Showing posts with label IMF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IMF. Show all posts

Sunday, September 17, 2023

The United Nations must keep its promises to end extreme poverty and ensure no person goes hungry

  • World leaders meet tomorrow (18 Sep) at the United Nations in a bid to salvage ambitious promises to lift the planet's poorest.
  • But the development summit, on the eve of the annual UN General Assembly that opens Tuesday, threatens to be eclipsed by growing geopolitical tensions -- which will be symbolized by the presence at the meeting in New York of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
  • In 2015, UN member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, 17 targets to transform the world by 2030 including by completely ending extreme poverty and making sure not a single of the planet's eight billion people goes hungry.
  • UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the summit will seek a "global rescue plan" on the targets, as he acknowledged that only about 15 percent were on track to be met and that metrics on some were heading in reverse.
[NOTE from Sudan Watch Ed: Ukraine and Russia must stop their senseless war immediately. Ukraine must not be given any funds needed by the UN to keep its promises to transform the world, eradicate hunger and extreme poverty. Leaders must be held accountable if those promises are broken.]

Read full story.

FROM AFP NEWS 
Published by The Barron's Daily
Written by Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS
Dated Sunday 17 September 2023 - here is a full copy:

UN Meet Looks To Salvage Promises On Helping World's Poorest

Image: Women who fled the war in Sudan await the distribution of international aid rations at the Ourang refugee camp, near Adre town in eastern Chad on August 15, 2023 (Photo credit: Mohaned BELAL)


World leaders meet Monday at the United Nations in a bid to salvage ambitious promises to lift the planet's poorest, at a time when vulnerable nations are facing a volley of crises.


But the development summit, on the eve of the annual UN General Assembly that opens Tuesday, threatens to be eclipsed by growing geopolitical tensions -- which will be symbolized by the presence at the meeting in New York of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.


In 2015, UN member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, 17 targets to transform the world by 2030 including by completely ending extreme poverty and making sure not a single of the planet's eight billion people goes hungry.


UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the summit will seek a "global rescue plan" on the targets, as he acknowledged that only about 15 percent were on track to be met and that metrics on some were heading in reverse.


The goals are "about the hopes, dreams, rights and expectations of people and the health of our natural environment," Guterres said.


"They're about righting historic wrongs, healing global divisions and putting our world on a path to lasting peace," he said.


Efforts to devote money and attention to the goals have been repeatedly set back, including by the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and other tumult, worsening climate catastrophes and sharp increases in the cost of living.

Image: A light display created using drones is performed before the city skyline and United Nations headquarters as part of a campaign to raise awareness about the Amazon rainforest and the global climate crisis ahead of the 78th United Nations General Assembly (Photo credit: Ed JONES)


The United Nations summit "is a vital space to make change," said Abby Maxman, the president of anti-poverty activist charity Oxfam America.


"Leaders must be held accountable, heed the calls of those on the front lines and use this time to listen, make meaningful commitments and follow up with real action," she said.


She said that one powerful step would be for wealthy nations to back reforms of international economic institutions to address the crushing debts impacting parts of the developing world.


A Group of 20 summit in New Delhi this month took initial steps to address representation in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.


"But overall, will this SDG summit reignite a sense of 'hope, optimism and enthusiasm,' as it's been billed?" asked Noam Unger, a development expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.


"Rising authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, but also geostrategic competition and economic distress, those are likely to overshadow other fundamental issues related to climate change and global development," he said.


Developing countries' leaders will be present in force on Monday. The United States, which has pumped $43 billion in military aid into Ukraine to help defend against Russian invasion, has hoped to show it is also interested in development.

Image: People rally to end fossil fuels ahead of the 78th United Nations General Assembly and Climate Ambition Summit in New York on September 17, 2023 (Photo credit: LEONARDO MUNOZ)


"The world's most vulnerable are looking to us, like the young woman I met in Chad (in September), who fled unthinkable -- unthinkable -- violence in Sudan and had to leave her family and her education behind," said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations.


"This young woman is counting on us. She's counting on the world in her time of need," she said.


But a senior European diplomat warned the gap was growing between the developing and developed worlds.


One goal for the summit is "making sure that that rift doesn't grow further," the diplomat said.


This story was produced by AFP. For more information go to AFP.com© Agence France-Presse


Source: https://www.barrons.com/news/un-meet-looks-to-salvage-promises-on-helping-world-s-poorest-b32a31d4


[Ends]

Sunday, March 22, 2020

South Sudan: a country on its knees - millions of lives at stake as ‘unity government’ announced


  • “People are tired. Corruption is the medicine of the day.”
  • The last time Kiir and Machar clashed, an estimated 380,000 people perished and nearly two million were displaced in a wave of terror and famine which subsumed the country from December 2013 to October 2018.
  • Both government and opposition forces “intentionally targeted targeted civilians, often on the basis of ethnicity”, reported Amnesty International in a detailed 2018 study of the conflict.
  • While many were killed by gunfire, others were “burned alive in their homes, hung from trees and rafters, or run over with armoured vehicles”. Thousands more were subjected to “rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, torture, castration and forced nudity”.
  • It was the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Read more below.
South Sudan: a country on its knees
Report from The Telegraph.co.uk
By Paul NukiPictures by Simon Townsley
Dated week ending 22 February 2020

Millions of lives at stake as ‘unity government’ announced
After a devastating civil war, life in South Sudan hangs by a thread. Can the world's newest nation find a path to unity? 

There are few places left on earth where mobile phone use is not ubiquitous, but South Sudan is one of them.

Yet in this scarcely developed nation of tukul huts and herdsman there is hardly a family among its 11 million population who is not anxiously awaiting news from the capital Juba.

This Saturday, February 22, is the deadline for President Salva Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar to stand down their rival armies and form a “unity government”.

It’s the long awaited centrepiece of a fragile peace accord which paused the country’s five year civil war 16 months ago. Only if the two self-styled ‘big men’ sign is the peace likely to hold. 

With the US threatening sanctions and fatigued aid agencies saying they may pull out, the stakes could hardly be higher.
Much of South Sudan's population of 11 million is anxiously awaiting the outcome of peace talks in Juba

With just 48 hours to go, there were positive noises. "We had a meeting with the president on the outstanding issues. We have agreed to form the government on 22 February”, Machar said on Thursday.

Only a few dare to dream that a deal this weekend would set South Sudan, the world’s newest but fourth least developed nation, on a path to modernity.

A country the size of France, it has only 186 miles (300 km) of paved road and 90 per cent of its population are without access to electricity or clean water. An estimated 60 per cent rely on food dropped by World Food Programme planes and helicopters to survive.  

The best that can be hoped for, say observers, is that a deal will avert fresh military calamity. 

“If they can shake hands it would help cement the peace deal and allow the UN and aid organisations like us to keep things ticking over,” said Geoff Andrews, country director of Medair, a Swiss NGO which has been in the country since 1992 and runs its biggest emergency aid programme.

“We talk about failed states but this is a non-functioning state”, says another NGO. “The things that define a state, its institutions, are virtually non-existent”
Two-year-old Ibrahim weighed only a third of what he should when he arrived at the clinic

He is just one of the severely malnourished children receiving treatment from Swiss NGO Medair
Franco Duoth Diu, deputy governor of Southern Liech State which saw some of the most intense fighting, says that unless a deal is done change will be forced on the rival leaders.

“These two men will be looking at something very different unless they can agree,” he warns. “The pressure is from the international community but also the community here.”

“People are tired. Corruption is the medicine of the day.”

What everyone fears, and many are braced for, is no deal at all. The last time Kiir and Machar clashed, an estimated 380,000 people perished and nearly two million were displaced in a wave of terror and famine which subsumed the country from December 2013 to October 2018.

Both government and opposition forces “intentionally targeted targeted civilians, often on the basis of ethnicity”, reported Amnesty International in a detailed 2018 study of the conflict.

While many were killed by gunfire, others were “burned alive in their homes, hung from trees and rafters, or run over with armoured vehicles”. Thousands more were subjected to “rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, torture, castration and forced nudity”.

It was the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Across the country, 99 under-fives die per 1,000 births
A mother stands at the grave of her two-year-old child, who died from diarrhoea
A herder with malnourished cattle

This month the Telegraph travelled extensively in South Sudan to document the humanitarian relief effort in the run up to Saturday’s deadline. 

It’s undoubtedly a country on its knees, aptly described by one commentator as a “kleptocracy gone insolvent”, but also a place full of youthful ambition, its average age just 18.

In a tarpaulin-clad clinic run by Medair on the outskirts of Renk, a market town in the north of the country, dozens of pregnant young women queue for check ups. 

They have been tempted in by a volunteer network of local women who preach the benefits of antenatal checks and good hygiene in a bid to cut child deaths and deaths in childbirth; a sort of Avon for health which reaches 10 or more walking or “footing” hours into the bush.

The country’s maternal mortality rate at 789 deaths per 100,000 live births, is the fifth highest in the world - 87 times higher than in the UK where the corresponding figure is just nine.
Macca, a 30 year old mother of seven, is six months pregnant and only half jokes she would like 15 children in total. “I’m replacing the ones lost in the war”, she says, “I’m working for my country.”

She is not unusual. Women in South Sudan have an average of nearly five children, largely because the ruthless economics of the place demand it. 

“I want to have 10 children so I have enough if some die,” says Amel, a 23-year-old mother of two. “Without children who will look after us?”

A few metres from the antenatal clinic, the toll of infant mortality is all too evident. In a “stabilisation” room Medair staff are busy reviving distressingly listless toddlers, several of whom have been brought in only a hours away from death. 

Across the country, 99 under-fives die per 1,000 births, compared to just four in the UK. In Renk where acute childhood malnutrition is running at 32 per cent, the odds are even worse. 
Since the end of 2013, conflict has cost almost 400,000 lives and left six million people, of a population of 11 million, desperately hungry

“Malaria, diarrhea or pneumonia are what kills most but it’s because they are malnourished that they are so vulnerable,” says Jimmy Freazer who runs the unit.    

Two-year-old Ibrahim is just a third of his proper weight and has all the signs of a child on the brink. His feet and stomach are swollen, his mouth is white with thrush and his eyes are glazed and unresponsive. His baby sister is almost as big as him having won the battle for his mother’s breast.

“The sudden weaning of children can be a problem,” says Freazer, “Too many stop breastfeeding when they become pregnant. They think they need to save it for the next one.”

At the other end of room, Achol, a little girl of just eight months, is considerably worse. She has a drip in her arm and otherwise still, her tiny chest is heaving.  

Her mother, Nayana, is exhausted from trying to stem a tide of vomit and diarrhoea. The fear in her eyes is so intense that you want to duck her gaze. We leave her - wrongly as it turns out - to what we assume is her infant’s last few hours.
Sudanese civilians collect water form the Nile, in Renk district. Dirty water is a primary cause of disease

When South Sudan won independence from the north in 2011, its people made the fatal mistake of assuming that with independence comes freedom. 

The new government, while promising democracy, adopted the oppressive security infrastructure of the north and set about dividing what little wealth the country had between themselves.

There have yet to be elections and the International Monetary Fund calculates that real incomes in South Sudan today are about 70 per cent lower than in 2011.

Despite taking over about 75 per cent of old Sudan’s oil reserves, the vast majority of the population still relies on subsistence agriculture and gathers charcoal for fuel.

Worse, given the country’s reliance on food aid, the only large scale farms are said to be owned by government acolytes and export much of what they produce abroad. 
A boy plays in the Nile's dirty water
An abandoned ambulance at the military hospital in Renk
A boy with his donkey, carrying water to sell

The Nile runs through the centre of the country and, with modest investment, could be used to irrigate millions of hectares of fertile scrubland. 

But the only machines evident are old Blackstone pumps made in Stamford, England, a decaying relic of the time Britain held sway here. Even then much of the produce was exported.  

“This should be the food basket of the region”, an agricultural adviser with the International Red Cross says. “On the up side, what is grown is organic and the land retains its potential.”

As the deadline for the formation of a unity government looms, rebels in t-shirts and sandals marched alongside government troops outside Juba earlier this week in a display meant to reassure international monitors that progress is being made.

Then on Thursday, Machar said he had agreed to form a unity government by Saturday's deadline. Kiir confirmed the agreement, adding that he will appoint Machar as first vice president on Friday.

"We are going to discuss the security arrangement for the protection of all opposition forces and members," Kiir added.
Eight-month-old Achol with her mother. The malnourished infant is being treated for vomiting and diarrhoea
Just five days after she was admitted to the clinic, Achol is looking much better

There remain two key obstacles to a lasting deal, say analysts. The two rival armies need to be merged into a single force and control over the country’s oil revenues need to be split equitably, ensuring a balance of power.

While the big men quarrel and the nation waits, basic medical science and good care were working their magic in Medair’s health clinic.

Only five days after her arrival, little Achol was sitting up, putting on weight and playing with her delighted mother. 

“I would like to see a point in South Sudan where girls are more likely to complete their education than die in childbirth,” said Natalie Page, Medair’s senior health adviser in South Sudan.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Achol will live to see that dream become a reality if a deal is done this weekend.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Sudan: PM Hamdok needs to curtail defence budget - Imposing cuts on the generals is a perilous assignment

Article from the BBC 
By Alex De WaalSudan analyst
Dated 28 August 2019
Sudan crisis: Activists achieve 'big win' over generals
Sudan's pro-democracy movement has achieved its biggest victory - getting the junta to agree to a civilian government.

The Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) have hammered out a deal with the generals who took power after the fall of long-serving ruler Omar al-Bashir.

They have agreed to a 39-month transitional period. During this time, Sudan's ultimate authority will be a Sovereign Council of five civilians and five generals, with an eleventh member to chair it - initially a soldier, later a civilian.

A technocratic government is being set up and an interim national assembly appointed.

Negotiating the power-sharing formula was hard enough - solving Sudan's deep-seated political and economic problems is going to be harder still.

Newly-appointed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is under no illusions about the challenge he faces.

He is not a politician. He is an economist, a technocrat who has spent the last decades in the African Development Bank and the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

Over the coming days he is expected to appoint a cabinet of similarly impartial and competent technocrats.

In a speech after taking office, Mr Hamdok identified his two priorities - the economy and peace.

International goodwill
Sudan is deep in economic crisis. The protesters who brought down Mr Bashir took to the streets in December because the cost of living had become too high.

People relying on salaries could no longer afford bread; traders and farmers couldn't buy fuel; banks and ATMs were rationing paltry amounts of cash.

Inflation and shortages have a long-term effect on government debt, which is already enormous - over $50bn, more than 60% of gross domestic product.

And Sudan is experiencing a chronic foreign exchange shortage, after the loss of most of its oilfields when the south seceded in 2011.
Many Sudanese complain that the economy is in dire straits

Sudan missed out on the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel the debt of poor nations because it was under UN sanctions for human rights abuses, and US financial sanctions for a "state sponsor of terrorism" after the Bashir regime harboured killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden between 1991 and 1996.

Other highly-indebted countries have taken years to negotiate debt forgiveness - the Hamdok administration will need to do this in just a few month if the government is to obtain the funds it needs turn around the current macroeconomic crisis.

He has goodwill on his side. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have bankrolled the Sudanese generals.

However, they will need to switch from cash handouts and gifts of food, fuel and medicine to supporting a coordinated plan for restoring Sudan to the good graces of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

In an interview with Reuters news agency, Mr Hamdok said he had already started talks with the two bodies to discuss restructuring Sudan's crippling debt.

The US will also need to remove Sudan from the state sponsors of terror list, thereby lifting the de facto ban on Sudan's access to the dollar-based international financial system.

That is just the beginning. Since oil revenues abruptly ended eight years ago, the main foreign exchange earners have been gold and the income from troop deployments in Yemen in support of Saudi forces.

Both of these have allegedly fed corruption - and any investigation is likely to focus on General Mohamed Hamdan "Hemeti" Dagolo, the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the de facto strongman among the military cabal.

He has promised to abide by the decisions of the civilian government, but whether he will countenance reforms that unravel his business empire - including huge interests in gold mining and export - remains to be seen.

Mr Hamdok also needs to curtail the defence budget, which eats up more than half of government spending, but imposing cuts on the generals is a perilous assignment.

The other big file on the new prime minister's desk is peace with the armed rebels. Though there have been ceasefires in place, long-running wars in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile are not resolved.

Rebels rebuffed
There are three main rebel groups in Darfur and a separate insurgency in South Kordofan and Blue Nile by the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North, a legacy of the earlier north-south war, in which the non-Arab peoples of these areas joined their southern brethren in fighting against Khartoum.

These rebel forces are also split into two factions. Mercifully, the rebels are not fighting one another, but getting them to agree has eluded mediators for years.
People are demanding justice for loved ones killed by the security forces

The armed groups are aggrieved that their agenda of a better deal for Sudan's marginalized peoples was short-changed by the power-sharing deal between the generals and the FCC.

They had demanded representation in the Sovereign Council and a bigger say in the negotiations for a civilian government - and were rebuffed.

Mr Hamdok is well-placed to talk to the rebels. He is from western Kordofan himself, a marginalized area, and has advised African and UN mediators working on Sudan, as well as the rebel leaders themselves.

And the leaders of the armed groups know well that the new government is their best chance for peace. If they miss it they may need to wait another decade or longer.

One issue that will need careful handling is accountability for human rights abuses and corruption.

Mr Bashir was in court last week on the charge of illegally possessing foreign currency.

The generals fear that more ambitious charges such as human rights violations will implicate them too.

Courageous protesters
They would strenuously oppose extraditing Mr Bashir to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he is wanted on war crimes charges.

But many pro-democracy demonstrators, who have amply shown their determination and courage on the streets, demand justice.

This includes a proper investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the 3 June massacre in which RSF fighters and security officers killed between 80 and 120 civilians.

The finger of culpability points to the generals in the Sovereign Council.

But indicting them would upset the fragile power-sharing deal. Whatever approach he takes, Mr Hamdok will be harshly criticized by one side or the other.

To deliver on the goals of Sudan's revolution, he will need all of his skills, a lot of goodwill, and a dose of good luck.

Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US.
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