By Jasmina Byrne
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 2023 – The year 2022 was incredibly difficult for people around the world. We were confronted by a series of major crises, including a continuing pandemic, a major war in Europe, an energy crisis, rising inflation and food insecurity.

These events hit children particularly hard, compounding the already severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of children had to flee their homes because of conflict or extreme weather events. At the same time, child malnutrition and the number of children in need of humanitarian assistance rose.

The war in Ukraine, for example, has led to higher food and energy prices, which in turn has contributed to rising global hunger and inflation. Efforts to address inflation through rising interest rates in the US have driven up the value of the dollar against other currencies, making developing countries’ imports, debt repayments and their ability to access external financing more difficult.

As we explain in our new report, ‘Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook’, these realities have added up to what has been termed a ‘polycrisis’ – multiple, simultaneous crises that are strongly interdependent.

As we look to 2023, it’s clear that the polycrisis is likely to continue shaping children’s lives. The effects of these intertwined and far-reaching trends will be difficult to untangle, and solutions will be difficult to find as policymakers struggle to keep up with multiple urgent needs.

The situation is particularly dire in economically developing countries. Higher food and energy prices have contributed to a rise in global hunger and malnourishment, with children among the most affected.

The polycrisis is also limiting access to healthcare for many children, making it harder for them to receive treatment and routine vaccinations. Recovery from learning losses caused by the closure of schools will be slow and felt for years to come, while the shift to remote learning has left children from low-income families facing the greatest challenges in catching up.

At the same time, the combination of higher financing needs, soaring inflation and a tighter fiscal outlook will widen the education financing gap needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Climate change, too, is also a part of this polycrisis, with visible effects, including devastating floods in Pakistan and droughts in East Africa, making it harder for children to access education, food and healthcare, and causing widespread displacement of populations.

All these factors have led UNICEF to estimate that 300 million children will be in need of humanitarian assistance this year. This staggering number highlights the urgency for international organizations and governments to step in and provide assistance.

But the polycrisis doesn’t have to lead to further instability or, ultimately, systemic breakdown. Some of the stresses we saw in 2022 have already weakened, and new opportunities may arise to alleviate the situation.

For example, food and oil prices have dropped from their peaks, and good harvests in some countries may help to lower global food prices. Fortunately, we know there are solutions and strategies that work.

One potential solution is to increase investment in social protection programmes, such as cash transfers and food assistance, which can help alleviate the immediate economic impacts of the polycrisis on families. These programmes can also help to build resilience and reduce vulnerabilities.

The establishment of learning recovery programmes will help tackle the learning losses and prevent children from falling further behind. And early prevention, detection and treatment plans for severe child malnutrition have been effective in reducing child wasting.

Ultimately, a coordinated and collective effort is needed to protect the rights and well-being of children. This includes not only providing immediate assistance but also addressing the underlying causes of the polycrisis and building resilience for the future.

This cannot be achieved without a more coordinated and collective effort from international organizations and governments to help mitigate the effects of the polycrisis and protect children’s futures.

And, crucially, we must listen to children and young people themselves so that we can understand the future they want to build and live in. In fact, we followed this approach when we were assessing trends for ‘Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis’, asking young people from across the world age 16 to 29 to give us their views on some of the challenges their generation faces.

It’s critical that we take action to protect the most vulnerable among us. The future may be uncertain, but by working together we can help to build a better future for our children.

Jasmina Byrne is Chief of Foresight and Policy, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight.

‘Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook’, produced by UNICEF Innocenti – Office of Global Research and Foresight, unpacks the trends that will impact children over the next 12 months.

Source: UNICEF

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By Francis Kokutse
FREETOWN, Feb 14 2023 – Sierra Leone’s new gender equality law will benefit women with political aspirations – as well as stimulate development, say analysts.

The country’s President, Julius Maada Bio, signed the new Gender Equality and Women Empowerment into law in January 2023. It has shaken the foundations of previously held ideologies that restricted females’ involvement in various aspects of the country’s life.

Reacting to the enactment of the law, Janet Bangoura, a 35-year-old administrative worker in the capital, Freetown, said: “A year ago, I only nursed the dream of ever becoming a politician because the playing field has never been equal for women. This has changed with the signing of the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (GEWE Act 2022), which guarantees at least 30 percent of female participation in Parliament and at least 30 percent of all diplomatic appointments to be filled by women.”

In addition, the law stipulates that not less than 30 percent of all positions in Local Councils should be reserved for women, same with 30 percent of all jobs in the civil service and at least 30 percent of jobs in private institutions with 25 and more employees. It also extends maternal leave extended from 12 weeks to 14 weeks.

Sierra Leone’s President, Julius Maada Bio, signing the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Bill into law. Credit: Francis Kokutse/IPS

Bangoura sees this new law as “shaking the status quo because it has brought a change that women of my generation had not expected. Now, we do not have any excuse but to seek our dreams in the political field. I know things will not immediately change, but the foundation has been laid for those of us who want to break the political glass ceiling.”

It is not only the women who are happy that the country has achieved the “unthinkable”. With the coming into force by this law, Sierra Leoneans of all ages and sexes are glad their country has overtaken neighbouring countries in the West African region by taking the lead in giving equality to women. Though such a law has been talked about by the countries in the region, the head of the United Nations Women’s office in Sierra Leone, Setcheme Jeronime Mongbo, said the September 2022 data on women’s representation in English West Africa shows that Ghana has 14.8 percent of women in Parliament, Gambia, 11.6 percent, Liberia, 9.7 percent and Nigeria, 7,2 percent, adding that, “Sierra Leone is leading the way.”

Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, Manty Tarawalli welcomed the law, which she said has been late in coming but noted that it was better late than never. She attributed the lateness in enacting the law to the lack of political will that existed before. This changed with the current President’s role, adding that, “The climate wasn’t right in terms of women’s readiness and men not being accommodating for this sort of growth until now.”

Tarawalli said Sierra Leone was a “typical” African society. “We know the way things are, and to effect that sort of change that really needs a transformation and what shakes the status quo, it required time and understanding from both men and women for the change to happen.”

She said there were initial challenges in discussing the Bill. So, they had to cross massive hurdles to be able to change “the conversation from rights-based to economic growth, and it changed organically from our consultation,” adding that “those who were opposed became willing and ready to have the conversation.”

Tarawalli was of the view that the law was about economic growth meant to move Sierra Leone to a middle-income country, adding that “this cannot happen when 52 percent of the country’s population who are women are outside the economy and leadership position.”

She identified the unwillingness of men to accommodate women when they start getting into companies and institutions as a challenge they anticipate and said there was, therefore, the need to put in place structures to create a network to support females who will be in elective positions to know there is help for them.

Tarawalli said they would educate women to understand that “economic empowerment does not mean neglecting their duties as mothers and wives at home by abandoning the care of their children and other things that are expected of them. We will also make the men understand that economic empowerment contributes to the community and contributes to Sierra Leone.”

Speaking just before he appended his signature to the Bill,  Bio said the law has come to address the gender imbalances in the country comprehensively, and among other things, the provisions under the law provide for “inclusion, representation, participation, and a more responsive posture on gender.”

Bio said his signature on the law was to announce that a change has come to “our great country” and assured the country’s girls that it is a license for them to “get quality education, work hard and aspire beyond their wildest imagination to be the best at anything they do.”

“With this law, we break barriers to parliamentary representation and look forward to a more vibrant and diverse parliament with greater numbers of women and women’s voices. When compiling their proportional representation lists, I urge political parties to go beyond the legal minimum of the number of women,” he said.

Bio said his assent to the GEWE Bill has put the country on an irreversible path to achieving a more inclusive, equal, more just, more resilient, more sustainable, and more prosperous society for generations to come, adding that “with more women on the ballots, women voting, more women winning, and more women in Parliament, the country’s politics and the future of Sierra Leone will improve.”

It was his hope that the law would see more women in leadership and politics and more men supporting and acknowledging the central status of women as we work together for a vibrant, prosperous, inclusive, and democratic Sierra Leone. In addition, he believes the law ensures women equal access to credit and other financial services. To make it effective, those who discriminate on the basis of gender could face up to five years in prison as well as fines.

“Women dominate the informal economy, and data has shown that they are better at doing business, managing investments, and managing proceeds from those investments. Beyond that, as a government, we are eager to work with the private sector to create more jobs for women, harness business cultures that promote diversity and inclusion, and invest in training programmes tailored to create more job opportunities for women,” Bio said.

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By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Feb 14 2023 – Tatei Haramara, one of the sacred sites of the Wixárika indigenous people in the state of Nayarit in northwestern Mexico, has shrunk in size from its original area and is suffering from a lack of legal protection.

Also known as Isla del Rey, off the port of San Blas, six hectares are under protection as sacred, although the San Blas city council approved another 29 hectares. But now the ancestral land faces the threat of a ferry dock and other tourism projects.

The problem is not exclusive to Tatei Haramara, the name of the mother of five-colored corn and of the sacred gateway to the fifth world, represented by the white stones Tatei Waxieve and Tatei Cuca Wima, which rise up in front of the island.“If the resources we need are not allocated, the justice plan will not be completely fulfilled. We are concerned that this will happen. We are facing difficulties in how to get resources in order to work, with respect to all of the issues. The plan must come up with something fair. We don’t just want it to be empty words.” — Paulita Carrillo

Abandonment of ceremonies, lack of legal protection and budget, as well as poverty, violence and environmental damage undermine the application of the Mexican government’s Justice Plan for the Wixárika, Na’ayeri and O’dam peoples, who are from the states of Durango, Jalisco, Nayarit, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí.

This is stated in the document “Systematization of proposals: Justice Plan for the Wixárica, Na’ayeri and O’dam peoples”, drawn up by the government’s National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), and seen by IPS, which was among the thousands of emails from the ministry of national defense that the hacktivist Grupo Guacamaya leaked in September.

The assessment, dated July 2022 and 102 pages long, identifies insufficient coordination and communication between the authorities of the Wixárika people to make offerings in sacred places and the Na’ayeri people for the management, protection and conservation of their sacred spots, as well as deterioration and difficulties for the use of sacred places and the tangible and intangible heritage of the three groups due to lack of physical and legal protection.

In Mexico, justice plans for indigenous peoples were created in 2021 by the current government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a mechanism to identify and respond to the just demands and historical needs of native communities, including the issue of sacred sites.

But although it is a public policy, it is not legally binding.

Since then, the government has promoted six justice plans for the Yaquis, Yoreme-Mayos, Seris, and Guarijíos in the state of Sonora, the Rarámuris in Chihuahua, and the Wixárika, Na’ayeris, O’dams and Mexikans. But very few of them have been published.

Paulita Carrillo, who has participated in the process of debate and drafting of the plan for her people, the Wixárika, said the programs are not moving forward but are barely dragging along.

“They are moving slowly. It’s not like we thought it would be, it’s a lot of work. There are several factors: you have to engage in dialogue with the institutions of each state; the strength is in the protection of sacred places, and they are located in the four states. And it is difficult to do that,” she told IPS from San Andrés Cohamiata (TateiKie, in Wixárika), in the municipality of Mezquitic, some 460 kilometers from Mexico City, in the western state of Jalisco.

With regard to the Wixárika, “we drew up the proposals, they were gathered in each community,” she added, explaining that for their part they carried out the necessary work.

According to official data, there are nearly 17 million indigenous people belonging to 69 different peoples and representing 13 percent of the population of Mexico, the second-largest Latin American country in population and economy after Brazil, and the third in size, following Brazil and Argentina.

The program for the Wixárika, Na’ayeris and O’dams represents an update of the Hauxa Manaka Pact for the preservation and development of the Wixárika culture, which the governments of the five states involved, the federal administration and the indigenous leadership signed in 2008, but which has remained dead letter.

The Wixárika people have 17 sacred sites, the O’dam and A’daum groups share 17 and the A’daum have another 10.

The federal government has not yet published the decree for the defense and preservation of the sacred places of the Wixárika, Naáyeri, O’dam and Mexikan peoples, because the survey has not been completed of the Tee ́kata site, place of the original fire, where the sun was born, located in Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán (Tuapurie) in Mezquitic, a protected area covering 100 hectares.

Irene Alvarado, an academic with the Intercultural Indigenous Program at the private Western Institute of Technology and Higher Studies of the Jesuit University of Guadalajara, told IPS that the plans are aimed at creating a different kind of relationship with native groups.

“You have to understand how systematically the native peoples have been made invisible. We are in a system that denies and imposes its own culture and does not recognize that they are ancient cultures. The plans are an exercise in analysis and discussion with authorities and representatives of the peoples to examine problems and propose collective solutions. They have emerged to meet these ignored demands,” she said from the city of Guadalajara.

The plan for the Yaquis includes the construction of an aqueduct for water supply, the creation of an irrigation district and the installation of an intercultural university under their management.

Recognition of sacred sites constitutes a fundamental element of the Wixárika, Na’ayeri, O’dam and Mexikan Justice Plan, created by the Mexican government and these indigenous groups. The photo shows a ceremony held on Nov. 25, 2022 at the Hauxa Manaka site, located in Cerro Gordo, in the community of San Bernardino de Milpillas Chico, in the northern state of Durango. CREDIT: INPI

Fragmented

But ancestral territory is a fundamental element for native groups, and without it the exercise of their rights is limited. For this reason, five communities in the states of Durango, Jalisco and Nayarit have denounced the invasion of 91,796 hectares of land of which they say they were dispossessed by third parties.

In these same states, eight communities are demanding the adequate execution of judicial sentences and presidential resolutions for the recognition and titling of 23,351 hectares.

In addition, 27 communities maintain conflicts over the limits of communal “ejido” lands in this area and another 15 are engaged in border disputes between the states of Durango, Jalisco, Nayarit and Zacatecas.

The question of territory has an impact on the sacred sites. For example, Xapawiyemeta, located on Lake Chapala in Jalisco, only measures 377 square meters due to the reduction of the original site. In the north-central state of San Luis Potosí, the Wixárika people have 140,212 hectares under protection, but suffer from mining concessions and large-scale tomato and chili pepper production.

Three copper, gold, silver and zinc mines operate in the Wixárika zone and another five projects are in the exploration phase in San Luis Potosí. In this state and in Zacatecas, there are 203 mining concessions.

But some native communities have set conditions for participating. For example, San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán, in the municipality of Mezquitic in Jalisco, will participate when 10,500 hectares are returned to it. Meanwhile, the Bancos de San Hipólito community, in Durango, is about to recover 10,720 hectares, in compliance with a 2008 court ruling.

The Mexican government and indigenous peoples have been drawing up six justice plans since 2021 to remedy the historical injustice and neglect suffered by these groups. The photo shows Mayo-Yoreme indigenous people dancing during a working session with government representatives on Jan. 27, 2023 in the northern state of Sonora. CREDIT: INPI

Constitutional reform – a bogged-down promise

However, the government initiative for constitutional reform on the rights of indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples, also drafted in 2021, has not advanced in the legislature.

But the measures contain contradictions. In the south and southeast of the country, the government is building the Mayan Train, the administration’s flagship megaproject, which has brought it into confrontation with native Mayan groups in that area.

In fact, the office in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the indigenous consultation undertaken by the Mexican government in 2019 failed to comply with international standards.

In the southern state of Oaxaca, the government is pushing for an industrial corridor to connect the Pacific coast with the Gulf of Mexico in the Atlantic, which has brought it to loggerheads with indigenous populations in the area.

Funds are declining

The justice plans depend on the budget allocated both to native peoples and to the plans themselves.

Since 2018, INPI funds have steadily shrunk, from 316.52 million dollars that year to 242.07 million dollars in 2023.

In 2020, the programs for economic empowerment, education, infrastructure and indigenous rights totaled 77 million dollars, the execution of which was affected by the COVID pandemic that hit the country in February of that year. The following year, the amount had dropped to 39.63 million and in 2022, to 27.26 million dollars.

At a round table held on Jan. 17 in Durango, it was agreed that 382,803 dollars were needed from four institutions for the protection of sacred places, culture and identity of the Wixárika, Na’ayeri, O’dam and Mexikan peoples.

Carrillo said the lack of budget funds jeopardizes the execution of the plans.

“If the resources we need are not allocated, the justice plan will not be completely fulfilled. We are concerned that this will happen. We are facing difficulties in how to get resources in order to work, with respect to all of the issues. The plan must come up with something fair. We don’t just want it to be empty words,” said the Wixárika activist.

In 2021, INPI did not examine whether the Program for the Comprehensive Well-being of Indigenous Peoples assisted the development of indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities, according to an analysis by the government’s Superior Auditor of the Federation.

Alvarado said there is a large variety of challenges to provide justice for indigenous people.

“It is difficult to address complex issues,” said the researcher. “There are many good intentions, but the question is how to bring them to fruition. In the justice plans, most of the projects focus on infrastructure, but you can’t just think about that. The development vision is broader; it involves building a model based on the conception of native peoples.”

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Feb 14 2023 – Geology explains the terrible earthquake that shook Turkey and Syria on February 6 with academic coldness: the Arabian, Eurasian and African plates pressure the Anatolian plate. On the surface, geopolitics resorts to concepts like “fault”, “tension” or “fracture” to explain things too. When one looks at Turkey, both disciplines’ maps can easily overlap each other, with a death toll calculated in the tens of thousands.

The earthquake’s epicentre lies in a chasm that has been widening since World War I (1914-1918), when the Kurdish people were left stateless. Over 40 million Kurds remain spread across the borders of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

Half of them live in the southeastern region of Turkey. It is not by chance that the broken North-South socioeconomic divide in Anatolia actually shows itself from west to east.

Tour operators offer two main tourist packages: touring the west of the country in clockwise or anti-clockwise directions.

The east is never an option, even if you miss the astonishing Neolithic archaeological site of Gobekli, or the source of the Tigris and Euphrates, among other treasures.

Actually, “Kurdistan” has always been a taboo word for the Turkish national narrative, which favours euphemisms such as “the southeast” to refer to that part of the country. After all, what name can be given to what doesn’t even exist?

For decades there was no talk of Kurds, but of “mountain Turks.” Their language, Kurmanji, still has not reached newspapers or schools. There is indeed a television channel in Kurdish – there are around fifty in neighbouring Iraq – but it is government funded. Accordingly, there´s no deviation from the official discourse.

Without leaving the epicentre of the earthquake, the city of Kahramanmaras owes its name to the Turkification of its original Maras (of disputed origin) to which is added the Turkish Kahraman, “hero”. Also, better not look for “Amed” on maps when trying to get to Diyarbakir, Turkey’s main Kurdish city.

These are just two of the thousands of examples that speak of this drive to erase all “foreign” traces from the maps. The next step is to do it physically. The city of Hasankeyf, a 12,000-year-old archaeological treasure once protected by UNESCO, was completely flooded in 2020.

Diyarbakir´s city centre after the military operation launched by Ankara in 2015-2016 across the country´s main Kurdish cities. Credit: KNK.

Today, Hasankey lies out of reach under a network of dams through which the water supply from the Tigris and the Eufrates to Syria and Iraq is often cut off.

The most modern cities are not spared either. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Kurdish towns were burned down by the Turkish Army in the war against the Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

In the wake of the umpteenth military operation launched by Ankara in 2015 and 2016, the rubble in several of them was reminiscent of that of the last earthquake. Once again, the civilians then took the worst part.

“If my mother tongue is shaking the foundations of your state, it probably means that you built your state on my land”

Musa Anter, a Kurdish journalist and writer assassinated by Turkish intelligence agents in 1992

“You are not Kurdish, you are Armenian and we are going to do the same we did to you a hundred years ago,” this reporter heard a Turkish police officer shout over a loudspeaker during the curfew enforced on the Kurdish city of Cizre, in September 2015.

Two earthquakes (in 1912 and 1914) announced what was to become the first genocide of the 20th century, when more than a million and a half Armenians were swallowed by that same fault.

Today, in Turkey there are barely 60,000 castaways from that Eurasian plate, and the waves are still hitting neighbouring Armenia, which remains sandwiched between two Turkic states (the second one is Azerbaijan).

“How happy is the one who says I am a Turk,” read murals across Turkey, paraphrasing Kemal Ataturk, the controversial father of the republic. “The homeland is indivisible” is also a recurrent one.

The cruelest paradox decrees that the country celebrates its first hundred years of existence slit open. Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdoğan has already declared a state of emergency for three months in ten devastated regions.

The complaints that relief does not arrive pile up, creating an even more precarious situation for over three million Syrian refugees who´ve crossed the border to Turkey since the war started in Syria in 2011.

The earth has burst under their feet after more than a decade since the war broke out in his country. They are the most direct victims of the Arabian plate, the one governed by autocrats such as Bashar al Assad in Syria, General Abdulfatah al Sissi in Egypt or the satraps of the Persian Gulf.

They all share with Erdoğan an obsession with perpetuating themselves in power and an exclusive discourse on which to articulate their respective country models.

More paradoxes in history make Erdoğan come to power in the aftermath of the Izmir earthquake in 1999 -it left more than 17,000 deaths-, and the last one occurred on the eve of decisive elections next May.

But perhaps the deepest fault is that of democracy.

After more than two decades in power, Erdoğan had shielded his re-election by disqualifying Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and his most direct rival in the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

He had also outlawed the third political force, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Their leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yüksekdağ, have been in prison since 2016.

“If my mother tongue is shaking the foundations of your state, it probably means that you built your state on my land,” said Musa Anter, a Kurdish journalist and writer assassinated by Turkish intelligence agents in 1992.

Add to that the brutal jolts of geology, and disaster is served.