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Reliable and forward-looking: GIZ provides effective support in the Corona crisis
Annual press conference: Business volume rises to EUR 3.1 billion in 2019
Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven is GIZ’s new managing director
The development expert will start work on 1 October 2020.
Globetrotting master craftspeople: knowledge transfer, 3D printing and start-ups in Rwanda
After completing the International Master Craftsperson training course, German experts share their know-how with the rest of the world.
Climate and Environmental Report: sustainable mobility is crucial
On the road to climate neutrality in 2020: business trips are the biggest contributing factor to greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore offer the greatest potential for savings.
Women on the move: female perspectives enhance safety in public spaces
An initiative is providing new impetus in the transport sector to make travel better and safer for women in particular. In Bogotá, new ideas are already improving safety in public spaces.
Crime in the Western Balkans: cross-border policing and judiciary work
Investigations carried out by cross-border teams, good cooperation and an uncomplicated exchange of information are making it easier to fight organised crime.
Providing skilled support – as a refugee expert in Pakistan
International cooperation offers a wide range of employment opportunities. Judit Demjén has been working as a refugee expert in Islamabad since 2018.
Modern teacher training in Afghanistan
Teacher training is vital to a modern Afghan society. The professionalisation of training improves the career prospects of young Afghans.
‘Our work continues in Afghanistan’
GIZ has worked on behalf of the German Government to support reconstruction in Afghanistan for 15 years and has already achieved a lot for people there.
Electric power - driving development in Kundus, Afghanistan
18.11.2015 – Today some 200,000 Afghans can rely on a stable power supply
GIZ employee freed
17.10.2015 – The German employee of GIZ who was kidnapped in Afghanistan nine weeks ago on 17 August 2015 has been released. She is in good health considering the circumstances.
Jörg Dux
KfW, head of the team “Water and Waste Management in North Africa”.
Dieter Rothenberger
GIZ, head of the sector programme “International Water Policy – Innovations for Resilience”.
Benjamin Kiersch
is an environmental engineer. From 2019 to 2022, he directed the FAO project “Knowing water better – towards fairer and more sustainable access to natural resources”, funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
23-08-25_Christoph Schneider-Yattara - Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, leading to regular and severe droughts as well as floods. In recent years, these events have become more frequent and intense. Consequently, the region has experienced water scarcity, reduced agricultural productivity and the depletion of livestock and natural resources.
In the past, droughts occurred in the region about every five to ten years. Then they began to happen every three to five years. Now they seem to have become permanent. For the third consecutive year, the Horn of Africa is experiencing significantly reduced rainfall during the rainy season.
Christoph Schneider-Yattara 01.06.2022 Travelling far to keep herds aliveRestricted water access has caused reduced crop yields, livestock deaths and a decline in food production. More than 13 million animals have perished since 2020 across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia alone, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Rural communities that depend on farming and herding are particularly affected. As a result, these communities experience prolonged food insecurity, leading to hunger, poverty and disease. Vulnerable groups, especially women and children, suffer the most.
Low water quality and lack of water contribute to the transmission of waterborne diseases like cholera, dysentery and typhoid. People often resort to using contaminated water, which poses additional health risks and burdens health-care systems that are already under stress.
At the same time, the Horn of Africa has one of the highest population-growth rates in the world, averaging three percent per year. This exacerbates the struggle for available resources and increases pressure on limited arable land. As a result, deforestation, soil degradation, groundwater depletion and biodiversity loss are widespread in the region.
Migration as a coping strategyMoreover, when water becomes scarce, disputes over access, control and distribution can escalate, leading to conflict and violence. These conflicts have the potential to further destabilise already fragile social and political systems.
Migration is a coping mechanism for communities in need. According to OCHA, more than 2.7 million people have been displaced since 2020 by the ongoing drought across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. People are leaving their homes in search of better access to water and other basic needs. Sometimes entire communities are displaced by drought or water-related conflicts. Thus, refugee camps are emerging, and the influx of migrants into urban areas is growing, putting additional strain on limited resources and services.
Internal and cross-border migration due to water increases tension in a region plagued by wars and conflicts. In a vicious circle, people move from one crisis to the next, as most stay within the region.
Ethnic conflicts, civil wars, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) are part of everyday life, alongside disputes over access to water and land. According to the Fund For Peace’s Fragile State Index 2023, the Horn of Africa is one of the most volatile regions in the world. Somalia is considered the most unstable country globally according to the index. South Sudan follows in third place and Sudan was in seventh at the time of publication. Ethiopia and Eritrea are on “High Alert” and “Alert” respectively. All of these countries have been at war in the recent past or are currently in conflict.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), these conflicts have led to more than 13 million internally displaced people in the region by last year and 5 million refugees by March 2023. People are fleeing destruction, persecution and death.
SGBV is a common form of violence in this context. Various armed groups often target women and girls for rape, forced marriage and sexual slavery. SGBV was used in the recent war in Ethiopia and is also being reported from the ongoing war in Sudan.
Although the African Union (AU) has a peace and security architecture, its capacity to mediate conflicts is limited. The presence of the UN in every country in the Horn of Africa shows that national governments are overwhelmed by the task of dealing with all the challenges that affect their people.
Colonial relics create new conflictsTo make matters worse, relics of the colonial era not only recall historical grievances, but can also lead to new conflicts, as in the case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). In the past, Egypt had successfully prevented the construction of dams on the downstream Nile, invoking colonial-era agreements with Britain and Sudan from 1929 and 1959. Ethiopia’s decision to build the dam, which was completed in 2020, almost triggered a water war between the riparian states, especially between Ethiopia and Egypt.
It is high time for a mechanism to help these nations manage common resources such as water. This requires a multi-faceted approach that includes sustainable water management, investment in water infrastructure, improved agricultural practices and effective economic and governance systems.
In addition, regional, national and international cooperation is crucial to help communities build resilience to water scarcity, mitigate conflict and find sustainable solutions around resource management and equitable access. This also includes peacebuilding and conflict resolution, supporting humanitarian aid and development initiatives as well as addressing sexual and gender-based violence. A framework for legal and secure migration is urgently needed too.
All this requires a comprehensive approach. Regional bodies such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the AU and the UN can offer technical expertise and policy tools to facilitate processes that advance durable solutions.
Such procedures depend on the active participation and support of all stakeholders from governments, institutions, civil society and local communities. After all, the people in the Horn of Africa deserve to live a dignified, peaceful, just and prosperous life.
Christoph Schneider-Yattara is the regional representative of Bread for the World’s Horn of Africa Regional office.
csyattara@padd-africa.org
The Poaching and Trafficking of Pangolins is Sowing Instability in Central Africa
Pangolins are small mammals with hard scales and vital to biodiversity in forested regions. They are also the most trafficked mammal in the world. Although they are a protected species in international law, transnational organized criminal groups profit from trafficking Pangolins
This includes the Congo Basin in Central Africa. International organized criminal groups run poaching and trafficking networks in which most poached pangolins are exported to China and Southeast Asia, where they are a key ingredient in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pangolin meat is considered a high-end delicacy.
According to my guest today Oluwole Ojewale these networks rake in millions and are a destabilizing force across several countries in the Central Africa. Oluwole Ojewale is the Regional Organized Crime Observatory Coordinator for Central Africa at the Institute for Security Studies. As he explains in our conversation Pangolin trafficking is part of a broader criminal network of illicit wildlife trafficking that funds armed groups, including terrorist groups active in the Central Africa.
To get the episode delivered to your preferred podcast player, go here.
The post The Poaching and Trafficking of Pangolins is Sowing Instability in Central Africa appeared first on UN Dispatch.
Estuarine territorialization and the port of Hamburg
The port of Hamburg is the third-largest port in Europe and located approximately 120 km from the North Sea in the inner delta of the vast Elbe estuary. The foundation, expansion, and maintenance of Hamburg’s port required the reconfiguration of the estuary and its inner delta. Dredging and reclamation have transformed aquatic spaces and provided the material framework conditions for shipping and port industry. We build our contribution on an analysis of contemporary and historical documents, newspaper articles, and qualitative interviews, focusing on the metabolism of territorialization and protests against port expansion. Conceptually, we formulate a political ecology of estuarine territorialization and show how the materiality and the tidal-fuelled power of the Elbe estuary and constant dredging produce a specific form of territoriality, which is itself dynamic and in constant change, reflecting power dynamics within society and among humans and the estuary.
23-08-24_Hans Dembowski - Culture Special - Djafari - Mahtab
Mahtab, the main character, is a woman in her late 30s who works as a nurse in a Frankfurt hospital. She has been living in Germany with her family for about a decade. Her husband, Amin, runs a small store with great dreams but moderate success. Their youngest son was born in Frankfurt; their daughter and first son were born in Iran.
Mahtab is focused on her family. When her shift is over, she hurries home to prepare dinner for the kids. She does not socialise much with female colleagues, who seem to be obsessed with their looks and whether they are attractive to men.
The Iranian mother pays far less attention to the outside world than her husband and children do. Her husband listens to shortwave radio and always knows the latest news about the atrocities of the Shah dictatorship back home. He also follows what is going on in other countries of the so called Third World. On the other hand, he is constantly trying to grasp new business opportunities – but not with much luck. Mahtab finds his tendency to flirt with German women deeply irritating. She is equally bewildered by the attention a senior doctor pays her at the hospital.
The children go to German schools and accept their peers’ views and ideas. Azadeh, the 21-year-old daughter, in particular, is increasingly independent-minded and expects much more personal freedom than seems appropriate to Mahtab. The parents want all three to get a good education and have a great future.
In the first of 27 chapters, Mahtab and Amin are stuck in a traffic jam which is caused by young students protesting against the Vietnam war. Mahtab is surprised to see Azadeh in the crowd. It turns out that the young woman has a boyfriend, so Mahtab does not permit her to go out anymore. Nonetheless, she must discover that she has become unable to control her daughter’s life.
1960s FrankfurtWhile Mahtab disapproves of her daughter’s miniskirt, she is ignorant of many German mothers sharing those feelings. In an interesting twist, Djafari describes not only how his main character changes, but incidentally also gives account of the massive changes Frankfurt was undergoing.
The underground metro system was being built, so the downtown area was a permanent construction site. Consumerism had set in, and people were eagerly buying washing machines and TV sets. Birth-control pills had become available, and a side effect was that extra-marital affairs were no longer the scandal they had been in the past. Young people were rebellious, keenly aware of what was going on in Vietnam and other countries formerly or still under colonial rule. They objected to western governments’ involvement in the crises of far-away nations – and likened such involvement to Germany’s Nazi past. Of course, immigrants were changing the city too – it had started to become Germany’s hub of multiculturalism.
Mahtab takes everything for granted. She is struggling to cope with many challenges. Annoyed because her husband seems to have an affair with an employee, Mahtab decides to move out and take along her sons. She finds refuge in the home of a former patient, an elderly lady. Azadeh takes advantage of the chaotic situation and starts to share a room with her boyfriend. Her mother thinks she is still at home, while her father believes she is with his wife. The family’s reunification starts when the parents begin to look for their daughter.
In the meantime, Mahtab’s elderly friend has helped the nurse to become more self-confident and independent. Mahtab now has a bank account of her own, for example, and she has started to take swimming lessons. When she first accompanied her friend to the public swimming pool, she felt embarrassingly naked in her new swimsuit. The protagonist increasingly makes Frankfurt her home, and no longer feels bound by her childhood’s more restrictive gender roles.
Nassir Djafari is an immigrant himself. His family moved from Iran to Germany when he was four. He used to work for KfW Development Bank as an economist and has written several non-fiction contributions for D+C/E+Z. Mahtab is his second novel. His first one was about a father-son relationship in crisis.
Book
Djafari, N., 2022: Mahtab. Bremen, Sujet Verlag (in German only).
Hans Dembowski is editor in chief of D+C Development and Cooperation / E+Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit.
euz.editor@dandc.eu
Water, accumulation, and the space in-between
Continue reading "Water, accumulation, and the space in-between"
23-08-23_Alan Robles - Philippines - Despotism
Marcos Jr. is the son of a former dictator – and he proudly campaigned praising his father’s supposed achievements. In truth, thousands were murdered and tortured on Marcos Sr.’s watch, and his loot amounted to billions of dollars. The new vice president is Sara Duterte-Carpio, the daughter of Marcos Jr.’s immediate predecessor who was known for authoritarian tendencies and a phony war on drugs which claimed at least 12,000 lives. Most victims were poor urban people.
Alan C. Robles 16.03.2022 In May, Filipino democracy may heal – or dieDuring Duterte’s regime, we were all tense – to some extent we still are – walking along narrow streets, wondering if a motorcycle would suddenly drive with the tandem rider who would shoot us in the head. One colleague from decades ago who served his newspaper as head of research, left journalism and became a government consultant. A few years ago, he and his brother were ambushed and murdered when their car was stopped on a traffic light. Motorcycle gunmen shot them more than 40 times. The case, of course, is unsolved. Last year a radio journalist who criticised political corruption was similarly shot dead while he was driving home. A top government official and government soldiers have been linked to the assassination.
In 2021, after my wife Raissa, a multi-awarded book writer and investigative journalist, posted that Marcos Jr. was a convicted tax evader, a loyalist lawyer filmed himself in a short video that he then posted on social media. In it, he screamed and howled loathsome obscenities at her. For that he was first suspended and then disbarred by the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, he was recently appointed to a high-paying cabinet position by Marcos Jr.
Preening and gloating about it, he told a reporter he was not sorry for the attack, and that my wife was lucky he didn’t have her killed. One could almost imagine the image of Julius Streicher, the hate-mongering Nazi publisher of Hitler Germany.
Murder is all around us, so frequent that people take it for granted. Trolls and disinformation have corrupted public discourse and undermined belief in a free press. Anger and anxiety have become our permanent companions. The blatant criminality and corruption are infuriating, the uncertainty over the future of our country and journalism is worrisome. These feelings are common among many of our colleagues and friends. Their days are marked by sleeping problems, drifting focus, low motivation and heightened anxiety – classic symptoms of depression. One friend told me she was drinking every day for weeks before she managed to control it. Others do not feel like talking much and have increasingly retreated into the privacy of their homes.
We keep finding our dismal expectations being fulfilled. What is unfolding is a replay of what we lived through decades ago. In all possible ways, Marcos, his family, cronies, appointees and flunkies are helping themselves brazenly to the public treasury. They arbitrarily use the law to hound opponents. So far, it is not brutish as the reign of Marcos Sr., but it is criminal from top to bottom.
Our country is turning into an anocracy – a democracy in name only, like a zombie or a human body possessed by some alien parasite. The legislature and judiciary now basically serve to further enrich the elite.
It is galling that, while the original Marcos dictatorship was imposed at gunpoint under martial law, this new variant was voted into power by eager howling populists who reject facts. Similar things are happening in many countries, so I suppose we are basically experiencing the post-truth era. In the Philippines, there is no outrage, no popular resistance, no accountability. How can there be when facts are distorted constantly on conventional as well as social media. This must have been what it was like during the Third Reich, the difference being that propaganda here is now even more omni-present and pervasive.
I read how, when Hitler seemed to be winning World War II in 1942, self-exiled novelist Stefan Zweig and his wife found the future so bleak, they took their lives. I now understand what he must have felt like, though I am not about to take my life. My wife and I have considered moving abroad, but we survived the Marcos dictatorship and think we can probably survive this. On the other hand, I sometimes think of all those Germans who, after Hitler rose to power in 1933, didn’t leave while they could, saying it couldn’t be that bad, and why should they worry?
My mind is historical that way. I also cannot help comparing what is happening in Ukraine to the Spanish Civil War that led up to the Second World War and let the various powers try out their weapons systems. Or seeing China as something like the German Empire in its build-up of a navy and paranoia about being encircled. It is irritating that the US administration, which paints itself as a beacon of freedom and human rights, is wooing our authoritarian, abusive government, considering it to be an important ally in its contest with China. Tensions are rising in the South China Sea. Most people scoff at the likelihood of war, but so did most people before the great wars of the past century.
Add to all this the effects of the pandemic and global heating. We just had a record-breaking hot season with the heat index averaging 42 degrees Celsius for three months. Next, Thyphoon Dokursi displaced some 300,000 people, leaving dozens dead in its wake. In fact, in more ways than one the Philippines faces stormy weather.
Roli Mahajan 22.06.2023 Climate crisis keeps escalatingAlan Robles is a Manila-based journalist.
euz.editor@dandc.eu
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