Why do US health care workers continue to refuse vaccination against COVID-19?

Katy Kinner

In January, when COVID-19 vaccines were first rolled out among US health care workers, news stories quickly surfaced with reports that large numbers of health care workers were refusing to be vaccinated.

In a press briefing on January 4, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that roughly 60 percent of the state’s nursing home workers refused the first round of vaccinations.

Nurses and physicians on a COVID-19 unit in Texas [Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr.]

Other areas reported a similar phenomenon. In Los Angeles County, between 20 and 40 percent of all health care workers refused the vaccine when first available, and 50 percent in neighboring Riverside County refused.

Dr. Jeremy Boal, the chief clinical officer at the Mount Sinai Hospital system in NYC, told the Gothamist in early January that across the eight hospitals in the system, vaccine acceptance ranged from 25 to 65 percent.

The trend of vaccine skepticism among health care workers is especially dangerous because these workers are in more frequent contact with both COVID-19 patients and patients who are more vulnerable to deadly COVID-19 complications. Health care workers also play a crucial role in influencing the general population to accept the vaccine.

Updated data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) COVID-19 vaccine monitor shows that compliance with the COVID-19 vaccine is increasing among health care workers as well as the general population. However, health care workers are still accepting vaccination at alarmingly low rates.

The KFF COVID-19 vaccine monitor is an ongoing research project that tracks the public’s attitude toward the vaccine using a combination of qualitative research and surveys.

As of January 27, 32 percent of surveyed health care workers say they have received at least the first dose and 26 percent say they plan to receive it as soon as they can. Twenty-eight percent state they want to “wait-and-see,” while 9 percent say they will never get it. Of those refusing or delaying vaccination, 68 percent cited fear of long-term side effects as their primary concern.

According to the KFF vaccine monitor, despite high levels of vaccine hesitancy, health care workers are still vaccinated or plan to be vaccinated at higher rates than the general population. Fifty-eight percent of surveyed health care workers have been vaccinated or plan to become vaccinated as soon as possible compared to 47 percent of the surveyed general population.

Another survey by the non-profit group Surgo Ventures, focused solely on health care workers, allows for a more detailed analysis. The Surgo survey polled 2,500 health care workers between December 17 and 30. Respondents were split into three categories: health care professionals (nurses, physicians, dentists, pharmacists, physician’s assistants), allied health professionals (phlebotomists, nurse assistants, EMTs, medical technicians) and support staff (environmental services, kitchen staff, patient transporters, etc.).

At the time of the survey, 50 percent of respondents had been offered the vaccine and, across all groups, an average of 15 percent had refused vaccination. The group most likely to refuse the vaccine were allied health professionals, with a refusal rate of 22 percent.

The Surgo data also showed that long-term care facility (i.e., nursing home) workers were most likely to refuse the vaccine, with 7.5 of 10 long-term care facility workers compliant with the vaccine compared to 8.1 out of 10 hospital health care workers.

According to the Surgo study, 31 percent of those who refused the vaccine stated they were concerned about lack of evidence and safety of the vaccine. Another 24 percent had concerns about long-term side effects of vaccination. Sixteen percent felt the process of vaccine research and rollout was too rushed, and 12 percent stated they wanted to wait to observe side effects or issues in others.

Health care workers also hold an immense influence on the rest of the population’s opinion of vaccination for COVID-19. Eighty percent of non-health-care workers surveyed in the KFF survey stated that they would turn to a health care provider for more information if they were unsure about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, the Surgo survey found that 14 percent of physicians working in long-term care facilities stated they would advise a vaccine-hesitant patient to decline the COVID-19 vaccine compared to 3 percent of physicians working in hospitals.

Both surveys offer advice to fight this phenomenon. They suggest educational campaigns and styles of questions or types of information that are most likely to convince a vaccine-hesitant citizen. Public health research and strategies on ways to increase vaccination against COVID-19 are crucial in the fight against the spread of preventable disease and against the reactionary anti-vaccination movement.

However, neither survey addresses the political, social and historical context in which hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccinations among health care workers is taking place. There is no question that the inadequate, criminal, chaotic and disorganized response by the ruling class to the coronavirus pandemic has contributed to the reluctance of health care workers to embrace a safe and efficacious vaccine.

In April, then-President Trump urged Americans to inject themselves with disinfectant and insert ultraviolet lights into their bodies, measures that would kill those unfortunate enough to follow the president’s advice. He claimed that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu, pronounced that his “gut” instinct told him the pandemic would be over in April, and promoted use of hydroxychloroquine against the FDA’s warnings. In September, Trump made false claims that the White House could overrule the FDA if the agency maintained its standards for approval of COVID-19 vaccines.

The constant barrage of brazen lies from the Trump administration on the fight against the coronavirus has led millions who hate Trump to distrust the COVID-19 vaccines and doubt their efficacy, against scientific evidence. To this must be added, of course, millions more who have been fooled by right-wing propaganda—initially embraced by Trump—that the coronavirus itself is a “hoax,” or no worse than the flu, and therefore a vaccine against it is not necessary. Health care workers are to be found in both these segments of the population.

Health care workers have also been frontline victims of the bipartisan homicidal “herd-immunity” strategy, which allowed the disease to run rampant against all medical and scientific advice. This has had a direct effect on the lives of all workers, especially health care workers who see and feel each surge and outbreak. Their backs hurt from proning more patients in the ICU. Their facial skin breaks down from more time wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). Their brains are foggy from exhaustion after picking up more overtime shifts to make up for co-workers who have fallen ill or died. When offered a vaccine from the same ruling class that has put them through hell, some health care workers interpret this as another experiment, where they again are the lab rats.

Health care worker refusal of the vaccine has also likely been influenced by the continued campaign from the ruling class to minimize the severity of SARS-CoV-2 and normalize death. This outlook is rooted in the class interests of the ruling class, which prioritizes economic “health” over human life. The media, the political establishment, in both parties, and the financial oligarchs all embrace this outlook.

After taking office, Democratic President Joe Biden stated that “there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” This is a blatant lie, as blatant as any that has come out of Trump’s mouth. This too contributes to the atmosphere of helplessness and fatalism that underlies the distrust of vaccination by those who are in the greatest need.

A patient approach to the reluctance of some health care workers to be vaccinated does not imply any conciliation with the reactionary anti-vaccination movement, cultivated in a small, privileged section of the upper middle class, based on a total rejection of modern science.

Famously flawed and fabricated studies, such as the Lancet publication by Andrew Wakefield that falsely linked the MMR vaccine with autism, continue to play a role in the misinformation peddled by the anti-vaccination movement.

Despite its small size, anti-vaccination efforts have had a significant and deleterious public health effect. Measles requires herd-immunity rates of 93 to 95 percent to create an umbrella of protection for the community. Levels even slightly below this have recently caused deadly measles outbreaks across the world. Last year, the US reported its highest measles caseload in 25 years, according to the WHO.

The longstanding anti-vaccination campaign is now being reinforced by a significant right-wing element mobilized by Trump in his efforts to build a fascist movement. On January 30, a mass vaccination site at Los Angeles Dodger stadium was shut down for about an hour by 50 demonstrators who blocked the entrance.

The demonstration was organized by the group “Shop Mask Free Los Angeles,” which stated that the protest would be staged to be against “everything COVID, Vaccine, PCR Tests, Lockdowns, Masks, Fauci, Gates, Newsom, China, digital tracking, etc.” This small group of far-right demonstrators were allowed to disrupt a major public health operation while the LAPD officers stood by and watched. The demonstration was promoted publicly on social media and was not unexpected. The LAPD was not caught off guard, but chose not to act, in line with the police response to previous anti-lockdown protests as well as the January 6 insurrection.

UAE and Chinese spacecraft safely enter Martian orbit

Bryan Dyne

Two missions to Mars successfully entered orbit around the fourth planet in the solar system this week: the Hope spacecraft built by the United Arab Emirates and launched by Japan from the Tanegashima Space Center, on February 9, and the Tianwen-1 (“heavenly questions”) launched by China from the country’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, on February 10.

Artist’s conception of the Tianwen-1 rover getting ready to deploy across the surface of Mars. Credit: China New Service/Wikimedia Commons

A third mission will reach Mars next Thursday, the Mars 2020 rover and helicopter pair, named Perseverance and Ingenuity, respectively, launched by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

All three missions took advantage of the favorable conjunction between Earth and Mars, which occurs about every 26 months, when the two planets reach their closest approach to each other. The “launch window” varies slightly depending on the exact path taken to get to Mars, but it allowed all three spacecraft to arrive a mere seven months after launch, after a relatively short journey of about 493 million kilometers.

Once the spacecraft arrive in the vicinity of Mars, they must undertake an orbital insertion maneuver, one of the most difficult operations in space exploration. Spacecraft travel to Mars (and the other planets) at speeds of tens of kilometers per second, and must brake sharply and precisely to be captured by the planet’s gravity and enter orbit. The gravitational attraction of Mars is also much weaker, about 62 percent less than Earth’s. Moreover, the 22-minute round-trip required for radio signals between Earth and Mars means the entire process must be automated.

These challenges have meant that, since the Soviet Union first exploited this launch window 61 years ago, more than half of the 49 Mars missions have failed. Only in the last 25 years have successes overtaken failures.

Of course, many lessons on space travel have been learned in this arduous process. The Hope mission, in close collaboration with NASA, is the second time a country’s first mission to Mars safely entered orbit, following the success of India’s Mangalyaan probe in 2014. Tianwen-1 is only China’s second attempt to reach Mars, and the first time the country built and launched the spacecraft mostly on its own (a previous joint mission with Russia failed to escape Earth orbit).

A rendering of the UAE Hope orbiter. Credit: Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre/Wikimedia Commons

Satellites deployed in earlier missions are also informing the scientific objectives of each craft. Hope is designed to study the daily and seasonal weather cycles on Mars, and is slated to carefully analyze the red planet’s atmosphere for a full Martian year (about two Earth years). The primary mission is to understand why Mars lost so much of its atmosphere to space, a process that still continues today. Secondary objectives include mapping out a more complete picture of the more inclement weather cycles, such as the planet’s many dust storms.

Hope has three instruments in addition to its communications suite. The Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) is a high-resolution camera designed to image water, ice, dust and aerosols in the Martian atmosphere at six different wavelengths. The Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) will study the temperature characteristics of ice, water vapor and dust. The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) will use ultraviolet light to provide a better understanding of Mars thermosphere, as well as the planet’s oxygen and hydrogen content.

While these instruments are relatively commonplace, they will be filling a gap in the understanding of the Martian atmosphere, which has never been analyzed in such a complete manner. The mission objectives were decided in consultation with the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, a NASA-led international team which coordinates Mars missions from multiple countries.

The Hope team also received assistance in designing and making the spacecraft and its instruments from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, Arizona State University, and the University of California, Berkeley. They received further aid from the Indian Space Research Organization, which shared its experiences with the Mangalyaan mission.

Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, deputy project manager for the mission, commented to CNN’s Becky Anderson on the success of the orbital insertion that, “I am grateful for the performance of the spacecraft, and what has made this mission remarkable, Becky, it is not only the 200 Emiratis working on this, but it is the 450 people from different continents, and from different backgrounds and beliefs. This is truly an international endeavor, and this is what science needs to be. This is what exploration is all about.”

Tianwen-1 is a more sophisticated spacecraft, which includes a Mars orbiter, lander and rover. The lander and rover are set to deploy in May or June of this year after a close approach of the orbiter of about 265 kilometers to map the landing site in Utopia Planitia. The high resolution camera on board Tianwen-1 is capable of achieving a resolution of better than two meters at that height.

If the rover successfully lands, China will be the third country to achieve a soft landing on Mars, following the Soviet Union and the United States.

Other instruments on board the Tianwen-1 orbiter include a medium resolution camera, a magnetometer, a spectrometer, a subsurface radar, and two different particle analyzers. One of the particle analyzers, the Mars Energetic Particle Analyzer, has been operating since six days after the spacecraft’s launch last July to study the environment between Earth and Mars, and how that changes in Martian orbit. This is similar to the role of the Radiation Assessment Detector on board NASA’s Curiosity rover.

The rover has its own suite of instruments, including ground-penetrating radar, another magnetic field detector, a weather station, a navigation camera and two tools to study planetary geology. The solar panel-powered rover is slated to use these platforms to chemically analyze the Martian soil, looking for potential signs of past and (less likely) present life. It will add to the growing body of knowledge about the past and potential habitability of the red planet.

As part of its scheduled 90-day mission, the rover will also cache rock and soil samples for a future sample-return mission, which China has slated for the 2030s. If this 90-day mission is anything like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the rover will still be taking data and doing science even then.

Even if the rover does not land, both the Tianwen-1 and Hope are already successes, joining the constellation of satellites that have been studying Mars continuously for the past 20 years. These include the still operational Mars Odyssey and Mars Express, launched in 2001 and 2003 respectively, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mangalyaan, MAVEN and ExoMars.

If the rover does make it to the surface, it will be joining the Curiosity rover and InSight lander as part of the ongoing surface exploration of the planet, which has been ongoing since 2004. The whole mission is being supported by teams in Argentina, France and Austria.

Of course, the international collaboration necessary for each mission has not stopped a spate of nationalism from the governments of both China and the UAE. In contrast to the comments from Al Amiri, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, proclaimed that the Hope mission was solely a triumph for “Arab civilization.”

Moreover, this spacecraft as a whole was designed to reach Mars around the time of the country’s 50th anniversary. And the success was projected onto the side of the Burj Khalifa, the skyscraper which is a symbol of the crushing social and economic inequality in the region and around the world, and which had construction costs more than seven times higher than the paltry $200 million expended on the Hope mission.

Similar comments were issued at the time of Tianwen-1’s launch by Chinese officials. Bao Weimin, a senior director at the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation declared that the exploration of Mars by China is “a manifestation of the country’s scientific and technological strength.”

It is also a measure of China’s military capacity, which think tanks and the Pentagon in the US are painfully aware of. If a country can thread a spacecraft to orbit Mars and even land on it, it is more than capable of launching missiles with pinpoint accuracy against targets on its own planet. A great scientific achievement at the same time exacerbates international rivalries and extends them into outer space.

Such rivalries also limited the Chinese mission. There is no reason that a second rover on the scale of Perseverance, which is many times the mass and complexity of the Tianwen-1 rover, could not have been sent on the rocket launched from Wenchang, except that NASA workers are barred from such close collaboration with their Chinese counterparts. It has meant that, both for its Moon and Mars rovers, China has had to literally reinvent wheels to drive on those other worlds.

That the UAE launched spacecraft with the support of the United States and Japan is another indication of international tensions, this time US aggression against Iran. The UAE has traditionally been used by Iran, a few miles across the Strait of Hormuz, to send and receive goods that have been embargoed by other nations, usually the US. The close collaboration between the United States and UAE is no doubt concerning for Iranian ruling circles, further encircling the already isolated country.

Police murders spark demonstrations, riots in Chile

Mauricio Saavedra

Last Friday Francisco Martínez, a 27-year-old street performer, was shot dead by Carabinero police in broad daylight and in view of dozens of witnesses in Panguipulli, a lakeside town in the Araucanía, the poorest region in Chile. Martínez, who suffered from schizophrenia, had lived in Panguipulli for only three years, but was well known, having lived on the streets and relied on community assistance.

A relative attends a wake for Francisco Martinez a street juggler who was shot by the police, in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021. Martinez was fatally shot by an officer when he resisted a routine identity check, setting off protests over alleged police violence in Chile. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

In the many interviews given by locals since, Martínez was described as “very helpful” and “respectful.” Martínez was also the uncle of Anthony Araya, the youth who was pushed off a bridge by Carabineros during anti-police violence demonstrations in Santiago last October, which shocked the nation.

Amid angry cries from locals, for whom the young man was well-liked, Sgt. Juan González Iturriaga unloaded five bullets into Martínez, who fell to the ground in the middle of a busy intersection. Crowds descended on the scene chanting “Murderers! Murderers!” as the cops drove off and entrenched themselves in the police station, leaving the dying man abandoned on the street. Then they reappeared en masse to suppress the mass of people protesting the young man’s death.

Minutes earlier three cops were involved in conducting identity checks. In their statement, Carabineros alleged that after Martínez “refused” to provide identification he moved toward the officers with the juggling swords he used in his street performance and threatened to kill the Sergeant.

“He told me ‘I’m going to kill you, f…g cop’” González has claimed. The cops distanced themselves and ordered Martínez to drop what they described as “machetes,” and when he did not comply the sergeant drew his weapon and shot twice at the ground. According to the police report, the young man lunged at González who then “fired three more shots, since his life was at risk, and the assailant fell to the ground.”

Natalia Peralta, a nursing technician who witnessed the events from close range told a very different story: “We were right there with my daughter. The carabinero says to the boy ‘your ID card,’ and the boy says ‘no, I don’t have an ID card, I lost it, but my name is Franco.’”

Francisco Martínez with juggling swords. (Facebook)

Peralta explained that the Carabineros kept insisting that the young man present identification and then threatened to take him to the station for questioning. Elisabeth Matthei Schacht, lawyer for the National Institute for Human Rights, explained that “preventive identity checks … do not allow (police) to take the person to the police station in case the person refuses.”

Peralta continued: “the boy raised his fantasy knife that he had, but he didn’t mean to hurt (González); we were there. The Carabinero walks back, I don’t know, three steps, and draws his gun. They continue (walking backwards toward the intersection) and he shoots (Martínez) in the legs. He shoots him once, twice …”

During the arraignment the prosecution explained that there were six shots fired and not five as claimed by police. Five shots hit Martínez. This is visible in a new video from a service center security camera that provides a better view of events. The cop provocatively shoots three times at Martínez who yells repeatedly “paco asesino” (killer cop). Already injured, Martínez then comes out from behind a traffic control box where he was trying to protect himself and appears to lunge at the cop who shoots him another three times.

Peralta, who lent first aid to Martínez, sought help from the cops but “ The Carabineros got into the (car) and left. They did not stop the traffic, they did not help at all. The boy was left lying on the ground …”

Protests and rioting erupted as soon as news of the incident broke. Ten government buildings went up in flames in Panguipulli the same night that Francisco Martínez lost his life. On Saturday, police stations and other government buildings were firebombed or barricaded in several working class suburbs in Santiago, and daily protests were called across the country. In one spontaneous demonstration, hundreds of people jeered at the Carabineros and drove them out of the Plaza de Armas square in Santiago Sunday morning.

Then on Sunday evening, the family of 27-year-old Camilo Miyaki was told that the young man had hanged himself in a police station cell in the working class Santiago commune of Pedro Aguirre Cerda. He and his girlfriend had been arrested that morning for not carrying a COVID-19 safe conduct pass. She was released during the day.

Camilo Miyaki, 27 year old found dead in his cell. (Facebook)

According to human rights group ANEXPPSA, Camilo had been shifted in the course of the day from one cell to another that “had a blind spot, which did not allow one to see what was happening to the detainee.”

The 53rd police station in Pedro Aguirre Cerda achieved notoriety for torturing detainees. Complaints were filed against officers for having tortured and sexually abused at least two people detained during the mass youth and working class demonstrations at the end of 2019.

In October of that year, student civil disobedience triggered by a hike in public transport was transformed almost overnight as millions of workers, layers of the middle class and youth joined protests, strikes and demonstrations across the country. A mass movement opened up against decades of extreme social inequality, police violence, and in opposition to a deeply hated political caste that emerged in the transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule.

Right-wing president Sebastian Piñera, responded to the protests by decreeing a state of emergency and a curfew, made permanent since the COVID-19 pandemic. The government utilized police state measures, deploying the Armed Forces on Chilean streets for the first time in decades. In the course of three months of quasi-dictatorial conditions, dozens were killed or disappeared, hundreds suffered severe injuries and mutilations and the thousands of those detained suffered beatings, sexual abuse, rape, and torture.

Piñera also entered into national unity talks with the parliamentary opposition and the pseudo-left parties to redirect the explosive mass struggles into the safe parameters of parliamentary politics by promoting a constitutional convention.

These latest police murders threaten to rekindle the widespread struggles that exploded to the surface in 2019 and resurfaced in 2020. Protests and riots were triggered last November, after Carabinero officers raided a juvenile reform center and shot two adolescents weeks after throwing Anthony Araya over the Pío Nono Bridge. But while the Carabineros’ director, Gen. Mario Rozas, was forced to resign over these incidents, police repression has continued unabated under the protection of the latest director and with the full backing of the government.

Fearful of the social forces that may be unleashed, the opposition and the pseudo-“left” are at pains to keep illusions in parliamentary democracy. The Christian Democrats, the Socialist Party, the Party for Democracy, the Radicals, the Liberals, the Humanists, the Greens, the Broad Front coalition and the Stalinist Communist Party have all called for the reform, or re-founding of the paramilitary Carabinero institution.

The Socialist mayor of Panguipulli, Rodrigo Valdivia, initially backed the police and called for order to be restored, only to do a 180 degree shift the following day.

“Both the fires that occurred in Panguipulli and the death of Francisco, may he rest in peace, are the absolute responsibility of the Carabineros,” the mayor said at a press conference. He denounced the abandonment and negligence of Carabineros who “barricaded themselves in the Fifth Police Station of Panguipulli, protecting the interests of the Carabineros to the detriment of the municipality.”

What drove the change in his position is the same fear that motivated independent deputy René Saffirio’s call for a suspension of the legislative recess to address the crisis.

“It is the future of the country that is at stake, it is the respect for the human rights of all the citizens of our country that is at stake, it is our democracy that is at stake.” He continued, “I believe that a circumstance as painful as this can generate a state of major political convulsion, which could perfectly put at risk our constituent process.”

He recalled that the whole political establishment was caught unawares by the seething mass movement and warned that they could not be placed in the same position again: “Now we do see it, consequently, we have to act promptly, with celerity, with responsibility and with great seriousness.”

To this the youth and the working class will answer “we do not believe you!”

The inevitable response of the Chilean state, the verbiage of the liberals and pseudo-lefts notwithstanding, will be one of repression and a further lurch to the right. The struggle against police murders and violence requires the mobilization of the working class as a united, independent social force against the capitalist system.

French Communist Party and Unsubmissive France back Macron government’s far-right “anti-separatist” law

Jacques Valentin

The Macron government’s “bill strengthening respect of republican principles” has been under debate before the National Assembly since February 1. The law drastically restricts the freedom of association and religious freedoms under the pretext of fighting against Islamic separatism. The debate on the law is taking place in an increasingly fascistic atmosphere. Under these conditions, the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) have given their support to Macron’s extreme-right law.

On Thursday, February 4, the Assembly voted on Article 4 of the bill, which creates the offence of “separatism.” The article criminalizes the use of threats, violence or “intimidation” aimed at obtaining “total or partial exemption from, or different application of” the rules governing a public service. Those convicted face five years’ imprisonment and a €75,000 fine. This sweeping definition will provide vast powers to state and police forces.

French President Emmanuel Macron (Image Credit: AP Photo/Francois Mori)

The bill was brought forward following the terrorist killing of high school teacher Samuel Paty on October 16. Paty had shown his class an offensive cartoon of Mohamed. The offence in the new law has been so vaguely defined that it could be applied even to pupils who insist on not eating pork at school. It paves the way for an intensified anti-Muslim atmosphere by the French ruling class. It is a profound attack on the principle of secularism.

Article 4 was adopted without a single vote against. The PCF parliamentary group voted for the article, and the LFI parliamentary group abstained. These parties are thus complicit in the increasingly fascistic legislative agenda unveiled by the Macron government since the beginning of the pandemic.

On January 5, the Assembly voted on Article 6, which creates a “contract of republican commitment” in the 1901 law on public associations. This is a flagship measure of Macron’s bill. In the grotesque words of Marlène Schiappa, Macron’s minister delegate in charge of citizenship, the contract will guarantee that there is “not one euro of public money for the enemies of the Republic. Subsidies, therefore French money, must not finance organisations that are the breeding ground for terrorism.”

These statements are not based on any tangible facts. Associations are already obliged to respect French law. The aim of this article of the law is to introduce major restrictions on the payment of subsidies to associations, adding criteria unrelated to the activities of the association.

The law will directly target the religious and political opinions of the leaders and members of associations, in order to withhold financial subsidies. The “republican commitment” is to be set out by government decree and can be tightened with each new wave of police-state laws. Associations that receive government subsidies will be forced to adhere to and collaborate with the government’s security agenda.

However, provisions governing associations already exist. The Charter of Reciprocal Commitments between the state and associations was drawn up in 2001 on the centenary of the 1901 law, and then expanded in 2014 to include local authorities. It defines a general framework that must be respected by associations in order to receive subsidies. Since then, the link between Islamic “separatism” and the freedom of association has been concocted by the Macron government to justify its repressive law.

The report on the presentation of the law transmitted to the State Council states: “The activities of associations, because of the wide freedoms they enjoy, are used very actively by separatist actors, especially in the social, cultural and extracurricular areas.” The government clearly plans to deprive a large number of associations of funding. Moreover, it is not only aimed at supposed Muslim “radicalism”; the repressive measures will affect all kinds of associations.

Other provisions of the law contain even more far-reaching attacks. Article 8 considerably extends the grounds for dissolution of an association. Most significantly, it allows an association to be held responsible for the actions of any of its members. The article was discussed and adopted on February 8. It is a measure worthy of a fascist regime, which will allow mass dissolution of associations, including political parties and organisations formed under the 1901 law.

In this increasingly fascistic context, the establishment parties are seeking to outdo one another. The atmosphere has enabled the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen to table a counter-bill that goes even further.

The statements by the members of the Republican party (LR) often go even further than Le Pen’s party. Eric Ciotti, one of the Republicans speakers on the bill, said during the debates, “[T]he [Muslim] veil is not a harmless garment, it is the banner of Islamism and its ideology.”

As in any authoritarian regime, Macron is establishing close police control at every stage of the activities of associations and their formation. The abolition of such controls at the beginning of the 20th century, in favour of the freedom to create and manage associations, was a democratic conquest, as was the 1905 secularism law. These advances were the result of the struggle of the working class and the activities of its socialist representatives, who fought against the anti-Semitic and capitalist forces of reaction in the Dreyfus Affair.

The increasing turn toward fascism stems from the deep global crisis of capitalism. Death on a mass scale has become the new normal by the coronavirus pandemic and the policy of “herd immunity” pursued by governments in France and internationally. Enormous levels of social inequality, the increasingly parasitic character of the global financial system, the endless waging of neo-colonial wars over decades and the preparations for “great-power conflicts” are incompatible with democratic forms of rule. The ruling class around the world is turning to dictatorial forms of rule and promoting neo-fascist ideologies.

Macron intends to build the police state required to pursue his policy of enriching the financial oligarchy, which will require the crushing of popular opposition. The accumulation of police-state laws has become his priority for the end of his five-year term in 2022.

In this context, the major political parties, including LFI and the PCF, have made a political pact with the Macron government behind the scenes. The straw man of Islamic separatism is being held up to justify a front with outright neo-fascist forces under the banner of “republicanism,” as the means for strengthening the far-right.

This propaganda campaign has been meticulously prepared in the ruling class, in league with anti-Islamic intellectual circles. By claiming to defend the Republic, it is aimed at legitimizing continuous attacks on democratic rights. The defence of democratic rights cannot be carried out through appeals to the ruling elite, but only through the independent mobilisation of the working class.

Haiti and the ugly face of Biden’s “human rights” imperialism

Bill Van Auken

The new US administration of Democratic President Joe Biden has pitched its foreign policy as a radical departure from that of Donald Trump, claiming that Washington is back in the business of promoting democracy and human rights.

As Biden put it in a February 4 speech at the State Department, his aim is to “rally the nations of the world to defend democracy globally, to push back the authoritarianism’s advance.”

Demonstrators in Port-au-Prince (Credit: Mark Snyder)

That Washington is in no position to preach “democracy” to anyone has been made abundantly clear by the January 6 fascist coup attempt at the US Capitol. In any case, this rhetoric is meant solely as a propaganda cover for US imperialism’s pursuit of an even more aggressive policy against China and Russia.

The cynicism and fraud of these “democratic” and “anti-authoritarian” pretensions finds its most damning exposure in the policy being pursued by the Biden administration in Haiti, the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere and the victim of over a century of crimes committed by US imperialism.

In its “own backyard,” the Biden administration is backing an authoritarian regime in Port-au-Prince. Simultaneously, in a brutal violation of human rights, it is shipping planeloads of refugees, including babies and children, back into the violent and dangerous political situation in Haiti.

Last Friday, the US State Department came down squarely in support of the corrupt and dictatorial government of President Jovenel Moïse against mass demonstrations and general strikes challenging his extra-constitutional bid to remain in power.

Moïse took office in 2017 following rigged elections, announcing at the time his personal affinity for Donald Trump as a fellow “entrepreneur.” He succeeded in what Trump attempted to do, consolidating a presidential dictatorship based on the violence and terror of armed gangs, enabling Moïse and his cronies to loot Haiti’s devastated economy.

Under Haiti’s Constitution, Moïse’s term of office ended on Sunday, February 7, but he has refused to step down, claiming another year in power in which he intends to push through a new constitution that is being drafted solely by himself and his political allies.

Biden is continuing the policy of Trump in backing the US puppet against popular opposition. Moïse’s rise to the presidency, however, was engineered under the Obama administration and, in particular, by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, who was named UN special envoy to Haiti. They previously had pushed the 2011 presidential candidacy of Moïse’s predecessor, the carnival singer Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, a political ally of the right-wing death squads that were the legacy of the US-backed dictatorship of the Duvalier family, which exercised a reign of terror over the country for three decades.

The chief attraction of both these right-wing puppets was their subservience to US imperialism and the profit interests of the clothing sweatshop, agribusiness, tourism and mining sectors extracting wealth from the impoverished country.

Moïse’s rule has been characterized by a steadily tightening dictatorial grip over the Haitian state. He not only dissolved the country’s parliament—ruling by decree for over a year—but has also stripped the country’s local officials of their power. He has employed assassination, massacres and police state repression against his opponents. Armed gangs led by former and current police have been unleashed against neighborhoods in the capital of Port-au-Prince as well as areas of the countryside to crush opposition and intimidate workers and the oppressed rural poor.

Popular opposition grew against the Moïse regime, fueled by his personal involvement in a corruption scheme that saw the outright theft of some $4 billion in Petrocaribe aid provided by Venezuela in the form of loans and cheap oil that was resold on the world market.

Once oil prices collapsed and the aid dried up, Moïse demonstratively aligned himself with the Trump administration’s campaign of sanctions and military threats against Venezuela. At the same time, his government implemented draconian IMF-dictated austerity measures that drove up fuel costs, devalued the national currency and drastically deepened already intolerable levels of poverty, leading to massive protests in July 2018 demanding Moïse’s ouster.

On February 7, the day that Moïse was supposed to leave office, the Haitian president held a press conference at the Port-au-Prince airport, announcing the arrest of 23 people, including a Supreme Court justice, claiming that they were involved in a coup plot that included his assassination.

The arrests were clearly Moïse’s response to the State Department declaration last Friday that Washington supported his refusal to step down. The alleged coup plot served as a cover for his own extra-constitutional coup. He concluded his remarks, streamed on Facebook Live, by declaring, unconvincingly, “I am not a dictator.”

On Wednesday, the regime stepped up its repression, attacking a large demonstration led by university students in Port-au-Prince with tear gas and gunfire, and singling out reporters and photographers covering the protest for attack, injuring at least two of them.

The State Department’s statement backing Moïse’s bid to remain in power was couched in sanctimonious recommendations that he “should exercise restraint in issuing decrees,” when he is ruling entirely by decree, and that he organize legislative elections “as soon as technically feasible.”

While reporting on the events in Haiti in the US media has been scarce, both the Washington Post and the New York Times published worried editorials this week on the situation, no doubt concerned that the hypocrisy of US imperialism’s democratizing pretensions is too nakedly on display.

The Post lamented that “Haiti’s chronic hardship and hunger have long been entwined with a long line of corrupt autocratic and brutal leaders who have exacerbated the country’s instability,” with Moïse “among the worst.” One would never guess that Washington had any role in imposing these “brutal leaders.”

February 7, the day that Moïse gave his “I am not a dictator” speech at the Port-au-Prince airport, was the 35th anniversary of the downfall of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who was flown out of the same airport aboard a US Air Force plane to escape a popular revolt. The Duvalier dictatorship—whose rise followed the domination of the Haitian army, which was forged in a 20-year occupation of the country by the US Marines—began with the coming to power of Papa Doc in 1957. It was responsible for the killing and torture of tens of thousands of Haitians at the hands of the military and the dreaded Tontons Macoute. US imperialism saw the murderous regime as a bulwark against communism and revolution in the Caribbean.

After the Duvaliers’ downfall, US governments, Democratic and Republican alike, sought to reconstruct a reliable client state capable of defending the markets and investments of US firms attracted by starvation wages, as well as the property and wealth of the Haitian ruling elite. This entailed support for two bloody military coups and sending US troops back into Haiti twice over the course of two decades.

As for the Times, its editorial board lauded Washington’s colonial-style domination of the Caribbean nation, declaring paternalistically that “Haitians tend to look to their powerful northern neighbor for guidance in times of unrest.” It went on to offer a prescription for yet another imperialist intervention, with the United States joining with “some combination” of the OAS, the UN or the European Union in cobbling together a “transitional government,” i.e., another puppet regime in service of US imperialism.

As if the Biden administration’s backing for the hideous regime in Port-au-Prince was not enough, it is simultaneously loading Haitian deportees daily onto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) charter planes bound from the Mexican border to Haiti. While Biden had supposedly ordered a 100-day deportation moratorium and instructed ICE to pursue only dangerous criminals for deportation, the Democratic administration is expelling an estimated 1,800 Haitians, including infants and young children. They are being sent to a country in deep political crisis, with state-sponsored murder and criminality running rampant. The aim of this cruel policy is to intimidate other refugees and immigrants thinking of crossing the US border.

The pretext provided for these deportations is a 77-year-old public health statute invoked by the Trump administration in response to the coronavirus pandemic. They are being carried out, however, with complete indifference to the catastrophic implications of the spread of the virus in Haiti, a country of 11 million people with a total of 126 intensive care unit beds, 68 ventilators and 25 physicians per 100,000 inhabitants, one tenth the number in the US.

This is the true and ugly face of the Biden administration’s “human rights” foreign policy. It is no accident that it finds its most accurate expression in a country where Washington has its longest and most sustained record of bloody imperialist crimes.

“Our society is sick:” The Lancet condemns American capitalism

Andre Damon

On Thursday, the British medical journal The Lancet published its official report, three years in the making, on the Trump administration’s health care record.

The report is, appropriately, dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet found the Trump administration directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people during the pandemic, and that over 200,000 people would still be alive if the United States had a COVID-19 mortality rate similar to that of other developed countries.

Rectangles designed to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus by encouraging social distancing line a city-sanctioned homeless encampment at San Francisco’s Civic Center on Thursday, May 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

But The Lancet’s meticulously-researched report, boasting over a dozen distinguished authors, goes far beyond condemning the record of Trump alone. It argues that the nearly half million dead in the US from COVID-19 should be added to the toll of the “missing Americans” whose deaths were attributable to the rise of social inequality over the course of the past four decades. The Lancet report presents both the pandemic and the Trump administration as the outcome of deeper and more profound tendencies in American society.

“An emboldened plutocracy, under the guise of deregulation and austerity, has augmented its wealth and power by re-regulating markets to their advantage and adjusting government budgets for their own gain,” wrote The Lancet. “Under this type of governance, wealthy firms and families receive generous government transfers” while “job opportunities have disappeared.”

The Lancet concludes, “The disturbing truth is that many of President Trump’s policies do not represent a radical break with the past but have merely accelerated the decades-long trend of lagging life expectancy that reflects deep and longstanding flaws in US economic, health, and social policy. These flaws are not only evident in faltering longevity … but also in the widening gaps in mortality across social class.”

The massive loss of life in the COVID-19 pandemic—centered in the American working class—only accelerated the decline of life expectancy in the United States, and more importantly, the stratification of life expectancy along class lines.

“At the time of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the health of the US population was already on a downward trajectory,” writes The Lancet. “Average life expectancy in the US had declined from 78.9 years to 78.7 years between 2014 and 2018, a period that included the first 3-year decline in longevity since World War 1 and the 1918 flu pandemic.”

The report noted that “since the 1980s, the disparity between social and economic classes has widened as high-paid manufacturing jobs disappeared. ... Despite a booming stock market … many people living in the USA were forced into precarious jobs that offered low pay and insufficient benefits. This widening income inequality has widened inequalities in health.”

The Lancet report offers a historical analysis of this process, in which both parties of American capitalism played a leading role. “Faced with economic stagnation and mounting inflation, President Jimmy Carter (in office from 1977–81) pushed to reduce government deficits through spending cuts.”

Democratic President Bill Clinton “embraced key aspects of the neoliberal, pro-corporate agenda.” Clinton deregulated “banks and telecommunications firms; imposing time limits and other restrictions on welfare benefits and nutrition assistance.” Under Clinton, “Stock prices rose rapidly,” while “income and wealth inequalities widened.”

The health care programs of Barack Obama “reinforced decades of market-oriented reforms that made profitability the fundamental measure of performance, drove the commodification of care, and increasingly vested control in investor-owned conglomerates.

“Declining US longevity between 2014 and 2017, and the minimal uptick in longevity in 2018, attracted substantial media attention. However, a focus on these recent trends risks obscuring how far the USA lags behind other high-income nations and how long these cross-national gaps have been in the making. Life expectancy in the USA was average among high-income nations in 1980, by 1995, it was 2.2 years shorter than the average of other G7 countries, and by 2018, the gap had widened to 3.4 years.”

The report comes to a shocking conclusion about the number of Americans who have died prematurely as a result of America’s soaring social inequality. “The extent of difference can also be quantified as the number of missing Americans—i.e., the number of US residents who would still be alive if age-specific mortality rates in the USA had remained equal to the average of the other six G7 nations. By this measure, in 2018 alone, 461,000 Americans went missing, an annual figure that has been increasing since 1980.

“Lagging life expectancy in the USA has coincided with growing income-based and education-based mortality gaps among adults. These inequalities in mortality mirror widening economic inequality, with rising incomes for the wealthiest decile of the population (and huge gains for the very rich), but stagnant real incomes for the bottom 50%. By 2014, the life expectancy of the wealthiest 1% of men was 15 years longer than that of the poorest 1%.

“Between 2000 and 2014, adult life expectancy increased by over 2 years for people in the top half of the income distribution, while the lower half of the income distribution had little or no improvement.”

The Lancet concludes, “The Trump administration represents the culmination of more than three decades of neoliberal policies seeking to privatise many public services and deregulate corporations to maximise profits.

“Trump’s election was enabled by the failures of his predecessors. A four-decade long drift toward neoliberal policies bolstered corporate prerogatives. … The rich got much richer while their taxes were halved. Workers’ earnings stagnated, welfare programmes shrank, prison populations greatly increased, and millions were priced out of health care even as government payments enriched medical investors.

“The suffering and dislocation inflicted by COVID-19 has exposed the frailty of the US social and medical order,” notes the report.

“Americans’ health was deteriorating even as our economy was booming,” says Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, one of the committee’s co-chairs. “This unprecedented decoupling of health from national wealth signals that our society is sick. While the wealthy have thrived, most Americans have lost ground, both economically and medically.”

In its political conclusions, the report aims to convince the incoming Biden administration to carry out a fundamental break with the policies of its predecessors. But the very record presented in the report – of decade after decade in which the Democrats were the spearhead of a drive to redistribute wealth upward – makes clear that this is impossible. Biden was, after all, vice president under Obama, helping to organize the 2008 bank bailout.

The Lancet report, like a skilled physician, expertly lists the symptoms of America’s social disease. But if American society is sick, as Dr. Steffie Woolhandler insists it is, the appropriate medicine is not the Biden administration, any more than it was the Clinton or Obama administration. The disease they have identified is terminal. The solution is to be found in a fundamentally new and different political movement—one based on the struggle of the working class for socialism.

Air pollution crisis in South Asia causing massive loss of pregnancies

Vijith Samarasinghe

A recent study by scientists from Peking University (China) and the University of Connecticut (USA) has revealed that 1 in 15 lost pregnancies in South Asia may be due to air pollution-related health issues. The report, which was based on an analysis of the medical records of lost pregnancies from over 34,000 women in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, was published in the January edition of the interdisciplinary journal Lancet Planetary Health.

Researchers used data collected by the US government’s Demographic and Health Surveys 2000–2016. Using a mathematical model, they analysed the correlation between air pollution exposure levels in the three countries during the gestation period and the reported pregnancy losses of the selected mothers.

Dense pollution in Delhi, 2017 (Photo: Wikipedia)

The scientists used the atmospheric concentration of Particulate Matter smaller than 2.5 microns, more commonly known as PM2.5, as the primary indicator of air pollution. These small solid airborne particles can travel deep into the respiratory system, causing severe respiratory and cardio-vascular problems.

PM2.5 concentrations larger than 40 micrograms per cubic metre of air are considered unsafe. Particulate Matter is usually generated by vehicle exhausts, the burning of wood and other bio-mass, construction work or polluting industries. Rigorous analytical and statistical procedures were used to remove any biases or interferences by other external factors and cases were identified where the dominant factor causing the pregnancy losses could be established as air pollution.

Based on this analysis, the scientists extrapolate that “349,681 pregnancy losses per year were attributed to ambient air exposure of more than 40 micrograms per cubic metre of PM2.5, accounting for 7.1 percent of the total annual pregnancy loss burden in south Asia” between 2000 and 2016.

While the researchers state that these numbers are not exact because of many experimental limitations in research of this scale, the trend is clear and a shocking indication of how capitalism in South Asia is robbing the next generation of its right to live.

The study reports that the overwhelming majority of pregnancy losses (77 percent) are from India. This is hardly a surprise given that India now has 21 out of 30 of the world’s most air-polluted cities.

In the winter of 2019, the Indian capital Delhi faced one of the worst air-pollution incidents in known history. PM2.5 levels surged above 500 micrograms per cubic metre or more than ten times the safe limit. In some neighbourhoods, air-quality measurement equipment simply stopped working because the pollutant loads were too high for them to record.

Tens of thousands suffered from respiratory difficulties, with an untold number of deaths. Schools had to be closed for several days and more than 30 flights diverted from the Delhi airport due to bad visibility. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal described the situation as “living inside a gas chamber.”

The 2018–19 Economic Survey of Delhi reported that in addition to extreme Particulate Matter levels, hazardous gases, such as sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide, were also well above the safe limits and have increased fivefold and twofold respectively in a decade.

Indian cities with the most dangerous air pollution, such as Delhi, Patna and Ahmedabad, are in the country’s northern plains where the cold humid air descending from the Himalayas causes heavy winter fogs. These easily capture particulate matter and other air pollutants and become a hazardous concoction commonly referred to as “smog.”

As early as 2013, the Global Burden of Health report, which was published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, warned that air pollution was the fifth highest contributor to mortality in India. By 2017, 17.5 percent of all deaths in India could be attributed in some way to air pollution.

The urban and rural poor bear the brunt of this environmental disaster. The study showed that more than 40 percent of the mothers who suffered pregnancy losses also suffered from anaemia—a direct indicator of poverty. Malnutrition, exhaustion from long working hours and health care unaffordability, make the poor far more vulnerable to air quality-related health issues. Doctors have also reported that deaths from COVID-19, which has already killed hundreds of thousands in South Asia, are increased by air-pollution related respiratory issues among the poor.

Poor peasants involved in waste burning during early winter months are regularly blamed for the dangerous air pollution levels in northern India. While the burning of agricultural waste, such as stubble and hay, is a large contributor to pollution, official claims that this is the main cause of India’s air pollution crisis are outright lies.

A study by Urban Emissions Info notes that all bio-mass combustion, including waste burning in agricultural fields, accounts only for 20–35 percent of PM2.5 emissions, compared to 65 percent by vehicular exhaust fumes, industrial emissions and construction activities.

The air pollution crisis in India and other South Asian countries is a product of decades of ad hoc industrial and urban growth, poor environmental regulations and failure to integrate sustainable practices with small- and medium-scale agriculture.

These factors have worsened exponentially over the last two decades as rapid and unplanned growth has herded millions of poor people into the wretched conditions of the region’s mega-urban agglomerates. Moreover, thousands of tons of Particulate Matter and other polluting gases are spewed into the atmosphere every day by poorly regulated industries, such as coal-fired power plants and cement factories.

Air pollution, however, is not an insurmountable problem. Particulate Matter emissions can be very effectively reduced by proper vehicular emission regulations, dust-control measures in construction, and proper stack emission treatment in other industries. Agricultural waste, such as hay and stubble, moreover, does not have to be burnt but can be used in composting, bio-mass energy generation and sustainable building construction.

The ruling elites of South Asia, however, have no interest in allocating the urgently necessary resources to implement air pollution abatement measures to save millions of lives, including the unborn. Instead, the powers that be are preparing to dismantle the minimal safeguards for environmental protection and basic labour rights, to more effectively compete for the position of the cheapest labour platform for international finance capital.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Agricultural Reform Bills,” which have sparked mass opposition and resistance, will facilitate an orgy of corporate plunder of land and natural resources and take the environmental issues such as air pollution to unprecedented levels.

In the early 1980s, when the Beijing Stalinist regime opened up China as a cheap labour platform, its cities quickly climbed into the world’s “most polluted” list and remained in the “extremely hazardous” category for decades. While air pollution in China has been marginally reduced in recent years, the poisoning of the atmosphere has only been shifted to other parts of the earth’s ecosystem.

On the one hand, the atmosphere connects all living beings in one world ecosystem, on the other air pollution is driven by the ruthless thirst for corporate profit in the globalised world capitalist economy. This is international problem and can only be resolved through the intervention of the world working class fighting for a socialist program that restructures the global economy on a rationally planned and scientific basis to serve human need not private profit.

Government of Ireland – International Education Scholarships (Bachelor, Master & PhD) 2021

Application Deadline: 26th March 2021 5pm (Irish Time)

Eligible Countries: International

To be Taken at (Country): Ireland

About the Award: Under the initiative 60 scholarships will be provided for one year study at Bachelor, Master or PhD levels to successful candidates who have an offer of a place at an eligible Irish higher education institution.

Field(s) of Study: All

Type: Bachelor, Master PhD

Eligibility: The offer is open to students from non-EU/EEA countries and is applicable to all fields of study.

Number of Awards: 60

Value and Duration of Award: Students who are successful will receive:

• A €10,000 stipend for one year’s study
• A full fee waiver of all tuition and other registration costs at the higher education institution

How to Apply: Applications can be submitted via the online portal here.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Kaira Looro 2021

Application Deadline: 28th February 2021

About the Award: The challenge of the competition is to design a women’s house that aims to promote gender equality as a key factor in rural development. The architecture must be a space dedicated to hosting activities which focus on education, raising awareness, and developing the village in the name of equality.

Design: The aims of the “Women’s House” is to host meetings, seminars, labs, and any other activity that could be useful in reducing forms of discrimination, strengthening and promoting gender equality, creating awareness and knowledge, and stimulating involvement by all parts of society. The project will be self-constructed with the benefiting community and will therefore need to meet certain construction criteria. The structure will need to accommodate the following activities, which will correspond to certain areas that have been designed to be independent from or connected to one another, depending on the concept of the designer.

Eligible Field(s):

• be easily built with sustainable technologies: that can be adapted for self-construction and which do not require the use of heavy vehicles or complex machinery;
• make use of natural and/or recycled materials: available in the area so as to limit the environmental and economic impact caused by transport of materials and to generate revenue within the local context;
• be integrated with the socio-cultural context: of the area by reinterpreting and respecting its traditions.
• Management and Organisation: he structure will need to have an administrative space in order to allow for the management and organisation of activities.
• Dialogue: One of the project’s objectives is to encourage communication between institutions and associations in the area
• Collective Activities: The fundamental objective of the project is to promote gender equality and human rights through the organisation of awareness raising activities, seminars, labs, and exhibitions.

Participants will be sent (after registration) additional materials necessary for the project’s development:
data sheets, prices, images, and characteristics of the primary materials; maps of the village of Baghere and the valley; overview of the Tanaff Valley; images of the village of Baghere, Tanaff, and the valley; CAD and photographs of the construction site; Layouts of the designs.

Type: Contest

To be Taken at (Country):

• The location of the project is southern Senegal.
• The “Women’s House” will be built in the municipality of Baghere

Value of Award:

1st Prize: 5.000€ + Construction + Internship at Kengo Kuma
2nd Prize: 1.000€ + Internship at Miralles Tagliabue EMBT
3rd Prize: 500€ + Internship at SBGA
2 Honourable Mentions 100€
5 Special Mentions
20 Finalists
20 Top 50

How to Apply: Subscribe now

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details