isis Fashion Brands Repurpose Resources to Offer Aid in the COVID-19 Crisis By www8.gsb.columbia.edu Published On :: Wed, 22 Apr 2020 00:00:00 -0400 Retail giants like Yoox Net-a-Porter Group and Brooks Brothers quickly pivoted to offer life-saving services. Full Article
isis Legal Provision for Crisis Preparedness: Foresight not Hindsight By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:03:31 +0000 21 April 2020 Dr Patricia Lewis Research Director, Conflict, Science & Transformation; Director, International Security Programme @PatriciaMary COVID-19 is proving to be a grave threat to humanity. But this is not a one-off, there will be future crises, and we can be better prepared to mitigate them. 2020-04-21-Nurse-COVID-Test Examining a patient while testing for COVID-19 at the Velocity Urgent Care in Woodbridge, Virginia. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. A controversial debate during COVID-19 is the state of readiness within governments and health systems for a pandemic, with lines of the debate drawn on the issues of testing provision, personal protective equipment (PPE), and the speed of decision-making.President Macron in a speech to the nation admitted French medical workers did not have enough PPE and that mistakes had been made: ‘Were we prepared for this crisis? We have to say that no, we weren’t, but we have to admit our errors … and we will learn from this’.In reality few governments were fully prepared. In years to come, all will ask: ‘how could we have been better prepared, what did we do wrong, and what can we learn?’. But after every crisis, governments ask these same questions.Most countries have put in place national risk assessments and established processes and systems to monitor and stress-test crisis-preparedness. So why have some countries been seemingly better prepared?Comparing different approachesSome have had more time and been able to watch the spread of the disease and learn from those countries that had it first. Others have taken their own routes, and there will be much to learn from comparing these different approaches in the longer run.Governments in Asia have been strongly influenced by the experience of the SARS epidemic in 2002-3 and - South Korea in particular - the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015 which was the largest outside the Middle East. Several carried out preparatory work in terms of risk assessment, preparedness measures and resilience planning for a wide range of threats.Case Study of Preparedness: South KoreaBy 2007, South Korea had established the Division of Public Health Crisis Response in Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and, in 2016, the KCDC Center for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response had established a round-the-clock Emergency Operations Center with rapid response teams.KCDC is responsible for the distribution of antiviral stockpiles to 16 cities and provinces that are required by law to hold and manage antiviral stockpiles.And, at the international level, there are frameworks for preparedness for pandemics. The International Health Regulations (IHR) - adopted at the 2005 World Health Assembly and binding on member states - require countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health events to the World Health Organization (WHO) and ‘prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks, and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade’.Under IHR, governments committed to a programme of building core capacities including coordination, surveillance, response and preparedness. The UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk highlights disaster preparedness for effective response as one of its main purposes and has already incorporated these measures into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other Agenda 2030 initiatives. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said COVID-19 ‘poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security’ and that ‘a signal of unity and resolve from the Council would count for a lot at this anxious time’.Case Study of Preparedness: United StatesThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) established PERRC – the Preparedness for Emergency Response Research Centers - as a requirement of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which required research to ‘improve federal, state, local, and tribal public health preparedness and response systems’.The 2006 Act has since been supplanted by the 2019 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act. This created the post of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) and authorised the development and acquisitions of medical countermeasures and a quadrennial National Health Security Strategy.The 2019 Act also set in place a number of measures including the requirement for the US government to re-evaluate several important metrics of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative agreement and the Hospital Preparedness Program, and a requirement for a report on the states of preparedness and response in US healthcare facilities.This pandemic looks set to continue to be a grave threat to humanity. But there will also be future pandemics – whether another type of coronavirus or a new influenza virus – and our species will be threatened again, we just don’t know when.Other disasters too will befall us – we already see the impacts of climate change arriving on our doorsteps characterised by increased numbers and intensity of floods, hurricanes, fires, crop failure and other manifestations of a warming, increasingly turbulent atmosphere and we will continue to suffer major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. All high impact, unknown probability events.Preparedness for an unknown future is expensive and requires a great deal of effort for events that may not happen within the preparers’ lifetimes. It is hard to imagine now, but people will forget this crisis, and revert to their imagined projections of the future where crises don’t occur, and progress follows progress. But history shows us otherwise.Preparations for future crises always fall prey to financial cuts and austerity measures in lean times unless there is a mechanism to prevent that. Cost-benefit analyses will understandably tend to prioritise the urgent over the long-term. So governments should put in place legislation – or strengthen existing legislation – now to ensure their countries are as prepared as possible for whatever crisis is coming.Such a legal requirement would require governments to report back to parliament every year on the state of their national preparations detailing such measures as:The exact levels of stocks of essential materials (including medical equipment)The ability of hospitals to cope with large influx of patientsHow many drills, exercises and simulations had been organised – and their findingsWhat was being done to implement lessons learned & improve preparednessIn addition, further actions should be taken:Parliamentary committees such as the UK Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy should scrutinise the government’s readiness for the potential threats outlined in the National Risk register for Civil Emergencies in-depth on an annual basis.Parliamentarians, including ministers, with responsibility for national security and resilience should participate in drills, table-top exercises and simulations to see for themselves the problems inherent with dealing with crises.All governments should have a minister (or equivalent) with the sole responsibility for national crisis preparedness and resilience. The Minister would be empowered to liaise internationally and coordinate local responses such as local resilience groups.There should be ring-fenced budget lines in annual budgets specifically for preparedness and resilience measures, annually reported on and assessed by parliaments as part of the due diligence process.And at the international level:The UN Security Council should establish a Crisis Preparedness Committee to bolster the ability of United Nations Member States to respond to international crisis such as pandemics, within their borders and across regions. The Committee would function in a similar fashion as the Counter Terrorism Committee that was established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.States should present reports on their level of preparedness to the UN Security Council. The Crisis Preparedness Committee could establish a group of experts who would conduct expert assessments of each member state’s risks and preparedness and facilitate technical assistance as required.Regional bodies such as the OSCE, ASEAN and ARF, the AU, the OAS, the PIF etc could also request national reports on crisis preparedness for discussion and cooperation at the regional level.COVID-19 has been referred to as the 9/11 of crisis preparedness and response. Just as that shocking terrorist attack shifted the world and created a series of measures to address terrorism, we now recognise our security frameworks need far more emphasis on being prepared and being resilient. Whatever has been done in the past, it is clear that was nowhere near enough and that has to change.Case Study of Preparedness: The UKThe National Risk Register was first published in 2008 as part of the undertakings laid out in the National Security Strategy (the UK also published the Biological Security Strategy in July 2018). Now entitled the National Risk Register for Civil Emergencies it has been updated regularly to analyse the risks of major emergencies that could affect the UK in the next five years and provide resilience advice and guidance.The latest edition - produced in 2017 when the UK had a Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency - placed the risk of a pandemic influenza in the ‘highly likely and most severe’ category. It stood out from all the other identified risks, whereas an emerging disease (such as COVID-19) was identified as ‘highly likely but with moderate impact’.However, much preparatory work for an influenza pandemic is the same as for COVID-19, particularly in prepositioning large stocks of PPE, readiness within large hospitals, and the creation of new hospitals and facilities.One key issue is that the 2017 NHS Operating Framework for Managing the Response to Pandemic Influenza was dependent on pre-positioned ’just in case’ stockpiles of PPE. But as it became clear the PPE stocks were not adequate for the pandemic, it was reported that recommendations about the stockpile by NERVTAG (the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group which advises the government on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory viruses) had been subjected to an ‘economic assessment’ and decisions reversed on, for example, eye protection.The UK chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies, when speaking at the World Health Organization about Operation Cygnus – a 2016 three-day exercise on a flu pandemic in the UK – reportedly said the UK was not ready for a severe flu attack and ‘a lot of things need improving’.Aware of the significance of the situation, the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy launched an inquiry in 2019 on ‘Biosecurity and human health: preparing for emerging infectious diseases and bioweapons’ which intended to coordinate a cross-government approach to biosecurity threats. But the inquiry had to postpone its oral hearings scheduled for late October 2019 and, because of the general election in December 2019, the committee was obliged to close the inquiry. Full Article
isis Iran Crisis: The Impact on Oil Markets By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 09:00:23 +0000 14 January 2020 Professor Paul Stevens Distinguished Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme The assassination of Qassem Soleimani has exacerbated the sensitivity of oil markets to political events and brought geopolitics back into global oil prices. 2020-01-14-Hormuz.jpg Satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: Getty Images. The assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has created much speculation about the possible impact on oil markets and – although any impact will very much depend upon what happens next in terms of political and military responses – theoretically the potential exists for Iran to seriously destabilize oil markets, raising oil prices.Arguably, it would be in Iran’s interest to do so. It would certainly hurt Trump’s possibility of a second term if higher prices were to last for some time as the 2020 presidential election gets underway. And it would also help shore up Iran’s failing economy. The assassination did initially cause oil prices to rise by a few dollars before quickly falling back, and the missile attacks by Iran produced a similar response. However, direct action by Iran to raise prices – for example by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz – is unlikely.Around one-fifth of the world's oil supplies passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow choke point between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Closing it would invite serious military action by the Americans and many of its allies who, so far, have been rather lukewarm over Trump’s actions. It would also possibly limit Iran’s own oil exports.Similarly, overt attacks on American allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE would probably invite too heavy a reaction, although this is uncertain given the lack of response after the alleged Iranian attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais in mid-September.Indirect action by Iran to affect oil supplies is much more likely as they have many options by using their proxies to affect others’ oil production. This is especially true for Iraq, which is now an important source of global oil supply as Iraqi exports in 2019 averaged 3.53 million barrels per day (Mb/d), a significant amount.Iraq’s future production has already been damaged as international oil companies are withdrawing staff for safety reasons, anticipating potential attacks by both Iraqi and Iranian sources. It is now very unlikely that the crucial ‘common seawater supply project’ being run by Exxon – essential for expanding production capacity – will go ahead in the near future.However, one important consequence of the assassination that has attracted little attention is that it has almost fully restored the role of geopolitics into the determination of oil prices. Up to 2014, geopolitics played a key role in determining oil prices in the paper markets where perceptions and expectations ruled.Prices determined in these markets – NYMEX in New York, ICE in London and other lesser futures markets throughout the world – then influence wet barrel markets where real barrels of oil are traded. In 2014, the world was so oversupplied with real oil barrels that the oil price collapsed – the price of Brent crude fell from $110.72 on 23 May to $46.44 eight months later. Thereafter, little if any attention was given to geopolitical events, and geopolitics became marginalized in the determination of crude oil prices.This began to change in 2019. The market remained physically over-supplied but events in the Gulf began to attract attention. In June, there were a series of attacks on oil tankers close to the Gulf, followed by attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field in September.The Americans claimed these attacks were launched by Iran, but no convincing evidence for the claim was provided. Both attacks produced an initial price response but it was surprisingly limited and short-lived. However, it did suggest that geopolitics might be creeping back into influencing oil prices.This became ever more noticeable in the third and fourth quarters as rumours regarding the trade talks between China and US clearly began to affect price – talks going well meant higher oil demand, and prices rose; talks going badly meant lower oil demand, and prices fell.Meanwhile, the oil market showed signs of tightening towards the end of 2019. Although there was much cheating on the OPEC+ agreement that was trying to restrain production and protect prices, the OPEC meeting last December saw both Iraq and Nigeria agreeing to restrain production. US stock levels also began to fall in December and the futures markets began to price in a tightening market towards the end of 2020. Significantly, the tighter the market appears, the greater attention is paid to the level of spare producing capacity.Just before the attack on Abqaiq, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated there was 3.5 Mb/d spare capacity in OPEC which, historically, is quite comfortable. However, 2.5 of this was estimated to be in Saudi Arabia, so how much of this spare capacity still existed after the Abqaiq attack?The Saudis claimed the Abqaiq capacity was quickly restored but technical experts greeted this with considerable skepticism, not least because the Abqaiq equipment was highly specialized. If spare capacity is tight, this makes the oil price vulnerable to geopolitical scares and rumours, real or imagined. Although the assassination of General Soleimani has exacerbated the sensitivity of oil markets to geopolitical events, this becomes irrelevant if a serious shooting war starts in the region. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq’s oil infrastructure remains highly vulnerable to attack either directly by Iran or one of its many proxies, suggesting oil prices will become increasingly volatile but, at the same time, benefit from a rising geopolitical premium. Full Article
isis Conflict and the Water Crisis in Iraq By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 24 Feb 2020 13:15:01 +0000 Invitation Only Research Event 9 March 2020 - 9:00am to 10:30am Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE Event participants Dr Azzam Alwash, Founder & CEO, Nature IraqPeter Schwartzstein, Independent Journalist; Non-Resident Fellow, Centre for Climate SecurityDiscussant: Dr Jehan Baban, Founder & President, The Iraqi Environment and Health Society-UKChair: Dr Glada Lahn, Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Department, Chatham House Water is a critical issue for Iraq’s future stability and prosperity. Only a few decades ago, the country was one of the most fertile in the region, with two major rivers flowing through it. Today, national and transboundary pollution, mismanagement, and debilitating cycles of conflict have contributed to a situation where only half of current water needs are being met, and where an 80% reduction in the flow of water down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has led to the loss of millions of acres of formerly productive land and the displacement of rural communities.Water scarcity can be a driver of violence and conflict. Tribal conflicts over water sources have erupted sporadically in the south and the contamination of municipal water which led to the hospitalization of some 118,000 citizens was a trigger for the large-scale protests in Basra in late 2018. Without concerted action by national and local governments, companies and international agencies, the situation will only worsen as higher temperatures and reduced rainfall drive rural-to-urban migration and increase the risk of drought, food insecurity and water-related diseases.At this roundtable, part of the Chatham House Iraq Initiative, experts will discuss the domestic, regional and international factors that continue to exacerbate the water crisis in Iraq, and propose solutions, including technical innovation, public sector capacity-building and greater international cooperation, that might contribute to effective state-building, build resilience to the effects of climate change and reduce the risk of further conflict. Event attributes Chatham House Rule Department/project Middle East and North Africa Programme, Iraq Initiative Georgia Cooke Project Manager, Middle East and North Africa Programme +44 (0)20 7957 5740 Email Full Article
isis Webinar: The Environmental Crisis in the MENA Region – Impacts and Mitigation By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 02 Apr 2020 13:40:01 +0000 Research Event 16 April 2020 - 11:30am to 12:30pm Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE Event participants Glada Lahn, Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme, Chatham HouseGreg Shapland, Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House Moderator: Sanam Vakil, Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House The event will be livestreamed on the MENA Programme Facebook page.Climate and environmental issues have largely been marginalized in discussions about the Middle East and North Africa region and yet are critical to peace and security. In this webinar, experts will explore mounting pressures including those related to water (reduced, less reliable and more polluted sources), extreme temperatures, air pollution, land degradation and sea-level rise. Panelists will discuss the potential impact of worsening environmental conditions and what the region's governments can do to protect the health and livelihoods of their peoples.This webinar is part of the Chatham House MENA Programme's Online Event Series and will be held on the record. Department/project Middle East and North Africa Programme Reni Zhelyazkova Programme Coordinator, Middle East and North Africa Programme +44 (0)20 7314 3624 Email Full Article
Reni Zhelyazkova Programme Coordinator, Middle East and North Africa Programme +44 (0)20 7314 3624 Email
isis Can Morocco Effectively Handle the COVID-19 Crisis? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 06 Apr 2020 09:10:24 +0000 6 April 2020 Dr Mohammed Masbah Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme @MasbahMohammed LinkedIn Google Scholar Anna Jacobs Senior Research Assistant, Brookings Doha Center The Moroccan government is capitalizing on a burst of unity, social solidarity and public support in the face of a crisis. However, if it fails to effectively mitigate the public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, this spirit of solidarity and cooperation will not last long. GettyImages-1208907580.jpg A general view of empty stores during curfew as a precaution against the new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Rabat, Morocco on 1 April 2020. Photo by Jalal Morchidi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images. In Morocco, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased public trust in government, but people still have doubts about the effectiveness of the healthcare system. According to a recent study conducted by the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis (MIPA), the majority of Moroccans surveyed are generally satisfied with the measures taken by the government to battle the coronavirus. However, the same survey also shows that Moroccans do not have confidence in the healthcare sector’s ability to respond to this pandemic.The positive perceptions of the government’s response can be explained by the swift and strict measures enacted. King Mohammed VI held a high-level meeting with the prime minister, the minister of health, and top security officials on 17 March and a few days later, on 20 March, the Moroccan government declared a state of health emergency and began to implement aggressive measures to contain the virus.This has included closing airports, schools, mosques, cafés and shops – with the exception of food markets – preventing large gatherings, as well as strict guidelines to ensure social distancing. As of 2 April, nearly 5000 people have been arrested for violating the state of health emergency.In order to address urgent medical needs and to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic, the King ordered the creation of an emergency fund, raising more than 32.7 billion Moroccan Dirhams ($3.2 billion). The Ministry of Finance will begin to make cash transfers to vulnerable citizens, and especially those who have lost their jobs. However, the stipulations surrounding these cash transfers will be decided in the coming weeks.Updates about the virus are communicated daily by the Ministry of Health, despite growing criticism of its communication strategy. As of 4 April, Moroccan authorities have confirmed 883 cases and 58 deaths.Call for national unityIn times like these, there is a call for unity in the face of a national and global crisis, and opposition groups such as Adl wal Ihssan and Rif activists have expressed their support for government measures and have encouraged people to follow the new guidelines and restrictions. However, despite calls to release political prisoners, Moroccan authorities have not indicated that they will do so. This is a missed opportunity vis-à-vis the opposition because it could have served as a way to further strengthen national unity during the crisis.These are all promising signs and point to what is likely to be a short-term burst in unity and institutional trust. However, the institutional weaknesses in governance and the healthcare system have not disappeared, which is why this increase in institutional trust should be taken with a grain of salt.Public trust issuesThis pandemic poses tremendous challenges for governments across the globe, and this holds especially true for states in the Middle East and North Africa region, where citizens do not approve of government performance and do not trust key state institutions. The 2019 Arab Barometer survey found that Moroccans do not trust most of the country’s political institutions (notably the parliament and the Council of Ministers) and the level of satisfaction with the government’s performance remains extremely low.On the public health front, as shown in two of MIPA’s recent surveys, trust in the healthcare system is also very low. Around three-quarters of those surveyed do not trust Moroccan hospitals, highlighting the acute structural problems in the healthcare system. In fact, there is a stark divide between private and public healthcare, as well as a huge gap in access to healthcare facilities between urban and rural areas. Most of the country’s hospitals and doctors are located in major urban areas and the only three laboratories with capabilities for COVID-19 testing are located in Rabat and Casablanca, but even there, testing capacity is very limited.Similar to other countries, there could be a major shortage of doctors and medical equipment throughout Morocco. So far, the Ministry of Finance has said that 2 billion dirhams of the emergency fund will go towards purchasing medical equipment such as beds, ventilators, tests, prevention kits and radiology equipment, but the timeline remains unclear.A vulnerable economyThere is significant concern about the medium- and long-term economic impact of the virus. Two of the country’s key economic sectors have already been hit hard: agriculture and tourism. The agricultural sector was already struggling due to the impact of drought, while the coronavirus pandemic is likely to impact Morocco’s tourism industry not just this year, but well into 2021. In terms of government response, the emergency fund is a strong start, but questions surrounding the management of these funds have already been raised.The most vulnerable parts of the population have been affected by the economic crisis because of the country’s bulging informal sector – in which most people work - and a very weak private sector. In fact, two-thirds of the workforce are not covered by a pension plan, almost half of the working population does not currently benefit from medical coverage and there is no social care system for vulnerable parts of the population. As of 1 April, more than 700,000 workers have lost their jobs.Moving forward?Even if public perceptions of the government’s response are positive at the moment, this is most likely a short-term surge that should not be taken for granted. Despite the efforts made by the government, Morocco’s health system is not equipped to handle this crisis. Even with the new measures that have been implemented, if the spread of the virus gets out of control, more funds, more doctors, and more equipment will be needed. Given the structural weaknesses of the healthcare system, this will be an uphill battle.Moreover, even if the government manages to mitigate the public health impact, the economic consequences will be dire—especially in the tourism industry—and will severely hurt those workers in the informal sector who are living without a safety net. In Morocco, this category represents most of the working population.This crisis highlights that the Moroccan government must urgently tackle its large portfolio of unfinished reforms, notably in healthcare, the economy, and labour rights. So far, the government is capitalizing on the spirit of unity, social solidarity and public support. The future trajectory of the pandemic and the effectiveness of governance will determine if this spirit of solidarity will last. If the government fails to effectively mitigate the public health and economic impacts of this pandemic, this solidarity and cooperation will not last long. Full Article
isis Same Old Politics Will Not Solve Iraq Water Crisis By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 15:36:21 +0000 15 April 2020 Georgia Cooke Project Manager, Middle East and North Africa Programme Dr Renad Mansour Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme; Project Director, Iraq Initiative @renadmansour Glada Lahn Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme @Glada_Lahn Addressing Iraq’s water crisis should be a priority for any incoming prime minister as it is damaging the country’s attempts to rebuild. But successive governments have allowed the problem to fester. 2020-04-15-Iraq-Water Punting in the marshes south of the Iraqi city of Ammarah. Photo by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images. Historically, Iraq lay claim to one of the most abundant water supplies in the Middle East. But the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has reduced by up to 40% since the 1970s, due in part to the actions of neighbouring countries, in particular Turkey, upstream.Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall due to climate change are also negatively impacting Iraq’s water reserves. Evaporation from dams and reservoirs is estimated to lose the country up to 8 billion cubic metres of water every year.A threat to peace and stabilityShortages have dried up previously fertile land, increasing poverty in agricultural areas. Shortages have also served to fuel conflict: communities faced with successive droughts and government inertia proved to be easy targets for ISIS recruiters, who lured farmers into joining them by offering money and food to feed their families. Economic hardship for those whose livelihoods relied upon river water has also driven rural to urban migration, putting significant strain on already over-populated towns and cities, exacerbating housing, job and electricity shortages, and widening the gap between haves and have-nots.But scarcity isn’t the most crucial element of Iraq’s water crisis – contamination is. Decades of local government mismanagement, corrupt practices and a lack of regulation of dumping (it is estimated up to 70% of Iraq’s industrial waste is dumped directly into water) has left approximately three in every five citizens without a reliable source of potable water.In 2018, 118,000 residents of Basra province were hospitalised with symptoms brought on by drinking contaminated water, which not only put a spotlight on the inadequacies of a crumbling healthcare system but sparked mass protests and a subsequent violent crackdown.The water crisis is also undermining the stability of the country’s federal governance model, by occasionally sparking disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as between governorates in the south.The crisis is both a symptom and a cause of poor governance. Iraq is stuck in a cycle whereby government inaction causes shortages and contamination, which result in economic losses, reduced food supply, increased prices and widespread poor health. This in turn leads to increasing levels of poverty, higher demand on services and civil unrest, increasing the pressure on a weak, dysfunctional system of government.What can be done?The first priority should be modernising existing water-management infrastructure - a relic of a time when the problem was an excess rather than a shortage of water (the last time Iraq’s flood defences were required was 1968). Bureaucratic hurdles, widespread corruption and an endless cycle of other crises taking precedent prevent good initiatives from being implemented or scaled up.Diversifying energy sources to improve provision is crucial. Baghdad has a sewage treatment plant that originally ran on its own electricity source, but this capacity was destroyed in 1991 and was never replaced. The city continues to suffer from dangerous levels of water pollution because the electricity supply from the grid is insufficient to power the plant. Solar energy has great potential in sun-drenched Iraq to bridge the gaping hole in energy provision, but successive governments have chosen to focus on fossil fuels rather than promoting investment to grow the renewables sector.Heightened tension with upstream Turkey could turn water into another cause of regional conflict. But, if approached differently, collaboration between Iraq and its neighbour could foster regional harmony.Turkey’s elevated geography and cooler climate mean its water reserves suffer 75% less evaporation than Iraq’s. Given that Turkey’s top energy priority is the diversification of its supply of imported hydrocarbons, a win-win deal could see Turkey exchange access to its water-management infrastructure for delivery of reduced cost energy supplies from Iraq.German-French cooperation on coal and steel in the 1950s and the evolution of economic integration that followed might provide a model for how bilateral cooperation over one issue could result in cooperation with other regional players (in this case Iran and Syria) on a range of other issues. This kind of model would need to consider the future of energy, whereby oil and gas would be replaced by solar-power exports.These solutions have been open to policymakers for years and yet they have taken little tangible action. While there are leaders and bureaucrats with the will to act, effective action is invariably blocked by a complex and opaque political system replete with vested interests in maintaining power and wealth via a weak state and limited services from central government.Breaking the cycleTo break this cycle, Iraq needs a group of professional and able actors outside of government to work with willing elements of the state bureaucracy as a taskforce to pressure for action and accountability. Publishing the recommendations from a hitherto withheld report produced in the aftermath of Basra’s 2018 heath crisis would be a great start.In time, this taskforce could champion the prioritisation of water on the national agenda, the implementation of infrastructure upgrades, and hold more productive conversations with neighbour states.With such a high degree of state fragmentation and dysfunction in Iraq, looking to the central government to provide leadership will not yield results. Engagement with a coalition of non-state actors can begin to address the water crisis and also open a dialogue around new models of governance for other critical issues. This might even be a starting point for rewriting the tattered social contract in Iraq.This piece is based on insights and discussion at a roundtable event, Conflict and the Water Crisis in Iraq, held at Chatham House on March 9 as part of the Iraq Initiative. Full Article
isis Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Transitional Justice for the Victims of ISIS in Syria By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 15:50:01 +0000 28 April 2020 This paper aims to assist the region’s local authorities, and their key foreign backers, in understanding how transitional justice can provide alternative avenues for holding local ISIS members to account while contributing to the healing of communities. Read online Download PDF Haid Haid Senior Consulting Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme @HaidHaid22 2020-04-28-Syria-prison.jpg A fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces monitors prisoners accused of being affiliated with ISIS, at a prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hassakeh on 25 October 2019. Photo: Getty Images. SummaryFollowing the territorial defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in the region is now grappling with the task of quickly dealing with thousands of the group’s detained members while bringing justice to their victims. To that end, local authorities are focusing on the use of counterterrorism laws and courts to charge captured ISIS members and determine their guilt accordingly.The piecemeal approach to justice is deeply flawed, and raises particular concerns about due process. No precise instruments exist to determine the personal responsibility of ISIS individuals for specific crimes, or for their role in war crimes committed by the group. In any event, the scale of the crimes and the number of victims – as well as severe shortages of resources and workers – make dispensation of justice extremely difficult through the traditional legal system.Not all detained ISIS members receive prison sentences. Individuals who did not hold senior roles in the group’s apparatus and are not accused of ‘major’ crimes (in practice, largely defined as fighting for ISIS and murder) are being released under limited reconciliation deals with tribal leaders. But the involvement of local community leaders in those efforts is not enough to ensure positive results. Many victims are upset at seeing ISIS members walk free without even admitting their guilt publicly or apologizing for the pain they caused.To overcome the limitations of the current, counterterrorism-focused framework, a ‘transitional justice’ approach could provide judicial and non-judicial instruments to establish accountability for ISIS crimes and reduce community resistance to the reintegration of group members. A combination of non-judicial mechanisms such as truth commissions, missing persons’ committees, and reparations and victim-healing programmes could play a vital role in providing ISIS victims with a sense of justice while contributing to peacebuilding and stability.Ignoring the urgency of developing a long-term plan to serve justice and contribute to community healing will almost certainly allow ISIS to continue to prevent the recovery and development of northeastern Syria. This, in turn, risks undermining the stability of the country and the region at large. Department/project Middle East and North Africa Programme Full Article
isis Webinar: Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Transitional Justice for the Victims of ISIS in Syria By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 09:05:01 +0000 Research Event 12 May 2020 - 2:00pm to 3:00pmAdd to CalendariCalendar Outlook Google Yahoo Haid Haid, Senior Consulting Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham HouseSara Kayyali, Syria Researcher, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights WatchModerator: Lina Khatib, Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House You can register your interest here. Alternatively, you can watch the webinar live on the MENA Programme Facebook page.Following the territorial defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in the region is now grappling with the task of quickly dealing with thousands of the group’s detained members while bringing justice to their victims. To that end, local authorities are focusing on the use of counterterrorism laws and courts to charge captured ISIS members and determine their guilt accordingly.In a recent research paper, author Haid Haid argues that this approach to justice is deeply flawed as it raises concerns about due process and lacks the precise instruments to determine the personal responsibility of ISIS individuals for specific crimes, or for their role in war crimes committed by the group. The paper proposes that a ‘transitional justice’ approach could provide judicial and non-judicial instruments to establish accountability for ISIS crimes and reduce community resistance to the reintegration of group members.In this webinar, part of the MENA Programme’s Online Event Series, speakers will examine the benefits of such an approach to justice for overcoming the limitations of the current, counterterrorism-focused framework. Panelists will discuss the alternative mechanisms local authorities and their key foreign backers can use to hold local ISIS members to account while contributing to the healing of communities. The event will be held on the record. Reni Zhelyazkova Programme Coordinator, Middle East and North Africa Programme +44 (0)20 7314 3624 Email Department/project Middle East and North Africa Programme, Syria from Within Full Article
Reni Zhelyazkova Programme Coordinator, Middle East and North Africa Programme +44 (0)20 7314 3624 Email
isis COVID-19 Crisis – Business as Usual for Gaza? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 14:48:14 +0000 6 May 2020 Mohammed Abdalfatah Asfari Foundation Academy Fellow @mhalabi258 LinkedIn The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges, economic collapse and strict lockdowns in many parts of the world. For the people of Gaza, this reality is nothing new. 2020-05-06-covid-19-gaza.jpg Palestinians light fireworks above the rubble during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Gaza City , 30 April 2020. Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images. In August 2012, when the UN released its report Gaza in 2020: A liveable place?, they could not have imagined what the world would look like in 2020: cities under lockdown, restrictions on movement, border closures, widespread unemployment, economic collapse, fear and anxiety and, above all, uncertainty about what the future holds.For Gaza’s population of 2 million people this reality is nothing new. The conditions that the rest of the world are currently experiencing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is similar to the tight blockade Gaza has been living under ever since Hamas took over in 2007. Israel has imposed severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods, youth unemployment has reached 60 per cent, and over 80 per cent of Gaza’s population are now dependent on international aid.The people of Gaza are having to face the COVID-19 crisis already at a disadvantage, with poor infrastructure, limited resources and a shortage of the most basic services, such as water and power supply. It also has a fragile health system, with hospitals lacking essential medical supplies and equipment, as well as the capacity to deal with the outbreak as there are only 84 ICU beds and ventilators available. Meanwhile, intra-Palestinian divisions have persisted and were evident in the initial reaction to the pandemic. When President Mahmoud Abbas announced a state of emergency, it took two days for the Hamas-led government in Gaza to follow suit and shut down schools and universities. They later made a separate emergency appeal to address the crisis and prepare for a COVID-19 response in Gaza. This lack of coordination is typical of the way the Palestinian Authority and Hamas approach crisis situations.After the initial uncoordinated response, Hamas, as the de-facto ruler of Gaza, has asserted its ability to control Gaza’s borders by putting in place quarantine measures for everyone who enters the strip, whether through the Erez checkpoint with Israel or the Rafah border with Egypt. They have also assigned 21 hospitals, hotels, and schools as compulsory quarantine centres for all arrivals from abroad, who have to stay in quarantine for 21 days. In comparison, there are 20 quarantine centres in the West Bank. These strict measures have prevented the spread of the virus in the community and confined it to the quarantine centres, with only 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of 6 May. Gaza’s de-facto authorities have also been able to monitor markets and prices to ensure the availability of essential goods.Faced with a major crisis, Al-Qassam Brigades – the armed wing of Hamas – have tried to play the role of a national army by participating in efforts to fight the pandemic. They have relatively good logistical capacity and have contributed to the construction of two quarantine facilities with a total capacity of 1,000 units to prepare for more arrivals into Gaza. At the local level, municipalities have been disinfecting public spaces and facilities in addition to disseminating information about the virus and related preventative and protective measures. Other precautionary measures put in place include closing the weekly open markets, and restricting social gatherings like weddings and funerals.Despite COVID-19, it’s business as usual when it comes to international dealings with Gaza. The key parties in the conflict – Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – along with the main external actors – Egypt, the United Nations and Qatar – have continued to stick to their policies aimed at keeping the security situation under control and preventing further escalation. Although Israel has allowed entry of pharmaceutical supplies and medical equipment into Gaza during the pandemic, it has kept its restrictions on the movement of goods and people in place, while keeping a close eye on the development of the COVID-19 outbreak in Gaza – a major outbreak here would be a nightmare scenario for Israel.Meanwhile, Qatar has continued to address the humanitarian and economic needs of Gaza in an attempt to ease the pressure and prevent further escalation. It has pledged $150 million over the next six months to help families in Gaza from poorer backgrounds. Gaza has also been discussed by the Middle East Quartet, as Nickolay Mladenov, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, expressed his concern about the risk of a disease outbreak in Gaza during a call with the members of the Quartet.Amid the pandemic, threats are still being exchanged between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli defence minister, Naftali Bennett, requested that in return for providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, Hamas agrees to return the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 war. While openly rejecting Bennett's statement, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has offered to move forward with a prisoner swap deal if Israel agrees to release elderly prisoners and detainees in addition to detained women and children. Though dealing with its own COVID-19 outbreak, Egypt has started to mediate between the two parties in an attempt to stabilize the situation and reach a prisoner swap deal.In the wake of this pandemic, lessons should be learned and policies should be examined, by all parties. Firstly, Israel should re-evaluate its security measures towards Gaza by easing restrictions on movement and trade which would have a positive impact on living conditions for Gaza’s population. The current measures have proven to be unsustainable and have contributed to the endless cycle of violence. Secondly, the intra-Palestinian division should end, to save Palestinians from contradictory policies and insufficient capacity on both sides. In fact, all previous attempts have failed to end this self-destructive division and this is due to the absence of political will on both sides. Elections seem to be the only viable path towards unity. Finally, efforts by the international community should go beyond stabilizing the security situation and ongoing crisis inside Gaza, where disruption of normal life is the norm.While the world has reacted to this pandemic with a whole host of new policies and emergency measures, it has remained business as usual when dealing with Gaza. Should COVID-19 spread in Gaza, its people – who have already paid the price of a continuous blockade and intra-Palestinian division for 13 years – will pay a heavy price yet again. However, this time it is not a crisis that they alone will have to face. Full Article
isis Coronavirus Risks Worsening a Food Crisis in the Sahel and West Africa By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 01 May 2020 14:20:52 +0000 1 May 2020 Dr Leena Koni Hoffmann Associate Fellow, Africa Programme @leenahoffmann LinkedIn Paul Melly Consulting Fellow, Africa Programme @paulmelly2 In responding to the spread of the coronavirus, the governments of the Sahel and West Africa will need to draw on their collective experience of strategic coordination in emergency planning, and work together to prioritize the flow of food across borders. 2020-05-01-Africa-Market-Virus An informal market in the Anyama district of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, is sanitized against the coronavirus. Photo by SIA KAMBOU/AFP via Getty Images. The COVID-19 pandemic has struck the Sahel and West Africa at a time when the region is already under severe pressure from violent insecurity and the effects of climate change on its land, food and water resources.By the end of April, there had been 9,513 confirmed coronavirus cases across the 17 countries of the region, and some 231 deaths, with the highest overall numbers recorded in Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Niger and Burkina Faso. Low testing rates mean than these numbers give only a partial picture.The Food Crisis Prevention Network (RPCA) forecast in early April that almost 17 million people in the Sahel and West Africa (7.1 million in Nigeria alone) will need food and nutritional assistance during the coming lean season in June–August, more than double the number in an average year. The combined impact of violent insecurity and COVID-19 could put more than 50 million other people across the region at risk of food and nutrition crisis.Rippling across the regionThe effects of the collapse in global commodity prices, currency depreciations, rising costs of consumer goods and disruptions to supply chains are rippling across the region. And for major oil-exporting countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Chad and Cameroon, the wipe-out of foreign currency earnings will hammer government revenues just as the cost of food and other critical imports goes up. It is likely that the number of people who suffer the direct health impact of the coronavirus will be far outstripped by the number for whom there will be harsh social and economic costs.In recent years, valuable protocols and capacities have been put in place by governments in West and Central Africa in response to Ebola and other infectious disease outbreaks.But inadequate healthcare funding and infrastructure across this region compound the challenge of responding to the spread of the COVID-19 infection – which is testing the resources of even the world’s best-funded public health systems.Over many years, however, the region has steadily built up structures to tackle humanitarian and development challenges, particularly as regards food security. It has an established system for assessing the risk of food crisis annually and coordinating emergency support to vulnerable communities. Each country monitors climate and weather patterns, transhumance, market systems and agricultural statistics, and terrorist disruption of agricultural productivity, from local community to national and regional level.The system is coordinated and quality-controlled, using common technical data standards, by the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), a regional intergovernmental body established in 1973 in response to a devastating drought. Collective risk assessments allow emergency support to be mobilized through the RPCA.For almost three months already, countries in Sahelian West Africa have been working with the World Health Organization to prepare national COVID-19 response strategies and strengthen health controls at their borders. Almost all governments have also opted for domestic curfews, and variations of lockdown and market restrictions.Senegal has been a leader in rapidly developing Africa’s diagnostic capacity, and plans are under way to speed up production of test kits. Niger was swift to develop a national response strategy, to which donors have pledged €194.5 million. While the IMF has agreed emergency financial assistance to help countries address the urgent balance-of-payments, health and social programme needs linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, signing off $3.4 billion for Nigeria, $442 million for Senegal and $130 million for Mauritania.Steps are also now being taken towards the formulation of a more joined-up regional approach. Notably, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has been chosen by an extraordinary session of the Economic Community of West African States to coordinate the regional response to COVID-19. As Africa’s biggest economy and home to its largest population, Nigeria is a critical hub for transnational flows of goods and people. Its controversial August 2019 land border closure, in a bid to address smuggling, has already painfully disrupted regional agri-food trade and value chains. The active engagement of the Buhari administration will thus be crucial to the success of a multifaceted regional response.One of the first tough questions the region’s governments must collectively address is how long to maintain the border shutdowns that were imposed as an initial measure to curb the spread of the virus. Closed borders are detrimental to food security, and disruptive to supply chains and the livelihoods of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs that rely on cross-border trade. The impact of prolonged closures will be all the more profound in a region where welfare systems are largely non-existent or, at best, highly precarious.Nigeria, in particular, with more than 95 million people already living in extreme poverty, might do well to explore measures to avoid putting food further beyond the reach of people who are seeing their purchasing power evaporate.In taking further actions to control the spread of the coronavirus, the region’s governments will need to show faith in the system that they have painstakingly developed to monitor and respond to the annual risk of food crisis across the Sahel. This system, and the critical data it offers, will be vital to informing interventions to strengthen the four components of food security – availability, access, stability and utilization – in the context of COVID-19, and for charting a post-pandemic path of recovery.Above all, careful steps will need to be put in place to ensure that preventing the spread of the coronavirus does not come at the cost of even greater food insecurity for the people of the Sahel and West Africa. The region’s governments must prioritize the flow of food across borders and renew their commitment to strategic coordination and alignment. Full Article
isis Financial Markets: Lessons Learned Since the Financial Crisis and What the Future Holds By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 10:00:02 +0000 Invitation Only Research Event 2 September 2019 - 5:15pm to 6:30pm Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE Event participants Professor Robert Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale UniversityChair: Marianne Schneider-Petsinger, Research Fellow, US and the Americas Programme Chatham House The 2007-08 financial crisis wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people across the globe, and upended the faith of many in the prevailing economic system, with many countries still recovering a decade on.Drawing on extensive research in his new book, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events, Professor Shiller will draw on a rich array of historical examples and data and outline a new way to think about economic change, and the narratives that shape it, to provide answers to questions such as whether lessons have been learned since the last financial crisis, are the same dislocations likely to occur again and what toolkits, if any, are there for anticipating the next financial crisis or recession?Attendance at this event is by invitation only. Event attributes Chatham House Rule Department/project US and the Americas Programme US and Americas Programme Email Full Article
isis Chinese Overseas Direct Investment and the Economic Crisis: Reaching Out By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 24 Mar 2020 09:54:24 +0000 1 January 2009 , Number 5 Decisions taken today will determine the course of events for a generation. Nowhere is this truer than over the question of China’s investment abroad. This issue lies at the heart of what part the country will play in the global finance and trade system, and how it will work with the rest of the world in laying the foundations for longer term growth and stability after the current crisis is over. Professor Kerry Brown Associate Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme @Bkerrychina LinkedIn Google Scholar Peter Wood Independent China strategist based in Hong Kong HaierFlickr.jpg Chinese companies establish a presence abroad. Full Article
isis Can Morocco Effectively Handle the COVID-19 Crisis? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 06 Apr 2020 09:10:24 +0000 6 April 2020 Dr Mohammed Masbah Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme @MasbahMohammed LinkedIn Google Scholar Anna Jacobs Senior Research Assistant, Brookings Doha Center The Moroccan government is capitalizing on a burst of unity, social solidarity and public support in the face of a crisis. However, if it fails to effectively mitigate the public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, this spirit of solidarity and cooperation will not last long. GettyImages-1208907580.jpg A general view of empty stores during curfew as a precaution against the new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Rabat, Morocco on 1 April 2020. Photo by Jalal Morchidi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images. In Morocco, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased public trust in government, but people still have doubts about the effectiveness of the healthcare system. According to a recent study conducted by the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis (MIPA), the majority of Moroccans surveyed are generally satisfied with the measures taken by the government to battle the coronavirus. However, the same survey also shows that Moroccans do not have confidence in the healthcare sector’s ability to respond to this pandemic.The positive perceptions of the government’s response can be explained by the swift and strict measures enacted. King Mohammed VI held a high-level meeting with the prime minister, the minister of health, and top security officials on 17 March and a few days later, on 20 March, the Moroccan government declared a state of health emergency and began to implement aggressive measures to contain the virus.This has included closing airports, schools, mosques, cafés and shops – with the exception of food markets – preventing large gatherings, as well as strict guidelines to ensure social distancing. As of 2 April, nearly 5000 people have been arrested for violating the state of health emergency.In order to address urgent medical needs and to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic, the King ordered the creation of an emergency fund, raising more than 32.7 billion Moroccan Dirhams ($3.2 billion). The Ministry of Finance will begin to make cash transfers to vulnerable citizens, and especially those who have lost their jobs. However, the stipulations surrounding these cash transfers will be decided in the coming weeks.Updates about the virus are communicated daily by the Ministry of Health, despite growing criticism of its communication strategy. As of 4 April, Moroccan authorities have confirmed 883 cases and 58 deaths.Call for national unityIn times like these, there is a call for unity in the face of a national and global crisis, and opposition groups such as Adl wal Ihssan and Rif activists have expressed their support for government measures and have encouraged people to follow the new guidelines and restrictions. However, despite calls to release political prisoners, Moroccan authorities have not indicated that they will do so. This is a missed opportunity vis-à-vis the opposition because it could have served as a way to further strengthen national unity during the crisis.These are all promising signs and point to what is likely to be a short-term burst in unity and institutional trust. However, the institutional weaknesses in governance and the healthcare system have not disappeared, which is why this increase in institutional trust should be taken with a grain of salt.Public trust issuesThis pandemic poses tremendous challenges for governments across the globe, and this holds especially true for states in the Middle East and North Africa region, where citizens do not approve of government performance and do not trust key state institutions. The 2019 Arab Barometer survey found that Moroccans do not trust most of the country’s political institutions (notably the parliament and the Council of Ministers) and the level of satisfaction with the government’s performance remains extremely low.On the public health front, as shown in two of MIPA’s recent surveys, trust in the healthcare system is also very low. Around three-quarters of those surveyed do not trust Moroccan hospitals, highlighting the acute structural problems in the healthcare system. In fact, there is a stark divide between private and public healthcare, as well as a huge gap in access to healthcare facilities between urban and rural areas. Most of the country’s hospitals and doctors are located in major urban areas and the only three laboratories with capabilities for COVID-19 testing are located in Rabat and Casablanca, but even there, testing capacity is very limited.Similar to other countries, there could be a major shortage of doctors and medical equipment throughout Morocco. So far, the Ministry of Finance has said that 2 billion dirhams of the emergency fund will go towards purchasing medical equipment such as beds, ventilators, tests, prevention kits and radiology equipment, but the timeline remains unclear.A vulnerable economyThere is significant concern about the medium- and long-term economic impact of the virus. Two of the country’s key economic sectors have already been hit hard: agriculture and tourism. The agricultural sector was already struggling due to the impact of drought, while the coronavirus pandemic is likely to impact Morocco’s tourism industry not just this year, but well into 2021. In terms of government response, the emergency fund is a strong start, but questions surrounding the management of these funds have already been raised.The most vulnerable parts of the population have been affected by the economic crisis because of the country’s bulging informal sector – in which most people work - and a very weak private sector. In fact, two-thirds of the workforce are not covered by a pension plan, almost half of the working population does not currently benefit from medical coverage and there is no social care system for vulnerable parts of the population. As of 1 April, more than 700,000 workers have lost their jobs.Moving forward?Even if public perceptions of the government’s response are positive at the moment, this is most likely a short-term surge that should not be taken for granted. Despite the efforts made by the government, Morocco’s health system is not equipped to handle this crisis. Even with the new measures that have been implemented, if the spread of the virus gets out of control, more funds, more doctors, and more equipment will be needed. Given the structural weaknesses of the healthcare system, this will be an uphill battle.Moreover, even if the government manages to mitigate the public health impact, the economic consequences will be dire—especially in the tourism industry—and will severely hurt those workers in the informal sector who are living without a safety net. In Morocco, this category represents most of the working population.This crisis highlights that the Moroccan government must urgently tackle its large portfolio of unfinished reforms, notably in healthcare, the economy, and labour rights. So far, the government is capitalizing on the spirit of unity, social solidarity and public support. The future trajectory of the pandemic and the effectiveness of governance will determine if this spirit of solidarity will last. If the government fails to effectively mitigate the public health and economic impacts of this pandemic, this solidarity and cooperation will not last long. Full Article
isis COVID-19: America's Looming Election Crisis By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 08:31:53 +0000 8 April 2020 Dr Lindsay Newman Senior Research Fellow, US and the Americas Programme @lindsayrsnewman LinkedIn Planning now is essential to ensure the legitimacy of November’s elections is not impacted by COVID-19, as vulnerabilities are becoming ever more apparent if voting in person is restricted. 2020-04-08-COVID-US-election Roadside voting in Madison, Wisconsin in April 2020. Because of coronavirus, the number of polling places was drastically reduced. Photo by Andy Manis/Getty Images. The COVID-19 epidemic has hit every aspect of American life. The upcoming November general elections will not be immune to the virus’ impact and may be scheduled to happen while the pandemic remains active, or has returned.There is a danger the epidemic forces change to the way voting takes place this fall, amplifying risks around election security and voter suppression that ultimately undermine the integrity of the elections.This is further highlighted by the US Supreme Court’s last-minute ruling along ideological lines to restrict an extension on the absentee voting period in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary despite the level of infections in the state, forcing voters into a trade-off between their health and their right to vote. The US could be thrown into a political crisis in addition to the health and economic crises it already faces.Bipartisan sentimentWhile France, Chile and Bolivia have already postponed elections in the wake of COVID-19, there is a bipartisan sentiment that the US elections should be held as scheduled on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This is enshrined not only in America’s sense of itself – having weathered elections during a civil war, a world war and heightened terrorist alert before – but also in its federal law since 1845.Despite increasing appetite for federal elections to go ahead in November, there are serious vulnerabilities, which are already becoming visible as connections are drawn between mail-in voting and voter fraud, greater voter access and disadvantages for the Republican party, and city polling closures and Democratic voter suppression.Concerns around voting access have gained the most attention. If voting in-person is untenable or risky (especially for vulnerable health populations), voters must have alternative means to cast ballots.During negotiations for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives proposed $4 billion in state election grants and a nationally-mandated period for early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.But the final CARES Act sidestepped the access question and stripped funding to $400 million for election security grants to ‘prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 Federal election cycle’. Without knowing exactly what is in store from a cyber-threat perspective, the actual cost for basic election security upgrades is estimated to be $2.1billion. And that is a pre-COVID-19 calculation.With social-distanced voters likely to be getting more election information than ever from social media, information security is critical to prevent influence from untrustworthy sources. And opportunities for cyber intrusions are likely to increase as states transition to greater virtual registration, plus absentee and mail-in balloting.This will open new doors on well-documented, existing voter suppression efforts. With the Supreme Court clawing back the Voting Rights Act in 2013 - allowing certain states to make changes to election and voting laws without federal pre-clearance - heightened election security requirements, such as exact match campaigns and voter purges, have been used to justify voter suppression.As more vote remotely in the remaining primaries (many now rescheduled for 2 June) and the November general elections, the added burden on states around verification will only increase temptation to set aside ‘non-compliant’ ballots. Especially as some in the Republican Party, including Donald Trump, have advocated a contested view that higher turnout favours the Democratic Party.A fundamental principle of US democracy is that losers of elections respect the result, but history shows that election results have been contested. In 2000, it took weeks for a result to be confirmed in the presidential election. More recently, in the 2018 race for governor in Georgia, allegations of voter suppression raised questions about the validity of the eventual result.Without proper access, security, and verification the electoral process – whenever it takes place – will become vulnerable to questions of integrity. The federal response to the initial spread of COVID-19 saw costly delays which pushed the US into a public health crisis and economic contraction.Any narrative thread of election illegitimacy with November’s elections will further pull apart the fabric of a country already frayed by coronavirus. Federal and state authorities must start planning now for how the US will hold elections in the midst - or immediate aftermath - of COVID-19. Full Article
isis Same Old Politics Will Not Solve Iraq Water Crisis By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 15:36:21 +0000 15 April 2020 Georgia Cooke Project Manager, Middle East and North Africa Programme Dr Renad Mansour Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme; Project Director, Iraq Initiative @renadmansour Glada Lahn Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme @Glada_Lahn Addressing Iraq’s water crisis should be a priority for any incoming prime minister as it is damaging the country’s attempts to rebuild. But successive governments have allowed the problem to fester. 2020-04-15-Iraq-Water Punting in the marshes south of the Iraqi city of Ammarah. Photo by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images. Historically, Iraq lay claim to one of the most abundant water supplies in the Middle East. But the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has reduced by up to 40% since the 1970s, due in part to the actions of neighbouring countries, in particular Turkey, upstream.Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall due to climate change are also negatively impacting Iraq’s water reserves. Evaporation from dams and reservoirs is estimated to lose the country up to 8 billion cubic metres of water every year.A threat to peace and stabilityShortages have dried up previously fertile land, increasing poverty in agricultural areas. Shortages have also served to fuel conflict: communities faced with successive droughts and government inertia proved to be easy targets for ISIS recruiters, who lured farmers into joining them by offering money and food to feed their families. Economic hardship for those whose livelihoods relied upon river water has also driven rural to urban migration, putting significant strain on already over-populated towns and cities, exacerbating housing, job and electricity shortages, and widening the gap between haves and have-nots.But scarcity isn’t the most crucial element of Iraq’s water crisis – contamination is. Decades of local government mismanagement, corrupt practices and a lack of regulation of dumping (it is estimated up to 70% of Iraq’s industrial waste is dumped directly into water) has left approximately three in every five citizens without a reliable source of potable water.In 2018, 118,000 residents of Basra province were hospitalised with symptoms brought on by drinking contaminated water, which not only put a spotlight on the inadequacies of a crumbling healthcare system but sparked mass protests and a subsequent violent crackdown.The water crisis is also undermining the stability of the country’s federal governance model, by occasionally sparking disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as between governorates in the south.The crisis is both a symptom and a cause of poor governance. Iraq is stuck in a cycle whereby government inaction causes shortages and contamination, which result in economic losses, reduced food supply, increased prices and widespread poor health. This in turn leads to increasing levels of poverty, higher demand on services and civil unrest, increasing the pressure on a weak, dysfunctional system of government.What can be done?The first priority should be modernising existing water-management infrastructure - a relic of a time when the problem was an excess rather than a shortage of water (the last time Iraq’s flood defences were required was 1968). Bureaucratic hurdles, widespread corruption and an endless cycle of other crises taking precedent prevent good initiatives from being implemented or scaled up.Diversifying energy sources to improve provision is crucial. Baghdad has a sewage treatment plant that originally ran on its own electricity source, but this capacity was destroyed in 1991 and was never replaced. The city continues to suffer from dangerous levels of water pollution because the electricity supply from the grid is insufficient to power the plant. Solar energy has great potential in sun-drenched Iraq to bridge the gaping hole in energy provision, but successive governments have chosen to focus on fossil fuels rather than promoting investment to grow the renewables sector.Heightened tension with upstream Turkey could turn water into another cause of regional conflict. But, if approached differently, collaboration between Iraq and its neighbour could foster regional harmony.Turkey’s elevated geography and cooler climate mean its water reserves suffer 75% less evaporation than Iraq’s. Given that Turkey’s top energy priority is the diversification of its supply of imported hydrocarbons, a win-win deal could see Turkey exchange access to its water-management infrastructure for delivery of reduced cost energy supplies from Iraq.German-French cooperation on coal and steel in the 1950s and the evolution of economic integration that followed might provide a model for how bilateral cooperation over one issue could result in cooperation with other regional players (in this case Iran and Syria) on a range of other issues. This kind of model would need to consider the future of energy, whereby oil and gas would be replaced by solar-power exports.These solutions have been open to policymakers for years and yet they have taken little tangible action. While there are leaders and bureaucrats with the will to act, effective action is invariably blocked by a complex and opaque political system replete with vested interests in maintaining power and wealth via a weak state and limited services from central government.Breaking the cycleTo break this cycle, Iraq needs a group of professional and able actors outside of government to work with willing elements of the state bureaucracy as a taskforce to pressure for action and accountability. Publishing the recommendations from a hitherto withheld report produced in the aftermath of Basra’s 2018 heath crisis would be a great start.In time, this taskforce could champion the prioritisation of water on the national agenda, the implementation of infrastructure upgrades, and hold more productive conversations with neighbour states.With such a high degree of state fragmentation and dysfunction in Iraq, looking to the central government to provide leadership will not yield results. Engagement with a coalition of non-state actors can begin to address the water crisis and also open a dialogue around new models of governance for other critical issues. This might even be a starting point for rewriting the tattered social contract in Iraq.This piece is based on insights and discussion at a roundtable event, Conflict and the Water Crisis in Iraq, held at Chatham House on March 9 as part of the Iraq Initiative. Full Article
isis Legal Provision for Crisis Preparedness: Foresight not Hindsight By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:03:31 +0000 21 April 2020 Dr Patricia Lewis Research Director, Conflict, Science & Transformation; Director, International Security Programme @PatriciaMary COVID-19 is proving to be a grave threat to humanity. But this is not a one-off, there will be future crises, and we can be better prepared to mitigate them. 2020-04-21-Nurse-COVID-Test Examining a patient while testing for COVID-19 at the Velocity Urgent Care in Woodbridge, Virginia. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. A controversial debate during COVID-19 is the state of readiness within governments and health systems for a pandemic, with lines of the debate drawn on the issues of testing provision, personal protective equipment (PPE), and the speed of decision-making.President Macron in a speech to the nation admitted French medical workers did not have enough PPE and that mistakes had been made: ‘Were we prepared for this crisis? We have to say that no, we weren’t, but we have to admit our errors … and we will learn from this’.In reality few governments were fully prepared. In years to come, all will ask: ‘how could we have been better prepared, what did we do wrong, and what can we learn?’. But after every crisis, governments ask these same questions.Most countries have put in place national risk assessments and established processes and systems to monitor and stress-test crisis-preparedness. So why have some countries been seemingly better prepared?Comparing different approachesSome have had more time and been able to watch the spread of the disease and learn from those countries that had it first. Others have taken their own routes, and there will be much to learn from comparing these different approaches in the longer run.Governments in Asia have been strongly influenced by the experience of the SARS epidemic in 2002-3 and - South Korea in particular - the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015 which was the largest outside the Middle East. Several carried out preparatory work in terms of risk assessment, preparedness measures and resilience planning for a wide range of threats.Case Study of Preparedness: South KoreaBy 2007, South Korea had established the Division of Public Health Crisis Response in Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and, in 2016, the KCDC Center for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response had established a round-the-clock Emergency Operations Center with rapid response teams.KCDC is responsible for the distribution of antiviral stockpiles to 16 cities and provinces that are required by law to hold and manage antiviral stockpiles.And, at the international level, there are frameworks for preparedness for pandemics. The International Health Regulations (IHR) - adopted at the 2005 World Health Assembly and binding on member states - require countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health events to the World Health Organization (WHO) and ‘prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks, and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade’.Under IHR, governments committed to a programme of building core capacities including coordination, surveillance, response and preparedness. The UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk highlights disaster preparedness for effective response as one of its main purposes and has already incorporated these measures into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other Agenda 2030 initiatives. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said COVID-19 ‘poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security’ and that ‘a signal of unity and resolve from the Council would count for a lot at this anxious time’.Case Study of Preparedness: United StatesThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) established PERRC – the Preparedness for Emergency Response Research Centers - as a requirement of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which required research to ‘improve federal, state, local, and tribal public health preparedness and response systems’.The 2006 Act has since been supplanted by the 2019 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act. This created the post of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) and authorised the development and acquisitions of medical countermeasures and a quadrennial National Health Security Strategy.The 2019 Act also set in place a number of measures including the requirement for the US government to re-evaluate several important metrics of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative agreement and the Hospital Preparedness Program, and a requirement for a report on the states of preparedness and response in US healthcare facilities.This pandemic looks set to continue to be a grave threat to humanity. But there will also be future pandemics – whether another type of coronavirus or a new influenza virus – and our species will be threatened again, we just don’t know when.Other disasters too will befall us – we already see the impacts of climate change arriving on our doorsteps characterised by increased numbers and intensity of floods, hurricanes, fires, crop failure and other manifestations of a warming, increasingly turbulent atmosphere and we will continue to suffer major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. All high impact, unknown probability events.Preparedness for an unknown future is expensive and requires a great deal of effort for events that may not happen within the preparers’ lifetimes. It is hard to imagine now, but people will forget this crisis, and revert to their imagined projections of the future where crises don’t occur, and progress follows progress. But history shows us otherwise.Preparations for future crises always fall prey to financial cuts and austerity measures in lean times unless there is a mechanism to prevent that. Cost-benefit analyses will understandably tend to prioritise the urgent over the long-term. So governments should put in place legislation – or strengthen existing legislation – now to ensure their countries are as prepared as possible for whatever crisis is coming.Such a legal requirement would require governments to report back to parliament every year on the state of their national preparations detailing such measures as:The exact levels of stocks of essential materials (including medical equipment)The ability of hospitals to cope with large influx of patientsHow many drills, exercises and simulations had been organised – and their findingsWhat was being done to implement lessons learned & improve preparednessIn addition, further actions should be taken:Parliamentary committees such as the UK Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy should scrutinise the government’s readiness for the potential threats outlined in the National Risk register for Civil Emergencies in-depth on an annual basis.Parliamentarians, including ministers, with responsibility for national security and resilience should participate in drills, table-top exercises and simulations to see for themselves the problems inherent with dealing with crises.All governments should have a minister (or equivalent) with the sole responsibility for national crisis preparedness and resilience. The Minister would be empowered to liaise internationally and coordinate local responses such as local resilience groups.There should be ring-fenced budget lines in annual budgets specifically for preparedness and resilience measures, annually reported on and assessed by parliaments as part of the due diligence process.And at the international level:The UN Security Council should establish a Crisis Preparedness Committee to bolster the ability of United Nations Member States to respond to international crisis such as pandemics, within their borders and across regions. The Committee would function in a similar fashion as the Counter Terrorism Committee that was established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.States should present reports on their level of preparedness to the UN Security Council. The Crisis Preparedness Committee could establish a group of experts who would conduct expert assessments of each member state’s risks and preparedness and facilitate technical assistance as required.Regional bodies such as the OSCE, ASEAN and ARF, the AU, the OAS, the PIF etc could also request national reports on crisis preparedness for discussion and cooperation at the regional level.COVID-19 has been referred to as the 9/11 of crisis preparedness and response. Just as that shocking terrorist attack shifted the world and created a series of measures to address terrorism, we now recognise our security frameworks need far more emphasis on being prepared and being resilient. Whatever has been done in the past, it is clear that was nowhere near enough and that has to change.Case Study of Preparedness: The UKThe National Risk Register was first published in 2008 as part of the undertakings laid out in the National Security Strategy (the UK also published the Biological Security Strategy in July 2018). Now entitled the National Risk Register for Civil Emergencies it has been updated regularly to analyse the risks of major emergencies that could affect the UK in the next five years and provide resilience advice and guidance.The latest edition - produced in 2017 when the UK had a Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency - placed the risk of a pandemic influenza in the ‘highly likely and most severe’ category. It stood out from all the other identified risks, whereas an emerging disease (such as COVID-19) was identified as ‘highly likely but with moderate impact’.However, much preparatory work for an influenza pandemic is the same as for COVID-19, particularly in prepositioning large stocks of PPE, readiness within large hospitals, and the creation of new hospitals and facilities.One key issue is that the 2017 NHS Operating Framework for Managing the Response to Pandemic Influenza was dependent on pre-positioned ’just in case’ stockpiles of PPE. But as it became clear the PPE stocks were not adequate for the pandemic, it was reported that recommendations about the stockpile by NERVTAG (the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group which advises the government on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory viruses) had been subjected to an ‘economic assessment’ and decisions reversed on, for example, eye protection.The UK chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies, when speaking at the World Health Organization about Operation Cygnus – a 2016 three-day exercise on a flu pandemic in the UK – reportedly said the UK was not ready for a severe flu attack and ‘a lot of things need improving’.Aware of the significance of the situation, the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy launched an inquiry in 2019 on ‘Biosecurity and human health: preparing for emerging infectious diseases and bioweapons’ which intended to coordinate a cross-government approach to biosecurity threats. But the inquiry had to postpone its oral hearings scheduled for late October 2019 and, because of the general election in December 2019, the committee was obliged to close the inquiry. Full Article
isis Coronavirus Risks Worsening a Food Crisis in the Sahel and West Africa By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 01 May 2020 14:20:52 +0000 1 May 2020 Dr Leena Koni Hoffmann Associate Fellow, Africa Programme @leenahoffmann LinkedIn Paul Melly Consulting Fellow, Africa Programme @paulmelly2 In responding to the spread of the coronavirus, the governments of the Sahel and West Africa will need to draw on their collective experience of strategic coordination in emergency planning, and work together to prioritize the flow of food across borders. 2020-05-01-Africa-Market-Virus An informal market in the Anyama district of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, is sanitized against the coronavirus. Photo by SIA KAMBOU/AFP via Getty Images. The COVID-19 pandemic has struck the Sahel and West Africa at a time when the region is already under severe pressure from violent insecurity and the effects of climate change on its land, food and water resources.By the end of April, there had been 9,513 confirmed coronavirus cases across the 17 countries of the region, and some 231 deaths, with the highest overall numbers recorded in Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Niger and Burkina Faso. Low testing rates mean than these numbers give only a partial picture.The Food Crisis Prevention Network (RPCA) forecast in early April that almost 17 million people in the Sahel and West Africa (7.1 million in Nigeria alone) will need food and nutritional assistance during the coming lean season in June–August, more than double the number in an average year. The combined impact of violent insecurity and COVID-19 could put more than 50 million other people across the region at risk of food and nutrition crisis.Rippling across the regionThe effects of the collapse in global commodity prices, currency depreciations, rising costs of consumer goods and disruptions to supply chains are rippling across the region. And for major oil-exporting countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Chad and Cameroon, the wipe-out of foreign currency earnings will hammer government revenues just as the cost of food and other critical imports goes up. It is likely that the number of people who suffer the direct health impact of the coronavirus will be far outstripped by the number for whom there will be harsh social and economic costs.In recent years, valuable protocols and capacities have been put in place by governments in West and Central Africa in response to Ebola and other infectious disease outbreaks.But inadequate healthcare funding and infrastructure across this region compound the challenge of responding to the spread of the COVID-19 infection – which is testing the resources of even the world’s best-funded public health systems.Over many years, however, the region has steadily built up structures to tackle humanitarian and development challenges, particularly as regards food security. It has an established system for assessing the risk of food crisis annually and coordinating emergency support to vulnerable communities. Each country monitors climate and weather patterns, transhumance, market systems and agricultural statistics, and terrorist disruption of agricultural productivity, from local community to national and regional level.The system is coordinated and quality-controlled, using common technical data standards, by the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), a regional intergovernmental body established in 1973 in response to a devastating drought. Collective risk assessments allow emergency support to be mobilized through the RPCA.For almost three months already, countries in Sahelian West Africa have been working with the World Health Organization to prepare national COVID-19 response strategies and strengthen health controls at their borders. Almost all governments have also opted for domestic curfews, and variations of lockdown and market restrictions.Senegal has been a leader in rapidly developing Africa’s diagnostic capacity, and plans are under way to speed up production of test kits. Niger was swift to develop a national response strategy, to which donors have pledged €194.5 million. While the IMF has agreed emergency financial assistance to help countries address the urgent balance-of-payments, health and social programme needs linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, signing off $3.4 billion for Nigeria, $442 million for Senegal and $130 million for Mauritania.Steps are also now being taken towards the formulation of a more joined-up regional approach. Notably, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has been chosen by an extraordinary session of the Economic Community of West African States to coordinate the regional response to COVID-19. As Africa’s biggest economy and home to its largest population, Nigeria is a critical hub for transnational flows of goods and people. Its controversial August 2019 land border closure, in a bid to address smuggling, has already painfully disrupted regional agri-food trade and value chains. The active engagement of the Buhari administration will thus be crucial to the success of a multifaceted regional response.One of the first tough questions the region’s governments must collectively address is how long to maintain the border shutdowns that were imposed as an initial measure to curb the spread of the virus. Closed borders are detrimental to food security, and disruptive to supply chains and the livelihoods of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs that rely on cross-border trade. The impact of prolonged closures will be all the more profound in a region where welfare systems are largely non-existent or, at best, highly precarious.Nigeria, in particular, with more than 95 million people already living in extreme poverty, might do well to explore measures to avoid putting food further beyond the reach of people who are seeing their purchasing power evaporate.In taking further actions to control the spread of the coronavirus, the region’s governments will need to show faith in the system that they have painstakingly developed to monitor and respond to the annual risk of food crisis across the Sahel. This system, and the critical data it offers, will be vital to informing interventions to strengthen the four components of food security – availability, access, stability and utilization – in the context of COVID-19, and for charting a post-pandemic path of recovery.Above all, careful steps will need to be put in place to ensure that preventing the spread of the coronavirus does not come at the cost of even greater food insecurity for the people of the Sahel and West Africa. The region’s governments must prioritize the flow of food across borders and renew their commitment to strategic coordination and alignment. Full Article
isis COVID-19 Crisis – Business as Usual for Gaza? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 14:48:14 +0000 6 May 2020 Mohammed Abdalfatah Asfari Foundation Academy Fellow @mhalabi258 LinkedIn The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges, economic collapse and strict lockdowns in many parts of the world. For the people of Gaza, this reality is nothing new. 2020-05-06-covid-19-gaza.jpg Palestinians light fireworks above the rubble during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Gaza City , 30 April 2020. Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images. In August 2012, when the UN released its report Gaza in 2020: A liveable place?, they could not have imagined what the world would look like in 2020: cities under lockdown, restrictions on movement, border closures, widespread unemployment, economic collapse, fear and anxiety and, above all, uncertainty about what the future holds.For Gaza’s population of 2 million people this reality is nothing new. The conditions that the rest of the world are currently experiencing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is similar to the tight blockade Gaza has been living under ever since Hamas took over in 2007. Israel has imposed severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods, youth unemployment has reached 60 per cent, and over 80 per cent of Gaza’s population are now dependent on international aid.The people of Gaza are having to face the COVID-19 crisis already at a disadvantage, with poor infrastructure, limited resources and a shortage of the most basic services, such as water and power supply. It also has a fragile health system, with hospitals lacking essential medical supplies and equipment, as well as the capacity to deal with the outbreak as there are only 84 ICU beds and ventilators available. Meanwhile, intra-Palestinian divisions have persisted and were evident in the initial reaction to the pandemic. When President Mahmoud Abbas announced a state of emergency, it took two days for the Hamas-led government in Gaza to follow suit and shut down schools and universities. They later made a separate emergency appeal to address the crisis and prepare for a COVID-19 response in Gaza. This lack of coordination is typical of the way the Palestinian Authority and Hamas approach crisis situations.After the initial uncoordinated response, Hamas, as the de-facto ruler of Gaza, has asserted its ability to control Gaza’s borders by putting in place quarantine measures for everyone who enters the strip, whether through the Erez checkpoint with Israel or the Rafah border with Egypt. They have also assigned 21 hospitals, hotels, and schools as compulsory quarantine centres for all arrivals from abroad, who have to stay in quarantine for 21 days. In comparison, there are 20 quarantine centres in the West Bank. These strict measures have prevented the spread of the virus in the community and confined it to the quarantine centres, with only 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of 6 May. Gaza’s de-facto authorities have also been able to monitor markets and prices to ensure the availability of essential goods.Faced with a major crisis, Al-Qassam Brigades – the armed wing of Hamas – have tried to play the role of a national army by participating in efforts to fight the pandemic. They have relatively good logistical capacity and have contributed to the construction of two quarantine facilities with a total capacity of 1,000 units to prepare for more arrivals into Gaza. At the local level, municipalities have been disinfecting public spaces and facilities in addition to disseminating information about the virus and related preventative and protective measures. Other precautionary measures put in place include closing the weekly open markets, and restricting social gatherings like weddings and funerals.Despite COVID-19, it’s business as usual when it comes to international dealings with Gaza. The key parties in the conflict – Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – along with the main external actors – Egypt, the United Nations and Qatar – have continued to stick to their policies aimed at keeping the security situation under control and preventing further escalation. Although Israel has allowed entry of pharmaceutical supplies and medical equipment into Gaza during the pandemic, it has kept its restrictions on the movement of goods and people in place, while keeping a close eye on the development of the COVID-19 outbreak in Gaza – a major outbreak here would be a nightmare scenario for Israel.Meanwhile, Qatar has continued to address the humanitarian and economic needs of Gaza in an attempt to ease the pressure and prevent further escalation. It has pledged $150 million over the next six months to help families in Gaza from poorer backgrounds. Gaza has also been discussed by the Middle East Quartet, as Nickolay Mladenov, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, expressed his concern about the risk of a disease outbreak in Gaza during a call with the members of the Quartet.Amid the pandemic, threats are still being exchanged between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli defence minister, Naftali Bennett, requested that in return for providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, Hamas agrees to return the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 war. While openly rejecting Bennett's statement, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has offered to move forward with a prisoner swap deal if Israel agrees to release elderly prisoners and detainees in addition to detained women and children. Though dealing with its own COVID-19 outbreak, Egypt has started to mediate between the two parties in an attempt to stabilize the situation and reach a prisoner swap deal.In the wake of this pandemic, lessons should be learned and policies should be examined, by all parties. Firstly, Israel should re-evaluate its security measures towards Gaza by easing restrictions on movement and trade which would have a positive impact on living conditions for Gaza’s population. The current measures have proven to be unsustainable and have contributed to the endless cycle of violence. Secondly, the intra-Palestinian division should end, to save Palestinians from contradictory policies and insufficient capacity on both sides. In fact, all previous attempts have failed to end this self-destructive division and this is due to the absence of political will on both sides. Elections seem to be the only viable path towards unity. Finally, efforts by the international community should go beyond stabilizing the security situation and ongoing crisis inside Gaza, where disruption of normal life is the norm.While the world has reacted to this pandemic with a whole host of new policies and emergency measures, it has remained business as usual when dealing with Gaza. Should COVID-19 spread in Gaza, its people – who have already paid the price of a continuous blockade and intra-Palestinian division for 13 years – will pay a heavy price yet again. However, this time it is not a crisis that they alone will have to face. Full Article
isis Economic Crisis and the Delayed Arrival of a New President: Transition Trauma By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 13:16:14 +0000 1 November 2008 , Number 1 The new American president will not be inaugurated until January 20. He will certainly face the most difficult economic conditions since Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House in March 1933. The politics of presidential transition – in this year, as seventy-six years ago – seem likely only to exacerbate the global crisis. John Dumbrell Professor of Government, Durham University USCharlesDharapak_AP_PAPhotos.jpg Full Article
isis Russia and the Economic Crisis: No Safe Haven By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 13:26:47 +0000 1 November 2008 , Number 4 Russia is caught in the global crisis and cannot escape its impact. The crucial question is how the Dmitri Medvedev-Vladimir Putin leadership will respond. Putin has presided over a steadily strengthening economy; he now appears ill-equipped to handle crisis and contraction. The signs are not encouraging. Trust and confidence, two essential ingredients vital to resolving any financial crisis, are in short supply. The public could pay a heavy price for the hubris and schadenfreude of their leaders, still ‘dizzy with success’ from years of economic revival and what they perceive as a successful reaffirmation of the country’s great power status. Julian Cooper, Professor, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham TASS_RUSSIA.jpg Full Article
isis Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Transitional Justice for the Victims of ISIS in Syria By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 15:50:01 +0000 28 April 2020 This paper aims to assist the region’s local authorities, and their key foreign backers, in understanding how transitional justice can provide alternative avenues for holding local ISIS members to account while contributing to the healing of communities. Read online Download PDF Haid Haid Senior Consulting Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme @HaidHaid22 2020-04-28-Syria-prison.jpg A fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces monitors prisoners accused of being affiliated with ISIS, at a prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hassakeh on 25 October 2019. Photo: Getty Images. SummaryFollowing the territorial defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in the region is now grappling with the task of quickly dealing with thousands of the group’s detained members while bringing justice to their victims. To that end, local authorities are focusing on the use of counterterrorism laws and courts to charge captured ISIS members and determine their guilt accordingly.The piecemeal approach to justice is deeply flawed, and raises particular concerns about due process. No precise instruments exist to determine the personal responsibility of ISIS individuals for specific crimes, or for their role in war crimes committed by the group. In any event, the scale of the crimes and the number of victims – as well as severe shortages of resources and workers – make dispensation of justice extremely difficult through the traditional legal system.Not all detained ISIS members receive prison sentences. Individuals who did not hold senior roles in the group’s apparatus and are not accused of ‘major’ crimes (in practice, largely defined as fighting for ISIS and murder) are being released under limited reconciliation deals with tribal leaders. But the involvement of local community leaders in those efforts is not enough to ensure positive results. Many victims are upset at seeing ISIS members walk free without even admitting their guilt publicly or apologizing for the pain they caused.To overcome the limitations of the current, counterterrorism-focused framework, a ‘transitional justice’ approach could provide judicial and non-judicial instruments to establish accountability for ISIS crimes and reduce community resistance to the reintegration of group members. A combination of non-judicial mechanisms such as truth commissions, missing persons’ committees, and reparations and victim-healing programmes could play a vital role in providing ISIS victims with a sense of justice while contributing to peacebuilding and stability.Ignoring the urgency of developing a long-term plan to serve justice and contribute to community healing will almost certainly allow ISIS to continue to prevent the recovery and development of northeastern Syria. This, in turn, risks undermining the stability of the country and the region at large. Department/project Middle East and North Africa Programme Full Article
isis Let's talk about the interregnum: Gramsci and the crisis of the liberal world order By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 09:34:15 +0000 7 May 2020 , Volume 96, Number 3 Read online Milan Babic The liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis. Numerous publications, debates and events have time and again made it clear that we are in the midst of a grand transformation of world order. While most contributions focus on either what is slowly dying (the LIO) or what might come next (China, multipolarity, chaos?), there is less analytical engagement with what lies in between those two phases of world order. Under the assumption that this period could last years or even decades, a set of analytical tools to understand this interregnum is urgently needed. This article proposes an analytical framework that builds on Gramscian concepts of crisis that will help us understand the current crisis of the LIO in a more systematic way. It addresses a gap in the literature on changing world order by elaborating three Gramsci-inspired crisis characteristics—processuality, organicity and morbidity—that sketch the current crisis landscape in a systematic way. Building on this framework, the article suggests different empirical entry points to the study of the crisis of the LIO and calls for a research agenda that takes this crisis seriously as a distinct period of changing world orders. Full Article
isis Legal Provision for Crisis Preparedness: Foresight not Hindsight By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:03:31 +0000 21 April 2020 Dr Patricia Lewis Research Director, Conflict, Science & Transformation; Director, International Security Programme @PatriciaMary COVID-19 is proving to be a grave threat to humanity. But this is not a one-off, there will be future crises, and we can be better prepared to mitigate them. 2020-04-21-Nurse-COVID-Test Examining a patient while testing for COVID-19 at the Velocity Urgent Care in Woodbridge, Virginia. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. A controversial debate during COVID-19 is the state of readiness within governments and health systems for a pandemic, with lines of the debate drawn on the issues of testing provision, personal protective equipment (PPE), and the speed of decision-making.President Macron in a speech to the nation admitted French medical workers did not have enough PPE and that mistakes had been made: ‘Were we prepared for this crisis? We have to say that no, we weren’t, but we have to admit our errors … and we will learn from this’.In reality few governments were fully prepared. In years to come, all will ask: ‘how could we have been better prepared, what did we do wrong, and what can we learn?’. But after every crisis, governments ask these same questions.Most countries have put in place national risk assessments and established processes and systems to monitor and stress-test crisis-preparedness. So why have some countries been seemingly better prepared?Comparing different approachesSome have had more time and been able to watch the spread of the disease and learn from those countries that had it first. Others have taken their own routes, and there will be much to learn from comparing these different approaches in the longer run.Governments in Asia have been strongly influenced by the experience of the SARS epidemic in 2002-3 and - South Korea in particular - the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015 which was the largest outside the Middle East. Several carried out preparatory work in terms of risk assessment, preparedness measures and resilience planning for a wide range of threats.Case Study of Preparedness: South KoreaBy 2007, South Korea had established the Division of Public Health Crisis Response in Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and, in 2016, the KCDC Center for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response had established a round-the-clock Emergency Operations Center with rapid response teams.KCDC is responsible for the distribution of antiviral stockpiles to 16 cities and provinces that are required by law to hold and manage antiviral stockpiles.And, at the international level, there are frameworks for preparedness for pandemics. The International Health Regulations (IHR) - adopted at the 2005 World Health Assembly and binding on member states - require countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health events to the World Health Organization (WHO) and ‘prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks, and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade’.Under IHR, governments committed to a programme of building core capacities including coordination, surveillance, response and preparedness. The UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk highlights disaster preparedness for effective response as one of its main purposes and has already incorporated these measures into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other Agenda 2030 initiatives. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said COVID-19 ‘poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security’ and that ‘a signal of unity and resolve from the Council would count for a lot at this anxious time’.Case Study of Preparedness: United StatesThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) established PERRC – the Preparedness for Emergency Response Research Centers - as a requirement of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which required research to ‘improve federal, state, local, and tribal public health preparedness and response systems’.The 2006 Act has since been supplanted by the 2019 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act. This created the post of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) and authorised the development and acquisitions of medical countermeasures and a quadrennial National Health Security Strategy.The 2019 Act also set in place a number of measures including the requirement for the US government to re-evaluate several important metrics of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative agreement and the Hospital Preparedness Program, and a requirement for a report on the states of preparedness and response in US healthcare facilities.This pandemic looks set to continue to be a grave threat to humanity. But there will also be future pandemics – whether another type of coronavirus or a new influenza virus – and our species will be threatened again, we just don’t know when.Other disasters too will befall us – we already see the impacts of climate change arriving on our doorsteps characterised by increased numbers and intensity of floods, hurricanes, fires, crop failure and other manifestations of a warming, increasingly turbulent atmosphere and we will continue to suffer major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. All high impact, unknown probability events.Preparedness for an unknown future is expensive and requires a great deal of effort for events that may not happen within the preparers’ lifetimes. It is hard to imagine now, but people will forget this crisis, and revert to their imagined projections of the future where crises don’t occur, and progress follows progress. But history shows us otherwise.Preparations for future crises always fall prey to financial cuts and austerity measures in lean times unless there is a mechanism to prevent that. Cost-benefit analyses will understandably tend to prioritise the urgent over the long-term. So governments should put in place legislation – or strengthen existing legislation – now to ensure their countries are as prepared as possible for whatever crisis is coming.Such a legal requirement would require governments to report back to parliament every year on the state of their national preparations detailing such measures as:The exact levels of stocks of essential materials (including medical equipment)The ability of hospitals to cope with large influx of patientsHow many drills, exercises and simulations had been organised – and their findingsWhat was being done to implement lessons learned & improve preparednessIn addition, further actions should be taken:Parliamentary committees such as the UK Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy should scrutinise the government’s readiness for the potential threats outlined in the National Risk register for Civil Emergencies in-depth on an annual basis.Parliamentarians, including ministers, with responsibility for national security and resilience should participate in drills, table-top exercises and simulations to see for themselves the problems inherent with dealing with crises.All governments should have a minister (or equivalent) with the sole responsibility for national crisis preparedness and resilience. The Minister would be empowered to liaise internationally and coordinate local responses such as local resilience groups.There should be ring-fenced budget lines in annual budgets specifically for preparedness and resilience measures, annually reported on and assessed by parliaments as part of the due diligence process.And at the international level:The UN Security Council should establish a Crisis Preparedness Committee to bolster the ability of United Nations Member States to respond to international crisis such as pandemics, within their borders and across regions. The Committee would function in a similar fashion as the Counter Terrorism Committee that was established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.States should present reports on their level of preparedness to the UN Security Council. The Crisis Preparedness Committee could establish a group of experts who would conduct expert assessments of each member state’s risks and preparedness and facilitate technical assistance as required.Regional bodies such as the OSCE, ASEAN and ARF, the AU, the OAS, the PIF etc could also request national reports on crisis preparedness for discussion and cooperation at the regional level.COVID-19 has been referred to as the 9/11 of crisis preparedness and response. Just as that shocking terrorist attack shifted the world and created a series of measures to address terrorism, we now recognise our security frameworks need far more emphasis on being prepared and being resilient. Whatever has been done in the past, it is clear that was nowhere near enough and that has to change.Case Study of Preparedness: The UKThe National Risk Register was first published in 2008 as part of the undertakings laid out in the National Security Strategy (the UK also published the Biological Security Strategy in July 2018). Now entitled the National Risk Register for Civil Emergencies it has been updated regularly to analyse the risks of major emergencies that could affect the UK in the next five years and provide resilience advice and guidance.The latest edition - produced in 2017 when the UK had a Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency - placed the risk of a pandemic influenza in the ‘highly likely and most severe’ category. It stood out from all the other identified risks, whereas an emerging disease (such as COVID-19) was identified as ‘highly likely but with moderate impact’.However, much preparatory work for an influenza pandemic is the same as for COVID-19, particularly in prepositioning large stocks of PPE, readiness within large hospitals, and the creation of new hospitals and facilities.One key issue is that the 2017 NHS Operating Framework for Managing the Response to Pandemic Influenza was dependent on pre-positioned ’just in case’ stockpiles of PPE. But as it became clear the PPE stocks were not adequate for the pandemic, it was reported that recommendations about the stockpile by NERVTAG (the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group which advises the government on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory viruses) had been subjected to an ‘economic assessment’ and decisions reversed on, for example, eye protection.The UK chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies, when speaking at the World Health Organization about Operation Cygnus – a 2016 three-day exercise on a flu pandemic in the UK – reportedly said the UK was not ready for a severe flu attack and ‘a lot of things need improving’.Aware of the significance of the situation, the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy launched an inquiry in 2019 on ‘Biosecurity and human health: preparing for emerging infectious diseases and bioweapons’ which intended to coordinate a cross-government approach to biosecurity threats. But the inquiry had to postpone its oral hearings scheduled for late October 2019 and, because of the general election in December 2019, the committee was obliged to close the inquiry. Full Article
isis Iran Crisis: How Far Does Trump’s Authority Go? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 10 Jan 2020 12:26:36 +0000 10 January 2020 Dr Leslie Vinjamuri Dean, Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs; Director, US and the Americas Programme @londonvinjamuri Google Scholar The legal and political boundaries of presidential power are being redefined, but the president may still be attentive to some constraints. 2020-01-10-Trump.jpg Donald Trump arrives for a rally in Toledo, Ohio on 9 January. Photo: Getty Images. On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution affirming its authority under the War Powers Resolution Act, and reminding the president, the American people and the world that when it comes to the use of military force, Congress must be taken into account. President Donald Trump replied by retweeting John Bolton, his former national security advisor, who tweeted that the War Powers Act was ‘unconstitutional’, effectively dismissing Congressional efforts to rein in the president.This round of legal Twitter diplomacy came days after the president tweeted that ‘legal notice (to Congress) is not required, but it is given nevertheless’ and that ‘should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner.’ President Trump’s overt attacks on Congressional authority and disregard for the law are not normal for a US president, but legal constraints over the president’s authority to use military force have been eroding for several years.In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, requiring the president to report to Congress and acquire Congressional approval for continued overseas troop deployments. But Congressional authority over the use of military force has continued to diminish, especially since the 9/11 attacks. Now, Congress is pushing back – a resolution similar to that passed by the House is likely to be voted on by the Senate soon. Given the intense frustration of some senators over the president’s handling of the current conflict, this resolution may pass, though the president is still likely to veto. The bigger problem, of which this is one part, is the expansion of executive authority, and it predates this presidency. Many argue that executive power is greatest on matters of foreign policy, and that in this domain the US president is unconstrained. As partisanship has increased and the demands on Congress have made it harder for its members to cultivate foreign policy expertise, the power of the president has grown.So the fact that Congress is taking active steps to check the president’s power not only on the question of impeachment, but also on foreign policy, is significant, even if the law is not likely to restrain President Trump. But Congress is also playing a long game. And its growing determination to assert its authority matters not only for this presidency, but also for the future.Political constraintsIn the short term, other constraints matter more. Even if President Trump rejects legal restraints – and shuns diplomatic pressure that might have mattered to other presidents – he is not impervious to political restraint.Already there are signs that Trump listens to his key Republican allies in Congress. When Senator Lindsay Graham pushed back against the president’s threat to attack cultural heritage sites in Iran, and the Pentagon failed to shore up the president’s threat, the president changed his position. The threats also provoked an overwhelming response in Europe, and across the Middle East, but the president has shown that he is willing to disregard international admonishment. Not so for domestic allies.Nor is this the first time that Senator Graham’s views have mattered. When the president announced his decision to pull troops from northeast Syria, effectively abandoning the Kurds, a key partner to the US in its fight against ISIS, Senator Graham and Senator Mitch McConnell pushed back and it mattered. Public opinion also matters to the president, especially Republican public opinion, and this is likely to affect the president’s next steps. Recent polls suggest that Americans feel less safe as a result of the killing of General Qassem Soleimani by a considerable margin of 55% to 24%.But the same survey also shows that a majority of Americans support the decision to kill Soleimani. Already Vice President Mike Pence has spoken at a rally in Ohio designed to bolster support for this Presidential action. So what might change public opinion and will this alter the president’s future steps?Americans are very reluctant to support further deployments of troops overseas. President Trump knows this and he has consistently stated that he seeks to pull US troops out of the Middle East.In fact, the opposite has happened. And once again, the decision to kill General Soleimani is pulling the US further into the Middle East and putting into stark light the inconsistency of Trump’s foreign policy ambitions. In recent days, the United States has committed to sending thousands of troops to the region.Continued US troop deployments may not play well with Trump’s base, though they currently support his Iran policy. But absent an obvious justification, this could change, so it is not surprising that this has become a rallying point for Vice President Pence.An even greater political risk, and one that will matter to the president, is the risk to US military personnel and civilians overseas. Public support for the killing of Soleimani and increased US presence in the region is bound to dissipate if Americans are killed.But it isn’t clear how the president will respond, and already the death of one American in the militia attack on 27 December seems to have been a critical factor in Trump’s decision to authorize the assassination of General Soleimani. So far, Iran’s response appears to be calibrated to avoid this kind of public backlash, and keep the door open to some sort of managed resolution of the current crisis.But the considerable risk of miscalculation and mistakes has already been born out. A week after the killing of Soleimani, the world is tuning in to the tragic news that a civilian airliner departing Iran for Ukraine appears to have been accidentally shot down by an Iranian missile, resulting in the deaths of all 176 people on board, including 82 Iranians and 63 Canadians.Whether the US president is constrained is a critical question for Americans, for US democracy and for the rest of the world. Trump is different, but he is not unconstrained. Steps taken by Congress along with diplomatic and political pressure mean he is still operating within boundaries. But it is clear that these boundaries are being redefined. Full Article
isis Iran Crisis Pushes Foreign Policy to Top of 2020 Election Debate By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 16:41:52 +0000 14 January 2020 Dr Lindsay Newman Senior Research Fellow, US and the Americas Programme @lindsayrsnewman LinkedIn Democrats would be wise to communicate a clear alternative to Trump’s ‘America First’ policy in the Middle East. 2020-01-14-Trump.jpg Donald Trump speaks to the media in front of the White House on Monday. Photo: Getty Images. Conventional wisdom says that foreign policy takes a backseat role in US elections. But last autumn’s Democratic primary debates suggest a potential shift is taking place in the conventional view. While healthcare dominated the discussion (Democrats attribute their 2018 midterm gains to the issue), through November foreign policy followed closely behind in second place in terms of minutes devoted to the discussion.This trend is consistent with President Donald Trump’s America First approach to foreign policy, in which an eye is always kept on how decisions abroad play for the domestic audience. One former Trump administration official has called this dynamic the ‘recoupling’ of foreign policy with domestic policy.The US–China trade conflict, which commanded headlines throughout 2019, is perhaps the best example of this recoupling, tying trade imbalances less with the geopolitical than with domestic impact on farmers. Immigration is another policy area in which Trump has linked domestic implications and indeed domestic opinion with foreign policy. It’s in the title: America First.Now, for better or worse, the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s response and the subsequent fallout may make US foreign policy towards Iran and the US role in the Middle East a central issue for the 2020 US elections. As it comes just ahead of the Democratic presidential primaries, voters will be looking to the candidates to differentiate their foreign policy experience and proposals for America’s Middle East policy.To President Donald Trump, Soleimani’s assassination represents a campaign promise kept to confront Iran’s aggression.The Trump administration initially justified the action by citing intelligence of an imminent threat to US personnel and targets, but after Defense Secretary Mark Esper called this into question, Trump tweeted that ‘it doesn’t really matter because of [Soleimani’s] horrible past’. Ultimately, Trump’s message, on the campaign trail and any general debate stage he agrees to be on, is that he has overseen a new national security strategy for Iran.Soleimani’s removal from the Iranian calculus is just a part of this broader policy, which also includes neutralizing the Iranian government’s destabilizing influence in the Middle East, denying Iran and especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ access to funding for its malign activities, and rallying the international community against domestic human rights violations and unjust detentions.To counter Trump, Democrats and democratic presidential candidates would be best-served by offering a simple argument that too links domestic interests and foreign policy: the killing of Soleimani and Trump’s national security strategy for Iran have not made the US or its interests safer.Iran’s ballistic missile attack on US forces in Iraq, which Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called a ‘slap in the face’ for the US, makes the risks to US assets and personnel abundantly clear. Even if Iran reverts entirely to covert, proxy efforts to counter US interests, the current US–Iran tensions remain unresolved and will likely continue to persist through the 2020 elections in November.As a matter of the first order, Soleimani was replaced by his deputy Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani within a day of the former’s death, with Khamenei saying that the Quds Force will be ‘unchanged’.At the second order, Iraq’s parliament voted in favour of a nonbinding resolution to rescind the invitation to US forces, which led Trump to threaten sanctions and demands for reimbursement. Whether US troops will ultimately leave Iraq (following a ‘mistaken’ report that the US was preparing to depart) remains to be seen, but the destabilization of the US military presence in Iraq fulfils a key Iranian objective.In the interim, the US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria fighting ISIS announced that it would at least temporarily cease its counterterrorism efforts to instead fortify its outposts and prepare for Iranian retaliation, opening a wider door for the resurgence of the terror group.By arguing that the US, its troops and interest have not been made safer by Trump’s Middle East policy – from withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal to the imposition of a ‘maximum pressure campaign’ to Soleimani’s killing – Democrats will be able to point to every post-Soleimani US injury, death, regional terrorism attack, asset compromise, cyberattack and shipping disruption as evidence.Democratic presidential candidates also ought to be explicit about how they plan to manage tensions with Iran – strategic, diplomatic and military – particularly their position on the future of the nuclear deal.Iran has made clear that the path to de-escalation is through sanctions relief. Asserting leverage need not always involve taking away all of your counterparty’s options (‘maximum pressure’). It also involves knowing what your adversary wants (sanctions relief) and showing a willingness to offer it (especially where it means less to you) in exchange for something of greater worth (avoiding war/a non-nuclear Iran).Clarity around future policy of a potential Democratic president may bring de-escalation forward in a way that Trump’s statement of Iran standing down are unlikely to do. Full Article
isis COVID-19: America's Looming Election Crisis By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 08:31:53 +0000 8 April 2020 Dr Lindsay Newman Senior Research Fellow, US and the Americas Programme @lindsayrsnewman LinkedIn Planning now is essential to ensure the legitimacy of November’s elections is not impacted by COVID-19, as vulnerabilities are becoming ever more apparent if voting in person is restricted. 2020-04-08-COVID-US-election Roadside voting in Madison, Wisconsin in April 2020. Because of coronavirus, the number of polling places was drastically reduced. Photo by Andy Manis/Getty Images. The COVID-19 epidemic has hit every aspect of American life. The upcoming November general elections will not be immune to the virus’ impact and may be scheduled to happen while the pandemic remains active, or has returned.There is a danger the epidemic forces change to the way voting takes place this fall, amplifying risks around election security and voter suppression that ultimately undermine the integrity of the elections.This is further highlighted by the US Supreme Court’s last-minute ruling along ideological lines to restrict an extension on the absentee voting period in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary despite the level of infections in the state, forcing voters into a trade-off between their health and their right to vote. The US could be thrown into a political crisis in addition to the health and economic crises it already faces.Bipartisan sentimentWhile France, Chile and Bolivia have already postponed elections in the wake of COVID-19, there is a bipartisan sentiment that the US elections should be held as scheduled on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This is enshrined not only in America’s sense of itself – having weathered elections during a civil war, a world war and heightened terrorist alert before – but also in its federal law since 1845.Despite increasing appetite for federal elections to go ahead in November, there are serious vulnerabilities, which are already becoming visible as connections are drawn between mail-in voting and voter fraud, greater voter access and disadvantages for the Republican party, and city polling closures and Democratic voter suppression.Concerns around voting access have gained the most attention. If voting in-person is untenable or risky (especially for vulnerable health populations), voters must have alternative means to cast ballots.During negotiations for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives proposed $4 billion in state election grants and a nationally-mandated period for early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.But the final CARES Act sidestepped the access question and stripped funding to $400 million for election security grants to ‘prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 Federal election cycle’. Without knowing exactly what is in store from a cyber-threat perspective, the actual cost for basic election security upgrades is estimated to be $2.1billion. And that is a pre-COVID-19 calculation.With social-distanced voters likely to be getting more election information than ever from social media, information security is critical to prevent influence from untrustworthy sources. And opportunities for cyber intrusions are likely to increase as states transition to greater virtual registration, plus absentee and mail-in balloting.This will open new doors on well-documented, existing voter suppression efforts. With the Supreme Court clawing back the Voting Rights Act in 2013 - allowing certain states to make changes to election and voting laws without federal pre-clearance - heightened election security requirements, such as exact match campaigns and voter purges, have been used to justify voter suppression.As more vote remotely in the remaining primaries (many now rescheduled for 2 June) and the November general elections, the added burden on states around verification will only increase temptation to set aside ‘non-compliant’ ballots. Especially as some in the Republican Party, including Donald Trump, have advocated a contested view that higher turnout favours the Democratic Party.A fundamental principle of US democracy is that losers of elections respect the result, but history shows that election results have been contested. In 2000, it took weeks for a result to be confirmed in the presidential election. More recently, in the 2018 race for governor in Georgia, allegations of voter suppression raised questions about the validity of the eventual result.Without proper access, security, and verification the electoral process – whenever it takes place – will become vulnerable to questions of integrity. The federal response to the initial spread of COVID-19 saw costly delays which pushed the US into a public health crisis and economic contraction.Any narrative thread of election illegitimacy with November’s elections will further pull apart the fabric of a country already frayed by coronavirus. Federal and state authorities must start planning now for how the US will hold elections in the midst - or immediate aftermath - of COVID-19. Full Article
isis "It's the workforce, stupid" - is the NHS workforce in crisis? By feeds.bmj.com Published On :: Wed, 09 Mar 2016 10:36:21 +0000 As the junior doctors in England strike, concerns for the workforce are foremost in the minds of those running the NHS. A summary is available here: http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1510 In The BMJ roundtable, recorded at the Nuffield Trust Health Policy Summit on Friday 4 March 2016, we asked our participants if they think the NHS is in... Full Article
isis Partha Kar: What will come after the covid-19 crisis? By feeds.bmj.com Published On :: Monday, April 20, 2020 - 15:21 Full Article
isis Joining Up the Dots: Energy and Infrastructure for Countries in Crisis By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 16 Dec 2019 12:53:31 +0000 16 December 2019 Glada Lahn Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme @Glada_Lahn Suzanna Huber Hajar Al-Kaddo Could a refugee crisis help the host-country improve its health and development outcomes? The ‘energy and infrastructure’ focus at this week’s first UN Global Refugee Forum suggests it could, where national policy enables it. Practical action RV0_1139.jpg A man serves customers at a shop in Nyahbiheke Refugee Camp, Rwanda. Energy access makes it possible for refugees to power and run businesses. Photo: Practical Action. Mass human displacement crises like those in Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar do not dissipate within a year or two. The average age of a refugee camp globally is 18 and counting.Meanwhile, the pressures on resources and services in neighbouring countries absorbing an influx of vulnerable people can be harsh. Imagine the overstressed schools and hospitals where intake has doubled in areas of Jordan and Lebanon, and the damage to ecosystems and elephant habitats where camps have sprung up in Bangladesh. The fallout from such crises is prompting new ways of working in the international humanitarian system. These recognize that short-term, emergency responses can jeopardize national development goals if maintained indefinitely. In most refugee camps for instance, each family cooks with wood in regions already suffering from deforestation.Reliance on polluting trucks to bring in fuel and water is high. At the same time, developing countries – which host 80 per cent of the record 70.8 million people currently displaced by conflict – desperately need to address health, water, energy and housing needs for their own populations. Aid and welfare interventions directed only at refugees can provoke frustrations amongst the local community, damaging social cohesion and fostering political instability. The Global Compact on Refugees, affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly one year ago, aims at fairer responsibility-sharing amongst countries and equitable resourcing to host communities and refugees. The Global Refugee Forum (GRF) taking place 17–18 December in Geneva is the starting point for donor pledges and commitments. An opportunity for refugee-hosting countriesAmong the GRF’s 6 focus themes is ‘Energy and Infrastructure’ – a new priority for humanitarian aid and finance. This covers energy, environment, water and sanitation, health, shelter and connectivity – services that are tightly interconnected. In October, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) also launched its first energy strategy, which ‘promotes the transition to clean, renewable energy at refugee camps and hosting sites’.Given this impetus, alongside a growing international focus on speeding up Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) delivery, stabilizing migration and supporting climate resilience, more aid and soft credit for interlinked objectives will become available. Countries hosting refugees have an opportunity; how they approach it will determine the level of support they attract and how effectively it is deployed. Policy conditions are key to successIn a refugee situation, energy access is about much more than keeping warm or cooking food. It is also about connecting with loved ones across borders, safety at night, healthy births and making a living. Due to the lack of long-term funding, maintenance systems or government approvals, failed pilots to introduce for example, solar streetlighting or clean cookstoves, are the norm. To increase their durability and reach, projects need to harness local markets and support national development goals, especially those on access to modern energy for all (SDG 7), protecting ecosystems (SDG 15) and resilient human settlements (SDG 11). Several examples of these are emerging, each with valuable lessons to share. The policy environment, in particular, coordination between authorities, humanitarian agencies and private sector actors, can make or break a project. Beyond the basic conditions of adequate security and refugee acceptance, our research highlights three enabling factors:First: government willingness to engage in long-term response and resilience coordination. Jordan is the most advanced in this with its three-year rolling Response Plan for the Syria Crisis whereby the government works with humanitarian agencies to integrate refugee welfare with national development needs.Here, energy, water and housing needs are specified and have attracted funding. For example, in Irbid, Jordan where over 137,600 Syrian refugees live, the Norwegian Refugee Council, is expanding a programme under the Renewable Energy for Refugees (RE4R) initiative that applies energy efficiency and solar water heating to reduce bills and rents for refugee tenants while adding value for Jordanian homeowners. Second: strong, clear, energy and environment plans and legislation. Signals can be mixed. Jordan’s ‘wheeling’ regulation, allowed UNHCR to reduce its electricity bills through specially built solar plants at Azraq and Zaatari, yet the current freeze on renewable connections has stifled further projects.In Rwanda, the government banned the supply of woodfuel to refugee camps on the basis of concerns about deforestation. The announcement sharpens focus on cleaner cooking.Yet with little guidance on enforcement and the timeframe for change, it is difficult for UNHCR and its partners to plan viable schemes. A reversion to stove and fuel handouts is likely, damaging the potential to create markets for alternative cooking practices in the camps. Third: local fuel prices. Where polluting fuels are subsidized or untaxed, additional subsidy is needed to make cleaner alternatives competitive. The higher prices of diesel in Uganda for example are an incentive for solar projects at Bidi Bidi, the world’s largest refugee settlement.The Gaia Association-UNHCR clean energy programme in Ethiopia’s Western refugee camps has avoided burning some 10,000 tonnes of wood since 2006 through ethanol, but if VAT (which is applied to neither charcoal nor kerosene) were waived, it could scale up commercially. Joining up the dotsMany humanitarian and government dots could be joined up in support of the SDGs. In Rwanda for example, clarity on electrification plans – which appear to cover refugee areas – could allow camp mini-grids to be designed for eventual grid integration. In Jordan, lessons learned from the home upgrading programme could be applied to meet city climate resilience ambitions. Donors at the GRF should support humanitarian operations that leave a positive legacy, increasing the robustness of country infrastructure and systems. Host-country governments should help define and encourage projects that benefit national and refugee populations. This will be critical to both development outcomes and limiting future human suffering. Full Article
isis Iran Crisis: The Impact on Oil Markets By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 09:00:23 +0000 14 January 2020 Professor Paul Stevens Distinguished Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme The assassination of Qassem Soleimani has exacerbated the sensitivity of oil markets to political events and brought geopolitics back into global oil prices. 2020-01-14-Hormuz.jpg Satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: Getty Images. The assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has created much speculation about the possible impact on oil markets and – although any impact will very much depend upon what happens next in terms of political and military responses – theoretically the potential exists for Iran to seriously destabilize oil markets, raising oil prices.Arguably, it would be in Iran’s interest to do so. It would certainly hurt Trump’s possibility of a second term if higher prices were to last for some time as the 2020 presidential election gets underway. And it would also help shore up Iran’s failing economy. The assassination did initially cause oil prices to rise by a few dollars before quickly falling back, and the missile attacks by Iran produced a similar response. However, direct action by Iran to raise prices – for example by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz – is unlikely.Around one-fifth of the world's oil supplies passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow choke point between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Closing it would invite serious military action by the Americans and many of its allies who, so far, have been rather lukewarm over Trump’s actions. It would also possibly limit Iran’s own oil exports.Similarly, overt attacks on American allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE would probably invite too heavy a reaction, although this is uncertain given the lack of response after the alleged Iranian attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais in mid-September.Indirect action by Iran to affect oil supplies is much more likely as they have many options by using their proxies to affect others’ oil production. This is especially true for Iraq, which is now an important source of global oil supply as Iraqi exports in 2019 averaged 3.53 million barrels per day (Mb/d), a significant amount.Iraq’s future production has already been damaged as international oil companies are withdrawing staff for safety reasons, anticipating potential attacks by both Iraqi and Iranian sources. It is now very unlikely that the crucial ‘common seawater supply project’ being run by Exxon – essential for expanding production capacity – will go ahead in the near future.However, one important consequence of the assassination that has attracted little attention is that it has almost fully restored the role of geopolitics into the determination of oil prices. Up to 2014, geopolitics played a key role in determining oil prices in the paper markets where perceptions and expectations ruled.Prices determined in these markets – NYMEX in New York, ICE in London and other lesser futures markets throughout the world – then influence wet barrel markets where real barrels of oil are traded. In 2014, the world was so oversupplied with real oil barrels that the oil price collapsed – the price of Brent crude fell from $110.72 on 23 May to $46.44 eight months later. Thereafter, little if any attention was given to geopolitical events, and geopolitics became marginalized in the determination of crude oil prices.This began to change in 2019. The market remained physically over-supplied but events in the Gulf began to attract attention. In June, there were a series of attacks on oil tankers close to the Gulf, followed by attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field in September.The Americans claimed these attacks were launched by Iran, but no convincing evidence for the claim was provided. Both attacks produced an initial price response but it was surprisingly limited and short-lived. However, it did suggest that geopolitics might be creeping back into influencing oil prices.This became ever more noticeable in the third and fourth quarters as rumours regarding the trade talks between China and US clearly began to affect price – talks going well meant higher oil demand, and prices rose; talks going badly meant lower oil demand, and prices fell.Meanwhile, the oil market showed signs of tightening towards the end of 2019. Although there was much cheating on the OPEC+ agreement that was trying to restrain production and protect prices, the OPEC meeting last December saw both Iraq and Nigeria agreeing to restrain production. US stock levels also began to fall in December and the futures markets began to price in a tightening market towards the end of 2020. Significantly, the tighter the market appears, the greater attention is paid to the level of spare producing capacity.Just before the attack on Abqaiq, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated there was 3.5 Mb/d spare capacity in OPEC which, historically, is quite comfortable. However, 2.5 of this was estimated to be in Saudi Arabia, so how much of this spare capacity still existed after the Abqaiq attack?The Saudis claimed the Abqaiq capacity was quickly restored but technical experts greeted this with considerable skepticism, not least because the Abqaiq equipment was highly specialized. If spare capacity is tight, this makes the oil price vulnerable to geopolitical scares and rumours, real or imagined. Although the assassination of General Soleimani has exacerbated the sensitivity of oil markets to geopolitical events, this becomes irrelevant if a serious shooting war starts in the region. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq’s oil infrastructure remains highly vulnerable to attack either directly by Iran or one of its many proxies, suggesting oil prices will become increasingly volatile but, at the same time, benefit from a rising geopolitical premium. Full Article
isis Same Old Politics Will Not Solve Iraq Water Crisis By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 15:36:21 +0000 15 April 2020 Georgia Cooke Project Manager, Middle East and North Africa Programme Dr Renad Mansour Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme; Project Director, Iraq Initiative @renadmansour Glada Lahn Senior Research Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Programme @Glada_Lahn Addressing Iraq’s water crisis should be a priority for any incoming prime minister as it is damaging the country’s attempts to rebuild. But successive governments have allowed the problem to fester. 2020-04-15-Iraq-Water Punting in the marshes south of the Iraqi city of Ammarah. Photo by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images. Historically, Iraq lay claim to one of the most abundant water supplies in the Middle East. But the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has reduced by up to 40% since the 1970s, due in part to the actions of neighbouring countries, in particular Turkey, upstream.Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall due to climate change are also negatively impacting Iraq’s water reserves. Evaporation from dams and reservoirs is estimated to lose the country up to 8 billion cubic metres of water every year.A threat to peace and stabilityShortages have dried up previously fertile land, increasing poverty in agricultural areas. Shortages have also served to fuel conflict: communities faced with successive droughts and government inertia proved to be easy targets for ISIS recruiters, who lured farmers into joining them by offering money and food to feed their families. Economic hardship for those whose livelihoods relied upon river water has also driven rural to urban migration, putting significant strain on already over-populated towns and cities, exacerbating housing, job and electricity shortages, and widening the gap between haves and have-nots.But scarcity isn’t the most crucial element of Iraq’s water crisis – contamination is. Decades of local government mismanagement, corrupt practices and a lack of regulation of dumping (it is estimated up to 70% of Iraq’s industrial waste is dumped directly into water) has left approximately three in every five citizens without a reliable source of potable water.In 2018, 118,000 residents of Basra province were hospitalised with symptoms brought on by drinking contaminated water, which not only put a spotlight on the inadequacies of a crumbling healthcare system but sparked mass protests and a subsequent violent crackdown.The water crisis is also undermining the stability of the country’s federal governance model, by occasionally sparking disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as between governorates in the south.The crisis is both a symptom and a cause of poor governance. Iraq is stuck in a cycle whereby government inaction causes shortages and contamination, which result in economic losses, reduced food supply, increased prices and widespread poor health. This in turn leads to increasing levels of poverty, higher demand on services and civil unrest, increasing the pressure on a weak, dysfunctional system of government.What can be done?The first priority should be modernising existing water-management infrastructure - a relic of a time when the problem was an excess rather than a shortage of water (the last time Iraq’s flood defences were required was 1968). Bureaucratic hurdles, widespread corruption and an endless cycle of other crises taking precedent prevent good initiatives from being implemented or scaled up.Diversifying energy sources to improve provision is crucial. Baghdad has a sewage treatment plant that originally ran on its own electricity source, but this capacity was destroyed in 1991 and was never replaced. The city continues to suffer from dangerous levels of water pollution because the electricity supply from the grid is insufficient to power the plant. Solar energy has great potential in sun-drenched Iraq to bridge the gaping hole in energy provision, but successive governments have chosen to focus on fossil fuels rather than promoting investment to grow the renewables sector.Heightened tension with upstream Turkey could turn water into another cause of regional conflict. But, if approached differently, collaboration between Iraq and its neighbour could foster regional harmony.Turkey’s elevated geography and cooler climate mean its water reserves suffer 75% less evaporation than Iraq’s. Given that Turkey’s top energy priority is the diversification of its supply of imported hydrocarbons, a win-win deal could see Turkey exchange access to its water-management infrastructure for delivery of reduced cost energy supplies from Iraq.German-French cooperation on coal and steel in the 1950s and the evolution of economic integration that followed might provide a model for how bilateral cooperation over one issue could result in cooperation with other regional players (in this case Iran and Syria) on a range of other issues. This kind of model would need to consider the future of energy, whereby oil and gas would be replaced by solar-power exports.These solutions have been open to policymakers for years and yet they have taken little tangible action. While there are leaders and bureaucrats with the will to act, effective action is invariably blocked by a complex and opaque political system replete with vested interests in maintaining power and wealth via a weak state and limited services from central government.Breaking the cycleTo break this cycle, Iraq needs a group of professional and able actors outside of government to work with willing elements of the state bureaucracy as a taskforce to pressure for action and accountability. Publishing the recommendations from a hitherto withheld report produced in the aftermath of Basra’s 2018 heath crisis would be a great start.In time, this taskforce could champion the prioritisation of water on the national agenda, the implementation of infrastructure upgrades, and hold more productive conversations with neighbour states.With such a high degree of state fragmentation and dysfunction in Iraq, looking to the central government to provide leadership will not yield results. Engagement with a coalition of non-state actors can begin to address the water crisis and also open a dialogue around new models of governance for other critical issues. This might even be a starting point for rewriting the tattered social contract in Iraq.This piece is based on insights and discussion at a roundtable event, Conflict and the Water Crisis in Iraq, held at Chatham House on March 9 as part of the Iraq Initiative. Full Article
isis Crisis at the Border? Not by the Numbers By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Thu, 07 Jun 2018 15:04:06 -0400 Monthly apprehension statistics at the Southwest border have become a preoccupation for the Trump administration, which compares the 2018 numbers to 2017 and declares a crisis. Yet it was 2017, when the "Trump effect" temporarily paused illegal crossings, that was the outlier. Recent trends have reverted to the pattern seen in 2016, a result notable at a time of very low U.S. unemployment, as this commentary explores. Full Article
isis A Wall Cannot Fix Problems at Border; Smart Solutions for Asylum Crisis Can By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 10:48:47 -0500 What President Trump calls a border crisis is in fact a crisis in the asylum system—one worsened at every turn by his administration’s harsh policies and rhetoric. Rather than spend $5.7 billion on a wall, it would be far more effective to use the money to retool an overwhelmed asylum system, adapt outmatched border enforcement infrastructure to respond to the changing composition of arrivals, and work cooperatively with Mexico to tackle the factors propelling Central Americans to flee. Full Article
isis Shaping a Narrative of "Crisis" at Border, Trump Administration Takes Muscular Action By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Tue, 18 Dec 2018 16:06:51 -0500 The Trump administration took sweeping action in 2018 to slow legal immigration, make life harder for some immigrants already in the United States, rebuff would-be asylum seekers, and reduce refugee resettlement. Shaping a narrative of crisis at the border, the administration significantly changed the U.S. asylum system, deployed troops and tear gas, and separated families—yet Central American migrants continued to arrive. Full Article
isis Creative Policy Responses in Latin America to the Venezuelan Migration Crisis By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Mon, 04 Feb 2019 10:07:13 -0500 With more than 3 million Venezuelans having fled their country in crisis, this event features the release of an MPI-OAS report that examines the creative responses that host countries in Latin America are providing. These include the opening of legal pathways to residence, access to formal labor markets, and greater use of forms of ID for recognition. Full Article
isis Creatividad Dentro de la Crisis: Opciones Legales para Inmigrantes Venezolanos en América Latina By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Mon, 04 Feb 2019 17:43:58 -0500 Convocamos un seminario en línea (webinar) en español en la ocasión del lanzamiento del informe, Creatividad dentro de la crisis: opciones legales para inmigrantes venezolanos en América Latina, que describe donde se han radicado los migrantes venezolanos; las medidas que han utilizado los gobiernos latinoamericanos para regularizar el estatus legal de los migrantes venezolanos; y los esfuerzos por integrar a los recién llegados en sus nuevas comunidades de residencia. Full Article
isis On the Brink of Demographic Crisis, Governments in East Asia Turn Slowly to Immigration By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Mon, 05 Dec 2016 16:12:43 -0500 With many countries in East Asia facing unfavorable demographic shifts in the form of aging populations, low fertility, and shrinking workforces, governments in 2016 continued to explore immigration as a potential policy solution. However, a tradition of cultural homogeneity and wariness among publics about increased immigration is leading policymakers to test the waters with very small steps. Full Article
isis Protection in Crisis: Forced Migration and Protection in a Global Era By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 17:50:04 -0400 More than 51 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced today as refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons. This report details the increasing mismatch between the legal and normative frameworks that define the existing protection regime and the contemporary patterns of forced displacement. Full Article
isis Spiraling Violence and Drought Drive Refugee Crisis in South Sudan By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 11:55:03 -0400 Nearly 4 million South Sudanese have been driven from their homes by violence or food insecurity since late 2013, roughly half seeking refuge in neighboring countries. Drought and conflict have converged in the young country to fuel one of the world's most severe humanitarian emergencies. This article examines refugee flows from South Sudan, underlying drivers, and regional and international responses to the crisis. Full Article
isis As Lesvos Battles Migration Crisis Fatigue, the Value of Centralized Migration Decision-Making Is Questioned By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Wed, 11 Sep 2019 12:42:46 -0400 As Greece's Aegean islands continue to grapple with migrants arriving on their shores, decisions regarding the needs of newcomers are negotiated in Brussels and Athens, far removed from the situation on the ground. Meanwhile, local communities have had successes in hosting migrants, as this article drawing on observations from the hospitality center and refugee camp on Lesvos explores. Full Article
isis Migration, Development, and Global Governance: From Crisis toward Consolidation By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Tue, 25 Jun 2019 18:12:58 -0400 Migration and development policy discussions have edged closer to each other on the international stage. The adoption of the Global Compact for Migration in December 2018 marks an important milestone. As all eyes turn toward the compact’s implementation, this brief examines some of the key topics states have pledged to work more closely on—from labor migration and migrants’ rights, to returns and reintegration. Full Article
isis From Control to Crisis: Changing Trends and Policies Reshaping U.S.-Mexico Border Enforcement By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Fri, 02 Aug 2019 12:09:41 -0400 How did the U.S. border enforcement picture go in the span of two years from the lowest levels of illegal immigration since 1971 to a spiraling border security and humanitarian crisis? This report draws on enforcement and other data as well as analysis of changing migration trends and policies to tell this story. The authors outline key elements for a new strategy that can succeed over the long term. Full Article
isis Crisis in the Courts: Is the Backlogged U.S. Immigration Court System at Its Breaking Point? By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Tue, 01 Oct 2019 12:31:23 -0400 With a backlog of more than 1 million removal cases, the U.S. immigration court system is in crisis. Pressure from external forces, internal challenges, and lagging resources for the courts at a time of massive increases in spending on immigration enforcement have contributed to the backlog. This article explores how the system got to the breaking point, and what opportunities for reform exist. Full Article
isis Dietary Sugar and Body Weight: Have We Reached a Crisis in the Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes?: Health Be Damned! Pour on the Sugar By care.diabetesjournals.org Published On :: 2014-04-01 George A. BrayApr 1, 2014; 37:950-956Current Concepts of Type 2 Diabetes Prevention Full Article
isis Dietary Sugar and Body Weight: Have We Reached a Crisis in the Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes?: Health Be Damned! Pour on the Sugar By care.diabetesjournals.org Published On :: 2014-04-01 George A. BrayApr 1, 2014; 37:950-956Current Concepts of Type 2 Diabetes Prevention Full Article
isis Amid an Unfolding Humanitarian Crisis in Syria, the European Union Faces the Perils of Devolving Migration Management to Turkey By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Fri, 20 Mar 2020 10:00:26 -0400 The high-stakes gambit taken by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to allow tens of thousands of asylum seekers and migrants free movement to the Greek border demonstrated the fragility of the EU-Turkey deal and the European Union's broader approach to outsource migration management to third countries. This article examines the causes for the tensions, the EU approach to external partnerships, and a hardening European attitude towards unwanted arrivals. Full Article
isis International Experience Suggests Safe Third-Country Agreement Would Not Solve the U.S.-Mexico Border Crisis By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Mon, 24 Jun 2019 10:44:06 -0400 While safe third-country agreements appear to hold the potential of deterring new asylum claims, experience suggests this may be a false promise. As the Trump administration explores the possibility of such agreements with Mexico and Guatemala, this commentary examines the evidence of safe third-country arrangements in Europe, finding them difficult to enforce and playing little role in deterring new claims. Full Article
isis Policy Solutions to Address Crisis at Border Exist, But Require Will and Staying Power to Execute By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Mon, 01 Apr 2019 14:51:59 -0400 Closing the U.S.-Mexico border and cutting off aid to Central America would only feed the crisis unfolding at key points along the U.S.-Mexico border. This commentary outlines a range of immediate and long-term policy responses that would more effectively address the complex mix of factors fueling rising Central American migration to the United States. Full Article
isis Strategic Solutions for the United States and Mexico to Manage the Migration Crisis By www.migrationpolicy.org Published On :: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 09:07:25 -0400 Amid surging migration from Central America, the United States and Mexico in June 2019 agreed to a series of enforcement measures. Yet these near-term efforts will be difficult to maintain given chronic institutional weaknesses and poorly thought-out policy structures in both countries. This commentary, by the presidents of MPI and El Colegio de México, offers a set of long-term, collaborative solutions to dissuade illegal migration while ensuring fairness to those seeking protection. Full Article