Complete Wellness

Credit: UNICEF/UNI403619/Karimi

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jul 26 2023 (IPS) – The needs of Afghanistan’s children and families are immense. So are the efforts of those supporting them: teams of community workers made up of family members, teachers in community-based schools, vaccinators, and health workers working around the clock to bring life-saving services in the face of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

I recently traveled to eastern Afghanistan to meet some of the inspiring heroes who, this year already, helped UNICEF reach around 19 million children and their families with health and nutrition services.

UNICEF’s incredible health and nutrition response is supported by people across Afghan society. One of them is Mangal, a hero on two wheels. Every morning, Mangal picks up vaccines at a UNICEF-supported district hospital.

He carefully packs them in a cooler, which he straps to his motorbike before setting off to remote villages. Mangal braves rough, narrow roads, the scorching heat, and genuine security risks.

“I ride for nine kilometres every day to bring these vaccines to the people who need them,” he tells me. “They understand how important it is to protect their children from diseases. They don’t need any persuasion to come here. They greet me with gratitude and hope.” 

A doctor prescribes medicine for mothers and children during a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team visit. Credit: Karim / UNICEF

Some of Mangal’s supplies land here, with a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team providing services straight to the communities who need them most and who have no other way to access health care.

Like so much of UNICEF’s health and nutrition work across Afghanistan, these programmes are game-changers.

But these teams have their work cut out for them.

“Nearly half of all children under five in Afghanistan are malnourished, a truly devastating number,” UNICEF’s head of nutrition, Melanie Galvin, tells me. “Some 875,000 of them are expected to need treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of undernutrition and one of the top threats to child survival across the globe.”

Ramping up the response means staffing up the response, too. UNICEF has more than doubled the number of places where a child can be treated.

“Last year we put more nutrition nurses and nutrition counsellors into overflowing hospitals,” Melanie says. “We put them directly into communities where people live. We put them into mobile clinics that reach very small and isolated populations. We put them into day care centre spaces in poor urban areas.”

A child receives RUTF during a visit by a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team. Credit Karim/UNICEF

Mobile health and nutrition teams are critical in reaching rural areas with basic services like pre-natal checkups, vaccinations, psycho-social counselling, and ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). It’s a heartbreaking condition to see up close. In this photo, little Zarmina receives an RUTF sachet from Melanie.

RUTF really is a magical paste – energy dense and full of micronutrients. Used to treat severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, RUTF is made using peanuts, sugar, milk powder, oil, vitamins and minerals, and has helped treat millions of children in Afghanistan.

As we tour a hospital, Dr. Fouzia Shafique, UNICEF Afghanistan’s Principal Health Advisor, explains how UNICEF has managed to support so many children, despite all the challenges.

“Health clinics, family teams of community workers, community-based schools, vaccinators, and trained female health workers,” she tells me. Donors such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have also been critical partners, helping UNICEF provide care even in difficult-to-reach areas of the country.

So many of the life-saving interventions I encountered on my mission are made possible by the tireless work of UNICEF staff such as Dr. Shafique and Dr. Nafi Kakar, who fill a multitude of roles, including inspecting vaccines and parts of the cold chain system that is used to store them.

Helping families access quality primary and secondary health care means supporting thousands of health facilities, covering operating costs, paying the salaries of tens of thousands of health workers, and procuring and distributing medical supplies.

Together, these efforts are helping UNICEF reach many of the more than 15 million children in Afghanistan who need support. It’s a difficult number to comprehend, but easier to appreciate when you meet some of those very same children.

There’s the baby fighting for her life in an incubator; the children working for their families in fields of unexploded mines; the children grappling with the anxieties and pressures of poverty; or the girls deprived of their greatest hope – education. Each child is like my own. Unique. Each child is special.

The smiles say it all: For Dr. Shafique and young girls in Afghanistan, it’s been a good day. But there remains so much to do. Supporting the health and well-being of people in Afghanistan isn’t only about access to health services, it’s also about the protection of rights – notably, ensuring rights and freedoms for women and girls.

Given the enormity of UNICEF’s role in the health and nutrition sector, it’s critical for UNICEF – and for children in Afghanistan – that funding is maintained. So that the country’s children can grow up safe, healthy and be the heroes in their own stories.

Source: UNICEF Blog
The UNICEF Blog promotes children’s rights and well-being, and ideas about ways to improve their lives and the lives of their families. It also brings insights and opinions from the world s leading child rights experts and accounts from UNICEF s staff on the ground in more than 190 countries and territories. The opinions expressed on the UNICEF Blog are those of the author(s) and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF s official position.

James Elder is UNICEF Spokesperson in Afghanistan.

IPS UN Bureau

WHO Goodwill Ambassador Sasakawa with some of the representatives from persons affected by leprosy organizations that participated in the Bergen International Conference on Hansen’s Disease (June 21–22, 2023).

TOKYO, Japan, Aug 28 2023 – This year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the leprosy bacillus by Dr. Gerhard Armauer Hansen in Bergen, Norway. To prompt reflection on the past and build momentum for a zero leprosy future, the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative and the University of Bergen co-hosted an international conference on June 21–22. The conference was attended by 200 people from 27 countries and opened with video messages from Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, and Mr. Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In my remarks, I emphasized that progress in the area of human rights has lagged far behind medical progress. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution as well as principles and guidelines on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members. In other words, the international community officially recognizes that leprosy is a human rights issue.

However, persons affected by leprosy and their family members still face severe discrimination in fundamental areas of social life, including education, employment, and marriage. Many of them are burdened with self-stigma, wondering whether they have human rights. Despite the importance of receiving early diagnosis, some try to keep their disease hidden out of fear of the discrimination that they and their family members might face.

For me, hope comes from seeing persons affected by leprosy take the lead. At the conference, representatives from organizations of persons affected by leprosy shared the remarkable results that they are achieving in their countries. I will continue to make every effort to realize a truly inclusive society where all persons affected by leprosy and their family members feel like they belong.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination

Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary – a conservation center dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, and protecting Sierra Leone’s national chimpanzee. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

FREETOWN, Nov 3 2023 (IPS) – Thirty-three years ago, Bala Amerasekaran – a Sri Lankan by birth – visited Freetown, Sierra Leone. Since then, the West African nation has been his home, where Amerasekaran has dedicated his life to conserving the chimpanzee – Sierra Leone’s national animal.

In 1995, with support from the national government, he founded Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary – the country’s first conservation center that rescues, rehabilitates, and protects chimpanzees, often hunted, traded, and killed for their meat. Currently home to 100 chimpanzees, the conservation works of the sanctuary also help prevent the spread of any possible diseases transmitted from primates to humans.
Related IPS Articles

However, 20 years later, Amerasekaran’s enthusiasm is declining as he has witnessed massive encroachment within the sanctuary, destroying its forest cover and threatening the sustainability of the conservation program itself.

“I am beginning to feel that I have wasted my life for 28 years because there is no safety for this place,” says a visibly upset Amerasekaran.

Wildlife Connection to Africa’s Zoonotic Disease Trail

“At least 75 percent of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases of humans—including Ebola, Marburg, Henipavirus, and zoonotic avian flu—have an animal origin, according to Hellen Amuguni – Associate Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. “Chances are that when the next illness like COVID-19 emerges to threaten global health, it will originate in animals before it passes to humans, a process known as spillover,” Amuguni says.

West Africa has a long history of recurring zoonotic disease spillovers, the biggest of which occurred in 2014 when the region witnessed a devastating Ebola virus outbreak. The outbreak spread quickly across the entire region, including Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where about 11,000 people died.

A 2018 led by Caroline Huber of Precision Health Economics estimated that the disease outbreak also caused an economic and social burden worth over USD50 billion. Researchers later traced the origin to a spillover event: a two-year-old boy in Guinea likely infected while playing near a tree where bats roosted.

Since then, the conservation of biodiversity, especially the natural habitats of wildlife, has gained attention in the region to prevent any quick transmission of a zoonotic pathogen from animals to humans. But almost all the major forests and key wildlife habitats also face increasing stress from loggers, hunters, traders, and illegal builders.

An example is the Upper Guinean Forest, which covers the lowland forests of West Africa from Guinea to Togo. This forest is a global biodiversity hotspot and contains the world’s second-largest rainforest, the Congo Basin. However, studies have found that the forest has lost 84 percent of its original area, mostly due to agricultural expansion, commercial logging, charcoal burning, and human settlement.

Within the borders of Guinea – where the 2014 Ebola outbreak occurred first – 17.1-kilo hectares of humid primary forest disappeared between 2002 -2022, according to Global Forest Watch (GFW). To put it in perspective, this is the loss of a forest area as big as the city of Washington, DC.

GFW has also tracked large-scale deforestation in Equatorial Guinea –the country that reported the first cases of Marburg – a deadly viral zoonotic disease in May this year that claimed 12 lives. According to GFW’s estimates, in 2010, Equatorial Guinea had 2.63 mega hectares (Mha) of tree cover, extending over 98 percent of its land area, but by 2022, it lost 7.76 thousand hectares (kha) of tree cover, which is roughly the size of Paris.

Sierra Leone’s Vulnerable Forests

In Sierra Leone, several dense forests are habitats of many endangered wildlife species, including 6000 chimpanzees. These include Kangari Hills and Nimini Hills forests, Outamba-Kilimi National Park, and the Gola Rainforest – one of the largest remaining West African tracts extending to neighboring Liberia.

While deforestation has occurred in all these forests owing to illegal logging, unsustainable land use, infrastructural development, and charcoal production, it is particularly high in Gola Forest. According to a , the Gola forest has been losing its green cover at an annual rate of 4.18 percent. These losses are largely due to the expansion of rice farms within the forest area, says John Christian Abu-Kpawoh, who conducted the research.

In comparison, Tacugama Sanctuary is a tiny patch of forest of only about 40 hectares. Yet its proximity to the national capital, Freetown, a 40-minute drive away, makes it a prime target for encroachers. About 30 percent of the sanctuary has been encroached upon by builders, many of whom are powerful and well-connected.

“Last year, the Ministry of Lands deployed soldiers here (to protect the chimpanzee sanctuary). Yet every name that is coming up in the recent encroachments is of a soldier,” Amerasekaran reveals, indicating deep-rooted corruption in the government.

Worrying News for One Health

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the One Health Approach to prevent a future zoonotic disease spillover has gained traction. The One Health approach recognizes the interconnection between human, animal, and environmental health and emphasizes an integrated approach to prevent any health crisis, especially related to infections transmitted from animals to humans.

Across West Africa, several large projects are already being implemented where multidisciplinary experts, including veterinarians, zoologists, epidemiologists, social behavior scientists, and risk communicators, are working together to prevent a new spillover.

The USAID-funded , and , the Eco Health Alliance projects, and the actions for understanding, preventing, and mitigating outbreaks are some examples.

These projects, among others, are engaged in studying and monitoring animal-human interaction, assessing risks of a possible disease breakout, putting surveillance measures in place to detect the early warning of spillover, and raising awareness among locals about the importance of conserving forest and wildlife to prevent a disease outbreak.

Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary is also working with local communities to address some of the threats being faced by the rainforest-dwelling species. For example, the sanctuary is helping to establish livestock rearing projects, setting up swamp rice plantations, improving fuel efficiency of cooking, setting up tree nurseries for sustainable harvesting of wood and food products, and running education programs for school children.

But the uncontrolled development and encroachment on the forest land pose serious threats to the success of these activities, the biggest of them being the shrinking of space between humans and animals.

Although the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak and spillover were attributed to bats, chimpanzees can also be responsible for a new Ebola outbreak as they can contract and succumb to the virus. Ebola has been a major reason for the declining chimpanzee population across Africa. Once humans come in contact with an infected chimpanzee or its body fluids, the deadly disease can be transmitted to humans – leading to a viral spillover.

This means every unmonitored handling of a chimpanzee, including its capture, to sell it as a pet or kill for meat poses a risk of a disease breakout simply because the hunter or the capturer cannot know whether the animal has contracted Ebola virus. On the other hand, protecting a chimpanzee’s natural habitat and ensuring it stays within that habitat not only leads to its conservation but also prevents it from passing on any deadly pathogen, such as Ebola, to humans.

‘Learn from East Africa’

Considering the spillover risks, conserving the habitats of key wildlife species, especially those known to transmit viral zoonotic diseases to humans, is vital. Many feel West Africa can learn from its East African neighbors who have set examples of protecting their wildlife reserves by creating a safe distance between the wildlife and humans.

“Look at countries like Rwanda or Kenya, then you will see that where there is a wild reserve, they create a buffer zone of 2-3 kilometers,’’ says the founder of Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary.

The failure to maintain this distance can pose serious risks to the region’s One Health goal, says Frederick Jobo Moseray, Assistant Conservation Manager at the sanctuary.

“When the forest goes, the animals become homeless. They then come to human colonies. Here, we are talking about chimpanzees. They are hunted, killed, and also kept as pets. All of this is dangerous. We are talking about preventing a zoonotic disease spillover, but first, we must stop the shrinking of safe space between humans and chimpanzees,” Moseray concludes.

IPS UN Bureau Report

School of fish and coral. Credit: UNDP Seychelles

NEW YORK, Dec 6 2023 (IPS) – As COP28 delegates focus on the first Global Stocktake, there is no doubt that the race to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is vital.

But while electric vehicles and solar power uptake have seen visible and welcome progress in particular, the transition to a thriving future on a healthy planet requires much more than decarbonization alone.

Don’t get me wrong. Decarbonization is a must. It has to be done. But focus on just one lane of what must be a systemic transition to a liveable planet is dangerously myopic.

Water vapor, for example, is overlooked as a highly significant greenhouse gas. It is the most abundant greenhouse gas, and responsible for about half of greenhouse heating effects. Recent research published in the International Journal of Environment and Climate change highlights that the quantities of water vapor in our atmosphere are affected by a breadth of environmentally damaging human activities, beyond fossil fuel emissions.

The oceans are the world’s biggest carbon sink and a weather and climate regulator in their own right. Harm to ocean ecosystem functions due to ocean acidification, toxic “forever chemicals” and microplastic pollution has led to reductions in phytoplankton photosynthesis by as much as 50 per cent since the 1950s. Phytoplankton photosynthesis underpins almost all marine animal life by generating most of the oxygen and food that provide other organisms with the chemical energy they need to exist.

This has knock-on implications deeply interlinked with climate action: reduced phytoplankton leads to higher concentrations of dissolved carbon dioxide in ocean surface water, further accelerating ocean acidification and allowing evaporation and atmospheric water vapor concentrations to increase, increasing humidity, precipitation and temperature as an additional climate change feedback loop.

Importantly, if we achieve net zero carbon by 2050, we could still face catastrophic climate change if ocean ecosystem health is overlooked. In addition to the consequences of global heating, ocean acidification and the collapse of the marine ecosystems could lead to the loss of most seals, birds, whales, fish, and food supply for three billion people.

Take another example: deforestation. In the past 300 years or so, 1.5 billion hectares of forest have been removed – an area roughly one and a half times the size of the US. Scientists have shown that ecosystems damaged by humans are more vulnerable to wildfires, which add to atmospheric carbon dioxide and cause excessive atmospheric heat to pass back to the ocean, releasing more water vapor and further increasing greenhouse gases.

Similarly, the increasing severity of devastating floods in recent years is not only linked to climate change but often also the result of forest and vegetation loss, land conversion, intensive land management and river straightening. Anthropogenic climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and more severe, while human activity is also eroding the resilience of the environment to absorb these impacts.

Any narrow focus on something that is systemic is inherently problematic. Our planet’s multivarious ecosystems are deeply interconnected dynamic systems within which human activity is interwoven. We cannot silo our environmental challenges, nor our responses to them. Successful climate mitigation can be only achieved in the wider context of terrestrial and marine ecosystem health and social impact, measuring progress in lockstep with planetary health metrics and the sustainable development goals.

This is why it is beyond time to rethink our relationship with nature. Without a shift in how we value our natural environment and our relationship to it, we will always be trapped in a race against time to clean up after ourselves, treating only the symptoms of a dysfunctional relationship with our natural world, rather than the cause.

A revaluation of how humanity interacts with nature will bring the sea change we need. Protecting nature is too often falsely considered a trade-off against economic development, when the fact is that one helps the other: the collapse of ecosystem services would cost $2.7 trillion annually by 2030. The truth is that thriving, protected ecosystems are an exceptionally powerful development asset.

Not only is the protection of nature an absolute prerequisite for the success of climate action, but policies that preserve natural land could also increase global real GDP in 2030 in the order of trillions of dollars. This includes benefits through carbon sequestration, and through the multiple benefits that natural lands, waters and oceans provide.

The economic case for protecting nature by the World Bank found that restoring 350 million hectares of land could generate about $170 billion per year in net value by sequestering up to 1.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually and through watershed protection, improved crop yields and forest products.

As we race towards net zero, we must look with equal urgency at nature’s protection to ensure we decarbonize alongside progress towards ecological health and social stability on a superhighway of durable transition. Only change that accounts for humanity’s relationship with nature at a systemic level, its climate and its ecosystem health, will truly be a transition to thriving future on a liveable planet.

Midori Paxton is Director, Nature Hub, United Nations Development Programme

IPS UN Bureau

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 31 2024 (IPS) – Contractionary economic trends since 2008 and ‘geopolitical’ conflicts subverting international cooperation have worsened world conditions, especially in the poorest countries, mainly in Africa, leaving their poor worse off.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Conditions and prospects are so bad that two well-known globalisation cheerleaders have appealed to rich nations for urgent action. Former IMF Deputy Managing Director and World Bank Senior Vice-President, Professor and influential Financial Times columnist warn ominously of the dire consequences of inaction.

Deepening stagnation
Following tepid growth after the 2008 global financial crisis, Covid-19 disrupted supply chains worldwide. Then, post-pandemic recovery was disrupted by wars in Ukraine and then Gaza.

Food and energy prices soared briefly, largely due to market manipulation by opportunistic investors. Invoking the price hikes as a pretext, the US Fed and European Central Bank raised interest rates, deepening economic stagnation worldwide.

Countries which borrowed heavily during the earlier decade of unconventional monetary policies – especially ‘quantitative easing’, offering easy credit – now have to cope with increasingly unbearable debt burdens, particularly in the global South.

Earlier modest progress in reducing poverty – now termed ‘extreme poverty’ – and food insecurity has slowed sharply, if not worse. For many of the world’s poorest, progress has not only stopped but even been reversed.
Related IPS Articles

The World Bank currently defines the poor as those with daily per capita incomes under US$2.15 in 2017 prices. It estimated those deemed poor fell from 1.87bn – 31% of the world’s population – in 1998 to a forecast of 690mn (9%) in 2023.

The : global poverty is forecast to fall by a little over three percentage points during 2013-23 – very much less than the 14 percentage points in the decade before 2013.

Poorest mainly in poor countries
The pace of poverty decline has slowed most in the world’s poorest nations. Wolf defines these countries as those deemed eligible for concessional loans from the World Bank Group’s soft-lending arm, the International Development Association (IDA).

Seventy-five countries are now considered eligible for IDA resources, including 39 in Africa. Some – e.g., Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan – can also borrow on costlier terms from financial markets and the Group’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In IDA-eligible countries, those in extreme poverty fell from 48% in 1998 to 26% in 2023. But this only involved a single percentage point decline over 2013-23, compared to 14 percentage points in the decade before.

Extreme poverty has mainly declined in better-off middle-income countries, with 497 million poor in IDA-eligible countries. With 72% of the world’s total of 691 million poor in IDA-eligible nations, the remaining 193 million were in other countries.

The population share in extreme poverty in countries not IDA-eligible fell from a fifth in 1998 to 3% in 2023, falling by only four percentage points during 2013-23. Expecting modest overall growth, Wolf expects this 3% share will be largely eliminated by 2030.

Hence, he argues that extreme poverty can only end if attention and resources are focused on the world’s poorest countries, where poverty is most concentrated and deeply entrenched.

Unequal debt burdens
Government debt is widespread, but especially debilitating in countries where the poor are most concentrated. The World Bank’s last International Debt Report notes such countries depend too much on unreliable and expensive funding.

The report acknowledges, “For the poorest countries, debt has become a nearly paralysing burden: 28 countries eligible to borrow from [IDA] are now at high risk of debt distress. Eleven are in distress.”

During 2012-21, the external debt share of IDA-eligible countries owed to private creditors jumped from 11.2% to 28.0%! Their debt service payments more than tripled from $26bn in 2012 to $89bn in 2022, as interest due jumped from $6.4bn to $23.6bn!

Meanwhile, the share of bondholders and other private lenders in total government debt fell from 37% in 2021 to 14% in 2022! As the US Fed raised interest rates sharply during 2022-23, investors dumped ‘high-risk’ poor borrowers, lending much less to those in most need.

With this ‘perfect storm’, debt distress should come as no surprise. The 2023 International Debt Report found 56% – over half – of IDA-eligible countries at risk of such distress.

Distress of the poorest
Wolf argues it is in rich nations’ interest and their obligation to provide poor countries with far more concessional finance. But such funding has actually declined in recent decades, especially with the end of the first Cold War over three decades ago.

The IDA is using its 20th replenishment for July 2022 to June 2025 to provide financing on concessional terms. The World Bank president has argued for a much bigger new replenishment ostensibly to accelerate growth, reduce poverty and address other challenges in the poorest countries.

IDA-eligible countries include many of the world’s worst-managed nations, often very fragile, vulnerable to shocks, and stuck in “hard to escape” poverty. But their problems have become pretexts to withhold or withdraw concessional finance from those most in need.

Much more concessional finance and other resources are needed for poor nations to develop sustainably. But reducing sustainable development to simply eliminating poverty, nowadays with climate action, will condemn the poorest developing countries to backwardness.

World financial arrangements have been crucial in undermining fair, sustainable development in poor countries. While it will be critical to enable these nations to overcome their current and imminent predicaments, far more fundamental reforms must quickly follow.

As the poorest developing countries are both weak and vulnerable, needed reforms are nowhere on the horizon. Instead, the ‘international community’ continues to kick the can down the road instead of undertaking bold reforms for the short and medium term.

IPS UN Bureau

Nimco Ali, CEO, The Five Foundation (center), meeting with Andrew Mitchell, (right) Minister for Development, UK, and Harriet King (left), UK High Commissioner to The Gambia. Credit: The Five Foundation

LONDON, Mar 27 2024 (IPS) – Earlier this month, a UNICEF report on the prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM) showed that while some success is taking place, the pace of progress remains slow lagging behind population growth, especially in places where FGM is most common.

The report revealed that over 230 million girls and women worldwide have undergone FGM – a 15 per cent increase, or 30 million more girls and women, compared to the data released eight years ago. The largest share of the global burden is found in African countries, with over 144 million cases, followed by over 80 million in Asia and over 6 million in the Middle East.

As the concluded last week I became particularly anxious for the women and girls of The Gambia. As advocates from around the world arrived in New York to attend the annual event hosted by the United Nations, our excitement was quickly dissolved.

Just hours before, we had learned from our Gambian colleagues that religious leaders predominantly men including politicians were voting to repeal a law passed almost 10 years ago by former President Yayah Janneh, which banned the practice of FGM. In that time a law that has saved thousands of girls and women undergoing this devastating human rights abuse.

It came as a shock. However, as world leaders scrambled on what to do or say following the news it was African women including from Safe Hands for Girls, from Women in Liberation and Leadership, from The Five Foundation, who showed leadership during one of our most challenging times.

Survivors and activists were relentless in our pursuits. In a few days, many of us took to the media, as well as anywhere we could gather within our communities to say no to repealing the law.

This is a crucial moment for the FGM campaign, which could have even further negative consequences for Gambian women and girls. This fight is not just a call to repeal the law on FGM but if this request succeeds, we are going to see a widespread roll back on other fundamental rights of women and girls.

Fatou Kinteh, the Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs said in a statement at a meeting at CSW68 that: “Women cannot be empowered if their rights continue to be violated . Yet, this same government is putting them at risk.

World leaders must confront so-called religious leaders too including Imam Fatty who issued this very carefully planned , even while FGM is still illegal. Leaders like Imam Fatty are very determined to roll back the progress made in the Gambia in the last 10 years. His pronouncement has already cost lives. Because immediately after his statements many families were already receiving threats to have their daughters cut.

I hope that people like UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron now stand up to support Gambian women. In 2014, it was under his leadership that the took place. This helped to catalyse the groundbreaking work that gave rise to the ban. During that Summit, as the , I was very pleased to hear of action and funding commitments.

As an FGM survivor activist, a global advocate and speaker, and a mother, I am calling on him, as well as all government representatives around the world to immediately release direct funding to women like me grassroots activists working on the frontlines to help with this fight.

Leaders should also sanction those who support the call to repeal the ban on FGM, while also finally calling on nations like Sierra Leone to enact laws and implement sustained policies that go towards protecting and safeguarding girls and women from FGM once and for all.

Alimatu Dimonekene MBE, is a leading women and girls rights advocate in the UK:

IPS UN Bureau

We need help illuminating the dark matter in food and charting the intricate interplay between food, ecosystems, climate and health, argue the authors. Credit: Shutterstock.

Jun 20 2024 (IPS) – This year, bee pollen has become a trendy superfood thanks to a wide range of . Last year, led the superfood trends. Before that, it was .

Invariably, these newly celebrated superfoods are never new; they have long been consumed by non-Western cultures. The inadequate research on their nutritional composition and health attributes almost always leads to a list of exaggerated benefits, from preventing cancer to overall vitality and longevity. They become a fad for a few years and then often take a back seat to the next “superfood.”

Globally, half of all calories come from some form of wheat, rice or corn even though over 30,000 named edible species exist on our planet.

An estimated 95% of the biomolecules in food are unknown to science — this is the “dark matter” of food, diets and biodiversity. We don’t know what these biomolecules are, or how they function in ecosystems and in our bodies

Yet the frequent emergence of trending superfoods demonstrate that food biodiversity persists in many communities and regions around the globe. In a in Nature Food, we joined 54 colleagues in beginning to capture and prioritize this diversity, with a curated list of 1,650 foods.

Strikingly, more than 1,000 of the foods on the curated food list are not included in national food composition databases — in other words, we don’t have easy access to what is in these foods, or science may not yet know what these foods contain. This suggests that dietary guidelines relying on national food composition databases miss the majority of humanity’s long and co-evolutionary history with food.

Moreover, even the foods that are commonly consumed and included in national food composition databases are barely understood. An estimated 95% of the biomolecules in food are unknown to science — this is the “” of food, diets and biodiversity. We don t know what these biomolecules are, or how they function in ecosystems and in our bodies.

Mapping this dark matter is too large a task for any one laboratory, organization or country to achieve on its own. We need a united scientific movement, larger than the human genome project, with governments and researchers around the globe filling the gaps in our knowledge of the food we eat.

A of standardized tools, data and training is now available for this effort, which can build a centralized database based on standardized tools for researchers, practitioners and communities to share their wisdom and expertise on food and its diverse attributes to inform solutions to our pressing societal challenges.

Preliminary data from analyzed reveals that many “whole foods” can be considered “superfoods,” with more unique than common biomolecules. Each fruit and vegetable, for example, has a unique composition of biomolecules that varies based on the environment, processing and preparation.

Broccoli, which achieved “superfood” status several years ago for its and its connections to , has over 900 biomolecules not found in other green vegetables.

We have identified the existence of these compounds through mass-spectrometry, but we have not determined the properties of these unique metabolites — we do not even have enough data to accurately name them, much less understand the roles that they play in our bodies and in ecosystems in the world at large.

And these 900+ biomolecules — broccoli’s dark matter — are in addition to the biomolecules that broccoli shares with other cruciferous vegetables, which may help prevent a wide variety of illnesses, from to .

Diet-related diseases such as diabetes, some cancers and heart disease are now the main cause of mortality globally. Yet the full scope of the links between diet and disease, soil microbes and gut microbes, climate change and nutrient content still remains shrouded in uncertainty.

Regulatory bodies are calling for more science to guide policy decisions even as scientists are finding new connections between diet and health for conditions as varied as macular degeneration and blood coagulation disorders.

The 20th century witnessed the simplification of agriculture, resulting in a narrow focus on yield and efficiency of a handful of cereal crops. Its successes were considerable, but they came at the expense of diversity, food quality and agricultural resilience. The superfoods — the trends, not the actual foods — are the collective poster child of this problem.

Now food systems are at a crossroads. The 21st century can become the century of diversity, as the new cornerstone of science on food. But we need help illuminating the dark matter in food and charting the intricate interplay between food, ecosystems, climate and health.

As we call for a globally coordinated effort to fill the gaps in the food we eat, we need to ensure these efforts do not create scientific disparities between countries and regions.

We need capacity-strengthening efforts so that all countries can equally and inclusively participate and benefit from the knowledge of what is in our food, how it varies, and implications for the health of people and the planet.

It is not enough to borrow superfoods from non-Westernized cultures and give them nothing in return. Today, it is time to start opening the black box of food and create more nourishing food systems for everyone.

Selena Ahmed is Professor at Montana State University and Global Director of Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) at the American Heart Association

Maya Rajasekharan is PTFI Director of Strategy Integration and Engagement at Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Parliamentarians from across Asia met in Malaysia to discuss aging and policy. Credit: APDA

KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 29 2024 (IPS) – With projections that by 2060, over 1.2 billion people in Asia will be 65 or older, and by adopting technology, including artificial intelligence technologies, it is possible to plan for active and fulfilled aging, lawmakers attending a regional meeting on Aging Preparedness and Care Economy in Asia heard.

The meeting, convened by the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) Malaysia, looked at several aspects of aging, including the use of technology, digital health solutions and assistive technologies, all aimed at ensuring that governments have policy and finance in place to ensure the aging population is sufficiently catered for.
Related IPS Articles

Hon. Dato’ Hjh Mumtaz Md Nawi, an MP from Malaysia, succinctly explained the repercussions of this population trend.

“The implications of this aging trend are profound, affecting everything from labour markets to healthcare systems. The increase in the older population will require substantial investments in healthcare infrastructure and long-term care services.”

For parliamentarians, this means enacting policies that support lifelong education, employment among older people, and gender equality, which will become increasingly necessary to maximize older people s economic contributions while minimizing the risks associated with aging.

Hon. Dato Sri Alexander Nanta Linggi, an MP from Malaysia, was concerned about the impact of aging on women. Credit: APDA

The President of AFPPD in Malaysia, Hon. Dato Sri Alexander Nanta Linggi, reminded the audience that aging would impact women differently than men, especially as they have a longer life expectancy and currently constitute 61 percent of the population aged 80 and above.

“Even though they have a higher life expectancy than men, older women are often subjected to the compounded effect of ageism and gender discrimination, prevalent in both the social system and the workplace. Ageism refers to the systematic prejudices and discrimination experienced by older individuals,” Linggi noted.

Women frequently had to retire earlier, while men were able to advance in their careers well into their 60s.

China serves as a case in point, enforcing a 10-year gender disparity by requiring women working in civil services to retire at age 50, while allowing men to retire at age 60. Likewise, Vietnam also practices similar regulation but with a five-year gap.”

This ageism unfairly limits “women s opportunities for career development, resulting in inequitable treatment and compensation.”

Linggi urged the lawmakers to dismantle the barriers of ageism and ensure that social protections include women, especially those in the informal sector, to alleviate poverty and vulnerability, mitigate risk exposure, and enhance the ability of workers to safeguard themselves against income loss and give them equitable access to healthcare services.

He noted that Malaysia’s Self-Employed Scheme (SPS) initiative in Budget 2024 aims to offer comprehensive social protection coverage, targeting women engaging in informal sector jobs. The scheme entitles them to access to a range of benefits, including medical coverage and compensation for temporary and permanent disabilities resulting from work-related injuries.

Malaysia’s parliamentary speaker H.E. Tan Sri Dato’ (Dr.) Johari Bin Abdul reiterated lawmakers challenges for an aging population and care populations saying that was imperative to invest in and strengthen social protection programmes and health-care services; establish sustainable financing mechanisms for the elderly; upgrade the skills of the working-age population and create productive and decent jobs for older persons; and invest in research and innovation to develop new technologies and solutions that improve the quality of life for older persons, enabling them to live independently longer; while recognizing the significance of care work, value unpaid care work and promote shared responsibility within the framework of a care economy.

“As parliamentarians, we hold a crucial responsibility in formulating and executing policies that cater to the needs of the elderly. We can lead the development of inclusive policies, propose and endorse legislation to safeguard the rights and well-being of older people, and serve as advocates to increase public awareness. Additionally, parliamentarians can oversee the implementation of policies and programs, ensuring government agencies deliver effective services for the elderly community and holding them accountable when necessary. In conclusion, let us unite to face these challenges with bravery, empathy and foresight.”

Hon. Dr. Hajah Halimah Ali, MP Malaysia, said while technology is often associated with the youth, it also offers opportunities to enhance the lives of the elderly.

“Consequently, the term ‘Gerontechnology —a technology designed to address the specific needs of the elderly—has gained worldwide recognition and should be central to any policies concerning the elderly and technology.”

Ali noted that Japan and South Korea were making strides to transform elderly care, including addressing social isolation and loneliness.

For instance, in Japan, the development of robotic caregivers such as the PARO therapeutic robot has demonstrated substantial benefits in providing companionship and reducing stress among elderly patients. These robotic pets, which learn from interactions, recognize faces and respond with affection, have become highly popular with seniors.”

In South Korea, AI technology has been integrated into care facilities.

“AI systems can detect falls, monitor sleep patterns, and alert caregivers to any unusual behavior, thus enhancing safety and response times. For instance, a robot can keep company with an elderly person living alone and call emergency services when necessary. In nursing homes, robots assist elderly patients with daily tasks such as defecation and cleaning assistance.”

And on a lighter note, an AI robot could even “play Go with bored elderly patients,” Ali said, adding that this was not a “distant future scenario but a reality in the smart care services of Seoul, as announced by the Seoul Metropolitan Government as part of their plans for elderly care services.”

Senator Hon. Datuk Wira Dr. Hatta Bin MD Ramli agreed, adding that AI-powered devices and wearables play a crucial role in health monitoring and telemedicine as they are capable of “analyzing individual preferences, health conditions, and daily routines, enabling personalized care and assistance.”

Another advantage is that AI-powered sensors and smart devices can detect falls, unusual movements, or emergencies, promptly alerting caregivers or emergency services. AI-driven medication management systems assist older adults in organizing their medications, setting reminders for doses, and monitoring adherence to prescribed regimens.

Data analytics and predictive modeling driven by AI can identify trends, forecast health outcomes, and optimize care delivery for older adults.

Hon. Howard Lee Chuan How, Vice President of AFPPD Malaysia, highlighted that the meeting aimed to establish a collaborative framework for sharing best practices. Credit: APDA

Serving as a facilitator and session chair throughout the meeting, Hon. Howard Lee Chuan How, Vice President of AFPPD Malaysia, highlighted that the meeting aimed to establish a collaborative framework for sharing best practices and enhance international cooperation to improve policies and programs that support aging populations. He explained that while each country faces unique challenges, it is crucial to harmonize policies across the region for a unified approach to address common issues so that the countries are well-prepared to meet the challenges posed by demographic shifts.

“By leveraging our shared knowledge and resources, we will reinforce our collective commitment to building a future where our elderly are valued, cared for, and supported,” he said.

Note: The Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) in Malaysia organized the meeting. It was supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

IPS UN Bureau Report