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Champani youth in Cambodia find creative ways to promote their culture amid the pandemic · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Members of Champani community during a learning session. Source: Facebook
A youth group in Cambodia has found creative ways to promote the Champani language and culture through online initiatives.
The Champani group is originally from the ancient territory of Champa (the current central and southern Vietnam). There are over 30,000 Champani people in Cambodia, who are also known as Cham Kan Imam San. The majority of them are currently located in the Cambodian provinces of Kampong Chhnang, Pursat and Battambang.
In recent years, the group has maximized online platforms like Instagram and Facebook to rasie awareness about their unique language, script, and history.
Global Voices talked to Teyaorm Mas, a member of the Kan Imam San Youth for Development (KIYD),  a group dedicated to strengthening community volunteerism in order to preserve Champani tradition. The group was established in 2011 and they currently have around 30 active members who do a range of community care activities including assisting the elderly Champani members and organizing Online Cham language classes.
KIYD produces short videos and online learning materials which are posted on social media. Teyaorm Mas shares examples of what they have been producing:
Our content usually shares about our traditional ceremony, KIYD activities in the community such as environmental protection, Online Cham class (peer teaching happens twice a week), supporting older people and others.
A post shared by KIYD Cambodia (@kiyd.cambodia)
SosTey, one of those who participated in the online Cham language classes wrote about their experience during the pandemic:
During COVID pandemic and lockdown, I am able to keep myself going sane with online language classes and Cham is one of them. Cham is my origin and one of the most enjoyable and proudest languages for me.
Together we can improve and learn. Let's go forward together to keep our language alive!
Online Cham language classes are conducted through Zoom. Source: Facebook
Teyaorm Mas shared some of the challenges they face in their work such as “limited social media outreach, lack of human resource to create initiative and bring (Champani) masterpiece to the world, the influence of foreign culture, inadequate funding to strengthen capacity and support Cham class in the community, and absence of a learning curriculum/learning module for the younger/next generation to start learning the language.”
She added that some elders are also reluctant to share knowledge with the younger generation “because they believe some information will be harmful to share,” which is linked to the “trauma of war” experienced by the older generation.
Despite these difficulties, they persist in their advocacy and even partnered with global groups to achieve their mission. For example, they highlighted Champani culture when they took over the Instagram page of Global Voices for a week in August.
A post shared by Global Voices (@globalvoicesonline)
Teyaorm Mas summed up a few lessons from their online campaign:
We have learned that more people are keen to know about us on a deeper level and they enjoy watching what we produce, which is the motivation for our group to keep on our mission. Secondly, we have taken from the community for so many years, so why not spare a couple hours each week to give back what we could contribute by preserving our culture and getting more people around the world to know us. We believe that it is worth investing some time for the community by starting small, but making many impacts.
KIYD plans to improve and expand their online and offline activities:
We are committed to enhance our online Cham class to be more engaging and entertaining so that more youth will enroll in the class. More importantly, we just kick started our own documentation project in which we are trying to record the sound of the reading/singing of the elder people from the ancient books we have. We wish to preserve those treasures and we extremely need support to make it possible.


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Japan named ‘Fossil of the Day’ for ‘clean coal’ plans · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Coprolite (a piece of fossilized dung) of a Jurassic-era herbivorous dinosaur on display at Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Japan. The coprolite was dug up in Utah, United States. Photo by Nevin Thompson. Image license: CC BY 3.0
Japan earned a “Fossil of the Day” award on November 2 in Glasgow at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) for the country's “especially regressive” reluctance to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out coal-fired thermal electricity generation.
The satirical Prize is awarded each day over the course of the COP conference by the Climate Action Network (CAN), a group of 1,500 environmental NGOs from all over the world, to countries “doing the most to achieve the least” and “doing their best to be the worst” in terms of climate action.
Japan regularly wins the award at the annual COP meetings for this reason. This year, Japan shared the podium with Norway and Australia for promoting the use of fossil fuels.
Today's #COP26 ?#FossiloftheDay? Award? goes to…
?? Norway (1st) ?? Japan (2nd) and ?? Australia (3rd) for all promoting fossil fuels – from Norwegian gas to coal in Asia, and CCS ?#RayoftheDay? also goes to ??????? Scotland and ?? India ?
Read: https://t.co/2B04lxm16y pic.twitter.com/D2iEQOHasd
— Climate Action Network International (CAN) (@CANIntl) November 2, 2021
Japan won the award this year following a speech at COP26 by Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, who spent just eight hours at COP26 before flying back to Japan. In his speech, Kishida did not commit to phasing out coal-fired electricity generation, which is projected to still account for at least 25 per cent of the country's power production by 2030, down from 31 per cent in 2019–2020. Japan currently operates 140 thermal power plants.
Meanwhile, 40 other countries at COP26 agreed to phase out coal-fired electricity production by 2040 at the latest.
Thermal coal terminal at the Hokuriku Denryoku electric generation plant, Tsuruga, Fukui. Coal-fired power plants provide electricity to many small cities in Japan outside of Tokyo, Osaka, and other large urban centers. Photo by Nevin Thompson. Image license: CC BY 3.0
While Japan is by some estimates the world’s fifth-largest emitter of carbon, the country's greenhouse emissions have continued to decline year-over-year for over the past decade. However, carbon-emitting thermal power still accounts for 76 per cent of Japan's electricity generation.
Efforts by Japan to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade appear to be marginal. According to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific analysis that tracks government climate action, Japan's plans to phase out aging coal plants will do little to reduce the country's carbon emissions:
The reported plan would not take Japan beyond the country’s “Highly insufficient” 2030 climate target (nationally determined contribution, or NDC) in the light of fair contributions to limiting warming to the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of 1.5°C.
Japan's Fossil Award from the Climate Action Network at COP26 is also based on Prime Minister Kishida's pledge to continue to build thermal power plants in “developing nations” in Asia that use so-called “clean coal” technology:
Japan, through the Asia Energy Transition Initiative, will develop leading projects worth 100 million USD to transform fossil-fuel-fired thermal power into zero-emission thermal power such as ammonia and hydrogen.
The Japanese prime minister's announcement that the country will continue to export coal-fired electricity generation technology at COP26 appears to contradict a promise made earlier in 2021 to halt new government backing for “unabated coal power.”
At the same time, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), an export credit agency that helps Japanese industry sell overseas, also stated earlier this year that it would “provide support for exports from coal power plants if they come with emissions-cutting steps such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and co-firing ammonia.”
Over the past decade, Japan has also helped build coal-fired thermal power plants across Asia, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) which examines issues related to energy markets, trends, and policies:
JBIC, and to a lesser extent the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), have been key enablers of coal-fired power development in developing Asia. Such projects are sold to nations like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Indonesia, often based on overly optimistic power demand growth projections.
The JBIC has also stated it would support the use of ammonia or hydrogen as co-firing fuels in thermal power generation, in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. that these novice and costly technologies are linked to fossil fuel extraction and would leave little chance of meeting the global 1.5C degrees targets.
However, skeptics such as Greenpeace point out that, as a technology, ammonia co-firing is still in its infancy, with many problems still needing to be worked out. For example, ammonia is not particularly efficient when used as a fuel to generate electricity, and it also produces harmful nitrous oxide.
The IEEFA also noted that, ultimately, Japan's plans to export “clean coal” technology will likely result in a net increase of greenhouse gasses:
Using ammonia as cover for further “abated” coal power developments overseas will mean more coal consumption and further economic burden from this expensive power source in nations that can’t afford it.
In awarding Japan the prize, the Climate Action Network said, “These novice and costly technologies are linked to fossil fuel extraction and would leave little chance of meeting the global 1.5C degrees targets.”
Reacting to Japan's latest Fossil Prize, Setsu Mori, the managing editor of Alterna, a business magazine focused on environmental issues, called on the Japanese government to abandon efforts to use ammonia as a fuel for generating electricity and invest in renewable energy instead.
Japanese government spokesperson Matsuno Hirokazu, responding to the award and criticism of the country's “clean coal” plan, said the government had “no comment.”
Japan has received at least six “Fossil of the Day” prizes from CAN, in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2019, 2020, and 2021 for the country's reluctance to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

source: news-globalvoices

license: Creative Commons - Attribution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

author: Nevin Thompson


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Democratization in South Korea and the legacy of the Gwangju Uprising · Global Voices
Juke Carolina

Chan-ho Kim at the fourth International Conference on State Violence and Trauma in 2016, held by Gwangju Trauma Center. Used with permission.
South Korea is known globally for its creative enterprises, high-end tech brands, automobiles, and of course, the Hallyu Wave — the Korean culture phenomenon that encapsulates digital content, music, silver screen programs, and language. But less are familiar with South Korea's impressive legacy as a democratic nation.
In 1988 South Korea successfully transitioned from an authoritative military state (1948–1987) to a liberal democratic civilian state. Through a series of email exchanges, Global Voices’ writer Juke Carolina Rumuat (GV), interviewed Chan-ho Kim (CHK), the Program Manager of International Relations at the Korea Democracy Foundation (KDF) in Seoul about South Korea's democratic transition.
Established in 2001,  the KDF's goal is to enhance Korean democracy through the preservation of the country's history of democratic transition, education, and international exchanges. One of its projects is the Seoul Democracy Forum, held in May 2021, and this year's theme was the roles of youth and women in international cooperation for democracy.
GV: Hello Chanho Kim! Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?
CHK: My name is Chan-ho Kim, I am the acting Director of International Relations at the Korean Democracy Forum. Prior to KDF, I worked for the May 18 Memorial Foundation for about 20 years. My main responsibility is to promote the May 18th Democracy Movement and develop networks and alliance with Asian civil society activists and human rights defenders in national and international events.
I became interested in social movements since I was a highschool student in 1988 when a pro-democracy movement took place in South Korea.
After graduating high school, I moved out of Seoul and attended Gwangju University in Gwangju (Hangul: 광주시). It’s not a prestigious university but the city itself was known as the center of a known pro-democracy movement known as  the Gwangju Uprising in 1980.
After completing the mandatory military inscription, I embarked abroad.  I went to Norway as an exchange student for a program called the International Culture Youth Exchange to learn Norwegian language and culture at the Folk School. Norway has a huge impact to me and my later life as my experience in the country had broadened my views on democracy and human rights.
The city of Gwangju was the center of South Korea's democratization movements in the 1980s. On May 18, 1980, a string of street protests occurred in the city and the military government deployed troops who killed at least 196 people. For many years, the events were heavily censored. Although the uprising was barely mentioned in global historical textbooks, the Gwangju Uprising inspired resistance movements overseas against authoritarian regimes in various parts of Asia, including Hong Kong.
GV: Can you tell us more about your personal experience related to Korea's democratization?
CHK: I grew up in Seoul, which is about 166 miles away from Gwangju. I attended Gwangju University in 1980s. The government had strict anti-communist policies, at the time, the majority population preferred not to doubt or question, including myself. The (popular) struggle against the government violent repressions were not intense at the beginning.
Things started on the streets, and later on spread in the form of pamphlets and tracts. Neighbors in big cities, including Seoul, began to whisper as we received anonymous tracts in our mailboxes with pictures of May 18th Democracy Movement. It was a complicated and bloody process (for the nation), but eventually it ended authoritarian military regime South Korea and we transitioned into a democratic state. During the regime, state violence was on plain sights and such history shouldn’t be repeated in the future.
I consider studying in Gwangju as part of my destiny as it path my way to the May 18th Memorial Foundation, where I learned how May 18th demonstrators lived difficult lives as survivors of extreme state violence. I had the opportunity to listen to the stories of those survivors. Many students, workers and democratization movement activists were illegally arrested and tortured during my university years.
The May 18th Uprising was a cornerstone for civilians to set themselves free from being subjugated to political power. Since then, the struggle continues by commemorating the truth about the Democratic Uprising that began since 1980. Thanks to this pivot in South Korean history, this collective history that we went through, South Korea now has the direct presidential election system.
GV: Last year, a commentary published on Foreign Policy said that South Korea's success in handling the COVID-19 pandemic has been undermined by politics and religious conservatism. Does the global pandemic impact the practice of democracy and human rights in South Korea?
CHK: The COVID-19 pandemic does curtail freedom of movements, just like what has happened in other countries. The global pandemic impacted South Koreans economically and socially. For example, foreign migrant workers are in the blind spot during mandatory quarantine, and irregular workers in South Korea are suffering from fatal health risks in a difficult working environment and are losing their jobs.
We also noted that the Korean government has enacted related laws to crack down on people who spread fake news through YouTube due to the coronavirus since last year. Conservatism remains an issue here. For instance, thousands of far-right conservative groups held mass protests demanding the release of former President Park Geun-hye and demanded the resignation of the current government. Some far-right YouTubers are under investigation by the police for spreading anti vaccine narratives.
Former President Park Geun-hye was impeached for abuse of power abuse and corruption in 2017. Earlier this year, the country's top court denied her appeal and upheld her 20-year prison sentence. Conservative Christian groups are often seen as allies to South Korean far-right conservatives and are often critical towards current President Moon Jae-in's government.
GV: Can you give us a bit more background on the rising conservatism in South Korea?
CHK: You should know is that there's a serious divide between the conservatives and those who are striving for peaceful coexistence through dialogue with North Korea. The latter is striving to give up the outdated ideological framework that sees the existence of North Korea as a mere threat to the country.
Luckily, the youth participation and engagement in politics are promising. We're expecting to see less ideological and more inclusiveness in politics thanks to the youth. Lastly, I see that South Korean political system is gradually developing and the general public are embracing institutionalized democratic practices.
The Korean Peninsula was originally a single nation annexed by Japan in 1910. At the end of the Second World War in 1945, the country was divided into North Korea, backed by the Soviet Union, and South Korea, backed by the US Under the leadership of  Kim Il-sung. North Korea adopted a Soviet model of political dictatorship and economic collectivism, while South Korea had been under an anti-communist military dictatorship until 1987 when the first democratic presidential election was held. Roh Tae-woo of the Democratic Justice Party won the presidency and ended the South Korean military regime with a series of political and economic reforms.
The participants of 2021 Seoul Democracy Forum posing in solidarity with the people of Myanmar. Due to the global pandemic, most of the event took place online with few sessions held on site in at the South Korean capital. Photo by Korea Democracy Foundation, used with permission.

author: Juke Carolina


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The legacy of killed Colombian indigenous reporter lives on · Global Voices
J. Fernanda Sánchez Jaramillo

Mural in homage to María Efigenia Vásquez, made by the Iskra collective in the city of Popayán, used with permission.
Editor's note: this profile is part of wider coverage of threats against Indigenous reporters in Cauca (Colombia). The first story covers impunity regarding crimes against reporters, and the second, the context of indigenous and their fight to report on community land struggles.
It was an ordinary Sunday, with no hint of trouble. María Efigenia Vásquez Astudillo and her partner John Miller, both Indigenous reporters from the south of Colombia, took their camera and went to the Kokonuko indigenous reserve.
Miller's job was to record the protest of the Kokonuko Indigenous community and their subsequent encounter with the police anti-riot unit, Esmad. The events took place at the Kokonuko reserve, in Puracé, a small town a couple of hours from the large city of Popayán.
Miller told Global Voices that he and Efigenia Vásquez had been called by people from their neighborhood to document possible confrontations with the police. The Kokonuko community had gathered to protest a private tourism project, led by Diego Angulo, on what they consider the heart of their reserve (resguardo, in Spanish), which is under collective property according to Colombian law.
On the morning of October 8, 2017, the couple was near the entrance of Agua Tibia N.2, in the reserve, which is also the location of Angulo's ecotourism, spa, and thermal baths company called Centro de Turismo y Salud Termales Agua Tibia.
Miller said he was recording with their equipment, as Vásquez taught him—without distractions and focused on the possible confrontation between police and indigenous people. At around 3 p.m., Vásquez suggested they go back home to take care of her three children.
As they walked down the mountain, she suddenly looked at him, saying, “I am going this way.” She went to the other side of the mountain. Miller continued recording.
He captured an Esmad member shooting, but could not see the target, and then he heard community members screaming for help. Immediately, he put down this camera and looked for where the cries were coming from.
John Miller (right) showing the author (left) the mountain where Efigenia was killed by armed forces. Photo by Willian Mavisoy Muchavisoy, used with permission.
He was shocked when he saw Vásquez's body lying on the ground and went towards her with other community members. On the road below, the Esmad was still confronting people and making it impossible for the ambulance to pass.
A driver, who was passing by on the road, transported Vásquez to the ambulance so they could take her to the closest hospital. However, the small town did not have enough equipment, so they took her to Popayan’s Cauca at Saint Joseph Hospital.
During this time, Vásquez said, “Please don't let me die,” and “Don’t tell my parents what happened.” A few hours later, a nurse told Miller they could not save her. He was devastated—his loved one and co-worker died from bullet wounds. The next day, the Legal Medicine Institute confirmed her death by a gunshot.
Vásquez Astudillo, Indigenous Radio Renacer Kokonuko reporter, former Indigenous guard, and a mother of three, died while reporting on her community's struggle to recover their land. Although it was four years ago, her death inspires the community to keep their fight for their reserve and collective property.
Land recovery is fundamental to the Kokonuko because their identity is rooted in Mother Earth.
Sulma Yace, an ancestral Kokonuko authority, emphasized their relationship to Mother Earth. She also said that they are more committed to defending Agua Tibia N. 2  since Vásquez was killed there, as she was reporting on their community struggle. In 2021, Indigenous communities still protest the presence of Diego Angulo's thermal resort on their reserve.
For his part, Jhoe Sauca, the legal representative of the Kokonuko at the Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca (Cric, for its acronym in Spanish) told Global Voices why it is so important to recover Agua Tibia N.2: “to extend their reserve; to practice traditional rituals and to claim the right to the territory in the name of Efigenia.”
Indigenous radio station of the Kokonuko community. Photo by Willian Mavisoy Muchavisoy, used with permission.
As Vásquez was killed doing her work, the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP, for its acronym in Spanish) told Global Voices that Colombia's Attorney General should follow procedure and take into account Esmad's aggressions against journalists.
By email, the Attorney General's Office replied to Global Voices’ request, informing us that there is a disciplinary process open against the police agent for the following conduct: “extra limitation of rights and innominate functions.”
Although justice seems far for Vásquez, her legacy lives on. Her three children remember her as a devoted mother, passionate about her work at the radio station, and committed to her Indigenous community.
Her mother, Ilda Astudillo, was happy because her daughter became what she wanted: a broadcaster. Her father, Luis Vásquez, continues to be inspired by her dreams to study journalism and law, which she couldn't accomplish.
John Miller, her partner in work and life, said that despite this fatal event and the risks that Indigenous communicators face in Cauca, he will continue reporting from Agua Tibia N.2. “As María Efigenia Astudillo said: ‘How can I run, I must be strong, have personality, and I cannot allow myself to be defeated’,” he said, reminiscing.
“We must act following our thinking,” John added.

author: J. Fernanda Sánchez Jaramillo


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Global Voices seeks a project editor/coordinator for our Advox Project · Global Voices
Nanjala Nyabola

Advox, the digital rights initiative of Global Voices, is seeking a project editor/coordinator to support the implementation of Advox projects and the Advox programme, edit and manage the Advox website and support outreach and community management.
The editor/coordinator will also work on a project that aims to analyze, document and report on the growing phenomenon of the use of digital communications technology to enforce and advance authoritarian governance. This project will create a framework for analysis, build a workflow and method for tracking, documenting, and amplifying incidents and cases for relevant audiences, and produce reporting on a series of cases. The project editor/coordinator will support the project director in coordinating editorial activities and managing a team of independent researchers around the world to ensure the timely completion of project deliverables.
The project editor/coordinator's duties will include:
Candidates must be comfortable setting their own schedules and working in a wholly virtual environment and be prepared to do some international travel.
We strongly welcome candidates from outside North America and Western Europe and encourage people currently contributing to the Global Voices project to apply.
Email a résumé and a cover letter in English that highlights your work and explains why you would be a great fit for Global Voices to jobs@globalvoices.org, with the subject line: Advox Project editor/coordinator: [your name]. The application deadline is 11:59pm ET (GMT -5) on December 3, 2021.

author: Nanjala Nyabola


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Nepal: Drowning in sorrow · Global Voices
Nepali Times

Children who have lost their lives in the pits and ditches left by contractors: Clockwise from left, Riya Bishwakarma, Sushil Layomagar, Aditya Layomagar, Jasmine Khatun, Suman Mahato, Anil Mahato, Karuna Bishwakarma, and Samma Khatun. Photo: Mukesh Pokhrel/HimalKhabar via Nepali Times, used with permission.
This article was originally written by Mukesh Pokhrel in Nepalese in Himal Khabar and a translation by Aryan Sitaula was published in the Nepali Times. An edited version is republished by Global Voices as part of a content sharing agreement.
Despite protests, defiant sand mining and quarry contractors have continued to leave large abandoned pits along Nepal’s rivers in which children drown by the dozens every year. There is no exact count of how many children lose their lives every monsoon in the pits and ditches left by sand mining contractors because police only record these deaths as generalised “deaths by drowning.”
Sand mining is rampant in Nepal, and illegal and uncontrolled excavations of riverbeds and low streams are taking lives, besides causing environmental hazards. In Dhanusa district alone, 206 children have drowned in the past two years — most of them were under 15 years of age, and they died while swimming in these water-filled sand mining pits.
Bhojbahadur Layomagar with a picture of his nephew Sushil Layomagar. Photo: Mukesh Pokhrel/HimalKhabar via Nepali Times. Used with permission.
Twelve-year-old Sushil Layomagar of Birendra Bazar could not return to school after the holidays in July 2019 because of the heavy rains. He was sent out in the afternoon to graze goats, but fell into a 50-metre-deep pit dug by a sand mining contractor, and drowned, together with a friend. Sushil's death was a doubly severe blow to his mother, Chhalimaya, whose husband Hari Bahadur had died in Saudi Arabia earlier that year.
The pit was the result of a contractor extracting sand and gravel to build the Bharatpur-Srirampur road, leaving the gaping hole that filled with water after the rains. There was a strong protest against the contractor. “We told them to stop digging, the children will fall into the ditch,” says Susil’s grandmother Madhumaya Layomagar. “But they shouted at us, saying that they owned the land and could do with it as they pleased.”
That same year, in the adjoining Sarlahi district, Samma Khatun, 6, and Jasmine Khatun, 11, of Sarlahi drowned in a pit dug for a brick kiln. The two girls left home to play at noon, but when they did not return for two hours their parents started a frantic search.
Ommaya Layomagar with a picture of her son Aditya who had drowned together with Sushil Layomagar. Photo: Mukesh Pokhrel/HimalKhabar via Nepali Times. Used with permission.
It is not just in the Tarai region that children are drowning in abandoned sand pits. In Nuwakot, 12-year-old Binita Balami fell into a ditch left by illegal sand miners. Laxmi Tamang, 35, jumped into the pond to save her but also drowned. Last year, a 12-year-old boy drowned in similar circumstances in Nuwakot district’s Likhu River.
There have been many localised protests against contractors and calls for a ban on their activities, but both licensed and illegal businesses have local political patronage and have continued unabated. The rampant sand mining does not just pose a danger to children drowning, but also threatens bridges and other infrastructure.
Residents of Naktjij in Dhanusa have repeatedly complained to the municipality office against illegal gravel extraction along the Aurahi River, which has led to many deaths of children. Yet the practice continues.
It was after protests against illegal sand mining on Aurahi River that Dilip Mahato was beaten and then run over by a tipper truck near his home in Sripur in January 2020. Mahato was a college student in India, and had been outraged by the dangerous pits that the contractors left near his home.
Chandrakala Devi Mahato with a picture of her son Dilip Mahato who was murdered for his activism against illegal sand mining. Photo: Mukesh Pokhrel/HimalKhabar via Nepali Times. Used with permission.
Following his murder, locals formed a struggle committee and waged a losing battle against the contractors. Dilip’s father, Ramjivan Mahato, says the police sided with the owners of the Churiyamai Sand Processing Centre.
The government’s rule on sand excavation prohibits sand and gravel mining within 2 kilometres of towns, and along rivers within a 1-kilometre radius of highways and bridges. The regulation requires contractors to level out ditches after mining so they do not collect water. The rules are blatantly ignored.
Neither the national nor provincial governments have any data on how much sand, gravel and boulders are extracted from Nepal’s rivers and streams every year, but the Chure Tarai Madhes Conservation Committee estimates that more than 30 million cubic metres of riverine resources are collected annually nationwide.
The municipalities generally set a minimum price of NPR 211 per cubic metre for the sand and gravel when inviting bids, which means the revenue for 30 million cubic metres should be NPR 6.33 billion. But, according to the National Natural Resources and Finance Commission, the government collected only NPR 4.62 billion in revenue from sand and gravel contractors in the current fiscal year despite one-third of municipalities across the country having signed contracts for excavation. It is clear that most of the mining is illegal, or is licensed in exchange for kickbacks.
Only 20 out of 100 municipalities along the Chure Range that are extracting sand and gravel actually had licenses, according to Prem Nath Poudel, a geologist at the committee. He adds, “There has been far more excavation than we have allowed. Even within the 20 municipalities that have the approval.”
Bachhelal Mahato shows the area where his nephew Anil Mahato drowned. Photo: Mukesh Pokhrel/HimalKhabar via Nepali Times. Used with permission.
The business is being driven by a surge in construction across the country, which has raised the demand for building material. The trade is so lucrative that leader of political parties, the local administration and police officials are all in on it.
Dev Prakash Tripathi is a journalist who, after seeing rampant illegal sand mining in his native Malekhu, has become an activist with the Save Trishuli Campaign in Dhading district. He says, “Leaders and people’s representatives of all political parties have invested in the sand and gravel trade, which means their businesses are above the law.”
This angers families like the Layomagars and Khatuns, who have lost their children to drowning on sand pits, and infuriates Ramjivan Mahato, whose activist son was killed by lawless contractors in cahoots with local politicians.
In Dhanusa, the excavators and tipper trucks of the Churiyamai Sand Processing Centre are back on the banks of the Aurahi River, digging up sand and gravel. The company is still threatening the Mahato family. Says Ramjivan: “They say we already killed one of your children, don’t make us kill another one.”

author: Nepali Times


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#WhereIsPengshuai? Feminist activists and sports fans campaign for the missing tennis star · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Image created by Oiwan Lam
Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, 35, has not been seen or heard from since accusing former Chinese Communist top leader Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault through Weibo on November 2.
Peng Shuai's post accusing the former Chinese vice premier of sexually assaulting her twice in the last ten years was taken offline less than 20 minutes after she posted it on her official Weibo account. Since then, all her social media accounts have been suspended; her name has become a sensitive term on the Chinese Internet, meaning any post that mentions it gets removed; and she has remained silent for two weeks.
The incident has caught the attention of the world's tennis community. On November 14, Steve Simon, the Chair and CEO of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), finally issued a statement demanding a full and transparent investigation into Peng's allegation.
Peng Shuai, and all women, deserve to be heard, not censored. Her accusation about the conduct of a former Chinese leader involving a sexual assault must be treated with the utmost seriousness. In all societies, the behavior she alleges that took place needs to be investigated, not condoned or ignored. We commend Peng Shuai for her remarkable courage and strength in coming forward. Women around the world are finding their voices so injustices can be corrected.
We expect this issue to be handled properly, meaning the allegations must be investigated fully, fairly, transparently and without censorship.
Meanwhile, Chinese feminist activists and tennis lovers have started using the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai? on social media to express their concern over Peng's safety.
As China prepares to host the upcoming Winter Olympics in February 2022, some are calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to speak out for Peng.
Peng Shuai's accusations of Zhang Gaoli, the retired Chinese leader, has powerfully shaken the society; and yet she and her story are being erased in China. Chinese feminists projected Peng Shuai's portrait on a building and demanded Peng Shuai's safe return. #WhereIsPengShuai pic.twitter.com/xsm1Wxe4kE
— FreeChineseFeminists (@FeministChina) November 14, 2021
Peng's supporters have expressed concern about her safety as her expose involves the highest ranking official in the Chinese Communist Party and threatens the authority of the ruling bloc.
A number of former and current international tennis players, including Nicolas Mahut, Billie Jean King, Novak Djokovic, Martina Navratilova, and more, have spoken out in support of Peng. New York Times reporter Raymond Zhong highlighted Martina Navratilova's reaction to the allegations:
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova says “women's tennis in China will probably be over for a while” after WTA expresses support for Peng Shuai https://t.co/ynmGK8aokk
— Raymond Zhong (@zhonggg) November 15, 2021
Steve Simon told the New York Times that the WTA could not establish direct contact with Peng but was assured she is safe and currently in Beijing.
Yet, many are skeptical of such “reassurance.” Reuter's correspondent, Ian Ransom, said on Twitter:
It took Jack Ma a year to emerge from the Beijing freezer — and he didn't make a damaging allegation against a very senior Communist Party official. Very concerning for Peng. #pengshuai #WTA #Tennis https://t.co/3A5931bkL8
— Ian Ransom (@MyRansomNotes) November 16, 2021
Exiled Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao questioned the credibility of the Chinese Tennis Association, which is affiliated with the CCP:
If the only info about #pengshuai’s whereabouts and safety comes from ‘the Chinese Tennis Association’, that means Peng Shuai has been disappeared by the Chinese government and she is not safe.
We should keep asking: #WhereIsPengShuai ?#metoo #zhanggaoli #BoycottBeijing2022
— 滕彪 (@tengbiao) November 16, 2021
The 2022 Winter Olympics are scheduled to begin in China this February. Some have questioned why the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has not spoken out for Peng Shuai, who has competed in three Olympic Games. Stephen Wade, a sportswriter for the Associated Press, asked:
Total. Total silence by IOC in support of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. Thomas Bach? Kirsty Coventry. Where is your defense of Olympic athletes? https://t.co/Vgf5nF8q40
— Stephen Wade (@StephenWadeAP) November 15, 2021
Teng Biao also called for boycotting of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics:
Isn't it morally wrong to participate in the #Beijing2022 when the Chinese government forcibly disappeared a world tennis champion #pengshuai?
Not to mention #UyghurGenocide #Hongkong #Tibet and all those atrocities in #China.
— 滕彪 (@tengbiao) November 15, 2021
This week, Chinese feminists have begun posting photos and taking to the streets to voice support for Peng Shuai:
Chinese feminists’ artwork to support Peng Shuai. “CHINESE WOMEN SAID ENOUGH”. #WhereIsPengShuai #PengShuai pic.twitter.com/eeGd52axfH
— FreeChineseFeminists (@FeministChina) November 14, 2021

author: Oiwan Lam


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A memoir of escaping Turkmenistan in search of education · Global Voices
Akja Kepderi

Illustration by Kenjaeva Mufiza.
Not everyone can appreciate the virtue of unbiased, unprejudiced, and progressive education. Having the freedom to reason and speak one's own mind can be fascinating, confusing, and contradictory if you grew up in Turkmenistan. The deterioration of the country’s education system dates back to the early 1990s when then-president Saparmurat Niyazov decreed that all Soviet books be destroyed, in an effort to control the circulation of printed material. Since then, schools in Turkmenistan suffered from textbook scarcity.
I graduated from high school in Turkmenistan more than a decade ago, and I still vividly remember that only three or four sets of textbooks were available for 30 or more students in each classroom. Lessons were structured around note-taking from books and memorization—no analysis at all.
In 2001, Niyazov decided that our struggles could be made worse and compressed 10 years of schooling into nine. As a result, the hours allocated to school subjects were reduced, and many subjects such as physical education, statistics, and economics were permanently eliminated from the curriculum. Although my classmates and I were struggling, the authorities mandated that teachers give a passing grade to everyone, in order to demonstrate school progress. Secondary schools became “diploma factories.”
Despite the hardship, I was still hungry for knowledge. I used the opportunities provided by foreign embassies to learn English free of charge and borrow books from the library. Some of us took extra lessons on history, math, world cultures, English grammar and conversation, from foreign teachers who shared their knowledge with Turkmen youth. It was this experience that inspired me to continue my education.
Yet, the road to a university degree was not one without obstacles. Financial, cultural, and political hurdles hindered my pursuit of higher education. Education, although free of charge, is still out of reach for the majority of working-class citizens. To get into a university in Turkmenistan, a bribe to school officials is customary. Corruption and dreadful reforms in the education system have dramatically changed the nature and purpose of education in Turkmenistan. Today, the majority of Turkmen citizens see education merely as a means of achieving a diploma and qualifying for better-paying jobs.
My parents lost their Soviet-era jobs after independence because the associate degrees they had earned were no longer enough in the new job market. Despite their bitter experience, they still valued education, and sometimes sacrificed the quality of our food and clothing in order to pay for my English language courses.
My mother relentlessly told us that we had to study to avoid the financial hardships they had gone through. Her advice became deeply ingrained in my mind.
Facing bleak opportunities to gain education in my home country, I looked for sponsorships to study abroad. Foreign embassies had support systems, such as grants and tuition waivers for talented Turkmen students. I wept when I received the call: I would be fully funded to pursue a Bachelor’s degree at a university abroad with a U.S. curriculum. These were the tears of delirious happiness.
My father's approval was the last hurdle to overcome. In Turkmenistan, the custom is, “Ogul düzde, gyz öýde” (“The field is a place for boys, the house for girls”). I needed the help of the whole village to convince my father. When he gave in, I thought my life could finally take a new turn.
When it was time to leave, the members of my extended family gathered at the airport to bid their farewells. After all, I was the first girl in my family to ever leave the country. I could not hide my excitement among my loved ones’ worries. After an endless round of hugs, I happily marched towards passport control. I could see a bright future awaiting me, or so I thought.
After carefully examining my passport and student visa, an immigration officer told me in cold blood that I was not allowed to leave the country. He would not accept my questions; instead, he grabbed my arm and evicted me from the passport control area. I was bewildered. Only later, I learned from the Embassy that the Turkmen government had unilaterally banned students from leaving the country to study at selected foreign universities.
Months trudged by, what I expected to be my first semester was already underway, but I was stuck in Turkmenistan. “Why do they fight us?” was the question I kept asking myself for six months.
During this time, I was routinely “interviewed” by officers from the Committee of State Security (formerly known as the KGB). Other students who shared my fate also had to go through what were in fact hours-long interrogations. The State Security questions led me to believe that the government had grown suspicious about the purpose of the scholarships and decided to blacklist us. Maybe the KGB officers speculated that foreign embassies and universities were preparing future dissidents, who would challenge the regime. Blacklisting has been a common KGB tactic for decades to control society and spread fear. These tactics cultivated anxiety and fear, and caused chronic depression, with which I still struggle.
The more I suffered pressure and coercion, censorship and repression, the more I recalled the verses from 1960s feminist dissident Annasoltan Kekilova’s poem: “Dönmerin öz pikrimden/Atsalarda ýanaryn oda … ” (“I won’t give up on my thoughts, and if they throw me into the fire, I shall burn”). I used her stanzas as a mantra to hold on to my dreams while living under prolonged, cruel, oppressive, and totalitarian rule. Mentally, I was ready to go to prison, metaphorically throwing myself into the fire, rather than giving up on my hope for an education.
Months of diplomatic negotiations finally helped lift the ban on some of the students, shortening the blacklist. I managed to leave the country and realize my biggest dream of education and even obtained a Master's degree. Yet, these events left deep scars on my mental health and soul, which remain unhealed even after more than a decade. I am still haunted by the horrors I suffered, in my nightmares, and in reality, each time I have to pass through customs control around the world.
Since early 2020, Turkmen authorities have used the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic to ban its citizens from flying abroad. As I read alarming news about schools being closed either due to the pandemic – although the government still affirms the country has not been affected – or the environmental crisis so-called “Dust-19,” my heart bleeds for young people, especially young girls, whose schooling within the country is usually sacrificed in favor of their brothers’ education. After all, girls can be married off while boys have to be the breadwinners, as per Turkmen custom. In fact, at times of ongoing economic crisis, families opt for child marriage as a way to relieve economic hardship. The early marriage of daughters is a centuries-old custom used to ensure financial security for both the bride and her family. Under such conditions, Turkmen girls will be increasingly excluded from the already shrinking space for higher education.
That is unless the international community speaks up and starts pressuring the Turkmen government to resume flights and allow easier international exchanges.
My hope is that the remarks of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris during the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on March 16 this year, when she said that “the status of women is the status of democracy” will translate into a renewed international commitment to gender equality, human rights and democratic transition initiatives in Turkmenistan.

author: Akja Kepderi


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Disparity in the data collection policies of some pan-African firms in Uganda raises privacy concerns · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Image by Mr_Achraf taken on August 17, 2021. Free to use, no attribution required (CC0)
Unwanted Witness, a Uganda-based civil society organisation, in its 2021 report on privacy revealed inconsistencies in the privacy policy of the telecoms companies Airtel and MTN, financial services firms such as Stanbic Bank, and the insurance company Old Mutual. The data protection and privacy policies of these pan-African companies operating in Uganda significantly differs from their policies in other parts of the continent.
Dorothy Mukasa, CEO of Unwanted Witness, told Global Voices in a Zoom interview that the research evaluated compliance with the 2019 Ugandan Data Protection and Privacy Act, which was enacted to protect the rights of privacy of citizens by “regulating the collection of personal information in Uganda and outside.”
Airtel, MTN, Stanbic Bank and Old Mutual have different data protection and privacy policies across different African countries. “This is evidenced from the noticeable variations in length of privacy policies as well as the number of rights that users are exposed to. This is a case of practicing inconsistencies in exercising private policies,” notes the report.
Unwanted Witness analysed the number of words in these companies’ data and privacy policy documents for Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. They found that there were fewer words in Ugandan policy statements than that of Nigeria and South Africa.
The consequence of this being that “the fewer the words, the fewer rights mentioned or not mentioned at all” the Ugandan Unwanted Witness report laments.
Screenshot of the level of data protection prevalent in seven organisational categories investigated in the 2021 Unwanted Witness privacy scorecard report.
Mukasa said that the report evaluates “if companies in Uganda that are engaged in the business of data collection and processing. The core reason was to ensure that there’s compliance with data collection, to get rid of the exploitation of individuals through data collection.”
The research, which started in August 2020, categorized 32 Ugandan companies into seven main categories: e-commerce, financial services, telecom services, insurance services, government agencies, social security, and health/private hospitals. Adopting a five-star scale, the report graded these companies in the following areas: compliant with privacy best practices, giving information to the data subject before collecting data, mentioning third parties with whom personal data is shared with, practicing robust data security, and disclosing government requests for data.
The study analysed the “noticeable, clear and publicly available privacy policies” of the firms. This, according to Mukasa, was to ensure that “data collectors do not secretly change their policies.” The report sought to establish that the companies received the “informed consent” of customers before acquiring their data. Unwanted Witness also investigated the sharing of data with third parties.
Inconsistent data and privacy policies by these companies across Africa leaves consumers vulnerable in countries without strong data-protection policies. For instance, the policy documents of these companies in Uganda is superficial, when compared to the “more robust” Nigerian and South African privacy policy documents. This suggests that “the law and the authorities” in Nigeria and South Africa “are strong and working,”  according to the report.
The study also showed a significant lack of compliance with Uganda’s 2019 Data Protection and Privacy Act, and the presence of location and profiling trackers in many companies investigated, across mobile and web applications that collect and sell data for commercial benefit without transparent policies.
Analysis of how Uganda’s government agencies and companies are conforming to the 2019 data-protection regulation reveals that most sectors garnered good scores for adhering to robust data security. Ugandan health services providers ranked in the lowest performance in this area. Many health services “collect data but…lack the basic baseline for privacy.” Mukasa explained that these personal data are hosted online with trackers that “analyse the data,” hence, risking “the privacy and lives of their patients.”
The Unwanted Witness report is not the first time big telecom companies like MTN and Airtel have been complicit in the violation of the data privacy rights of their Ugandan clients as laid out by Ugandan law. For example, the South African-based MTN group failed to inform users of “how their data is collected, with whom it is shared, and why,” according to the 2019 Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index.
MTN “divulges very little of how it handles personal data and lacks strong governance mechanisms over human rights issues,” writes journalist Abdi Latif Dahir of Quartz Africa. The telecoms group provides very little or no information on the amount of data it collects, how long it retains data, whether third parties have access, or protocols in case of privacy breach. “The company also didn’t release details about the privacy-related risks that could come with its targeted digital advertising services,” Dahir wrote.
In 2020, the MTN group published a transparency report that details how it processes the information of 220 million subscribers in the 22 African countries in which it operates. While this was a milestone in data and privacy protection, it was not enough.
Isedua Oribhabor and Berhan Taye of the digital rights organisation Access Now demanded that “MTN … expand its reporting to disclose critical information regarding data retention requests, communication data, metadata and information around the installation of interception technology, and steps MTN takes to push back against improper requests, including detailed information regarding how it handles internet shutdown orders.”
As of April 2021, 28 (out of 54) African countries have enacted laws and regulations to protect personal data. This shows that data protection laws are on a steady rise in the continent. However, Mukosa of Unwanted Witness states “enforcement is the hardest stage of protecting data in Africa.” Hence, Mukasa emphasized that civil society, being independent, is better positioned to advocate for data rights and privacy violations in the continent.

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Global Voices seeks country-level researchers for our Advox project · Global Voices
Nanjala Nyabola

Advox, the digital rights initiative of Global Voices, is seeking researchers to conduct, present, and communicate research for a project on networked societies and authoritarianism in selected countries and territories, including: Moldova, Georgia, Serbia, Hungary, Mali, Cameroon, Mexico, El Salvador, Hong Kong, the Philippines.
The project will analyze, document and report on the growing phenomenon of the use of digital communications technology to enforce and advance authoritarian governance. This project will create a framework for analysis, build a workflow and method for tracking, documenting, and amplifying incidents and cases for relevant audiences, and produce reporting on a series of cases.
Country researchers will be responsible for implementing the project’s research goals at a national level, collaborating with other country-level researchers on cross-cutting issues, and for producing commentary and analysis for Advox that will support the amplification of the work. Country researchers are responsible for ensuring that research is conducted to the highest methodological standards and supported by contextual insights. Country researchers will also work with the Global Voices team to collate and translate information for other areas of the project as required.
The project researcher's duties will include:
Successful candidates for the position will:
There is no geographic requirement associated with this position. Please note that Global Voices has no office or physical headquarters. Candidates must be comfortable setting their own schedules and working in a wholly virtual environment and be prepared to do some international travel.
We strongly welcome candidates from outside North America and Western Europe and encourage people currently contributing to the Global Voices project to apply.
To apply:
Email a résumé and a cover letter in English that highlights your work and explains why you would be a great fit for Global Voices to jobs@globalvoices.org, with the subject line: Advox Project researcher: [your name]. The application deadline is 11:59pm ET (GMT -5) on May 31, 2022.


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Latino immigrants in the US: Has the situation really changed? · Global Voices
Amedeo Bastiano

Latinos are the largest minority in the United States. Their living conditions seem to be improving—studies and statistics suggest so. But even though poverty rates are declining, Latinos are still among the poorest and the least educated. In 2017, about 65 per cent of undocumented people were Mexican and Central American; these numbers encompass the lived experience of nearly seven million people, the great majority of whom have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade.
For immigrants without papers, life is particularly tough. Lacking papers, they lack basic rights. They must live in hiding, and in the majority of cases, they are at the mercy of the goodwill of their employers or landlords. These people often give them work illegally and make them work for low salaries, and with long, exhausting shifts. More often than not, these immigrants report poor living conditions.
As I am not Latino, my interest in this topic sparked from observing such conditions, which many people belonging to this minority are forced to face every day. Back in 2017, I moved to Los Angeles and spent about one and a half years there. During that period, I got close to the Latino community, making friends within it, speaking with dozens of people of different backgrounds, and sporadically attending Latino churches.
The word “Latino” is an umbrella term for people who identify as Latin Americans. The definition is large and encompasses many lived experiences in terms of socio-economic status, education, ethnicity, and gender. For this story, I have spoken with first and second-generation immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who work in the construction, care work industry, and factories in the United States.
Oscar M., 43, became a construction worker when he first got to the US from Mexico. When I spoke with him, he lived on the construction site itself in Los Angeles, as he could not afford to rent. Oscar says that his employers expected him to move directly to the working site to become more available. Working there was the fastest way to make a living for someone who had nothing but his hands. For years, he found jobs through rumors among the community, with hints coming from friends and colleagues.
He would sneak from one building site to the other, hoping that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wouldn’t find him. His car was his oasis, his bubble of intimacy when he was commuting throughout the city. But a ticket for a rear light that didn’t work could have been enough to put his stay at risk.
Now, Oscar is a permanent resident. He told me his situation has not changed much, however: he’s just no longer scared of being stopped by the police. Since he’s Mexican, he says that the people he works for expect him to “pick up the tasks nobody wants.”
They expect him to work longer hours and “do the heavy lifting.” He would like to find a more rewarding job, but it’s not easy when you have bills to pay and a family to feed. “This is the land of opportunity, it’s true. But when you’re always facing the risk of sleeping in the streets, you just keep doing what you already do. And you hope that tomorrow will be better.”
Photo by Thomas Hawk/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Representatives and volunteers of Latino churches in Los Angeles tell me of people with “no names” in the eyes of society, and who struggle to survive by the end of the month, asking for food and clothes. They tell of people who are overworked, consumed by the sheer physical effort they must make day after day by working in the fields, domestic work, construction industry, or factories. Sometimes Latin American workers also suffer work accidents, leaving them crippled, uncompensated for their injuries, and lacking access to healthcare.
Even Latinos with work permits denounce similar, if milder, conditions. They are given hazardous, low-income jobs with long working hours. Jobs that start to pay decently only when the number of hours worked is extremely high, like in fast-food joints, call centers, construction, and factories. There are immigrants with degrees who have to spend their lives as warehousemen. Most of the time, the quality of the benefits they have (health coverage, for example) does not depend on their skill or experience, but only on the policies of the company they work for, as many of them confessed to me. Their lives depend entirely on the decisions of their employers.
María Rosa S., 58, became a resident long before Oscar. As soon as she got her permit, she started working for a big supermarket as a cleaner on the night shift. She says it is just enough to have an “almost decent” life, considering that everything she can save, she sends to her relatives in El Salvador, to help them get by.
It has now been 13 years that María Rosa has not returned to El Salvador, her native country, and therefore 13 years she has not seen her sons. The paperwork to bring them to the U.S. is nearly impossible to have, she says. Plane tickets are expensive, so she prefers to save up.
Promising improvements of the society take time to become permanent. And to keep giving a voice to the marginalized members of this vast community remains one of the most effective ways to get a sense not only of their difficulties, but also of where action needs to be taken.

author: Amedeo Bastiano


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Take a hike! Some of the Caribbean’s most scenic trails in photos · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Hikers stopping to look at the view on Jamaica's famous Blue Mountain Trail. Photo by Junior Carson, used with permission.
The United States enjoys hiking so much that it dedicated an entire day to it: National Hiking Day, celebrated on November 17. Although the footprint of Caribbean hiking trails may not be able to rival the 60,000 miles the U.S. can boast of, the region has many avid hikers, the views are just as breathtaking, and—in the midst of not only the COVID-19 pandemic but the climate crisis, which poses an existential threat to many island nations—it may be more important than ever to connect with nature.
In that spirit, here are a few photos from various Caribbean territories that may just inspire you to dust off your hiking boots and hit the trails!
Entrance to the Bamboo Cathedral in Chaguaramas, Trinidad. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
Located in Tucker Valley in Trinidad's Chaguaramas National Park, the Bamboo Cathedral is so named because the tall stalks of the bamboo lining the trail overlap to form basilica-like arches. Several watercolor paintings by Trinidad’s revered 19-century artist, Michel-Jean Cazabon, were inspired by this trail, which has remained more or less the same for over 150 years.
View of the sea along the road to the Tracking Station at dusk. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
The trail, which offers stunning glimpses of Macqueripe Bay and the north coast, ascends to the Tracking Station where a massive satellite dish dating back to the Cold War dominates the landscape. Chaguaramas, on Trinidad's western peninsula, was also used as a United States military base during World War II.
The abandoned satellite dish at Tracking Station, Chaguaramas, Trinidad. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
A family on a coastal hike from Harbour View in the parish of St. Andrew, to Bob Marley Beach in St. Thomas, Jamaica. Photo by Paula-Anne Porter Jones, used with permission.
Part of the charm of Caribbean hiking is that many trails lead to the beach, like this trail on Jamaica's southern coast that runs from St. Andrew, the parish in which the capital, Kingston, is located, to the neighbouring parish of St. Thomas on the island's south-eastern tip.
Beach along Trinidad's north-east coast. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
There are many hiking trails along Trinidad's north coast, including Rio Seco, which leads to a waterfall, Shark River, which is a pleasant trek along a winding river, and this unnamed trail frequented by locals, which leads to this scenic pebble beach.
Breadnut Valley Estate, Maggotty, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica. Photo by Maëlle Johnston, used with permission.
Jamaica is not called “the land of wood and water” for nothing. The island has some of the most breathtaking locales in the region, including this waterfall, at Jamaica's Breadnut Valley Estate, which is off the beaten track, but well worth the trek.
Edith Falls, Chaguaramas, on Trinidad's northwestern peninsula, and Avocat Falls, Blanchisseuse, along the island's north coast. Photos by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
The hike to Trinidad's Edith Falls involves a fairly short and easy walk until you get you the rocky section, located upriver, which involves some climbing. The fall itself is really more like a water wall, as the water flows down various sections of the expansive rock face—especially during the rainy season, when it is more impressive. The hike to Avocat can be approached from opposite directions, one mostly via land and part of the other involving trekking through the Marianne River.
Trafalgar Falls, Dominica. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
The trail to Dominica's impressive Trafalgar Falls is a comfortable 10- to 15-minute walk, but if you need a respite before reaching the waterfall itself, there are warm sulphur pools you can take a dip in en route. Depending on how agile you are, you can climb a bit further and swim in the pools and springs beneath the falls.
On the Blue Mountain Trail. Photo by Susan Otuokon/Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust, used with permission.
One of the great joys of hiking in the Caribbean is its viridescence. Although dry seasons in the Caribbean can be harsh, the trails are typically lush and leafy, providing a real escape from the rigours of the world.
The Bull Head Mountain trail, Clarendon, Jamaica, and the route to Mount St. Catherine, Trinidad. Photos by Paula-Ann Porter Jones and Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
Many Jamaican families hike quite regularly; the photo above shows a group walking uphill on Bull Head Mountain, Clarendon, a steeper, more sloping trail than the road to Mount St. Catherine in Trinidad, where the road is paved all the way up to The Ball—a radar station used by the country's civil aviation authority.
One of Dominica's many amazing trails, with one of the peaks of the island's forest reserve in the background. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
Dominica is one of the most stunning Caribbean islands for hiking, full of lush forests, wide rivers, refreshing waterfalls and sulphur springs, and of course, beaches. The trail above, north of the capital, Roseau, is between 500-600 metres above sea level, mild compared to the difficulty level of other trails.
View from the top of Turtle Mountain, Guyana. Photo by Skye Hernandez, used with permission.
Though on the South American continent, Guyana is considered part of the Caribbean, and its trails are nothing short of spectacular—from the well worn path to Kaieteur Falls, to Turtle Mountain, located inland south of the capital, Georgetown, and offering panoramic views of the Iwokrama Forest from its summit, which is about 300 metres above sea level.
At the top of Jamaica's Blue Mountain Peak at dawn. Photo by Junior Carson, used with permission.
Like any hiking expedition, the journey may be challenging, but the views—not to mention the sense of accomplishment you feel once you've arrived at your destination—are worth the effort. Experienced hikers tend to be on the move early, in order to take advantage of the cooler morning hours, before the sun rises and the resulting heat makes the climb more difficult. This is the time of day when you tend to see more bird and animal activity as well, which adds to the experience.
View from Mount St. Catherine, Trinidad. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
No matter what time you set off, however, hiking in the Caribbean is always an adventure. Take the trails below: the Mount St. Catherine hike is approximately 10.5 miles (about 17 km) to the top and back, via a steadily rising trail that reaches more than 500 metres above sea level, and from which you can see Trinidad's Five Islands, dotted along the fringes of the island's northwesterly coast. Because the road is well paved, it is also a popular jaunt for cyclists.
One of the views from Barbados’ Coco Hill Forest. Photo by Annalee Davis, used with permission.
Hiking may not be one of the first activities that comes to mind in Barbados since it is a relatively flat island—but Coco Hill Forest is helping to change that perception. A hike through the property (a former sugar cane plantation) reveals a wilder, more regenerative green space that is quite different from the island's otherwise colourful, manicured tourism offering.
One of the spectacular views from Breezy Hill, that looks towards Trinidad's capital, Port of Spain. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
Breezy Hill, a trail that rises steeply above Lady Chancellor Road overlooking Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital, offers stunning views in all directions: the hills going north into Maraval, the westerly slopes facing “down the islands,” and looking south towards the city, into the Gulf of Paria. The hike can be demanding if you are not used to the terrain, with one section so steep that regulars have tied a rope to the area's pine trees in an effort to help newbies.
Once you catch the hiking bug, though, you'll want to challenge yourself more and more, and discover ever more fascinating regional locales.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Activists strive to preserve urban heritage in the old part of Kazakhstan’s capital · Global Voices
Paolo Sorbello

Temirtas Iskakov, of Fading.TSE, standing next to the old wood storage of the residence of the managers for the railroad enterprise, which built massive infrastructure projects during the war effort in the 1940s. Photo by Paolo Sorbello, used with permission.
Kazakhstan's capital was renamed from Astana (Kazakh for ‘capital’) to Nur-Sultan the day after long-time President Nursultan Nazarbayev resigned on March 19, 2019. Until it became the capital in 1997, the city was known by its original name of Akmola, although for 30 years between 1961 and 1991 it was renamed Tselinograd. With four names in three decades, the city's identity has been construed through the tension between ‘the old’ and ‘the new.’
With the transfer of the seat of the government came significant investment and changes in the urban landscape. The old village became known as the Right Bank, on the northern side of the Ishim river. Most of the new urban developments, including music halls, a tent-shaped mall, and several skyscrapers, mushroomed on the left bank since 1997.
Some of the tallest buildings in Nur-Sultan. Credit: “IMG_9113 Astana” by Ninara, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Against this glitzy backdrop, the Right Bank, the ‘real’ Astana or the old Tselinograd, runs the risk of fading away from the memory of local residents. Activists, however, argue that there are treasures to preserve, historical buildings to maintain, and a collective memory to respect.
Global Voices spoke to Temirtas Iskakov, the founder of the Instagram page Fading.TSE, which aims to highlight the most interesting hidden gems and link individual stories to the architectural environment and the history of the country.
Global Voices (GV): How did you come to experience this city since you moved here?
Temirtas Iskakov (TI): This is the city of the people that, one way or another, move here. I was born in 1991 in Omsk, Russia — my parents moved to Kazakhstan at the beginning of the 2000s, so I finished school here and stayed. As a kid, I was living in Ekibastuz and was watching daily updates on state TV about the growth of the new capital.
While studying architecture, I lived abroad in Krakow, Poland, where I could see first-hand how a city government deals with heritage. Plus, after seeing the practice of walking tours there, I thought this could be replicated here, because we have a wealth of history to showcase. There are pearls in each of Kazakhstan’s cities and we need to put them on display.
Moving the capital here was a fresh injection of capital and was beneficial for the locals. The whole nation was sent to live in this city, so they all learned to live and survive together.
I’ve seen a lot of changes in the past 12 years. They happen progressively, but inexorably.
We shouldn’t be in a rush to tear down the old and build the new. It’s not necessarily always about some great architecture or epic story. Sometimes it's about individual stories, which make up the history of the whole country.
GV: How did your Fading.TSE project start?
TI: After moving here, I heard people saying that Astana has no soul and no history, which intrigued me to find it. As photo blogs on Instagram became popular, I found a way to become a bridge between the voices of the locals, who have a good grasp of the city's soul and history, and the academic knowledge on architecture and conservation. Instead of keeping well-researched books and articles in the back of university libraries, only accessible to very few people, this project aims to tell stories that bring the study of the city closer to those who live here and those who carry out research projects alike.
My project received attention from the media, also traditional and state-owned media. The public reacts well, especially during our walking tours. We had funding from Soros Foundation Kazakhstan two years ago, which helped kick start the project and sustain our small team. Now we are doing more public lectures, walking tours, and other specific projects.
The buildings are not just buildings, those four walls hold amazing, inspiring, and terrible stories, and we need to see the whole picture to appreciate our own history.  There are lots of layers of city history, especially from the times when it became the capital. People are proud to have been part of the construction of the new capital.
Now our project has a good mix of supporters, it’s not only locals or people who have lived here all their life. Some of the ones who have arrived here find parallels with their own experiences in their hometowns. Young and old people take part and voice several different preferences and perspectives.
GV: Yet there are different interpretations of the “originality” of the Right Bank, compared to the Left Bank. What is your position?
TI: The history of the Left Bank is shiny and “in your face.” It is documented and researched about, especially by Western academia. My message isn’t one of demonization of the newer Left Bank, quite the opposite. You cannot hate half of your body. However, there are many tourists and first time visitors who have never been to the Right Bank. It should really all be one cultural environment.
In 2019, the city administration spent 600 million tenge to redo the facade of the Triumphal Arch on the Left Bank, which had crumbled just eight years after construction. And now the problem has resurfaced again. You cannot stop development, but you can avoid using bad construction materials and help match architectural styles.
GV: What are then the channels to fight for preservation?
TI: You can fight for every single object to be included in the list of Buildings of State Significance, but you’d end up using all your time on single projects, rather than tackling the nation-wide, global issues affecting Kazakhstan’s urban landscape. Plus, even buildings that are in the list are not as well protected.
The former Merchant House [photo below], a historical building that at one point hosted the Embassy of Belarus, was turned into a karaoke hall in 2020.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which owns the building, decided to rent it to a karaoke owner. Its cadastral function was therefore changed from “institutional” to “cafe,” which goes against the law on the preservation of heritage.
The Merchant House was built in the late 19th century and was owned by Ivan Silin, a trader. The building has since hosted the headquarters of the Red Guard, a library, a philarmonic orchestra, an administrative building, and the Embassy of Belarus. Now, it is a karaoke locale. Photo credit: Yakov Fedorov (Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 4.0).
GV: So the solution is more systemic?
TI: It’s almost impossible for activists and experts to take part in the discussions about urban planning. The number one priority should be to make the planning of Kazakhstan’s cities open to society.
There are several urban activism initiatives who signed an open letter to the government to establish a platform for open planning. Heritage is a public issue and should be discussed publicly.
Our work had an impact. The city administration has showed interest in our project, and it has consulted with us on certain issues. I cannot say that the end results are perfect, though, also because the coordination between us, the civil society, and them, the administration, is still tied to personal relationships with public officials. Institutional memory gets lost every time there is personnel change and the turnover in the urban planning department is high. In this context, it becomes hard to plan far ahead and there is a risk of repeating mistakes.

author: Paolo Sorbello


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Empty Chair Day highlights plight of imprisoned Ukrainian journalists · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Ukrainian journalist and writer Stanislav Aseyev speaks to the press at the Empty Chair Day action in New York City, November 15, 2021. Image: Emily Couch / PEN America, used with permission.
On November 15, human rights and free speech activists held a street action outside the Russian Federation Consulate in New York City to mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer.
This particular rally was held in support of Ukrainian writers and journalists imprisoned for their writing or speech in the occupied territories of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
The Empty Chair Day action was organized by PEN America, a longstanding free speech and writers’ rights non-profit, in partnership with the Media Initiative for Human Rights, Razom for Ukraine, PEN Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.
Emily Couch, Eurasia Program Assistant for PEN America, said:
The Empty Chair Day is a long-standing PEN tradition. The empty chair symbolizes and honors a writer who cannot be present because they have been imprisoned, detained, disappeared, threatened, or killed.
The focus of this year’s Empty Chair action is Vladyslav Yesypenko, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist who was detained in March 2021 and illegally imprisoned on espionage charges for reporting on the realities of life in Russia-occupied Crimea. Yesypenko has reportedly endured torture at the hands of Russian federal security services and Crimean law enforcement.
Dozens of other independent journalists, writers and creatives working in Crimea and occupied eastern Ukraine have faced similar pressures, with some imprisoned and many pushed out into exile.
This year’s Empty Chair Day was especially poignant, PEN America's Couch said, as Stanislav Aseyev, an award-winning Ukrainian journalist held hostage for his reporting on Eastern Ukraine, featured as one of the speakers at the street action.
Stanislav Aseyev […] was the focus of the Empty Chair Day in 2019. He was illegally detained and tortured for his reporting on Donbas. International pressure, including PEN America’s dedicated campaign, helped secure his release. Having him with us sent a powerful message that the world has not forgotten Donbas.
Aseyev, along with other activists and supporters, joined the action to show solidarity with journalists who remain illegally detained and imprisoned for their work in occupied Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
A big thank you to everyone who joined us in front of the Russian Consulate in NYC for the Day of the #ImprisonedWriter. We were honored to have Stanislav Aseyev present at the gathering of readers and writers calling for the release of Ukrainian journalist #VladyslavYesypenko. pic.twitter.com/iHK30FSuuN
— PEN America (@PENamerica) November 16, 2021
Aseyev, who was born in Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine, worked as a journalist there during the outbreak of the Russian-supported military conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine, encompassing the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Under the pen name Stanislav Vasin, he wrote short reports for Ukrainian media throughout 2015-2017 about the situation on the ground in occupied Eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian journalist and writer Stanislav Aseyev speaks at the Empty Chair Day action in New York City, November 15, 2021. Image: Emily Couch / PEN America, used with permission.
In June 2017, Aseyev was arrested and unlawfully imprisoned by separatist militia forces for “extremism” and “spying.” Aseyev was held captive in Izolyatsya, a former insulation plant turned public art space in Donetsk, and subjected to mistreatment and torture for over two and a half years. Multiple freedom of expression groups had called for his release as part of the #FreeAseyev campaign. On December 29, 2019, he was released as part of a prison exchange and handed over to Ukrainian authorities.
“In Isolation”, a collection of Aseyev's dispatches from occupied Donbas, was published in Ukraine while he was still held prisoner. An English-language translation is slated to be released in the spring of 2022 by Harvard University Press.
Aseyev's latest book, “The Torture Camp on Paradise Street,” published in Ukrainian in 2020, was also translated into English in 2021. The memoir recounts his imprisonment and exposes the brutal underground prison system run by the Russia-supported separatist authorities in the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic.
Since his release, Aseyev has campaigned internationally on behalf of other Ukrainian journalists and writers unjustly imprisoned by pro-Russian forces in occupied Donbas and Crimea.
Other media rights groups, along with the international Media Freedom Coalition, have been calling for the release of all media workers imprisoned in occupied Ukrainian territories, condemning Russia’s and pro-Russian authorities’ efforts to stifle independent print and broadcast media activity.
Read an excerpt from Stanislav Aseyev's book, “The Torture Camp on Paradise Street,” in the LA Review of Books.

author: Tanya Lokot


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Paper lives: Turkey’s trash collectors face deportations, arrests, and midnight raids · Global Voices
Doga Celik

A container full of trash. Image from Pixabay. Licensed under Pixabay.
Istanbul police conducted raids on dozens of waste collector depots last month, allegedly to address potential health hazards, public security concerns, and the employment of unregistered migrants. Some 200 workers were detained in raids that took place at 49 locations in Istanbul in October. According to reports, excavators demolished the depots, and at least three workers were arrested. Police also seized hundreds of hand carts that workers had been using to collect recyclable waste. Similar raids were carried out in September when police raided some 100 depots, seizing 650 hand carts and initiating administrative action against 286 waste collectors, including 145 Afghan migrants. The most recent raid left hundreds of recycling workers unemployed, and many migrants likely face deportation.
These raids have happened before, but the September and October arrests are seemingly part of an aggressive campaign against waste and recyclable collectors. Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya issued an announcement in August claiming that “unauthorized and unlicensed waste collection and separation activities in the city lead to employment in unregistered and unhealthy conditions, particularly environmental and public health problems, and cause public damage and unfair profits.”
But Mahmut Aytar, a graduate of biology who also collects waste, disagrees. He issued a statement in September on behalf of the waste workers following the raids.
Thanks to the workers, garbage trucks don’t have to make 2-3 rounds a day, but instead collect the trash once. Isn’t what we do a community service? The plastic, and papers we gather do not affect the environment. On the contrary, it helps the environment.
Please know, the only thing that is dirty are our hands. While our hearts are cleaner than everyone else. Our poverty is in our pockets, while our hearts are rich enough to share bread with immigrants, the Roma, the Kurd and the Turk.
The Istanbul governorship said the campaign was meant to curb the employment of undocumented immigrants. During the raids in September, some 140 undocumented Afghan immigrants were detained and sent to a detention facility in Tuzla, where unauthorized migrants are held until they are deported. According to Gazete Duvar, an online news platform, “until the 2010s, waste pickers constituted mostly Kurdish migrants and members of the Roma population. Today, however, their presence in the sector is gradually being replaced by Afghan immigrants.”
But some argue that the rise in waste collectors is the responsibility of the nation's leadership, as more and more people fall into this industry due to high unemployment and limited prospects for refugees and migrants. Ali Mendillioğlu, a former waste collector who used to serve as editor-in-chief of Katık, a magazine published by waste collectors, said the job is often a last resort and a matter of survival. He recently told Gazete Duvar, “as long as unemployment and lack of legal work for refugees continues to be a bleeding wound in Turkey, the system will function as is.”
Worker sifting through trash, filling out the handcart. Screenshot from BBC Turkish video report.
The human recyclers who roam Turkey's city streets with their carts stuffed to the brim with paper, plastic, and cardboard are largely ignored. That is, until they make the news, as they did in October and September. No statistical data indicates just how many people work as informal recyclers in Turkey. Though some estimate there are at least 500,000 people in this industry. They are, however, a common sight on the streets of Turkey, where municipal waste recycling is woefully inadequate; among OECD members (the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), it has the lowest recycling rate, at 12 percent.
No national legislation recognizes the profession of paper/waste collecting. While these workers see themselves as part of the solution to help Turkey reach its environmental goals, since they are considered part of the informal labor market in the country, there are no regulations in place to protect workers, which leads to tough working conditions. In an interview with Gazete Duvar, Dinçer Mendillioğlu, the president of the Recycling Workers Association, explained that intermediary firms and factories that buy waste off the waste collectors “pay next to nothing” and “reap profit.”
Normally, the handcarts these workers use to collect waste belong to the depot employing them. According to the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, there are some 1,350 depots in Istanbul alone.
Workers sort through collected trash at one of the depots. Screenshot from DW Turkish report.
Each time a cart is returned to the depot, its content is weighed, and the collector is paid. The average daily income ranges between 60–100 Turkish lire (6–10 US dollars). The handcarts weigh 30 kilograms when empty and 150 kilograms when full. In an interview with BBC Turkey, Ahmet Aytar and Mesut Aytar, two waste collectors, said they walk an average of 40 km a day and make three rounds per day.
In March of this year, Netflix aired a film, “Paper Lives,” that shed light on the lives of waste collectors. The streaming service original provided “a realistic portrayal of the work and lives of the city's recyclers, who come from all different walks of life: men young and old, children, women, and foreign nationals from West Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere,” wrote Turkey-based journalist Paul Benjamin Osterlund.
Emine Erdoğan, Turkey's first lady, used Twitter to express her support for the workers, describing them as part of the “Zero Waste Project,” which she helped establish with the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization in 2017.
Atık toplayan emekçilerimiz, #SıfırAtık projesinin doğal paydaşlarıdır.
Çevre ve Şehircilik Bakanlığımızın atık emekçileriyle işbirliği yaklaşımını tebrik ediyor, tüm kurum ve kuruluşlarımıza örnek olmasını temenni ediyorum. https://t.co/O74qHtABt4
— Emine Erdoğan (@EmineErdogan) October 27, 2021
Our workers who collect waste are a part of the #ZeroWaste project. I congratulate the cooperative approach of our Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation and hope they will be an example for all other organisations.
However, some say the sudden crackdown on waste collectors is a direct result of the first lady's project. In an interview with the online news platform Diken, Ali Mendillioğlu said soon after the first lady started talking about her “Zero Waste Project,” work on two separate recycling facilities began in Istanbul. “This signals that the recent crackdown on waste collectors is a matter of profit. These are investments worth millions of dollars. In their statement following the raids, Istanbul's governorship said the raids were carried out to prevent ‘illegal income, stealing Istanbul's garbage, employing illegal immigrant workers and creating security problems.'”
Brothers Mesut and Ahmet Aytar speaking to BBC Turkish. Screenshot from BBC Turkish report.
In order to meet EU membership requirements, Turkey had to follow the United Nations Directive on Packing Wastes. Therefore, in 2004 Turkey established additional legal regulations around its waste systems, such as the Law on Packing and Control of Packing Waste. However, in all 17 iterations of this law, the waste collectors have never once been considered in the amendments. In an interview with BBC Turkish, Mendillioğlu said, “No one took into account the fact that not in any EU member state, there are hundreds of thousands of people who make a living from trash and waste. This is unique to Turkey. The decision makers at the time, to this day, pretend that this reality does not exist and continue to implement projects not taking into account these people.”
As Turkey grapples with its environmental future, many waste collectors are wondering how they will fit into this new landscape. Mahmut Aytar said “the fact that most of the garbage workers are citizens of this country is overlooked. We are doing this work, which is the only thing we can do, with dignity, without stealing or begging.”

author: Doga Celik


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A ‘new deal’ for Africa: Is this the best chance for a generation? · Global Voices
Nana Asamoah

Four bright African ladies (left to right: Gladys Asare, Rita Mensah, Shelia Asamoah and Augustina Mensah) showcase their fashionable clothing for sale at Kwame Nkrumah Circle Market, Accra, Ghana on August 13, 2015. Image courtesy of Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment, some rights reserved, (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Every year, heads of states and governments gather for global summits, an essential part of the ebb and flow of international diplomacy. The Paris summit attended by African leaders in May 2021 promised to be one of those rare ones—a summit about changing Africa, not changing the wording of the rhetoric on Africa.
But frankly, it is easy to be skeptical about what global summits achieve—they usually lend themselves to expensive photo opportunities, set-piece speeches that endorse bland bureaucratic statements which nudge things forward to the next summit. Regardless, summits still do matter, although summits with genuine, long-lasting outcomes are rare.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron hosted African leaders and heads of global financial institutions for a summit that sought to support African economies hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Placed at the top of the agenda were the issues of debt cancellation and financial support through the provision of a special drawing right for African countries granted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Only time will be the judge of the summit: positive, if debts are canceled or dropped and a new cycle of sustainable growth achieved in economies built. And although debts are a big problem, the much bigger problem is that African countries are paying too much interest on these debts. For instance, debt services payments on average remain the fastest growth expenditure in sub-Saharan Africa’s fiscal budget. The rising debt services payments pose a major concern.
But in Paris for the post-COVID-19 economic recovery summit, most of the African and European heads of state, led by President Charles Michel of the European Council, published an opinion piece that called for a new deal for Africa,  a new framework to address the weakening of institutions that underpins international solidarity and cooperation among countries.
For the first initiative in this “new deal,” the poorest African countries without access to COVID-19 vaccines would be supported through the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights to address the inequalities in vaccine acquisition. Second, it would focus on large-scale investment in health, education, and the fight against climate change to support the continent’s recovery and progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This second initiative would be achieved while strengthening African financial institutions’ roles within a new international financial architecture. Third, a focus would be placed on the entrepreneurial dynamism of the continent by improving access to financing for African entrepreneurs.
The pandemic and the prospects for this new deal have undoubtedly increased the pressure on Europe, on the developed countries, and on governments to seize this opportunity to deliver a generational change in Africa. The lessons of the past few months are that the developed countries, for their own interest, can’t ignore other countries and continents.
Diseases thousands of miles away that lead to a public health emergency can affect us all. So for reasons of self-interest as well as decency, governments in the developed world can no longer turn their backs on Africa. This is why this new deal could be the moment of real opportunity and the best chance for a generation in Africa. Here’s how:
Firstly, Africa is changing—and for the better. Many young people are starting businesses; a 2020 survey revealed that half of young Africans said they would start a business if offered 100 U.S. dollars. This bodes well for the continent. A new generation of Africans who are committed to entrepreneurship is in place, with whom the rest of the world can work. Hence, the initiative to fund entrepreneurs is a welcome one.
But, for this initiative to succeed, hand-in-hand with funding for business must come access to new markets. African entrepreneurs must have access to developed markets to trade or sell their products and to purchase input materials if they are to be a part of a truly global world. The creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) signaled an intent to have new trading relationships with the rest of the world. And Europe will have a tremendous impact on the success of AfCFTA since Europe is Africa’s leading, and historically influential, trading partner.
Secondly, if the past years of relationships with Africa were defined by unsustainable growth, the success of this new deal will be defined by the quality of governance in Africa. This is what Africans of this generation want—clean and transparent governments committed to improving the lives of their citizens. As it’s widely known, the right help coupled with the right leadership can help countries overcome the immense challenges that they face. Thus, Africa’s capacity for good and transparent government will have to be built up to support any attempt at sustainable growth. And as Africa continues to grow and improve its governance, there is a chance to fundamentally change the relationship between Africa, Europe and the rest of the world.
Finally, alongside governments that work, Africa needs technologies that work. The coming age of the digital revolution is upon us and this generation of Africans does not intend to flounder in the backwash of it. This generation means to play a key part in shaping the digital revolution. Africa is home to many of the world’s youngest populations who are increasingly mobile-phone enabled. A strong and stable digital ecosystem is particularly crucial to the future success of growth as access to digital devices enhances consumer information and financial inclusion. Thus, as the new deal prepares to fund investment in Africa, investment in a digital ecosystem must be a centerpiece.
There’s a lot in today’s globalized world to cheer the skeptics and doomsayers. The ideals set out in the opinion piece published by the African and European leaders during the course of the post-COVID-19 economic recovery summit in Paris in May 2021 was an immensely ambitious challenge to the world. That new deal is clearly deliverable, though. The problems that would be faced should not be underestimated—but this is the best chance for Africa in a generation. Whether it is achieved or not is now up to the leadership of Africa and Europe. There’s no guarantee of success but failure shouldn’t be because of wanting to try.

author: Nana Asamoah