who were forcibly recruited when they were children but who have never had the chance or were unable to flee from the guerrilla’s ranks?

Aligning with International Standards

From the perspective of international frameworks, the prohibition of forced recruitment and the protection of victims are absolute. Regardless of the age of the victim, forced recruitment is described in the Rome Statute Art. 8 (2)(b)(XV) as a War Crime. In addition, the recruitment of children is prohibited in Protocol II Additional to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 Article 4(3)(c), and in the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict of 2000. Furthermore, UN resolution 2391 of 1968 affirms “the principle that there is no period of limitation for war crimes and crimes against humanity.” On the other hand, because of the so-called Block of Constitutionality (Garzon 2017; Constitutional Court 2003), the Colombian state is bound to apply the international norms the country has ratified, even if they are soft law. This category refers to agreements, guiding principles and declarations that have no legally binding force, such as the Paris Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups. However, as Catherine O’Rourke suggests (2019), the fragmentation of international humanitarian law and its interpretations across different institutions have allowed for uneven applications or unclear impact on domestic contexts.

The case of Helena (pseudonym) ruled on 2019 by the Constitutional Court exemplifies some of the ways in which interpretations of the Victims Act resulted not only in inconsistencies with international frameworks, but in the undermining of the rights of victims to reparation, truth and justice.

Helena was forcibly displaced and forcibly recruited by the FARC at age 14. Once in the ranks, Helena was subjected to forced contraception and forced abortion. In 2019, Helena’s case was brought before the Colombian Constitutional Court by Juliana Laguna and Marina Ardila, lawyers from Women’s Link Worldwide. Her case represented an example of a number of cases of women ex-combatants who were forcibly recruited by the FARC but to whom, willing or not, the Colombian state has denied recognition as victims. Furthermore, her story sets a precedent for how the fragmentation of international norms aimed at protecting women and girls among the guerrilla might have allowed women’s disenfranchisement and FARC top leaders’ impunity for the instrumental use of gender and sexual-based violence to feed the political economy of their war.

Arguing that Helena was an adult when she left the guerrilla, the Unit for Integral Attention and Reparation of Victims (hereinafter Victims’ Unit) created by the Victims Act refused to grant Helena a victim status. This decision removed her right to reparation set within the Victims Act and, indirectly, to adequate access to health services despite having experienced sexual violence. Thus, in the landmark Constitutional Court decision SU-599 of 2019, the Court ordered the Victims’ Unit to include Helena in the National Victims’ Registry for the crimes of forced displacement, forced recruitment and sexual violence (forced contraception and forced abortion), and to meet the conditions to grant her access to the right to reparation.

As with other previous cases brought by feminist organizations before the Constitutional Court, the experience of Helena reaches out to the broader FARC guerrilla economy of war. On one hand, it shows how the guerrillas operated in ways which were inconsistent with the discourse of gender equality that their Marxist doctrine and propaganda have spread (NCHM 2017). Patriarchy is malleable as Cynthia Cockburn and Cynthia Enloe claim (2014) and, in effect, allowing women to hold arms and assigning them to military activities did not spare the FARC from reproducing the hierarchical patriarchal structures that they claimed to have overturned among their ranks. Rather, the FARC machinery prompted a form of militarized femininity that involved sexual heteronormativity and manipulated women’s sexuality so as to feed into its own political aims.

Malleable Patriarchy and the FARC’s Tactical Use of Women’s Forced Recruitment

Testimonies of women ex-combatants collected by the National Centre for Historical Memory (hereinafter NCHM) describe the FARC’s appraisal of a hegemonic patriarchal masculinity, and its promotion of tactical aggressiveness against the fragile or the weak and of a female militarized subjectivity. To illustrate, the NCHM refers to personal features such as “strength, roughness and violence” (2017: 165), which were encouraged among the guerrillas and even traded off by FARC commanders against privileges over access to women’s sexuality. In parallel, women’s promotion possibilities in the FARC hierarchy were often mediated by sexual exchanges. Rigorous and detailed control of women’s sexual and reproductive lives made women carry the full weight of brutal forms of forced contraception on their own bodies. Thus, contraception within the FARC ranks was not an expression of women’s sexual freedom or autonomy but a tool to guarantee that women were available for both sex and war. Moreover, pregnancy was a privilege which, if ever allowed, was only granted to women related to guerrilla leaders (NCHM 2017: 119). Thus, the guerrilla machinery was built on a process that sought to transform women who had to adapt in order to navigate through its patriarchal structures if they were to survive.

By 2018, the peace agreement had made possible the demobilization of more than 13,000 FARC fighters and, according to the FARC self-assessment, women made up 40% of the guerrilla. Looking at such a level of women’s participation might prompt us to go beyond asking where the women were within the guerrilla ranks. We might instead ask why women were recruited on such a massive scale and how women’s recruitment fed into the FARC’s political economy. Gutierrez & Carranza (2017) describe an interlinked dynamic of push and pull factors driving women’s recruitment by the FARC guerrilla. As with the story of Helena, ethnographic research of the NCHM provides evidence of the use of menaces, extorsion and violence by the FARC to enforce child recruitment, which account for some of the push strategies used by recruiters. But in the meantime, NCHM’s research shows that the FARC, indeed, tapped into social, economic and cultural inequalities as well as everyday forms of oppression endured by women living in rural contexts. Using these factors as push forces, the FARC recruiters managed to disseminate an appealing discourse with the promise of a better life, freedom, women’s autonomy, empowerment, and personal advance. Those push and pull factors might explain the FARC’s recruitment success. Yet, they alone are not sufficient to explain the why of FARC’s gendered recruitment politics, as in fact the FARC has not always included women in its ranks (ibid.).

Indeed, the history of the FARC reflects a transition from being a peasant self-defence group in the 1950s to becoming a mobile hierarchical military structure able to achieve territorial control over extensive rural areas. While such transformation was fuelled by the FARC’s decision in the 1990s to gain control over drug-trafficking related activities, it would have not been possible without the FARC’s ability to become a socially self-contained organization. To this end, the FARC sought to control its fighters’ lives and pushed forward women’s forced recruitment so as to prevent their male guerrilla from engaging in sentimental relations with civilian women.

It would be misleading to claim that massive women’s recruitment by the FARC was just the result of their voluntary decision. To prevent the reparation of women who suffered forced recruitment and the clarification of the truth about the gendered use of forced recruitment would mean for Colombia to fail in its duty of memory and to guarantee the victims’ right to non-repetition. The legal advocacy of women's organisations in Helena's case can allow many victims to overcome the legal void created by the fragmentation of international humanitarian law and the gender blindness of inadequate interpretations.

Author Bio

Sonia is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, UK. She joined WICID as visiting researcher in November and December 2020. Her research lies at the intersections of peacebuilding, transitional justice, and gender and its intersectionalities. Sonia received her PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from Central European University, Budapest.

More information about her MSCA Research Project is available in the blog https://unfoldingpeace.com

Mouzayian Khalil : 09 Feb 2021 14:51 |  Tags: Columbia Farc International Humanitarian Law Peace Agreements Transitional Justice Women Ex-Combatants |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Photo Credit: Knut Bry/Tinagent

Written by: Henrik Kjellmo Larsen & Eleanor Gordon

A Policy of Silence?

After the fire that destroyed the Moria Reception and Identification Centre on the Greek island of Lesvos, on 08 September, the 13,000 migrant-residents were moved into a quickly assembled new camp in Kara Tepe. Within a month this camp was already being referred to as ‘worse than Moria’, which had itself been described as ‘hell on earth’.

After the fire, European Commission (EC) Home Affairs Commissioner, Ylva Johanson, said there would be ‘no more Morias’, recognising that the poor conditions were partly responsible for the developments which led to the fire.

Whether or not conditions in the camp would improve and the Commissioner’s assurances honoured will now be difficult to ascertain in light of a recent General Operation Regulation of the Temporary Reception Facilities in Greece passed on 30 November. This regulation prohibits all workers operating in a refugee camp, including government civil servants and volunteers, from publicly sharing any information about the residents or the conditions in the new camp. Kara Tepe is thus continuing a dangerous trend of hiding harm with a policy of silence.

‘Living Hell’

Moria was designated a ‘hotspot’ due to the overwhelming surge of migrants arriving on Lesvos in 2015. The ‘hotspot approach’ was intended to allow for a quicker Registration and adjudicate of asylum application and provide additional support to ensure dignified shelters and services.

However, when the EU-Turkey statement was signed in 2016, the vastly understaffed Greek asylum service meant asylum claims could not be processed quickly enough. The camp became a bottleneck, severely and perpetually overcrowded, with the 3,000-person capacity far exceeded by up to 20,000 people.

As a consequence, Moria, built as a short term transit camp but without even meeting the UNHCR standards of a transit camp, essentially became a camp for long-term residency where many migrants effectively remained trapped in deplorable conditions for months and sometimes years. Some described the camp as ‘the worst refugee camp on earth’, as ‘a living hell’, and a prisonlike place where the lack of food, poor sanitation, limited water and electricity supply and prevalent violence, earned the camp a reputation of being ‘the moral failure of Europe’. These deplorable camp conditions contributed to a number of fires in the camp, including the fire which destroyed the camp, resulting from technical faults and growing desperation among migrant residents.

Over a period of 18 months, we, two scholars, one of whom has extensive field experience from Lesvos, conducted interviews with humanitarian actors working in Moria on the causes and effects of these poor camp conditions. Invariably, research participants described the conditions as deplorable, and as intended to both deter humanitarian actors and, moreover, prospective migrants hoping to enter the EU. Many were also critical of how information about these conditions was being carefully managed in order to avoid public scrutiny.

Information Control

Humanitarian actors described being prevented from taking photos or video footage in and around the camp by the police: ‘If they get your camera, they delete everything’. This could be an indication of a desire to hide what is going on in Moria, and in so doing to keep it away from media scrutiny.

A number of humanitarian actors also regarded the recent, high-profile arrest of Salam Aldeen, a prominent NGO manager in the field, because he shared pictures and information and was an unrelenting critic of the terrible camp conditions and the treatment of migrants. His arrest was regarded by other humanitarian actors as intended to silence those seeking to document and share what they perceived to be wrongdoing by the Greek authorities. Many also regarded his arrest and the broader practice of policing humanitarian aid workers as intended to deter other volunteers from offering humanitarian assistance.

Humanitarian actors also said that when official visitors came, they would only be shown a small part of the camp, and only after it had been cleared and cleaned. These visits, during which journalists are not allowed in, were effectively staged to present the camp in a very particular way to avoid criticism and public scrutiny. However, a difficult balance needed to be maintained between avoiding criticism, while maintaining the spectre of deterrence by ensuring the message was communicated to migrant groups particularly, as well as to domestic groups hostile to migration, about the poor conditions. As one of our research participants (a humanitarian volunteer working in the camp) said in 2019:

They don’t want to keep the camp so bad so that Greece reputation is completely ruined. When Angelina Jolie and the pope visited, they cleaned up the camp a little bit. Journalists are not let in… They don’t want to show the worst part of the camp, but they want to make sure it’s bad enough to not want to come.

Official communication thus becomes a balancing act between presenting a powerful show of deterrence for migrants, as well as those who might want to help them, and evading criticism for failing to meet the international humanitarian standards. This difficult balance is maintained by limiting disseminated information and keeping audiences separate. Paradoxically, the less that is actually known about Moria, the more these dual messages are able to be managed: criticisms can be avoided, and the spectre of detention is all the more powerful because of the element of the unknown.

Photo Credit: Knut Bry/Tinagent

The Camp as Carceral Space

Prisons also perform this balancing act of communicating different messages to different audiences, and similarly do so by controlling and limiting information that is disseminated.

It is no coincidence that Moria has been referred to repeatedly by our research participants as ‘prison-like’. This is not just because it looked like a prison with its perimeter fences, barbed wire and gates, checkpoints and police guards. Nor is it just because the camp became a space of indefinite confinement. It is also because residents were segregated, contained and screened from outside communities, their movements strictly controlled and curtailed, and information about them tightly controlled.

Carefully managing information about groups in carceral spaces – through segregation, containment and curtailing communication channels – also helps protect the presentation of these groups as deviant and in need of control and punishment. Their continued segregation and containment, in often deplorable conditions, can thus be justified.

In effect, rendering migrants invisible enables a discourse to be constructed and maintained around the migrant left relatively unchallenged by a lack of evidence to the contrary. Segregation and control of information about migrants and how they suffer is also an effective governing technique, helping to dehumanise, facilitate indifference towards them and reduce acts of solidarity.

Hiding the Harm

With the policy of silence being legislated in Greece, under the General Operation Regulation, the Greek government is authorising an environment where the suffering of migrant remains unseen hidden from society. When suffering cannot be seen, when it is confined behind prison-like barriers, and when it is kept from public scrutiny by destroying camera footage, it is easier to dehumanise and to deny that human rights violations and other harms have occurred.

Efforts to hide the suffering enables dehumanisation and reduces the migrant to a number it enables them to be presented as someone who represents a danger, rather than someone who’s in danger.

In turn, this justifies entrapping migrants in deplorable camp conditions and, paradoxically, helps justify disinterest in the harms they suffered, thus allowing harms to continue under the shroud of silence.

Reference:

Gordon, E. and Larsen, H.K. (2020) ‘Sea of Blood’: The Intended and Unintended Effects of the Criminalisation of Humanitarian Volunteers Rescuing Migrants in Distress at Sea’, Disasters. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/disa.12472.

About the Authors:

Henrik Kjellmo Larsenis a PhD candidate in The School of Social Science at Monash University. He spent four months as a field coordinator doing search and rescue on Lesvos in 2015 and has spent the last six years working in the field of criminalisation of humanitarian workers, security, global governance and human rights. His research, practise and field work focus on violent borderwork, human rights and mental health of emergent groups and spontaneous volunteers in disaster areas.

Eleanor Gordonis a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Development at Monash University. She spent 20 years working in the field of conflict, security, justice and human rights, including 10 years working in conflict-affected environments with the UN and other international organisations. Her research, teaching and practice focuses on inclusive approaches to building security and justice after conflict.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6865-6562

Mouzayian Khalil : 26 Jan 2021 10:10 |  Tags: Displacement Humanitarian Crises Migrants Moria |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Harnessing Networks For Good

Written by Prerna Aswani

Project Lead, inHive (prerna@inhiveglobal.org)

Networks are inherently complex. And increasingly, I can’t help but think that like social media, networks are a tool that can be used both for good and bad: networks can catapult positive social change, but also have complex power dynamics embedded within them. On one hand, they are by definition exclusionary: they are usually based on members having a shared characteristic or history that others do not. These types of affiliation can grow out of all sorts of shared traits or experiences, whether it be profession, religion or educational experiences. Yet networks, as forms of social organising and mobilising also have the power of giving voice to those who are repeatedly and institutionally unheard and marginalised. The current social, economic and political climate requires us to increase our investment in harnessing the power of networks for positive social disruption and to think more deeply about networks and inclusion.

Networks for social change

By being part of a larger group, collective or network, those from historically and institutionally marginalised communities can find a safe space to express themselves and connect with a community with whom they can resist oppression. Organisations and movements that create and strengthen networks for women and minorities have enabled these marginalised voices to be taken seriously.

I have seen first-hand how these dynamics emerge through the Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Adalat (BMMA), a national mass organisation of Muslim women in India, who run centres to support women to resolve marital disputes. They provide members a sanctuary, as well as a route to tackle the multiple ways in which they have been oppressed.

Their oppressions are multifaceted and intertwined. As lower middle class women living in a highly patriarchal society, their marital grievances often go unheard both within the family and their wider communities. At the same time, as Muslim women, they belong to a minority religion in a country where family law is governed by religious tenets through Muslim Personal Law. This law enables matters of family and marriage to be legally governed by the Shariat.

Speaking to members in the Mumbai branch, they shared with me how on a personal level they felt empowered as a result of being part of this organisation, and that it has led to substantive change in their daily lives. By taking their marital disputes to the women’s centre run by BMMA, individual women have been able to negotiate a greater voice in their communities and families with the support of the collective. Furthermore, on a collective level, the BMMA has successfully advocated for women’s rights in national law by connecting with other organisations, movements and networks. They recently won a case in the Supreme Court of India to criminalise the practice of Triple Talak, where a Muslim man could legally divorce his wife by saying Talak (Divorce) three times.

The darker side of networks

The BMMA is just one example of where individuals who are marginalised along multiple identity lines come together not only to empower one another in navigate their personal challenges of marginalisation, but also effectively confront institutional discrimination.

Yet as we celebrate the power of networks that give rise to organisations, movements and other forms of collective action for their capacity to catalyse social and institutional change, we cannot ignore the ways in which networks can and have historically reinforced the unequal power structures that govern the world today. 'Old boys networks' are renowned for giving their members considerable advantages: job offers, business deals and other opportunities are unequally distributed within these networks, which by design exclude all but the upper echelons. These powerful networks are often affiliated with former pupils of elite schools and universities, hence the notorious reputation of alumni networks as elite and exclusionary.

My own work at inHive seeks in order to tackle this challenge, by democratising access to networks for young people who have traditionally not had access to them. Our work is one part of a much larger tradition of movements building and mobilising through networks. Yet it can’t be denied that on the whole, elite networks still wield the greatest social, economic and political capital. Networks of minorities and excluded groups absolutely develop a greater sense of empowerment for its members, but for the most part they tend to have lower levels of influence than established ‘old boys’ clubs’.

inHive building Alumni Networks with Health Poverty Action in Rwanda

And even within networks, movements and other forms of organising of minorities and the oppressed, complex power dynamics exist. Consider for example various anti-imperial and anti-colonial movements, where often older elite men exercised their power to silence women. Despite their vital contributions to the joint efforts, women’s interests are often falsely presented as distracting in the fight against the main enemy, leading to their side-lining at best, and exploitation, abuse and violence at worst. These dynamics were present in the recent Rhodes Must Fall protests, when women, queer and trans people were leading the conceptualisations of the underlying tenets, but were pushed out of the organising roles and the protest frontline due to misogyny, and trans- and homophobia.

What Next?

The Black Lives Matter movement is a powerful show of how historically marginalised groups coming together to mobilise collective action can have a huge impact. The movement has actually served as an accelerator for alumni of hundreds of schools and universities campaigning to decolonise the curriculum, my own alma mater included. By creating networks across initiatives and causes, solidarities and synergies emerge to amplify calls for change.

The presence of minority networks is both an encouraging success and a sign that more work still needs to be done. Rather than separate networks of the elite and marginalised, we need to build connections and linkages that are based on equality, openness and active listening to enable social change. Unlike the old boys’ clubs that exist solely for the benefit of their members, we need to invest in more networks that commit to intersectional and social change.

Note: there are important distinctions between organisations advocating for social change, groups formed around certain causes and networks, and differing internal power dynamics within each. However, for the broad focus of this article around democratising these different types of structures for social change, I consider them in unison.

About the Author

Prerna is passionate about youth development, access and social mobility. She is a development consultant with a diverse set of experiences. Having spent her early career in economic consulting and then transitioned to the social sector, within the education and youth development space, she has experience of working with stakeholders across the private and third sectors.

Mouzayian Khalil : 13 Jan 2021 10:09 |  Tags: Communities Exclusion Inclusion Networks Social Change |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

COVID–19, Women and Water in Urban India

(Image by Oleg Malyshev, 2016)

Written by Mansha Marwah

The first case of COVID-19 in India was reported on 30 January 2020 and a lockdown was announced on 24 March 2020. On 3 April 2020, the Central Government produced an advisory for the state governments: “Advisory for ensuring safe drinking water during lockdown and effective management of pandemic caused by Corona Virus”. This statement, however, does not reflect reality. India has the largest number of people in the world living with water scarcity- approximately one billion people. UNICEF and WHO data from 2017 illustrate that only 44 percent of India’s population has access to piped water. Additionally, those living in poverty, in informal settlements and rural populations, lack access to any clean water, which is essential for frequent hand washing to protect from, and prevent the spread of, COVID-19. For the majority in India, water of adequate quality and quantity is unavailable, intermittently available and/or inaccessible, rendering people in these situations particularly susceptible to infection.

Many households in India do not have access to water supply within their homes and often depend on shared sources of water. These are usually households in urban informal, low income and insecure housing areas. Residents here tend to deal with exacerbated stressors due to government neglect and a lack of proper infrastructure for basic amenities. An analysis of five of India’s most populous states, which accounted for 46% of all COVID-19 cases, as of June 10, found that in informal areas and poorer neighbourhoods, a lack of exclusive access to drinking water and distance to the source of water meant that proper hygiene and handwashinghabits were a challenge for households. These areas are usually densely populated so social distancing is hard, especially if residents share a water source. Hence, preventing theinfection also becomes a challenge. Due to the infrequent and intermittent supply of water, the household priority is often cooking food and drinking water, often at the expense of hand washing and other essential hygiene behaviours.

The experiences and effects of the pandemic affect women more harshly. Even though studies find that men are more vulnerable to losing their lives to the virus, women are disproportionately affected by its political, economic and social consequences. Instances of domestic violence across the globe are increasing, as has historically been the case in contexts of uncertainty.These women are moreover forced to continue with their everyday household labour and responsibilities while simultaneously dealing with this violence. The pandemic has highlighted the need for and value of this unpaid labour, termed by feminists as “social reproduction”.

Women bear the brunt of water scarcity simply because they are responsible for finding water for their family’s everyday needs. They are often the ones that have to stand in long lines to wait for water and walk long distances to collect it.Before the pandemic, a woman in Chennai described how her wait for water began at 4am in the dark, and how she spent her mornings looking for water and then rationing it for washing, bathing and cooking. A report from 2019 stated that Indian women on average spent 16 hours a day doing this kind of unpaid care work.

The need for this reproductive labour has increased during this pandemic especially due to the heightened demand for water in the household. “It’s been three days since the water tanker came to our area and, without, you can see that this place is a mess,” Kumudhashri R, a woman in Chennai was reported as saying. Since the lockdown was imposed, she has been locked at home with her family and complains, “Since everybody is at home now the demand for water is more, but what we are getting isn’t sufficient at all”. None of the 500 families on her street have access to piped water supply. The residents are completely dependent on the water tanker that comes to their area twice a week and they are not allowed to fill more than three pots per family. The women have been walking 3-5 kilometers daily to fetch more water. Less water makes cooking, cleaning and managing household health more difficult, responsibilities largely assigned to women. Much of the burden to reduce water use therefore falls on women, who have to carry out the same duties with fewer resources.

Water, along with other resources is unequally distributed in a household due to women’s lower status within family and society, and the perception of their labour being of less worth. This, along with the increased demand for water in the household might mean that many women are unable to meet everyday sanitation needs especially those related to menstrual hygiene. Even before the pandemic, women and girls in many parts of India struggled with menstrual hygiene, owing to a lack of clean water, a lack of access to safe menstrual hygiene products and taboos around menstruation. COVID-19 has intensified these struggles, illustrating another example of how it is disproportionately affecting women in India.

Moreover, the nationwide lockdown that restricts mobility would have had an adverse impact on unpaid care work carried out by women across the country as many would have been unable to move freely outside of their homes to, for instance, collect water. These women would have then been forced to break rules of social distancing in order to fulfill daily survival needs for their families, risking not only contracting the virus and their health but also, in some cases, state violence.

Women, in the context of this pandemic, are experiencing amplified responsibilities with regards to unpaid labour at home. These tasks such as fetching water or cooking are essential for the smooth functioning of a household. This dependence on women’s altruism shifts the responsibility of survival and maintaining the status quo during disasters and pandemics onto women, which often affects women negatively causing what has been termed as “depletion” of their health and general wellbeing. Holding women responsible for this survival obscures the role of the state in addressing issues and inequalities that lead to these issues in the first place.

The consequences of COVID-19 are disproportionately affecting women in urban informal settlements in India. Due to the sexual division of labour, it is women who are responsible for carrying out daily household tasks that are essential for the reproduction of everyday life. These responsibilities have been exacerbated by the pandemic, resulting in potential mental and physical harm to women’s health and overall wellbeing. Care burdens must be shared both by men and women, not just in disasters and pandemics but in everyday life. This will need gender responsive policies targeting social and cultural change that help families adopt and adapt to a more equitable way of living. Moreover, strategies to mitigate effects of COVID-19 must take into account an analysis of gendered experiences.

With regards to water challenges, the government must immediately enact and implement enforceable policies and strategies on the provision of emergency water in all water-scarce areas for all people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to water should be available regardless of tenure or settlement status. In the long term, COVID-19 should act as a lesson and the government should strengthen infrastructure facilities to be able to provide access to clean, safe water for all. This will require sustained political commitment, increased budget allocations for health, and improved physical infrastructure.

Mouzayian Khalil : 15 Dec 2020 12:09 |  Tags: Coronavirus Pandemic India Sanitation Social Reproduction Urban Areas Water Women |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

How COVID–19 is affecting the socio–economic conditions of women in Nigeria

IDP Camp, Wassa Community, Apo, Abuja, Nigeria in February 2020

(Source: Author)

Written by Ruth Duniya

From the Global North to the Global South, regardless of social classifications, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all. The trending mantra- ‘we are all in this together’ resonates across borders. The socio-economic conditions of millions of people globally have been adversely affected by the pandemic. Women in the Global South, many of whom were already living below the poverty line are the most affected, as many of these women are responsible for providing food and means of livelihood for their families. Those in the rural areas, who before the advent of COVID-19 relied on subsistence farming, and the urban poor who depended on petty trading for daily income to feed their families, are the most impacted by the pandemic.

Evidence from Nigeria indicates how women are being impacted by COVID-19. They have lost their meagre livelihood during the pandemic. The food security of poor households was significantly threatened due to restrictions on movement, these women who usually fend for their families from their daily income are unable to provide household care. Women in the North Eastern part of the country are most affected by the pandemic. Faced with challenges, such as sexual and gender-based violence, as well as poverty brought about by the Boko Haram insurgency these women and their families most of whom are currently living in Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps are confronted with increased food insecurity. Living in overcrowded IDP camps, most of these women are in daily search of menial jobs to provide for their families as support from government and other non-state agencies has not adequately addressed the food insecurity within displaced communities. COVID-19 restrictions on movement had made it difficult for displaced women to find jobs. The pandemic has also taken a toll on the small-scale enterprises these women were doing to support their families. The condition has become so deplorable such that the menace of street begging among disadvantaged children which is common practice in parts of Northern Nigeria has increased drastically. Some women whose source of livelihood has been depleted due to the pandemic have resorted to street begging along with their children in major cities across Nigeria.

The socio-economic challenges of women in, and beyond, Nigeria as a direct consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic requires increased collaborative actions by state-governments, the private sector and international organisations, particularly, UN agencies such as the UNDP, UNICEF and UNFPA as they are agencies for development, children’s welfare and maternal health respectively. First, there should be firm action on domestic violence. Laws against gender-based violence in a developing country like Nigeria need to be more stringent and adequately enforced. The existing law in Nigeria to ensure justice and protection from any form of sexual and gender-based violence against persons in private and public life is the Violence Against Person’s Prohibition Act (VAPP) signed into law in 2015. Unfortunately, 5 years since the Act was passed into law, only 13 states including Nigeria’s capital city- FCT, out of 36 states in the country have adopted this law. In addition, many cases of gender-based violence are underreported, as many victims do not report their experiences out of fear of being victimised in society. Relevant agencies, such as the Nigerian Police, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the National Council for Women Societies Nigeria (NCWS) need to ensure victims safety is guaranteed so that sexual and gender-based violence cases are reported without the risk of stigmatisation.

Secondly, the humanitarian relief response should be stepped up as many women and their families from low-income background most affected by the pandemic need to be supported with palliatives measures, such as- food items (for the immediate nutrition of their families) and finance in form of a grant scheme (to enable them start up micro-businesses to support themselves and their families post-COVID-19). Although, the government of Nigeria through the Ministry for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development with support from the private sector and international organisations have currently put in place some measures to assist their population during the COVID-19 pandemic, these strategies have so far not been sufficient. For instance, it is alleged that many among the poor in Nigeria have received little support, while some are yet to receive any support from the government.This can be attributed to one key factor- accountability deficit on the part of the relevant government agencies responsible for COVID-19 response, particularly the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development already shrouded in allegations of corruptionon their handling of COVID-19 emergency funds. Before the advent of COVID-19, corruption has been identified as a major limitation to Nigeria’s development.

Admittedly, the world was not prepared for a pandemic. This is evident in the way COVID-19 has affected most economies globally, from developed economies to developing economies such as Nigeria. The pre-existing socioeconomic challenges in Nigeria which includes, high rate of unemployment and inadequate basic social services, such as healthcare have been worsened by COVID-19, affecting mostly the poor and vulnerable groups, particularly, women and children. In view of this challenges, partnership arrangements with development agencies and the private sector, along with a strong political will by the Nigerian government is imperative to ensure that the poor and most vulnerable in society are adequately supported socio-economically in the short term and post-COVID-19. Going forward, as Nigeria, and indeed other developing economies have put together short term economic and social development measures to cushion the impact of COVID-19 on their societies, long term economic and social development policies should also be drafted as a matter of urgency to ensure recovery and sustainable growth beyond COVID-19.

Mouzayian Khalil : 08 Dec 2020 16:34 |  Tags: Covid 19 And Gender Gender Based Violence Gbv Global South Nigeria |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Pâle réconciliation ? Les enjeux des prochaines élections présidentielles en Côte d’Ivoire

(Photo by Eva Blue on Unsplash)

Êcrit par Adou Djané Dit Fatogoma, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques and Institut National de Santé Publique and Briony Jones, University of Warwick and WICID

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Le 24 août 2020, le Président Alassane Ouattara de Côte d'Ivoire a été autorisé par la Commission électorale indépendante (CEI) à se présenter aux élections pour un troisième mandat en octobre 2020. Ouattara avait précédemment déclaré qu'il ne se présenterait pas, et avait désigné le Premier ministre Amadou Gon Coulibaly pour lui succéder comme candidat de son parti, un allié politique dont il ne tarirait pas d’éloges en le décrivant de la manière suivante : « Sa loyauté n'a jamais faibli. Amadou est plus qu'un collègue, plus qu'un frère; c'est un fils » (Africa Confidential 19^th March 2020). Lorsqu’Amadou Gon Coulibaly meurt subitement en juillet 2020, Ouattara n'avait pas de « plan b » (Le Monde 8^thJuly 2020); il annonce alors qu'il se présenterait aux élections à l’occasion de son discours à la nation du 6 août 2020 à l’occasion du soixantième anniversaire de l’indépendance du pays. Cette déclaration a suscité des troubles dans le pays qui ont fait 2 morts (Africa Confidential 27^thAugust 2020).

Pendant que le président Ouattara obtenait l'autorisation de se représenter, la CEI se basant sur des condamnations de la justice ivoirienne, radie de la liste électorale l'ancien président Laurent Gbagbo, et à l'ancien président du Parlement Guillaume Soro. Ils ne peuvent ainsi ni voter encore moins de se présenter aux élections (Africa Confidential 19^th March 2020). On se retrouve ainsi dans un cercle vicieux de politique et de violence qui se poursuit. Ouattara avait lui-même été interdit de se présenter aux élections présidentielles jusqu'aux élections de 2010 qui ont occasionné une crise post-électorale ayant fait plus de 3000 morts. Dans ce blog, nous engageons la réflexion sur ce que cela signifie pour la réconciliation en Côte d’Ivoire et à la manière dont un dialogue politique ouvert et inclusif est plus important que jamais.

Dans la foulée de sa victoire contestée, Ouattara a mis en œuvre un processus de justice transitionnelle marquée par des procès de ses opposants devant des tribunaux nationaux, une commission nationale d'enquête et une commission vérité, dialogue et réconciliation de même qu’au niveau de la cour pénale internationale (CPI). Il ne semble ne pas être impressionné par les accusations de justice des vainqueurs et a plutôt promis une réconciliation nationale fondée sur la prospérité économique et la cohésion sociale. En 2015, il a clairement exprimé sa compréhension de la réconciliation dans un discours public :

« Être réconcilié, c'est d'abord pour moi, avoir un pays pacifique, où les gens vivent en harmonie avec les mêmes égalités des chances et je peux vous dire que c'est le cas. Il n'y a pas de zones réservées à aucun groupe ethnique. Dans tous les quartiers d'Abidjan, tous les groupes ethniques sont réunis. Pouvons-nous mieux concilier que cela? Si vous allez à Korhogo, Gagnoa, etc., vous trouverez des gens de toutes les ethnies. Fondamentalement, il ne doit pas induire en erreur la notion de réconciliation nationale en la reliant à une personne ou à un événement. […] La crise post-électorale était très grave. Plus de 3 000 personnes ont été tuées. Il est nécessaire que les personnes impliquées soient jugées ici ou ailleurs. D'ailleurs, si nous ne le faisons pas, les tribunaux internationaux le feront un jour. Tout le monde sera jugé ici. […] Il y a un élément clé dans ce que j'ai lu sur la réconciliation. C'est le bien-être de la population. C'est ce que nous faisons : un taux de croissance de 8 à 9%, réduire la pauvreté, construire des écoles, assainir l'environnement, etc. Une fois que nous aurons terminé tout cela, les tensions vont baisser » (President Ouattara’s speech, Fraternité matin, vendredi 26 juin 2015. N° 15164 p 6 et 7).

Les controverses autour des élections à venir en octobre de cette année démontrent les dangers du court-termisme lorsqu'il s'agit de faire face au passé, ainsi que les risques d'une démocratie à « case à cocher » sans débat substantiel et sans transparence pour jeter les bases d’une prospérité économique durable selon la version de la réconciliation de Ouattara. Il n'est pas clair que son approche puisse aborder et prendre en compte les questions d'exclusion d'individus de la course à la présidentielle, de la crise profonde de la légitimité démocratique ou des cycles continus de violence. L'histoire du système politique ivoirien est faite d’exclusion : soit l'exclusion de l'opposition par le régime au pouvoir, soit l'auto-exclusion par des partis d’oppositions qui refusent de participer à ce qu’ils estiment être une mascarade. Depuis l'introduction de la politique multipartite dans les années 1990, cette dynamique a continué à façonner le paysage politique et continue de façonner le débat sur la réconciliation aujourd'hui.

Nous pouvons le voir dans la reconfiguration de l’espace politique et des batailles en vue des élections d’octobre. L'ancienne alliance politique qui dirigeait le pays de la crise post-électorale jusqu'en 2019 est éclatée désormais, et les dirigeants des partis politiques autrefois favorables sont désormais des opposants à Alassane Ouattara. Le principal reproche qui lui est fait est de ne pas parvenir à la réconciliation pour tous les Ivoiriens, y compris ceux qui sont toujours en exil et ceux qui se trouvent dans les prisons nationales. Le 31 août, l'archevêque d'Abidjan, le cardinal Jean-Pierre Kutwa, a organisé un point de presse au cours duquel il a évoqué la situation sociopolitique en Côte d'Ivoire et a déclaré qu'à son avis « la candidature d'Alassane Ouattara pour un troisième mandat n'est pas nécessaire… la réconciliation est plus importante que les élections… ». Cela a provoqué une levée de boucliers entre soutien et d'opposition, démontrant à quel point la voie de la réconciliation est extrêmement source de division.

(Photo by Adou Djané)

Le chef de l'ancienne rébellion, Guillaume Soro, est désormais condamné à une peine de prison par contumace et nombre de ses partisans, dont des parlementaires, sont également en prison. Le Parti démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire - Rassemblement démocratique africain (PDCI-RDA) et le Front populaire ivoirien (FPI) de l'ancien président Laurent Gbagbo ont signé un document cadre de collaboration sur le `` Projet de réconciliation des Ivoiriens pour une paix durable '' le 30 avril 2020, au siège du PDCI-RDA à Cocody. Les objectifs de la nouvelle `` alliance '' sont de trouver le pardon dans la vérité et la justice, d'éliminer les séquelles de crises successives, de trouver des solutions originales aux problèmes qui sont à la base de ces crises, et de construire ensemble une `` nouvelle Côte d'Ivoire '' sur la base de principes, règles et valeurs partagés par tous les Ivoiriens et tous les étrangers résidant en Côte d'Ivoire. Mabri Toikeuse, leader de l'Union pour la démocratie et la paix (UDPCI) et dernier à quitter l'alliance au pouvoir, a annoncé sa candidature et a lancé une nouvelle plateforme électorale avec d'autres partis: «Nous venons d'achever la première série de signatures pour lancer cette plateforme électorale. C'est aussi une plate-forme pour la paix. Je voudrais remercier toutes les parties qui nous font confiance en nous rejoignant dans notre combat pour la paix».

Le lundi 14 septembre 2020, le Conseil constitutionnel a annoncé sa décision de retenir 4 candidats sur les 44 postulants aux élections présidentielles. Cette décision du Conseil constitutionnel a donné à l’ex-président Henri Konan Bédié l'occasion de se présenter comme le candidat qui se bat contre l'exclusion politique : « J’ai pris acte de la validation de ma candidature par le Conseil constitutionnel. Cependant, je dénonce la validation de la candidature inconstitutionnelle de M. Alassane OUATTARA et l'exclusion arbitraire et antidémocratique de grands dirigeants politiques, notamment Laurent GBAGBO, Guillaume SORO, Mabri TOIKEUSSE, Mamadou KOULIBALY et Marcel Amon TANOH. Il faut rester en ordre de marche pour une alternance démocratique en vue de construire une Côte d'Ivoire réconciliée, solidaire et prospère ». Dans le contexte de la politique ivoirienne, cela a une certaine ironie car c'est Bédié lui-même qui a été associé à l'introduction du concept d'ivoirité visant à exclure Ouattara de la course présidentielle entre 1994 et 1999 sur la base des allégations de sa lignée burkinabé.

Quand on observe ce qui se passe actuellement autour des prochaines élections, on est donc exactement dans la même situation qu'en 1995, 1999, 2000, 2010 où l'on a vu des violences politiques. La réconciliation promise par Ouattara ne s'est pas concrétisée, non pas parce qu'elle est la faute d'un individu ou d'un parti politique en particulier, mais parce qu'il est long de se réconcilier avec une longue histoire de violence politique, d'exclusion politique et d'inégalité entre les groupes ethniques, une tâche de long terme qui n'est ni prévisible ni linéaire. Les recherches menées par Interpeace et Indigo Côte d’Ivoire identifient un certain nombre de défis à la cohésion sociale, notamment les inégalités en matière de propriété foncière, le manque d'opportunités économiques pour les jeunes et la réduction de l'engagement civique. La capture de l'espace politique, auparavant par Félix Houphouët-Boigny, qui a régné de l'indépendance en 1960 à 1993, puis par des tentatives successives d'exclure des individus des courses présidentielles, a sévèrement restreint l'espace pour un dialogue public sûr sur les défis et les réalités de réconciliation. La réconciliation peut avoir une connotation différente selon les personnes et les groupes. Il ne s’agit pas d’un problème propre à la Côte d’Ivoire, mais d’une tension inhérente aux appels à la réconciliation partout où nous les entendons. Dans quelle mesure différents points de vue peuvent-ils être intégrés dans un projet national de réconciliation? Car si la réconciliation doit aboutir au type de cohésion sociale que les Ivoiriens ont promis depuis des générations, elle doit être fondée sur le dialogue, la reconnaissance des autres et pouvoir accueillir des expériences et des points de vue variés. Si la réconciliation elle-même disparaît de la vue pendant que les politiques se disputent, ce seront les Ivoiriens qui continueront à en subir les effets.

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Mouzayian Khalil : 18 Sep 2020 01:49 |  Tags: Cote Divoire Elections Politique Africaine Reconciliation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem