About the Award: AWLA aims to help early- and mid-career professionals in agriculture to secure leadership roles by encouraging gender-responsive working cultures and creating platforms to showcase their intellect, capability, and contribution. AWLA’s fellows will help establish a unique research and development (R&D) forum for women scientists in the MENA region to address pressing agricultural challenges and take part in a regional networking platform for women researchers across agricultural disciplines.
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility:
Arab women researchers from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia,
Available to travel and in possession of a passport valid at least 6 months beyond December 2020,
Passionate about innovation and R&D in agriculture, food security and nutrition,
Commitment to making positive change in their local communities and beyond, preferably with a good track record in research and development work,
Respect for diversity,
Personal motivation, initiative, and ability to work in teams,
Strong academic record, holders of master’s and/or Ph.D. degrees,
In their mid-career; preferably more than 10 years of professional experience,
English language proficiency; to understand and participate in all aspects of the fellowship.
Eligible Countries: Countries in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Number of Awards: The call for applications will lead to the selection of a group of 20 to 30 researchers from the MENA region.
Value of Award:
Boost your skills and knowledge through various channels of structured and applied learning: spot-on leadership and research and development training, coaching and mentoring to guide your career development and learning.
Work on team-based capstone projects to initiate collaborative solutions for driving positive change in agriculture.
Access information and tools needed to acquire funding for applied research projects.
Experience different cultures through learning to work with others across boundaries of place and culture.
Expand your knowledge on relevant research and development topics in different parts of the MENA region.
Raise awareness about organizational gender dynamics, shift attitudes around gender perceptions and take part in the transformation of a gender responsive culture and inclusive and enabling environment.
Join in the establishment of the first regional R&D forum to address the region’s pressing challenges in R&D, and the first network platform of Arab Women Researchers within and across disciplines.
Duration of Award: The programme will be delivered online over a 10-month period, starting from 1st June 2021.
Eligible Countries: Azerbaijan, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Mexico, People’s Republic of China, Tunisia, Turkey, Vietnam.
To Be Taken At (Country): Italy
About the Award: Scholarships are awarded for courses of Master’s degree (Laurea magistrale or Master universitario) at Italian Higher Education Institutes (state-owned institutions or institutions legally recognized by the relevant state authorities) partners of the Invest Your Talent in Italy Program. The program includes the attendance of a mandatory internship at selected Italian companies partners of the initiative.
The aim of the Program is to foster cooperation among Italian Universities and Italian companies in order to promote their internationalization by sustaining higher education courses tailored to the needs of the labor market. Thanks to this Program, young foreigners, educated in Italy and properly trained in their specific fields of expertise, will have the opportunity to make a working experience at selected Italian companies, partners of Invest Your Talent in Italy.
Type: Masters, Internship
Eligibility: Applications may be submitted only by those who meet the following requirements by the deadline of this call.
Academic qualifications: Applications may only be submitted by those candidates referred to in Article 2 who hold the required academic qualifications (Bachelor’s Degree) to enroll in the chosen Master’s degree Program (Laurea Magistrale or Master Universitario).
Age requirements: Candidates may apply if they are no more than 28 years old on the deadline of this call, except for the only renewals.
Language skills:
Candidates should submit an English language certificate as proof of their proficiency in English .
Candidates should hold at least a B2 level certificate within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Proof of proficiency in Italian is not mandatory but will be taken in consideration in the selection process.
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value of Award:
Candidates who have been granted scholarships under the Invest Your Talent in Italy Program are exempted from the payment of tuition fees except for the regional tax for “Diritto allo Studio”.
Grantees must subscribe a health insurance policy to bear any expenses due to illnesses or accidents.
Grantees will receive 888 euros monthly allowance every three months on their Italian bank account. The first installment of the scholarship can only be received after the University enrollment according to the necessary administrative procedures
Duration of Program: The scholarship will cover a period of study of 9 (nine) months. Students will receive the installment every three months.
How to Apply: Only those students who have submitted their application for one of the postgraduate courses (laurea Magistrale or Master) included in the Program can apply for a IYT scholarship:
Visit the section DOCUMENTS to find: Call for application/FAQ/Regulations of the IYT Scholarship
Eligible Countries:Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman and Tunisia.
To be taken at (country): The Netherlands
Accepted Subject Areas: You can use an MSP scholarship for a number of selected short courses in one of the following fields of study:
Economics
Commerce
Management and Accounting
Agriculture and Environment
Mathematics
Natural sciences and Computer sciences
Engineering
Law Public Administration
Public order and Safety
Humanities
Social sciences
Communication and Arts
About Scholarship: The MENA Scholarship Programme (MSP) enables professionals from ten selected countries to participate in a short course in the Netherlands. The overall aim of the MSP is to contribute to the democratic transition in the participating countries. It also aims at building capacity within organisations, by enabling employees to take part in short courses in various fields of study. There are scholarships available for short courses with a duration of two to twelve weeks.
Target group: The MSP target group consists of professionals, aged up to 45, who are nationals of and work in one of the selected countries. Scholarships are awarded to individuals, but the need for training must be demonstrated within the context of the organisation for which the applicant works. The training must help the organisation develop its capacity. Therefore, applicants must be nominated by their employers who have to motivate their nomination in a supporting letter.
Selection Criteria: The candidates must be nationals of and working in one of the selected countries.
Who is qualified to apply:
must be a national of, and working and living in one of the countries on the MSP country list valid at the time of application;
must have an employer’s statement that complies with the format EP-Nuffic has provided. All information must be provided and all commitments that are included in the format must be endorsed in the statement;
must not be employed by an organisation that has its own means of staff-development. Organisations that are considered to have their own means for staff development are for example:
multilateral donor organisations, (e.g. a UN organization, the World Bank, the IMF, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, IADB),
international NGO’s (e.g. Oxfam, Plan, Care);
must have an official and valid passport (valid at least three months after the candidate’s submission date);
must have a government statement that meets the requirements of the country in which the employer is established (if applicable);
must not be over 45 years of age at the time of the grant submission.
Number of Scholarship: Several
Value: A MENA scholarship is a contribution to the costs of the selected short course and is intended to supplement the salary that the scholarship holder must continue to receive during the study period.
The following items are covered:
subsistence allowance
international travel costs
visa costs
course fee
medical insurance
allowance for study materials.
The allowances are considered to be sufficient to cover one person’s living expenses during the study period. The scholarship holders must cover any other costs from their own resources.
How to Apply: You need to apply directly at the Dutch higher education institution of your choice.
Check whether you are in the above mentioned target groups.
Check whether your employer will nominate you.
Contact the Dutch higher education institution that offers the course of your choice to find out whether this course is eligible for an MSP scholarship and how to apply.
It is important to go through the application information details on the Scholarship Webpage (see Link below) before applying.
In most discussions on food and farming systems in India a concern that comes up time and again is that pressures and particular interpretations of the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) can increase problems of India’s farmers and the public distribution system (PDS) for food. A large number of India’s mostly small farmers face a number of serious problems due to a complex of factors. Now if particular interpretation of rules of WTO or its Agreement on Agriculture are used to increase the support the government provides to the farmers in the form of Minimum Support Price and in other ways then this will greatly accentuate the problems of farmers. Similarly if the PDS or the implementation of the food security legislation are disturbed due to the pressures created by certain countries from the WTO platform, then this will worsen the problem of hunger in India.
This kind of concerns exist not just for India but for several other developing countries as well. The overwhelming majority of farmers are small farmers. Small farmers have a very low resource base and their risk bearing capacity is very limited. If they face a situation of sudden price crash due to cheap imports it can be very difficult to recover from these losses. If this is repeated for some time, their precarious but proud existence as small farmers may be threatened as they are forced to sell their land to recover from debts, or feel that they cannot no longer bear further high risk of a possible cash in prices.
The Human Development Report (HDR) prepared a special issue on international trade which focused attention to some aspects of the threat posed by unfair trade to small peasants in developing countries . The HDR questions the globalisation hype by drawing attention to those who have suffered. This report says, “Participation in trade can exacerbate inequality as poor people absorb the adjustment costs of increased competition from imports, while people with assets and market power take advantage of opportunities provided by exports.”
For example, increased exports of high value added fruit and vegetables from countries like Kenya and Zambia have been concentrated in large capital – intensive farms with weak links to the rest of the economy. Similarly, in Brazil, just four or fewer firms account for more than 40% of exports of soy, orange juice, poultry and beef while ten million small and landless peasants live below the poverty line in villages.
In 1997 almost three-quarters (about 75%) of Kenya’s high value-added horticulture exports were supplied by small farmers. By year 2000 this share had fallen to 18%. According to HDR, “The biggest change to the industry has been the increased importance of farms owned or leased by major export companies.”
What the HDR report does not say is that even if small landholders are integrated into this export trade, this can still lead to longer-term loss if the concentration on export crops is damaging for soil, water and other aspects of environment. When the export demand is curtailed and the cash dries up, these small farmers may not be able to go back to their staple food crops.
HDR indicts particularly those unfair trade practices which undermine the livelihoods of small and landless peasants (who constitute two thirds of all people living in extreme poverty). These practices are linked particularly to the subsidies given by developed country governments. The HDR says, “The problem at the heart of the Doha Round negotiations can be summarised in three words – rich country subsidies. …. Rich countries spend just over $ 1 billion a year as aid to developing country agriculture and just under $ 1 billion a day supporting their own agricultural systems.”
These heavy subsidies hurt rural communities in developing countries.” Subsidized exports undercut them in global and local markets, driving down the proceeds received by farmers and the wages received by agricultural labourers. Meanwhile producers seeking access to industrial country markets have to scale some of the highest tariff peaks in world trade.”
Within the rich countries most benefits of farm subsidies go to those who deserve these the least, “The winners in the annual cycle of billion dollar subsidies are large-scale farmers, corporate agribusiness interests and landowners.” An example of extremely unequal income-distribution generally given is that of Brazil. Research carried out for HDR revealed that subsidies distribution in rich countries is more unequal than income distribution in Brazil.
So HDR concludes, “It would be hard to design a more regressive – or less efficient – system of financial transfers than currently provided through agricultural subsidies ….. Industrial countries are locked into a system that wastes money at home and destroys livelihoods.”
This has contributed significantly to highly unfair trade. HDR says, “When it comes to world agricultural trade, market success is determined not by comparative advantage but by comparative access to subsidies – an area in which producers in poor countries are unable to compete.”
In the European Union farmers and processors are paid four times the world market price for sugar, generating a 4 million tonnes surplus, which is marketed with the help of more than $ 1 billion in export subsidies (paid to a small group of sugar processors). Subsidised EU sugar exports lower world prices by about one-third, inflicting heavy losses on sugar exporters among developing countries as well as on sugar crop farmers based in developing countries.
At the time the HDR report on the special theme of trade was prepared 20,000 cotton farmers in the USA were likely to receive government payments of $4.7 billion in a year – an amount equivalent to the market value of the crop. These subsidies lowered world prices by 9% to 13% and enabled US producers to dominate world markets. In Benin the fall in cotton prices in one year was linked to an increase in poverty from 37% to 59%. Around the same time rice grown in the USA at a cost of $415 a tonne was exported at $274 a tonne. This was made possible by US government payments of $1.3 billion, almost three quarters of the value of output. In countries like Ghana and Haiti rice farmers were pushed out of national markets by US imports.
According to a widely quoted study by Oxfam International. “The practice of exporting agricultural surpluses on the world market at less than the cost of production – or ‘dumping’ – is one of the most pernicious aspects of industrialised country trade policies, which the WTO has failed adequately to address. Unfair competition from dumped agricultural produce creates problems for developing countries by depriving them of foreign-exchange earnings and market share, and undermining local production, rural livelihoods, and food security.”
This study titled ‘Rigged Rules and Double Standards – Trade, Globalisation and the Fight Against Poverty’ adds, “Oxfam has developed a new measure of the scale of export dumping by the EU and the United States. It suggests that both these agricultural superpowers are exporting at prices more than one-third lower than the costs of production. These subsidized exports from rich countries are driving down prices for exports from developing countries, and devastating the prospects for smallholder agriculture. In countries such as Haiti, Mexico, and Jamaica, heavily subsidised imports of cheap food are destroying local markets. Some of the world’s poorest farmers are competing against its richest treasures.”
Concerns of poor countries and poor people have been ignored to an alarming extent at the WTO. According to HDR, “The agreement on agriculture left most EU and US farm subsidy programmes intact for the simple reason that it was in all but name a bilateral agreement between the two parties that was forced onto the multilateral rules system. In effect, the world’s economic superpowers were able to tailor the rules to suit their national policies.”
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the emerging international trade regime is that the USA and some other developed countries have arranged the classification of subsidies in such a way that very massive subsidies given to their biggest agribusiness companies—which include some of the most powerful and resourceful multinational companies—can be defended as being acceptable under WTO rules while the much more modest subsidies given by developing countries to their small farmers are criticized as being violation of WTO rules. This allows these rich countries to strengthen big agribusiness companies domestically by allowing them to gobble the business and sometimes even the land of smaller farmers, on the other hand their big companies get even more space and power to unleash havoc in developing countries through their highly subsidized products and in other ways. In addition several free trade agreements, multilateral and bilateral agreements have also increased greatly the problems of small farmers in several developing countries. These trends are so blatantly unjust that international efforts as well as growing unity of developing countries are urgently needed to check them and create an alternative system of fair and just international trade.
Britain announced it is to reduce its grant aid to Yemen by nearly 50 percent as the UN pleaded at an international donor conference for an increase to stave off a humanitarian disaster.
James Cleverly, Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa, said that London would provide “at least” $120 million, down from more than $200 million last year. This is a pittance compared to the $6 billion of weaponry sold to the Saudi Arabian military that has devastated Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country.
Cleverly justified the cut, saying “recent global challenges”—meaning the pandemic—had “meant a difficult financial context for us all,” making no mention of the billions made available to big business and the financial institutions, including the arms manufacturers.
A few days later, leaked documents revealed that Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who had earlier pontificated that Britain should be a “force for good in the world,” is planning to slash the aid budget to other conflict and war zones. These include Syria, Libya, Somalia, Nigeria and the Sahel, where Britain has played a filthy role in pursuit of its geo-strategic interests.
In this Sunday, June 14, 2020 photo, seven-month-old Issa Ibrahim Nasser is brought to a clinic in Deir Al-Hassi, At seven months old, Issa weighs only three kilos. Like him, hundreds of children suffer from acute severe malnutrition because of poverty and grinding conflict. Yemen. (AP Photo/Issa Al-Rajhi)
Last year, the government announced the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) takeover of the Department for International Development. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that henceforth the FCO would decide which countries would receive Britain’s “help.” He said, “For too long, frankly, UK overseas aid has been treated like a giant cashpoint in the sky, that arrives without any reference to UK interests.”
Millions of starving Yemenis do not square with Johnson’s plans to use the aid budget to explicitly boost Britain’s business and military interests, rather than as a form of soft power. They are just so much collateral damage.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “death sentence” for Yemen as last week’s aid conference yielded just $1.7 billion, less than half the $3.85 billion needed to prevent a devastating famine. He said, “Millions of Yemeni children, women and men desperately need aid to live. Cutting aid is a death sentence.”
Oxfam put it more bluntly, saying, “The people of Yemen are not starving, they're being starved.” This is a reference to the Saudi blockade of the Red Sea port of Hodeida that has prevented food and basic commodities reaching Yemen.
Since March 2015, the Saudi-led war against Yemen—waged with the full backing of Washington and London—has killed over 100,000 people, mostly civilians. The attacks have targeted food production, schools and hospitals, Food prices have rocketed in a country that imports 90 percent of its food, making an already impoverished people destitute and creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Around 80 percent of the country’s 28 million people need humanitarian aid, including more than 12 million children. At least half the population are on the brink of starvation. United Nations agencies reported in February that nearly 2.3 million children under the age of five are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021. Of these, 400,000 are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and could die without urgent treatment. This comes on top of the many thousands that have died of starvation, including at least 75,000 children under five, while the worst cholera epidemic in modern history has infected 1.2 million.
COVID-19 has begun to spread uncontrollably across Yemen, compounding the catastrophe. Large numbers of people are in need clean water, toilets and handwashing facilities. Barely half of Yemen’s health facilities are functioning and many that remain operational lack basic equipment such as masks and gloves, let alone oxygen and other essential supplies to treat the coronavirus. Many health workers are receiving no salaries.
The US Trump administration’s designation of the Houthi rebels who govern territory containing 70 percent of Yemen’s population, as a “foreign terrorist organisation” in January exacerbated the crisis. It was part of Washington’s unrelenting “maximum pressure” campaign of punishing economic sanctions and continuous military provocations against Iran, which it has accused of backing the Houthis against Saudi Arabia and its puppet ruler of Yemen, a claim the Houthis have denied. The designation severely hampered the ability of aid agencies to respond to the humanitarian crisis as banks and other businesses refused to work with them for fear of falling foul of US sanctions.
While the incoming Biden administration revoked the designation last month “for purely humanitarian reasons,” it warned that it may impose new sanctions, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken noting that the US was “identifying additional targets for designation.”
The origins of the war lie in the 2011 Arab Spring, when mass protests broke out against the 32-year-long dictatorial rule of US and Saudi-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who turned the military on the protesters. Following Saleh’s resignation, Vice-President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi took over, promising reforms in an “election” without any opposition candidates.
Saudi Arabia, leading a military coalition with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Arab countries, invaded Yemen six years ago after Houthi rebels in the north of the country rejected Hadi’s cosmetic reforms and captured the capital Sana’a, forcing him to flee to Riyadh. Claiming that the Houthi rebels were Iran’s proxies, the Saudis sought to reimpose Hadi, expecting a speedy victory. The coalition evaporated as the war proved far more difficult and costly than expected, with local or tribal militias operating in unstable and fluid alliances—some backed by Riyadh and some by Abu Dhabi.
The UAE pulled out of the war in late 2019 amid growing disagreements with the Hadi government and the fragmenting of Yemen into three areas. The first is controlled by the Houthis in the north. The second is controlled by the UAE-backed secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in the south, and the Republican Guards on the western coast, led by former president Saleh’s nephew. The third, in the eastern provinces, is controlled by Hadi’s dwindling forces. Despite a US and French-brokered agreement in late 2019 for power sharing between the Hadi government in exile and the STC, the war has continued as the Houthis, with victory in sight, refuse to agree a ceasefire. The Saudis have continued their bombing campaigns against Houthi positions and on Sana’a.
The Houthis are engaged in a major campaign to take control of the northern governorate of Marib. This is Hadi’s last major stronghold in the northeast of the country that is the gateway to the oil and gas production and processing facilities further east, supplying nearly all the country’s domestic fuel and 10 percent of its energy needs. They are reportedly within 30 kilometres of Marib city, whose population has swollen from 300,000 to three million with people displaced by the war. A battle for the city would worsen the already dire humanitarian situation.
Before taking office, US President Joe Biden claimed that he would turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” and end arms sales to the kingdom. Since then, the State Department has insisted that Washington remains committed “to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory as it faces attacks from Iranian-aligned groups,” meaning the Houthis, and will continue to provide “defensive” weapons that will be used to attack Yemen. Saudi Arabia is a major purchaser of US arms, spending $10 billion a year.
Biden’s backhanded support for the Saudis, despite mass opposition to its war against the Houthis and barbaric murder of insider turned dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018, rests on Washington’s reliance on Riyadh as its client along with Israel—to promote an anti-Iranian axis that threatens to push the region into a catastrophic new war.
UK universities and colleges are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to cut jobs and attack pay and conditions for teaching staff.
At least 12 universities are planning redundancies. At the University of Leicester 60 jobs are being cut, with 47 jobs being cut at the University of Liverpool and 34 jobs at the University of Dundee. Redundancies are expected at the University of Leeds, Newcastle University, the University of Central Lancashire, and Solent University and the University of London.
University administrations claim that job losses are required in order to remain financially sustainable and to deal with the fallout from the pandemic. At the University of Liverpool, 47 jobs are to go with management claiming it will “increase academic quality”. The reality is that the cuts are central to the marketisation and privatisation of the sector that has proceeded apace under the framework of the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act.
Manchester University staff and students protest at the Oxford Road campus during the national pensions and pay strike in 2020
Dozens of jobs are to go due to the planned closure Newcastle University’s London campus. The campus opened just six years ago, with the university promising that staff recruited to work there would be part of a permanent workforce. The university is allowing only permanent higher education lecturers the option of relocating to the North East.
Redundancy announcements have sparked opposition from further and higher education staff. Strikes and industrial action ballots are in progress at a number of institutions.
Last week, University of Central Lancashire staff voted to strike to oppose job losses. Nearly four fifths of University and College Union (UCU) members (79 percent) agreed to back the strike, and 88 percent backed action short of a strike. In February, UCU members at Chichester College Group began balloting against plans by the institution to axe 10 full-time equivalent jobs in maths and English—40 percent of that entire department. The college also intends to make more cuts by reducing in-person teaching permanently.
Jo Grady, the General Secretary of the UCUC, said of the raft of planned job losses: “it is absolutely contemptible for some universities to exploit the pandemic by threatening to make staff redundant”.
It is only due to the UCU’s collaboration with university and college management that these attacks are able to be enforced.
Events at Solent University reveal the role of the UCU as a reliable partner of management. The university announced November 2 its intention to make 219 staff redundant. The union dragged its feet for three months by calling a “consultative ballot”, held from November 26-December 6, for strike action. Only then did they hold an actual strike ballot, held over January 6-January 20. Both returned overwhelming yes votes, one showing 94 percent in favour.
Instead of launching a strike, the union entered negotiations with the university and came back with a deal on February 15 delivering none of the workers’ demands. The union sought to obtain a “promise” from the university to make no compulsory redundancies, only “voluntary” ones. Management refused to offer even this concession. The deal allows the university to progress with a number of dismissals already in progress and merely postpones the rest until 2022.
In addition, and what the UCU was really after, the agreement provides for “disclosure of information to recognised trade unions in any future restructure or redundancy situation, including financial information”—thus ensuring that the union bureaucracy maintains its cosy relationship with management in order to be able to sell job losses and other cuts to its members more effectively.
Staff began a strike on February 22 at the University of East London (UEL) in response to the sacking of four members of staff. As opposed to other disputes, the UCU felt it necessary to allow action to go ahead due a particularly intransigent management, which refused even to enter negotiations mediated by the pro-employer Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS). Two of the staff targeted are the UCU branch chair and UCU vice-chair. The union is trying to paint the dispute as an attack on female black and minority ethnic staff, thus undercutting the class unity of members facing the same attacks on their jobs as thousands of others across the education sector and millions in other sectors nationally.
Goldsmiths University in London plans £6 million in cuts, which could result in as many as 120 job cuts. Another 472 lecturers in temporary positions are in danger as the university reportedly plans on not renewing their contracts. In response, around 700 lecturers have started a “marking boycott,” refusing to mark any student work until management commits to no redundancies for at least two years. Such demands reveal the bankrupt role of the UCU, which will accept any “voluntary” redundancies at the drop of a hat.
Goldsmiths staff and students from the university have been holding a virtual picket during the last week. Supporters were urged to post an image or a video with a protest sign and tag it with #SaveGoldsmith. The picket garnered wide support from workers, reaching over two million people on social media.
The UCU nationally has mostly ignored the dispute, with no attempt to mobilise other branches in support and no information about the boycott on its website. Its only intervention has been to utilise identity politics to divide lecturers, by emphasizing that female and BAME staff will be most affected by the cuts, as they are more likely to be on temporary contracts.
Similar attacks are happening in Northern Ireland, where all further education colleges have agreed to offer lecturers a pay increase of just 7 percent spread over 4 years. The UCU noted, “Overall, the offer amounts to an annual pay rise of just 1.2% over a nine-year period and a real terms pay cut.” The union has declared a dispute with the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy, claiming that colleges cannot pay staff more unless Stormont increases funding. The UCU is threatening to ballot members for industrial action.
As part of reopening the economy, even at the cost of thousands of lives, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government reopened colleges campuses to millions of students in England aged 16-18 years old from Monday. This can only lead to a surge of new cases as the only “safety measures” in place are that college students will be asked to wear face coverings in classrooms and be tested weekly with rapid tests of dubious quality. Face coverings by themselves are not enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Universities can also reopen campuses for students who require practical teaching, specialist facilities or on-site assessments. The government will review plans for the return of all other students by the end of the Easter holidays.
Last autumn, the Tories recklessly reopened further and higher education, leading to at least 65,000 students and 8,000 staff being infected with coronavirus. The UCU sanctioned the reopening, making only a few criticisms of safety precautions at several universities.
The current reopening plans are predicated on using “lateral flow tests” to quickly test students and quarantine those testing positive. Latest evidence suggests that lateral flow tests only pick up around 60 percent of positive cases, and in some settings even fewer. This means that some people will be told they do not have coronavirus, when in fact they do, allowing them to continue to spread the virus to others. Experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the accuracy of the tests and warned that using them to manage outbreaks without isolating close contacts risks increasing the spread of the virus. Agreeing to let even a small number of students on campus in these conditions is nothing short of criminal.
On March 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published its interim public health recommendations for fully vaccinated people. A person is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or two weeks after a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has recently received emergency authorization for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The guidelines outline certain privileges now allowed to fully vaccinated individuals, such as visiting with other people who are fully vaccinated indoors without wearing masks or physically distancing from them. They can also see other people in a single unvaccinated household, with the caveat that no one in that household is at high-risk for severe COVID-19 disease. If they remain asymptomatic, fully vaccinated individuals do not have to quarantine or be tested if they were exposed to the virus.
Voters masked against coronavirus line up at Riverside High School for Wisconsin's primary election Tuesday April 7, 2020, in Milwaukee (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Amid a global pandemic with less than 10 percent of the population having been fully vaccinated thus far, and while virulent strains are becoming dominant, these relaxations are quite extraordinary and possibly dangerous. The CDC is attempting to temper these guidelines with a semblance of cautionary recommendations, asking individuals who have been fully vaccinated to continue to wear masks in public, physically distance and avoid large gatherings. The guidelines stipulate that if someone develops COVID-19 symptoms, they should get tested.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, at a press briefing introducing the new guidelines, told reporters, “Our guidance must balance the risk to people who have been fully vaccinated, the risks to those who have not yet received the vaccine, and the impact in the larger community transmission of COVID-19.”
The carefully crafted and well-timed statement is politically loaded to offer a weary and dispirited population the illusion that normalcy is on the horizon. Dr. Walensky went on to add, “We believe these new recommendations are an important first step in our efforts to resuming everyday activities in our communities,” making reference to grandparents finally being able to visit their children and families.
President Joe Biden has been touting that there will be enough vaccine supplies for every American by the end of May, but not necessarily that everyone would be vaccinated by that time. Presently, about 60 million people have received at least one dose of a vaccine, and 30 million have been fully vaccinated.
After a blistering winter peak that had seen daily deaths reach more than 3,000 a day, the media has been repeatedly highlighting the decline in cases and deaths as if the pandemic had exited stage left. Despite the federal government’s toothless warnings against loosening restrictions, state after state, whether under Republican and Democratic administrations, is lifting restrictions on businesses and gatherings, and also lifting mask mandates.
What is lacking in the CDC’s guidelines is a thorough scientific assessment of their implications. Just a week ago, Dr. Walensky warned, “Please hear me clearly. At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. These variants are a very real threat to our people and to our progress. Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know could stop the spread of COVID-19 in our communities, not when we are so close.”
Accepting this concerning premise, these guidelines, in a real-world sense, will only encourage the loosening of restrictions, as people who have been falsely assured let their guard down and re-congregate. More than likely, the very real fatigue within the population—a product of criminal neglect that has produced social murder on an unprecedented scale—will make itself felt immediately, as the longing for social contact makes people heedless of the continued danger of the coronavirus.
As Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted succinctly in yesterday’s World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID press briefing, “We have come so far. We have suffered so much. And we have lost so many. We cannot, we must not squander the progress we have made. We have the tools to control the pandemic. But we can only do it if we use them consistently and equitably … there are no shortcuts.”
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, summarized the concerns raised by public health officials, adding, “The arrival of vaccines is a great hope. But it is, potentially, a moment when we lose concentration. If I think I am going to get a vaccine maybe in the next few weeks or the next six weeks or the next two months maybe I am not so careful anymore. Maybe I think I’m through this, right? You don’t need a lot of people to start thinking like that [to] give the virus the opportunity to spread. We saw that in Europe, we saw that coming into the Christmas period. Small changes in the behavior of a large number of people can lead to huge changes in the epidemiology of this virus. I think we need to have learned that by now.”
What the interim vaccine trials have proven is that the vaccines are efficacious in preventing severe disease and hospitalization. They have not verified that they can prevent infections. Precisely because of the possibility that vaccinated individuals can be infective, public health officials have consistently warned about the need for continued adherence to the public health measures that have repeatedly proven that they work very well when implemented consistently and consciously.
Moreover, the number of participants in these trials and outcomes between those receiving the vaccine or placebo were by all measures quite minuscule compared to the populations of even the smallest countries. It is more important to measure the effectiveness of a vaccine by how it performs in the real world. In a recent Scottish trial studying the effectiveness of Pfizer and AstraZeneca’s vaccines, the researchers conducted a study comparing the hospitalization rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.
Out of a population of 5.4 million people, more than 1.1 million had received at least one dose of either vaccine. The trial results demonstrated an 85 percent reduction for the Pfizer vaccine and a 94 percent reduction for the AstraZeneca vaccine. Those over 80 years of age had a comparable outcome at 81 percent.
Still, vaccinated people ended up in the hospital with COVID-19 complications, implying they were infected and therefore also infectious. Regarding the CDC guidelines for fully vaccinated people, this has significant implications. What remains unknown is how infective, and what percentage of vaccinated people will potentially be asymptomatic carriers and, ironically, contribute to extending the pandemic precisely because they have been vaccinated and are as a result less careful?
Detlef Trefzger, chief executive of Kuehne+Nagel, a logistics giant contracted by governments to distribute vaccines globally, explained that vaccine supplies were hindered not by distribution bottlenecks but by limited manufacturing capacity. “I don’t want to talk about hearsay or the feedback we get, but I would not expect it to be realistic that more than 30 to 50 percent of people [would be] vaccinated in the Western world before summer next year.”
More importantly, the variants presently surfacing throughout the United States have been rapidly mutating, becoming more virulent under pressures placed on the virus through mass surges and rapidly growing immunity within the population. Conducting a vaccination campaign while simultaneously supporting a policy of herd immunity can only spur more mutations. Even the WHO has recently acknowledged that a percentage of the infections in Manaus, Brazil in December were due to reinfections.
The present CDC guidelines advocating lifting restrictions for fully vaccinated individuals are an informal form of a “vaccine passport” and stink of hypocrisy. These guidelines are just the first volley in a process of prematurely dismantling public health restrictions.
Many wealthy and privileged individuals have used their influence to jump the line to receive these lifesaving vaccines. R. Couri Hay, a New York City society publicist, told the Insider, “The rich don’t want to wait their turn, so they’re able to pull strings just like they would get a first-class ticket on an airline by spending the top dollar or getting the best hotel room. The rich view the vaccine and the testing as another commodity that they could purchase.”
The WHO’s Dr. Ryan, speaking at a media conference in Geneva, said the organization didn’t recommend vaccination certificates. “Quite simply, vaccination is just not available enough around the world and is not available certainly on an equitable basis,” he said.
The fog of pandemic must not lull the working class into a state of complacency. The misery and isolation that have befallen so many is a byproduct of a deliberate policy that has subordinated their well-being to Wall Street and the financial oligarchs’ insatiable appetite for profits. Government advisories on the relaxation of restrictions should be regarded with suspicion.
As COVID-19 deaths and cases reach record levels in Paraguay, mass demonstrations have erupted for a second consecutive week over the disastrous response to the pandemic by the government of the country’s fascistic President Mario Abdó Benitez.
Teachers were the first to protest last week, with many refusing the mandatory return to school on Tuesday, March 2. The following day, nurses, doctors, patients and family members demonstrated outside of the main COVID-19 hospital in the capital of Asunción to protest the lack of medicines, including sedatives for intubating patients, and vaccines, even for front-line workers.
While Paraguay faces a massive surge in the pandemic that has filled all ICU beds in public hospitals, the country has received only 4,000 vaccine doses for a population of 7 million, and officials have no estimate for when more doses will arrive. Paraguay has confirmed almost 170,000 cases and 3,343 deaths.
Nurses protest for health supplies (Photo: Twitter)
Amid these explosive conditions, the initial actions by teachers and medical workers triggered widespread marches and roadblocks across the country. The hashtag #EstoyParaElMarzoParaguayo2021 was widely used to rally protesters, referring to the month-long protests of the “Paraguayan March” 1999.
Health Minister Julio Mazzoleni resigned last Thursday in an unsuccessful attempt to head off the growing unrest.
On Friday, in the biggest demonstration so far, over ten thousand people flooded the streets of Asunción demanding the ouster of the President Abdó Benitez and the entire Colorado Party government with the chants, “Out Marito!” and “All of them will leave!”
The use of tear gas and rubber bullets by anti-riot police set off a series of confrontations with young demonstrators. One 32-year-old man was killed under unclear circumstances, and 21 others were injured on Friday.
Demonstrations and roadblocks have been particularly large in the second most populated city, Ciudad del Este, next to the Iguazú Falls on the border with Brazil and Argentina.
As the repression continued on Saturday, Abdó announced the firing of his chief of staff, Juan Ernesto Villamayor, the minister for women, Nilda Romero, and Education Minister Eduardo Petta. Demonstrators had attacked Petta, in particular, over the reckless reopening of schools.
The new health minister, Julio Borba, said yesterday that the government was “considering” a two-week suspension of in-person instruction—a wholly inadequate measure. Medical experts such as Gloria Meza, president of the main doctors’ association, insist that only a return to strict lockdown measures can contain the surge in cases.
The government’s announcements and reshuffling have done little to appease the protest movement, which expresses a broader, international intensification of the class struggle against the almost universal policy of placing profits and social austerity over lives during the pandemic.
Even more fundamentally, protesters have made clear that their anger is being fueled by the staggering levels of social inequality exposed by the crisis.
Magui, a Paraguayan demonstrator, explained to the World Socialist Web Site that “it all began with a march organized on social media due to the president’s horrible management even before the pandemic. The health care system collapsed years ago—there are no beds, no medicines, we help each other. There are no medicines for the people!”
“We are sick of the Colorado Party, sick of being governed by a son of the dictatorship like [President Abdó],” she said, referring to the fact that Abdó’s father was the personal secretary of the fascist dictator Alfredo Stroessner.
Magui added: “I hope that the protests spread. I think almost all Latin America is facing the same situation. … I believe a unified struggle would have a great impact.”
Opposition parties around the Great Renewed National Alliance (GANAR), led by the right-wing Liberal Party and the pseudo-left Guasú Front of ex-president Fernando Lugo, have so far struggled to control the unrest.
They have introduced futile motions in Congress to impeach Abdó, without having enough votes to proceed. Liberal leader EfraÃn Alegre feigned support for the protests and made demagogic and vague calls for a “new model,” while Fernando Lugo has promoted the impeachment drive while declaring, “We don’t agree with changing people, we demand a change of the face of the country.”
The pandemic has shown, however, that whatever the political colors, or ostensible “model,” including that of Lugo’s close Peronist allies in Argentina, all capitalist governments across the region and beyond have advanced fundamentally the same response of reckless reopenings at the behest of the financial oligarchies.
What is most important for Abdó, is the support of Washington. In a March 1 letter, US President Joe Biden thanked Abdó for congratulating him on his election, adding: “I appreciate your government’s engagement on security issues and coordination with regional partners.” Subsequently, the White House has remained quiet on the repression of peaceful protests by the Paraguayan authorities.
Abdo’s disastrous pandemic response
In late March, 2020, Abdó implemented a strict lockdown, including night curfews and the shutdown of nonessential activities. The general director of Health Care Services, Juan Carlos Portillo, explained later, “We were conscious that our health care system is weak.”
As early as May 4, however, an “Intelligent Confinement” was implemented to gradually lift restrictions. Even by June 15, when restaurants and bars opened, only 13 coronavirus deaths had been reported. In late July, movies, religious services and other cultural gatherings were permitted, and the remaining restrictions were lifted by early October. Contrary to most of the region, schools were allowed to reopen on a "voluntary" basis. Predictably, cases and deaths saw a massive surge starting in July that has continued until today.
During 2020, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, the limited social assistance for nonessential workers and those going unemployed to shelter at home was on average just 34 percent of the poverty line. In a country where one-fifth of households live under official poverty and 60 percent of workers depend upon the unprotected, informal sector, the meager assistance compelled workers to return to work as soon as possible to avoid total immiseration. The IMF estimates that Paraguay’s GDP fell 1 percent for 2020, much less than neighboring countries.
While most countries in the region saw daily cases drop by late February after a holiday surge, Brazil and Paraguay continue to set one record after the other. In the last month, Paraguay’s seven-day moving averages jumped from 700 to 1,345 daily cases, and from 16 to 21 daily deaths.
The evolution of the pandemic in Brazil and Paraguay constitutes a grave warning for the world. Experts have suggested that the surge is a result of the spread of the more infectious variants from Brazil after thousands traveled there for the holidays; however, this has not been confirmed due to the lack of genetic tracing of the virus.
Paraguay’s Colorado Party has held power almost continuously since the Higinio MorÃnigo MartÃnez dictatorship took power in 1940, supporting the Nazis until their defeat in World War II, and then quickly shifting its allegiance to US imperialism by accepting a few months of democratic liberties.
In 1947, the Colorados prevailed in a bloody civil war against rebelling soldiers, workers and youth that the Stalinist Communist Party helped subordinate to a popular front alliance led by the oligarchic Liberal Party and the Febreristas, who had just left the MorÃnigo regime. The Colorados received military support from the Truman administration in the US and Juan Domingo Perón’s government in Argentina.
Stroessner then consolidated control until 1989 through a fascist terror regime, involving death squads, concentration camps, widespread torture and the crushing of the CP, the trade unions and a guerrilla movement. The coming to power of Stroessner was facilitated by the efforts of the Stalinists to subordinate all opposition among workers and peasants since the early 1930s to the Liberal Party and one or another faction of the military brass.
The Liberal Party is the twin party of the Paraguayan capitalist oligarchy and, like the Colorados, is subordinated to US imperialism and its financial and geopolitical interests.
Fernando Lugo was elected in 2008 in a coalition led by the Liberal Party and backed by the Stalinists. While using Lugo to channel opposition behind bourgeois politics, the ruling class, fearing growing expectations of social reform, overthrew Lugo in 2012 with the backing of the Obama administration.
The continued support by the Paraguayan ruling class and US imperialism for the political descendants of the barbaric Stroessner regime is a warning for workers and youth everywhere about the shift toward dictatorship and fascism by the capitalist ruling classes internationally in response to the pandemic crisis. This was most clearly shown by the January 6 coup attempt by Donald Trump in Washington itself.
The Biden administration’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is detaining the largest number of unaccompanied migrant children in the agency’s history, and 1,400 of them are being held beyond the three-day legal limit.
CBS News reported that it had obtained government documents showing more than 3,200 migrant children were being held in appalling jail-like cells at Border Patrol stations, and at least 170 of these youth are under the age of thirteen.
Under US immigration law, CBP is obligated to transfer children to shelters operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours of taking them into custody.
Migrant children at a detention camp in Homestead, Florida, Feb. 19, 2019 (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
However, an unprecedented number of unaccompanied children arriving at the US-Mexico border has overwhelmed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) infrastructure and led to a massive backlog of minors being held in facilities that were set up for the purpose of detaining adult men. The number of minors being apprehended at the border is currently estimated at three times greater than what it was just a few weeks ago.
CBS News noted the facilities the youth are being detained in have been described as “dog kennels” and “ice boxes” by migrants. Children are also being held in a “soft-sided” detention center in southern Texas which is designed for short-term detention.
The New York Times reported that “people familiar with the agency’s latest data” said there were nearly 100,000 migrants apprehended at the border in the month of February and an additional 19,000 “adults and children” had been detained by border agents since March 1.
According to the Times, the surge of workers and children arriving in the US is a result of a combination of people fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, the devastation caused by the recent hurricane season and an expectation that the Biden administration would reverse the Trump administration’s war against immigrants.
The crisis is exacerbated by measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in which the ORR reduced its bed capacity from 13,000 to 8,000 last year. However, on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authorized the department to return bed space back to pre-pandemic levels, citing “extraordinary circumstances,” according to a government memo obtained by CBS News.
The CDC memo said, “The only available options for housing (unaccompanied children) are prolonged stays at CBP facilities operating significantly above COVID-adjusted capacities, or placement in ORR facilities operating at capacity above the current COVID-19-adjusted thresholds.” The memo said further, "While CDC recognizes the inherent risk posed by any congregate housing facility, CBP facilities are not appropriate for housing children.”
During the month of February, ORR shelters—including the reopened Carrizo Springs, Texas and the Homestead, Florida facilities that were opened during the Trump administration for holding children separated from their families—received more than 7,000 migrant children.
The previous one-month record for detained minors was 5,900, set in February 2019. There are currently 8,100 unaccompanied children being held in these detention facilities.
While the Democratic Party Biden-Harris campaign promised a “quick and dramatic reversal” of the Trump administration’s criminal treatment of immigrants and to put in place a “fair and humane” immigration policy on “day one,” the latest developments expose these statements as having been completely false.
In an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Tuesday, Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the horrendous treatment of migrant youth was an “incredibly difficult and quite an emotional issue for many of us in the White House.” She attempted to deflect responsibility for the crisis by blaming it on procedural problems carrying over from the Trump administration.
Psaki said, “The challenge is there are a lot of really difficult choices. We are trying to chart the best path forward. But there's no question, this is a heartbreaking circumstance at the border.” In a press conference later in the day, Psaki refused to refer to the situation at the border as “a crisis,” saying, “I don’t think we need to put new labels on what we have already conveyed as challenging and a top priority for the administration.”
The Biden administration clearly identified the situation facing unaccompanied migrant youth as a crisis last weekend when the new Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, domestic policy advisor Susan Rice and a dozen other senior administration officials were dispatched to the border over the weekend.
The group “traveled to the Southwest border to visit a Department of Homeland Security Border Patrol facility and a Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement facility,” according to a White House statement.
Although the specific locations were not mentioned in the press release, the one paragraph statement blamed the situation on the “gutted border infrastructure and immigration system” and said the group “discussed ways to ensure the fair and humane treatment of immigrant children and families, the safety of the workforce, and the wellbeing of communities nearby in the face of a global pandemic.”
Among the only concrete proposals to come from the White House to address the crisis was that advanced by Secretary Mayorkas calling for federal employees to volunteer to help the US government at the border. As reported by Fox News, Mayorkas wrote in an email to DHS staff, “Today, I activated the Volunteer Force to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they face a surge in migration along the Southwest Border.”
Mayorkas added, “You have likely seen the news about the overwhelming numbers of migrants seeking access to this country along the Southwest Border. President Biden and I are committed to ensuring our Nation has a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system while continuing to balance all of the other critical DHS missions.”
It is clear from these developments that the Democrats have done nothing to prepare for the inevitable and substantial increase in workers and their families seeking to enter the US following Biden’s electoral victory last November.
Aside from the Democrats promoting the immigration “overhaul” bill announced on February 21—legislation which was advanced for the purpose of bargaining with Republicans in Congress—and dispensing with xenophobic rhetoric, immigration policies are developing along the same cruel and inhumane path set by the Trump administration.
