Haiti, seen here just after tropical storm Hanna in 2008, would have likely benefited from mobile money-dispersed aid funds. Photo credit: UN Photo/ Marco Dormino

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) 2013 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, launched at a press conference Wednesday, highlights the potential of mobile money as a means for the private sector to distribute aid to the countries most in need during disaster relief efforts.

“The financially excluded, the natural disaster victims, and the poorest people are all the same,” Jay Collins, Vice-President of Investing Banking at Citigroup, tells MediaGlobal. Citigroup recently partnered with USAID to work on facilitating widespread implementation of a mobile money network.

The use of mobile money, explains Collins, is especially useful in “serial natural disaster victim countries” or countries that are repeatedly hit by natural disasters, like Haiti, which suffered a chain of cyclones two years before its 2010 earthquake.

Governments using mobile money will “have reached out to the group that is the same group that is hardest hit by natural disasters,” says Collins.

According to Collins, the new technology would carry a number of benefits: 2 billion unbanked people could still have access to social benefits via mobile systems. While aid funds can still be intercepted, direct donor-to-user distribution would guarantee that the transaction be virtually corruption-proof.

“I also now have the potential to have a two-way dialogue with you,” adds Collins. “You could actually tell me back information that could be useful during the natural disaster recovery period.”

The Citigroup-USAID alliance is one of several global partnerships between businesses and aid groups—including partnerships that Collins cited between Target and FEMA, and Pfizer and UNICEF—that have formed since the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 to mitigate financial damages in addition to human and structural losses.

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Maarit Kohonen Sheriff, Deputy Head of UNHCR’s New York Office, briefs media at the UN’s New York headquarters on the International Day Against Homophobia. Photo Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

Speaking at a headquarters press briefing on Friday, the International Day Against Homophobia, Deputy Head of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) Maarit Kohonen Sheriff said further work must still be done by the UN and other groups to prevent the execution of men and women on the basis of sexual orientation.

“The death penalty is just like LGBT issues, one of the very sensitive issues that nobody wants to address,” Sheriff tells MediaGlobal. The UNHCR addresses the death penalty and LGBT rights together, explains Sheriff, “We focus equally, but we focus on the death penalty overall anyway because in the UN nobody else does.”

“We cannot promote and protect human rights if we don’t include the rights of LGBT people in this struggle,” Sheriff said at the briefing. Today “is not an official UN day. Its not been declared an official UN day by the General Assembly, and that in itself speaks volumes.”

According to Executive Director of the UN Joint UN Program on HIV and AIDS Michel Sidibe, who also spoke at the briefing, the death penalty still exists as punishment for same-sex acts in seven countries, three of them in Least Developed Countries, and 78 countries still view these acts as illegal.

Currently, executing someone based on his or her sexual orientation is a breach of international human rights law. However, Human Rights Watch reported that nearly one-third of the 193 United Nations Member States criminalize homosexual acts, with 38 of those countries located in Africa.

In Uganda and Ethiopia in the past year, where being gay is already considered illegal, political and religious groups have advocated for legislation that would execute those convicted of homosexuality.

“People are not informed, they don’t have the chance to talk about it,” says Sheriff. “They don’t know that statistics show that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent for crime. So that’s why we say when talking about LGBT, people have an opinion but not an informed opinion.”

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USAID/Haiti engineer Mario Nicoleau briefs (from left) Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Moreno, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, former Haitian President Rene Preval, and current Haitian President Michel Martelly on USAID-funded housing near Haiti’s Caracol Industrial Park in October 2012. Photo credit: Kendra Helmer/USAID

At the World Leader’s Forum in April, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe declared Haiti “really open for business” and hailed foreign direct investment as key to creating the kind of sustained economic growth that would finally cross his country’s name off the Least Developed Countries list.

But Haiti experts, including award-winning author and journalist Amy Wilentz, are reluctant to see the island nation, with its long and troubled history of foreign intervention and aid, so eagerly open its doors to the outside world.

The idea “that Haiti is open for business? I hate it, but I want people to have jobs,” she tells MediaGlobal. Wilentz, who has covered Haitian culture and politics for over two decades, spoke at Columbia University on Monday on the release of her new book Farewell Fred Voodoo.

“Haiti is in conflict with the outside world, and has been,” Wilentz told the audience. “It wants to be integrated in the outside world in a good way, in a healthy way, and it’s very hard. Globalization has not been kind to Haiti.”

The Haitian government’s efforts at economic rebuilding, one of the four main pillars in Haiti’s strategic development plan, is built on the assumption that by encouraging foreign direct investment, the country can grow its way into being an “emerging nation by 2030.”

“Frankly I see [foreign direct investment] as a promoter of un-development,” Wilentz says to MediaGlobal. “This new push for opening Haiti for business is up in the north, far from the earthquake victims, so for me that’s painful.“

The most recent example, says Wilentz, is the Caracol Industrial Park. Located 160 km from Port-au-Prince, the capital city that was devastated during the 2010 earthquake, the 617-acre, $300 million park was substantially financed by the Inter-American Development Bank and the United States. The South Korean company Sae-A Trading has said its garment factory on the site will create 20,000 new jobs in the region.

But without a secure financial infrastructure surrounding the business inside the country, Wilentz explains, “it never lifts people out of poverty in the next generation.”

“So what you’re seeing is an installation of a method of production that keeps profits high on the outside and will provide another generation to keep those profits high on the outside,” Wilentz says.

“It’s a quite beautiful plant for the moment, and the Haitians I interviewed in the area, near La Citadelle, say if they could get their daughter working there they would be so happy,” Wilentz says, even though it will only continue the unequal economic status quo. “But at least people will have jobs.”

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Domonstrating why better governance is needed in Africa, Ledgard compares its size to other world continents. Photo credit: MediaGlobal/Ariel Hofher

Over the next decade, the technological and environmental choices that Africa makes will determine its ability to thrive as a region said the economist and journalist Jonathan Ledgard during an informal talk on 24 April.

Speaking at Columbia’s Future Africa: Sharks, Spies, and Science, hosted by the university’s Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development and The Earth Institute, Ledgard, founder and director of AFROTECH lab and an East Africa correspondent for The Economist, examined the relationship between the high rate of marine life destruction and the rise of emerging technologies in Africa. The latter is overshadowing the former, explained Ledgard, with devastating environmental consequences.

“Forget about any ethical or moral questions, just think about it from an economics point of view: we’re wiping out biodiversity which has taken millions of years to evolve,” says Ledgard to MediaGlobal. “I see a complete annihilation of species and natural life unless we make much smarter decisions.”

According to Ledgard, African governments do not seem to share this view. In a 2012 Economist article, he explained that the African states are failing to invest in marine research because “it is a ‘donor activity,’ meaning they want foreigners to pay for it.”

In his piece “A sea of riches,” Ledgard compares the average fisherman’s catch from 60 years ago to last year. “Kenyan fisherman now catch an average of 3 kilograms of lobster on each trip, compared with 28 kilograms in the 1980s. Grouper fish appear to have become extinct in the Comoros in the 1970s. South Africa’s fishy haul is lower today than in the 1950s,” Ledgard wrote.

Sharks have suffered acutely from policymakers’ lack of biodiversity awareness. Over the past decade, says Ledgard, marine habitats like the Indian Ocean have seen a nearly 95 percent drop in the number of sharks in the area, also known as loss of biomass. The decrease is largely due to overfishing as fishermen seek out the predator for its “meat, skin, and oil” to sell.

The continent’s focus instead, Ledgard explains, has been toward developing science and technology in the region. He believes that the next generation of African youth will have greater access to technology, such as smart phones and tablets, but this technology driven continent will not solve the continent’s environmental problems.

African governments must “invest in proper management practices for fishing, for marine reserves, and marine national parks,” Ledgard says. The future of the seas and marine species, he stresses, will not improve until better governance is executed.

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Children and teachers in a Madagascar primary school. Photo credit: Amber Goodwin/Frontierofficial

Last month, American singer Katy Perry visited Madagascar with UNICEF as part of her role as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. The trip included stopping in the slums of Antananarivo, the country’s capital, and a pre-school in Sahavola.

“We are very happy that Katy Perry has chosen Madagascar for her first mission, because the country is often forgotten and the children here don’t always get the attention they deserve,” Daniel Timme, who works as UNICEF’s Chief of External and Media Relations, tells MediaGlobal.

Working with Perry, says Timme, helps “draw attention to the needs of children in a particular country.”

Madagascar is reportedly one of the poorest countries in the world. According to UNICEF’s 2012 State of the World’s Children report, 75 percent of households and 82 percent of children under 5 years old live below the poverty line as per UNICEF international standards.

A political crisis in 2009 resulted in practically all foreign aid being withdrawn from the country.

This led, says Timme, “to severe budget cuts in the social sector. Health, nutrition, education, child protection, the needs are everywhere.” In 2011, an agreement was reached between the government and the opposition for a transition to democracy, and presidential and parliamentary elections will take place in July of this year.

Perry’s visit highlighted two of UNICEF’s main program areas: chronic malnutrition and access to primary education, says Timme.

In Madagascar, Timme explains, more than 50 percent of children under 5 in Madagascar suffer from chronic malnourishment, and less than 10 percent of the approximately 2 million children aged 3-6 years old have access to public pre-school classes.

UNICEF is working with health and education authorities in the country to confront the problems with extensive programs that combine financial assistance and technical advice, says Timme.

In terms of how UNICEF stepped up its effort to counterbalance the short fall of foreign aid, Timme stated that its response “has been to adapt the program to help ensure the continued delivery of basic social services for children. Immediately after the onset of the political crisis, UNICEF diverted its support through NGOs but since the agreement of the political roadmap in late 2011, UNICEF has been progressively re-engaging with government ministries at both central and regional levels.”

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Children work in an artisanal gold mine in Kéniéba Cercle, Mali, 2010. Photo credit: International Labour Organization/IPEC

The informal process of artisanal mining in African LDCs is having lasting and damaging impacts on human health and the environment, Lisa Sachs said on Thursday at Columbia University.

Sachs, the Director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC), was speaking as part of the Earth Institute’s event: “Closing the loop—Technology & Sustainability.”

Showing the audience a picture of a young African boy mixing gold and mercury with his bare hands, she urged for regulation of both small and large-scale mining in African LDCs to mitigate the health and environmental impacts of the industry.

“How do you formalize an informal process like artisanal mining in developing countries?” she asks MediaGlobal. The task is challenging, she says, but it is these “under-capacitated places like Africa that need it most.”

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) are practiced by 20 million people globally and include a workforce made up of those living in the poorest of circumstances.

The practice is widespread across Sub-Saharan Africa and oftentimes operates outside the bounds of mining regulations. According to the UN International Labor Organization, an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of 17 work in gold mines in the Sahel region of Africa.

Mine workers—such as the young boy in Sachs’ presentation—regularly use mercury as part of the mining process.  This highly toxic substance can cause life threatening, irreversible damage to the central nervous system and internal organs, especially in children.

Moreover, it is estimated that one-third of all mercury released into the environment comes from ASM, polluting water and soil. When mercury is dumped into rivers and lakes, fish become toxic and unsafe to eat.  Deforestation, soil erosion, and land scarring are also common as miners excavate land for trenches and settlements.

After excavation, mercury pits can fill with water and act as a “breeding ground” for mosquitoes infected with malaria.

Sachs tells MediaGlobal that mercury reduction in ASM is the obvious solution, but doing so takes away vital employment opportunities in LDCs.

“You have to picture these families,” Sachs says, “if you make it illegal to dig for gold, you are taking away their livelihood.”

What needs to happen, Sachs says, is a combination of “appropriate policies to formalize the process” as well as “the right types of incentives to change the way that artisanal mining is done.”

Sachs tells MediaGlobal that she is encouraged by the presence of this event, and hopeful that a creative solution—including accessible and mercury-free mining processes to individuals in African LDCs—will be regulated and enforced soon.

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A.J. Walkley with her homestay family (from left, Felesiano, Johani, A.J., Jimmy, Louisa, and Caroline). Photo credit: A.J. Walkley

Former MediaGlobal contributor A.J. Walkley is publishing her third novel entitled Vuto, which was inspired by her experience as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi.

Walkley went into the Peace Corps as a health volunteer a week after graduating from college in 2007. A vocal advocate for the fight against HIV/AIDS, she went to Malawi to educate villagers about the ways to protect themselves from contracting HIV. While stationed in a remote village, the author witnessed a teenager giving birth all by herself with no family around to help her through her labor.

“I couldn’t imagine going through that experience alone,” Walkley told MediaGlobal. “I knew that was part of Malawian culture and a sign of strength for the mother, but I kept wondering what that young woman must have been thinking. I knew that I had to write about it in some way at some point in my life.”

Walkley does so in Vuto, a novel that centers on the title character who is only 17 when her third child dies, mere days after birth. Malawian tradition prevents men from considering a child their own until it has survived for two weeks. Frustrated at not being able to speak to her husband, Solomon, about all three of the children she’s had to bury alone, Vuto forces him to acknowledge the dead baby. Her rejection of tradition causes Solomon and the village elders to banish Vuto from the only home she’s ever known.

Vuto seeks refuge in the hut of US Peace Corps volunteer Samantha Brennan, where Solomon discovers his wife has not left as commanded. When Solomon arrives in the night to attack Vuto, Samantha disregards her oath to remain uninvolved in village politics and interjects herself into the center of the conflict. The women flee Vuto’s village and the Peace Corps, encountering physical, ethical, and cultural struggles along the way.

Vuto, which means “trouble” or “problem” in the Malawian language of Chichewa, is told from the perspectives of Vuto, Samantha, and two other Peace Corps volunteers.

“I’ve had this story churning in my head ever since I returned from Malawi,” Walkley said. “I fleshed out the plot during National Novel Writing Month 2011, and have been editing and rewriting it ever since.”

When asked about the plot of her novel and the message she is trying to get across, Walkley told MediaGlobal, “I wanted to address some of the customs that surprised me as a foreigner coming into a Third World country, as well as the idealism that most Peace Corps volunteers go into service with and the ways many are unprepared for the realities they face while in-country. At the heart of the story is a friendship between two women of vastly different cultures who are still able to bond over truths that span all nations.”

Vuto will be published by Rocket Science Productions later this year. Please visit the author’s website: www.ajwalkley.com

If A.J.’s Kickstarter campaign reaches $4,500 by May 9 she’ll cook a traditional Malawian meal on-camera to share with all of you!

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Survivors of sexual violence receive treatment at the Hospital of Panzi, a non-profit health centre located in South Kivu, DRC. Photo credit: UN/Photo Marie Frechon

Years ago in Somalia, after sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl, a perpetrator paid $150 as restitution to the mother for the loss of her little girl’s childhood, one of many horrifying cases Zainab Hawa Bangura has encountered during her mission as United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence and Conflict.

In an April 1 briefing at the UN to discuss the overview of the priorities for sexual violence during conflict, Bangura told stories of victims from the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Somalia.

Bangura, who began her career by documenting conflict in Sierra Leone, says the “atrocities” she witnessed moved her to become a human rights activist.

“The youngest of the victims was only 3 years old. This is why I started my mission,” Bangura tells MediaGlobal News.

A six-point agenda created by Bangura sought to bring attention to these crimes and to aid in the prevention of sexual violence in conflict zones. The points focused on the ending of impunity, protection of civilians, strengthening coordination, mobilizing leadership, increasing recognition of rape as a tactic of war, and ownership.

“I feel the biggest obstacle we face is the services to the victims. There are hundreds of thousands of victims,” Bangura tells MediaGlobal News. “I want to talk about this with more people, which will ultimately bring in more resources. With the initiation of the Group of Eight, more resources are being brought in that are helping with more services. I hope to get more countries interested in this issue.”

According to Save the Children, the UN estimates that up to 50 percent of sexual assaults worldwide are committed against girls under 16 years old. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) recorded 16,000 cases of sexual violence against women and girls in 2008.

“In the DRC, there were 11 children between the ages 6 to 12 months old who were raped last year,” said Bangura. “Also included in the same year, 59 children between 1 and 3 years, and 182 children between 5 and 14 years.”

“One person raped in war is one too many,” Bangura said.

The following day, April 16, Bangura participated in an open debate about the Secretary-General’s annual report of sexual violence. The report outlines the situation of conflict with sexual violence in 22 countries including trends of sexual violence, such as attacks on men and boys, and children born of rape.

“Sexual violence in conflict is the great moral issue of our time,” said Bangura. “History will not judge us kindly if we do not do everything in our power to end this horrific crime.”

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Earlier this year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) met with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to discuss development goals. Photo credit: UN Photo/ Eskinder Debebe

The post-2015 development agenda must take into consideration the specific issues facing the world’s most vulnerable countries, a panel of experts and delegates concluded at a discussion hosted at the United Nations on Tuesday.

Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the panel agreed, face unique structural barriers to development that must be highlighted moving forward, including increased exposure to economic and environmental shocks.

Panelist Patrick Guillaumont, President of the French economic development research organization Ferdi, pointed to data from his company’s Physical Vulnerability to Climate Change Index (PVCCI) that suggests LDCs are significantly more impacted by a range of climate shocks such as sea level rise or long-term changes in temperature and rainfall. Much more so than other countries, he said.

Many speakers acknowledged that while the Millennium Development Goals were successful in overall poverty reduction, LDCs’ disproportionate vulnerability means recent development gains are at risk of reversing unless the new development agenda adequately addresses these inequalities.

With the post-2015 development consultations ongoing, a complete assessment of how the agenda will address the role of LDCs is not yet clear.  However, Ricardo Dunn, the Advocacy and Outreach Officer from the UN’s Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS) argues that the agenda’s preliminary consultations hold promise for LDCs.

“There is increasing consensus that the LDCs need to be given priority in the post-2015 development agenda, due to their high poverty rates, high vulnerability to external shocks and climate change, and limited capacities to deal with these challenges” Dunn tells MediaGlobal News.

The voice and participation of LDCs in the global discussion, Dunn says, could be further acknowledged to address specific vulnerabilities more comprehensively.

Dunn’s point was illustrated during the event when panelists and several delegations, including ambassadors from Benin and Tanzania, and representatives from the UN’s Capital Development Fund, criticized the distribution system for official development aid (ODA). Much of the blame fell to the World Bank, which distributes a significant amount of development aid every year, due to its system of grouping countries based off gross national income.

Currently, LDCs are classified as “low-income” along with a list of other developing countries. This system, panelists argued, still focuses exclusively on economic factors and ignores the countries’ severe structural insecurities. The post-2015 development agenda, they argued, should be part of a broader attempt to reform the distribution of ODA along more holistic and multidimensional lines.

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Former Greek PM Georgios Papandreou speaking at a press briefing in 2010. Photo credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Speaking at Columbia University’s Earth Institute on Tuesday, former Greece Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou said a global carbon tax could go a long way in helping Least Developed Countries (LDCs) achieve a sustainable economy.

Papandreou was joined at the event by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, Laurence Tubiana, director of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, and Claude Henri, a visiting professor of Innovation and Sustainable Development, for a discussion on the possibility of green growth as a means to spur development in Europe.

The speakers were unanimous in their belief that the regulation of Europe through green initiatives will have a strong effect on markets around the world. Climate change and green growth are “major issues,” for Europe, said Papandreou, as well as for “the poorest in the world,” including LDCs.

“Everybody should pay a carbon tax based on their emission level,” Papandreou tells MediaGlobal. “We can use that money to help those countries that want to and need to change their energy mixture to a more sustainable one.” The revenue collected from such a tax would go to fund LDCs in their development of a more sustainable, environmentally friendly economy.

“The issue of climate can be one that unifies,” Papandreou told the audience. “It can be a peace project, which is at the core of what the European Union is and how it was founded: as a project for peace.”

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