Tell Me About Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Fellowships & Grants:
The goal of Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) fellowships and grants is to increase the engagement of early career researchers (ECR) in CliC activities and to promote the participation of scientists from regions currently underrepresented in CliC, i.e., South America, Asia and Africa.
Which Fields are Eligible?
Applications for CliC fellowships and grants should address CliC´s new vision and objectives as described in the CliC Strategic Plan 2022-2031.
What Type of Scholarship is this?
Fellowship, Grants
Who can apply for Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Fellowships & Grants?
PhD candidates: Applicants should be currently enrolled in a PhD program
ECR: those who have obtained a PhD within 7 years by the deadline January 21, 2022. The period exclude career breaks due to parental leave, health issues, etc.
Applicants from underrepresented regions in CliC, e.g. South America, Asia, Africa
For fellowships: the visiting facility must differ from the applicant´s country of origin and current country of residence
How are Applicants Selected?
Proposed activities for fellowships may include:
Research visits to laboratories, research groups, etc
Research synthesis, fieldwork or analysis
Proposed activities for grants may include:
Promotion of best practice protocols on research in cryosphere regions attentive to societal and community needs and expectations
Educational activities/capacity exchange related to cryosphere research
Activities to promote leadership and project management skills
Research/activities to support participation in policy decision processes
Science communication efforts aimed at policy making
Dissemination and outreach activities, e.g., production of media pieces about CliC activities, research highlights, etc
Proposals that are motivated by clearly articulated COVID-induced delays or thwarted activities will also be considered.
Which Countries are Eligible?
In South America, Asia & Africa
How Many Scholarships will be Given?
Not specified
What is the Benefit of Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Fellowships & Grants?
CliC fellowship and grant awards up to a maximum amount of 20,000 Swiss Francs (CHF). If a strong case is made for a larger grant, it should not exceed 30,000 CHF. Co-funding with other sources is encouraged.
How Long will the Program Last?
Activities must be completed in 2022.
How to Apply for Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Fellowships & Grants:
Eligible Countries: Scholarships are offered to i) ADC Priority countries (See list below) and ii) Other Developing countries
To be taken at (country): The Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in Salzburg Klessheim, Austria.
About the Government of Austria ITH Fully-funded Masters Scholarships: The Austrian Development Cooperation through the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management offers about 30 scholarships to applicants from priority countries as well as other developing countries. The Tourism School in Salzburg has an outstanding international reputation and a long tradition. They train future entrepreneurs and employees according to the needs of the international tourism and leisure industry.
Type: Postgraduate
Eligibility: To apply for thie Government of Austria ITH Fully-funded Masters Scholarships at ITH, candidate must meet the following criteria:
Be between 18 – 35 years of age
Have a secondary school leaving certificate (high school diploma)
Have a minimum of one year‘s experience within the tourism and hospitality industry
Non-native English speakers must have an English qualification e.g. TOEFL, Cambridge 1st Certificate, IELTS or equivalent
Successful candidates should be ambitious and open-minded with good organisational and time management skills
Number of Awardees: up to 30
Value of Scholarships: Scholarship for Priority countries include:
tuition fee
accommodation
flight tickets (from home country to Salzburg and back)
health insurance
food from Monday – Sunday
excursions (except field trip to ITB Berlin)
€ 205.- pocket money per month
Not included in this scholarship are:
transfer from the Airport to the hostel and back to the Airport when leaving
visa fee: the visa fees have to be paid by the applicants. The entry visa is approximately $ 110, – and the 8 months residence permit, which will be issued in Salzburg, costs approximately € 120.
Scholarship for Developing countries include:
tuition fee
health insurance
food from Monday – Friday
excursions (except field trip to ITB Berlin)
€ 205.- pocket money per month
Not included in the Scholarship are:
accommodation: accommodation costs have to be covered by students who are awarded this scholarship. It is € 247, – per month. (€ 1976, – in total). The total accommodation fee of € 1.976, – has to be remitted in advance before admission letter can be issued.
flight ticket: Students who are on this scholarship have to cover their own travel expenses from their countries to Salzburg and back.
visa fee: the visa fees have to be paid by the applicants. The entry visa is approximately $ 110, – and the 8 months residence permit, which will be issued in Salzburg, costs approximately € 120.
Other Developing countries include: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Benin, Burundi, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Dem. Rep., Eritrea, Gambia, The, Guinea, Guinea-Bisau, Haiti, Kenya, Korea, Dem Rep., Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Rep., Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Arab Rep., El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kiribati, Kosovo, Lao PDR, Lesotho, Mauritania, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vietnam, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen, Rep., Zambia, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Fiji, Gabon, Grenada, Hungry, Iran, Islamic Rep., Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Libya, Macedonia, FYR, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Montenegro, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Peru, Romania, Serbia, Seychelles, South Africa, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Thailand, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu and Venezuela
How to Apply: Students may attend ITH by private means or through scholarships given by the Austrian Development Cooperation.
Procedure:
Get information about ITH from an Austrian consulate or embassy
Download ITH application form by clicking here. Austrian embassies and consulates have this form as well.
Application Process – all applications should be sent directly to the Institute via post. Submission deadline is the 1st of March every year, which means the Institute has to receive the application latest by March 1st.
Confirmation – You would be informed about the result of your application by the end of April. If you were awarded a scholarship you will receive a letter of acceptance.
It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.
About Scholarship: At the inaugural plenary of the India – Africa Forum Summit held in New Delhi in April 2008, the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India announced the Government of India’s initiative to enhance the academic opportunities for students of African countries in India by increasing the number of scholarships for them to pursue undergraduate, postgraduate and higher courses.
The ICCR – Indian Council for Cultural Relations – implements this scheme on behalf of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Type: undergraduate, post-graduate
Eligibility
Students applying for doctoral/ post doctoral courses should include a synopsis of the proposed area of research.
Students wishing to study performing arts should, if possible, enclose video/ audio cassettes of their recorded performances.
Candidates must have adequate knowledge of English.
ICCR will not entertain applications which are sent to ICCR directly by the students or which are sent by local Embassies/High Commissions in New Delhi.
Priority will be given to students who have never studied in India before.
No application will be accepted for admission to courses in MBBS/MD or Dentistry/Nursing.
Candidates may note that Indian universities/educational institution are autonomous and independent and hence have their own eligibility criteria which have to be fulfilled. Please also note that acceptance of application by the University is also not a guarantee of admission. A scholarship is awarded only when admission is confirmed by ICCR.
Student must carry a proper visa. Students should ensure that they get the correct visa from the Indian Embassy/High Commission. Government of India guideline stipulate that if a scholar arrives without proper visa and his/her actual admission at the University/Institute does not materialize, he/she will be deported to his/her country.
Before departing for India the scholars should seek a full briefing from the Indian Diplomatic Mission in their country about living conditions in India/the details of scholarship/the type and duration of the course to which he/she is admitted. Scholars should inform the Indian Embassy/High Commission of their travel schedule well in advance so that ICCR can make reception and other arrangements for them.
Scholars are advised to bring some money with them to meet incidental expenditures on arrival in India.
The scholars who are awarded scholarships should bring with them all documents relating to their qualification in original for verification by the respective college/university at the time of admission
Number of Scholarships: 900
Value of Scholarship: (figure is in Indian currency)
Undergraduate-5,000, Postgraduate-7,000, M/Phil / Ph.D and M.Tech./ME-12,500, Postdoctoral studies-15,500, Tuition Fee/Other Compulsory Fee-As per actual (excluding refundable amount) –Thesis and dissertation Expenses (Once in entire duration of course)
D Scholar-10,000 and for BBA/BCA/MBA/MCA/M.Tech and other course required submission of Project-7.000
-Medical Benefits
Under the scheme scholars are expected to seek treatment only at medical centre or dispensary attached to universities / Institutes where they enrolled or in the nearest Government hospital (Bill are settled as admissible according to AMA/CGHS norms)
Duration of Scholarship: For the period of study
Eligible Countries: Under this Scheme, the Council offers 900 scholarships to the following African countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Comoros, Congo (Republic of), Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea (concurrent from Nairobi), Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Kenya, Libya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan (Republic of), Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sao Tame & Principe, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
To be taken at (country): India
How to Apply
Please read the instructions before filling out the application form.
Please also read the financial terms and conditions.
Detailed guidelines on the process of applying for ICCR Scholarships online on the A2A Portal and procedure and norms governing the same is given on the www.a2ascholarships.iccr.gov.in.
Students must read instructions and apply through the same website and no hard copy of the application form is required at the Mission.
Eligible Countries: Residents (who must be nationals) of the following countries are eligible to apply for the Scholarship Programme:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, BurkinaFaso, Cambodia, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo1, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, North Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Myanmar, Republic of Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Namibia, Nigeria, North Korea, State of Palestine, the Philippines, Republicof CaboVerde, Serbia, Somalia, SouthSudan, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen.
To be taken at (University): The following universities in Europe are participating:
Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Buda Campus, Budapest
FAO-HungarianGovernmentScholarshipFields of Study: The following Master of Science degree courses are being offered in English for the 2022-23 Academic Year: Food safety and quality engineering (Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences)
Type: Masters
Eligibility: Candidates will be selected on the basis of the following criteria:
Citizenship and residency of one of the eligible countries
Excellent school achievements
English language proficiency (for courses taught in English)
Motivation
Good health
Age (candidates under 30 are preferred)
Selection Procedure: The FAO-Hungarian Government Scholarship selection process as described below applies to scholarships beginning in September 2021.
Student selection will take place in two phases:
Phase 1: FAO will pre-screen candidates and submit applications to the Ministry of Agriculture of Hungary that will send them to the corresponding University as chosen by the 2 applicants. Students must submit only COMPLETED dossiers. Incomplete dossiers will not be considered. Files without names will not be processed.
Phase 2: Selected candidates may be asked to take a written or oral English examination as part of the admission procedure. The participating Universities will run a further selection process and inform each of the successful candidates. Student selection will be made by the Universities only, without any involvement on the part of FAO. Selected students will also be notified by the Ministry.
Number of Awardees: Courses will be offered provided the minimum number of students is reached.
Value of FAO-Hungarian Government Scholarship: The scholarship covers student costs only; family members are not supported within the frame of this programme.
The scholarship will cover:
application and tuition fees throughout the study period with basic books and notes;
dormitory accommodation;
subsistence costs;
health insurance.
How to Apply for FAO-Hungarian Government Scholarship: Interested applicants should prepare a dossier to be sent by E-MAIL (to REU-Scholarship@fao.org) consisting of:
Application form duly completed
A recent curriculum vitae
A copy of high school/college diploma and transcript/report of study or copy of the diploma attachment
A copy of certificate of proficiency in English
Copies of relevant pages of passport showing expiration date and passport number
A letter of recommendation
Statement of motivation
Health Certificate issued by Medical Doctor
Certificate of Good Conduct issued by local police authority.
All submitted documents must be in ENGLISH. Documents submitted in any other language will not be accepted. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that documents are duly translated and certified by a competent office; and that each document is saved with a name that identifies what it is.
A new analysis, “Taxing Extreme Wealth,” by the Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam, and Patriotic Millionaires found a shocking rise in global wealth among the world’s richest people despite deepening inequality during the Covid-19 pandemic.
+ 3.6 million people have over $5 million in wealth, with a combined wealth of $75.3 trillion, according to data commissioned for this study from Wealth-X.
+ 183,300 households own over $50 million, for a combined wealth of $36.4 trillion, according to Wealth-X data.
+ There are 2,660 billionaires with a total combined wealth of $13.76 trillion. (Drawn from Forbes on November 30, 2021).
+ An annual wealth tax applied to the world’s richest would raise U.S. $2.52 trillion a year (with a graduated rate structure: 2 percent tax on wealth over $5 million; 3 percent on wealth over $50 million; 5 percent on wealth over $1 billion.)
+ Amore steeply progressive wealth tax would raise U.S. $3.62 trillion a year (with graduated rates of 2 percent on wealth starting at $5 million; 5 percent on wealth over $50 million; and 10 percent on wealth over $1 billion.)
An annual tax on the world’s richest would be enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough vaccines for the whole world, and deliver universal health care and social protection for all the citizens of low and lower middle-income countries (3.6 billion people).
This new global billionaire wealth analysis comes on the heels of a new Oxfam International report based on World Bank data that shows that while 99 percent of the world’s workers earned less money in 2021, the world’s ten wealthiest men more than doubled their fortunes. Meanwhile, global protests around the world are set to coincide with the World Economic Forum’s ‘State of the World’ online meetings.
In the US, roughly 750 U.S. billionaires have seen their wealth increase over $2 trillion since March 2020 for a combined wealth of over $5 trillion, according to previous research by the Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies. And there are over 63,500 individuals with wealth over $50 million with combined assets of $12.8 trillion, according to the new report, Taxing Extreme Wealth. An annual wealth tax would raise $928 billion a year, enough to eliminate half of household out-of-pocket health expenses in the U.S.
It is time to levy a wealth tax on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires. This is not to simply raise revenue to vaccinate the world and invest in robust public health systems. But a wealth tax that is intended to save democracy from the extreme concentrations of wealth and power.
In November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the Guerguerat area, a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. The presence of Moroccan troops “in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area” violated the 1991 ceasefire agreed upon by the Moroccan monarchy and the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi. That ceasefire deal was crafted with the assumption that the United Nations would hold a referendum in Western Sahara to decide on its fate; no such referendum has been held, and the region has existed in stasis for three decades now.
In mid-January 2022, the United Nations sent its Personal Envoy for Western Sahara Staffan de Mistura to Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania to begin a new dialogue “toward a constructive resumption of the political process on Western Sahara.” De Mistura was previously deputed to solve the crises of U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; none of his missions have ended well and have mostly been lost causes. The UN has appointed five personal envoys for Western Sahara so far—including Mistura—beginning with former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, who served from 1997 to 2004. De Mistura, meanwhile, succeeded former German President Horst Köhler, who resigned in 2019. Köhler’s main achievement was to bring the four main parties—Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria, and Mauritania—to a first roundtable discussion in Geneva in December 2018: this roundtable process resulted in a few gains, where all participants agreed on “cooperation and regional integration,” but no further progress seems to have been made to resolve the issues in the region since then. When the UN initially put forward De Mistura’s nomination to this post, Morocco had initially resisted his appointment, but under pressure from the West, Morocco finally accepted his appointment in October 2021, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita welcoming him to Rabat on January 14. De Mistura also met the Polisario Front representative to the UN in New York on November 6, 2021, before meeting other representatives in Tindouf, Algeria, at Sahrawi refugee camps in January. There is very little expectation that these meetings will result in any productive solution in the region.
Abraham Accords
In August 2020, the United States government engineered a major diplomatic feat called the Abraham Accords. The U.S. secured a deal with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates to agree to a rapprochement with Israel in return for the U.S. making arms sales to these countries as well as for the United States legitimizing Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. The arms deals were of considerable amounts—$23 billion worth of weapons to the UAE and $1 billion worth of drones and munitions to Morocco. For Morocco, the main prize was that the United States—breaking decades of precedent—decided to back its claim to the vast territory of Western Sahara. The United States is now the only Western country to recognize Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.
When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, it was expected that he might review parts of the Abraham Accords. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear during his meeting with Bourita in November 2021 that the U.S. government would continue to maintain the position taken by the previous Trump administration that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara. The U.S., meanwhile, has continued with its arms sales to Morocco but has suspended weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates.
Phosphates
By the end of November 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and from the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 percent of the entire phosphate reserves in the world (the second-highest percentage of these reserves is in China, which has around 6 percent). Phosphate, along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer, a key element in modern food production. While nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is not merely about national pride, but it is largely about the presence of a vast number of resources—especially phosphates—that can be found in the territory.
In 1975, a UN delegation that visited Western Sahara noted that “eventually the territory will be among the largest exporters of phosphate in the world.” While Western Sahara’s phosphate reserves are less than those of Morocco, the Moroccan state-owned firm OCP SA has been mining the phosphate in Western Sahara and manufacturing phosphate fertilizer for great profit. The most spectacular mine in Western Sahara is in Bou Craa, from which 10 percent of OCP SA’s profits come; Bou Craa, which is known as “the world’s longest conveyor belt system,” carries the phosphate rock more than 60 miles to the port at El Aaiún. In 2002, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs at that time, Hans Corell, noted in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.” An international campaign to prevent the extraction of the “conflict phosphate from Western Sahara by Morocco has led many firms around the world to stop buying phosphate from OCP SA. Nutrien, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the United States that used Moroccan phosphates, decided to stop imports from Morocco in 2018. That same year, the South African court challenged the right of ships carrying phosphate from the region to dock in their ports, ruling that “the Moroccan shippers of the product had no legal right to it.”
Only three known companies continue to buy conflict phosphate mined in Western Sahara: two from New Zealand (Ballance Agri-Nutrients Limited and Ravensdown) and one from India (Paradeep Phosphates Limited).
Human Rights
After the 1991 ceasefire, the UN set up a Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). This is the only UN peacekeeping force that does not have a mandate to report on human rights. The UN made this concession to appease the Kingdom of Morocco. The Moroccan government has tried to intervene several times when the UN team in Western Sahara attempted to make the slightest noise about the human rights violations in the region. In March 2016, the kingdom expelled MINURSO staff because the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an “occupation.”
Pressure from the United States is going to ensure that the only realistic outcome of negotiations is for continued Moroccan control of Western Sahara. All parties involved in the conflict are readying for battle. Far from peace, the Abraham Accords are going to accelerate a return to war in this part of Africa.
Hundreds of thousands of educators and pupils are off sick with COVID-19 in Spain a week into Spain’s return to schools after the Christmas break. The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has forced children and teachers to attend school in person, despite skyrocketing COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations.
Maestro Padilla school in Madrid, Spain, on September 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
On average, more than 132,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 every day in Spain over the last week, three and a half times more than the highest average infection figures recorded at any other time in the pandemic. Almost 1 million people tested positive in the last seven days alone. The incidence rate has rocketed up to well over 3 percent nationwide.
These case figures barely scratch the surface, however, as Spain’s inadequate testing facilities are unable to keep up with the demand. Across Spain, 40 percent of coronavirus tests are returning a positive result, more than eight times higher than the World Health Organization’s recommended rate of 5 percent, which indicates that the testing is adequate to detect all cases. In some regions, the test positivity rate is between 50 and 70 percent.
Nearly 19,000 people are currently hospitalised with COVID-19, the most since early February 2021. Almost a quarter of intensive care unit (ICU) beds are occupied by coronavirus patients, or 2,251 people. These rates have not been seen since May last year.
The PSOE-Podemos government’s decision to force schools to reopen as the pandemic runs rampant throughout Spain is criminal and reactionary. The Spanish ruling elite is no longer even pretending to fight the spread of contagion, and is instead openly calling for COVID-19 to be treated like influenza and allowed to spread unimpeded within the population.
Speaking to Spanish radio channel Cadena Ser on Monday 10 January, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for the virus to be permitted to become endemic. It’s a “necessary debate,” Sánchez stated. Scientists have given the world the “response to protect ourselves,” he declared, adding that they must begin “evaluating the evolution of COVID into an endemic illness.”
In the same interview, Sánchez confirmed that his government is working on a new COVID-19 monitoring system which will treat coronavirus data in the same way as influenza data. Health Minister Carolina Darias has also discussed this with her counterparts across Europe.
The deliberate mass infection of pupils and teachers, who returned to classrooms on 10 January, is a part of the PSOE-Podemos government’s policy of making the virus endemic. Virtually no measures have been put in place even to mitigate the transmission of the virus, other than vague instructions for children and educators to wear masks and regularly wash their hands, and that classrooms are to be well ventilated. Pupils and teachers no longer are to quarantine if they have been in contact with a positive case, unless at least five members of their classroom are infected.
Despite the reduced quarantine requirements, by the end of the first week back at school, on January 14, more than 102,000 pupils and 19,335 teachers were off school either sick or isolating. This is 1.6 percent and 3.2 percent of the total number of students and educators, respectively.
However, this data is only partial, as it leaves out three of Spain’s 17 provinces, including the Madrid region, home to Spain’s capital and most populous city. One other region, Castilla-La Mancha, only reported absence statistics for teachers, not pupils.
In the 12 regions where coronavirus has been continuously reported, the number of educator absences has doubled since the last date that figures were reported prior to the Christmas break, and has increased more than seven-fold since early December.
According to estimates by unions and education centres themselves, even these figures are vast underestimates. They report that 6 to 8 percent of education staff have been unable to attend work due to COVID-19, while pupil absences are between 10 and 15 percent. Staff absences had reached 25 percent in some areas, according to Toni González, president of the Federation of Headteachers Associations in Public Schools (FEDADI).
Mass infection of pupils and the disruption to education caused by teacher absences give the lie to claims that reopening schools for in-person learning has anything to do with child well-being. In reality, children and youth have been herded back into schools so their parents can continue working in unsafe factories, offices and other workplaces.
The unions have done nothing to oppose the government’s right-wing policy, making only weak, rhetorical calls for more health measures in schools. They have issued no calls for schools to be shut until they can be made safe.
“We are going to see what happens,” stated Maribel Loranca, head of education in the PSOE-aligned General Union of Workers (UGT), “because I believe that if the situation continues like this, the educational and health administrations are going to have to take measures if they want to guarantee, as they’ve been saying, in-person education.”
Meanwhile, the pseudo-left parties like the Morenoite Workers’ Revolutionary Current (CRT) promote illusions in the unions, combining support for school reopenings with vague calls for the unions to issue a “mobilisation plan” to demand more safety measures in education facilities.
In an article in their online publication Izquierda Diario on January 13, the Morenoites made limited criticisms of longstanding overcrowding, claiming that the main coronavirus mitigation measure needed in schools is to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes. After rhetorically denouncing regional governments for blaming high infections on teachers not following health guidelines, the article states,
“But instead of increasing the education budget to lower [student–teacher] ratios, hiring more staff, having sufficient protective material and strengthening health provision with more staff and means, they [the regional authorities] say nothing.”
The article concludes by pointing to the teachers’ strike in France, and calling on unions in Spain to organise action to ensure that schools stay open with safety measures. “This is the first measure that the education unions must take,” the article declares.
“Many of them have criticised the lack of safety measures but they have to turn words into acts,” it continues, “convening assemblies in the [education] centres and calling for a mobilisation plan, for a return to safe classrooms and for other compensatory measures for families in need, such as paid leave to care for quarantining children.”
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan conceded Wednesday that the country is now in the grip of a fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, fueled by the highly contagious Omicron variant. Yet Khan immediately ruled out imposing a lockdown or indeed any concerted action to stop the spread of the virus, citing the need to boost economic growth.
A man holds his 10-month-old baby daughter who suffers from polio, in Suleiman Khel, Pakistan, May 6, 2020 (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)
Repeatedly during the course of the two-year pandemic, Khan and his Islamic populist Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) government have cynically invoked the desperate plight of Pakistan’s workers and rural toilers to justify keeping the economy “open” amid successive waves of infections and deaths.
The reality is the government and ruling class as a whole are single-mindedly focused on increasing investment and profits by intensifying the exploitation of the working class and rural poor. Their prioritizing of corporate profits over workers’ lives goes hand-in-hand with austerity and the sell-off of public assets, including much of the public health system.
As Omicron has been sweeping the globe in recent weeks fueling unprecedented levels of infection, Pakistan’s government has been preoccupied with securing and winning parliamentary approval for the revival of a $6 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout program negotiated in 2019. Release of the next tranche of funds, slightly more than $1 billion, is conditioned on Islamabad slashing electricity and petrol subsidies, eliminating sales tax exemptions, and passing legislation to prevent the government using central bank funds to finance social spending.
Yesterday morning, the authorities reported 6,808 new COVID-19 infections, the second-highest total recorded during the entire pandemic. Government data show new COVID cases increasing sharply for the past two weeks, with the number of daily infections rising four-fold since January 10.
As in previous waves, the official figures are a gross undercount that give only the faintest indication of the true extent of the health crisis. In a country of more than 225 million people, the authorities are administering little more than 50,000 COVID tests per day.
Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest urban agglomeration and the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, recorded a shocking test positivity rate of 40 percent last weekend and again on Wednesday. Of the 7,670 diagnostic tests for new COVID infections administered Wednesday in Karachi, a city of 15 million, 3,149 were positive. Other major urban centres—in three of Pakistan’s four provinces as well as Pakistan-held Azad Kashmir— also reported test positivity rates Wednesday well in excess of the 5 percent benchmark the World Health Organization says indicates infections are out of control, signaling that the virus is spreading rapidly across the country. Lahore had a test positivity rate of 14.25 percent, Islamabad 15.4 percent, Peshawar 11.2 percent, and Muzaffarabad in Azad Kashmir 25 percent.
Media in Karachi are now reporting that there has been a sudden spike in hospitalizations with the Sindh Infectious Disease Hospital admitting 32 COVID-stricken patients directly to its Intensive Care Unit on Tuesday, and the Aga Khan University Hospital saying an influx of COVID patients is forcing it to add new beds every hour.
The surge in Omicron cases has already overwhelmed health facilities in numerous economically advanced Western countries whose health care systems, whilst inadequately funded, are day and night when compared with Pakistan’s ramshackle public hospitals.
Yet all Pakistan’s government could bring itself to do in the face of what clearly is an impending tsunami of COVID infections was to announce Wednesday that in cities with a test positivity rate of 10 percent or higher a handful of new, utterly inadequate social distancing measures will be enforced. Under the latest orders from the government’s anti-COVID National Command and Operations Centre, in-class schooling is to continue in the areas hardest-hit by Omicron, and most businesses will function as normal, although some capacity limits may apply.
Pakistan’s population is especially vulnerable to COVID-19 due to poverty, squalid living conditions, and a lack of access to health care including vaccines. According to a 2017 study, 80 percent of the country’s population does not have access to clean drinking water. Tens of millions are forced to live in cramped quarters in slums. In line with its prioritizing of profits over lives, the PTI government has largely relied on foreign donations to provide lifesaving COVID vaccines to the population.
As a result of inadequate supplies and public infrastructure, more than half of all Pakistanis have yet to receive even one vaccine shot. According to Our World in Data, as of yesterday, 46.5 percent of the population had received one shot and just 35.5 percent two shots. Not until the first week of January did Pakistan begin administering booster shots, which are essential to protect against serious Omicron infections and possible death.
Pakistan’s anti-COVID immunization campaign has also been undermined by the Islamic fundamentalist right, which Khan and his PTI have long appeased and courted.
Officially, Pakistan’s pandemic death toll stands at just over 29,000—a figure the government cites to promote the monstrous lie that the PTI’s COVID-19 response has been a “success.”
Given the lack of basic health care in rural areas, where more than 60 percent of all Pakistanis live, the huge financial and social barriers that the urban poor face in accessing health care, and the general dearth of public infrastructure, including in the compiling of death records, it is impossible to know how many people in Pakistan have succumbed to COVID-19. However, Our World in Data, based on the findings of the Economist, puts the number of excess deaths in Pakistan during the pandemic at between 300,000 and a million, with 796,000 deaths as of January 17 considered the best estimate.
In the midst of this catastrophe, the PTI government is moving to further dismantle a public health care system that is already on life-support. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that his government intends to shut down the country’s entire system of state-run District Headquarters Hospitals or DHQs, which play a critical role in providing health care in rural areas. Cynically, Khan claimed this will open the door to the private sector to provide health care to rural Pakistan. As a pretext for the ruinous closure decision, Khan pointed to a chronic shortage of doctors at DHQs, which he attributed to doctors not liking to live in rural areas. He omitted to mention that DHQ doctors make only a tiny fraction of the salaries paid those who work at the private hospitals in Karachi, Lahore and other urban centres that cater to the ultra-rich and upper middle class.
Further underscoring that Khan and his PTI his government are determined to intensify their class war assault on the working class and rural poor, last week they rushed through parliament their mini-budget imposing the latest round of IMF-ordered austerity measures. These measures will impose an additional financial burden of $3.4 billion on working people over the next six months, and many billions more in every subsequent year.
The elimination of price subsidies for electricity and petrol is a double blow, as it will drive up the price of food and virtually all goods and this at a time when inflation is already surging at more than 12 percent per year.
As around the world, the pandemic has vastly intensified social inequality. While the companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange recorded their largest after-tax profits in a decade in 2021, the incomes of working people have been squeezed by inflation, job losses, and the refusal of the state to provide compensation to those unable to work due to the pandemic.
Khan and his PTI government long-resisted imposing a lockdown when COVID first surged in the country in March-April 2020, and when their hand was ultimately forced by the military and various provincial government they provided famine-style relief and only to the poorest of the poor. Under conditions where the World Bank estimated half of the population lost income or were rendered jobless, some 12 million families received the equivalent of $77 each in pandemic relief.
According to a report issued by the UK-based international aid agency Oxfam last week, 78 percent of women living in poverty “could have been excluded” from Khan’s Ehsaas Emergency Cash program. At the same time, up to 73 percent of “intended recipients were excluded” from the pre-existing Benazir Income Support Programme.
It is not clear from the report if Khan’s emergency “assistance” program was in fact funded by pilfering from other welfare programs. But the state of social distress in Pakistan, as well as the extent to which the pandemic’s impact is covered up by the authorities’ phony COVID statistics, is underlined by Oxfam’s finding that in May 2020 50 percent of Pakistanis were unable to receive medical attention for want of money.
Pakistan’s opposition parties are complicit both in the Khan government’s criminal mishandling of the pandemic and the implementation of its anti-working class social-economic agenda. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which heads the provincial government in Sindh, stands out in this regard. Amidst the unfolding catastrophe in Karachi, it is refusing to order any serious measures to suppress the spread of the virus, beginning with the closure of non-essential businesses and in-person learning at schools. More than 500 health care professionals have been infected during the current COVID-19 surge in Karachi, further straining the limited health facilities.
The opposition parties, beginning with the PPP and its traditional main political rival, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), have imposed brutal IMF restructuring programs whenever they have held office. Hoping to exploit the growing popular anger against Khan in the run-up to the 2023 national elections, the opposition parties made a brief noisy show of opposition to the mini-budget, then allowed it to win quick parliamentary approval. As Fahd Husain, the Dawn’s resident editor in the national capital, Islamabad, noted, “All political stakeholders had been communicated that returning to the IMF fold was a strategic necessity at this point in time. None had disagreed.”
Khan and his PTI won office in 2018 with phony promises of an “Islamic welfare state,” then quickly pivoted to imposing austerity. Last July, he conceded that hunger and malnutrition impede the physical growth and cognitive development of 40 percent of Pakistani children. The US Department of Agriculture’s International Food Security Assessment in July, which noted that Pakistan has been “severely impacted” by the pandemic, found that 91 million people or more than 38 percent of all Pakistanis were food insecure in 2021.
Malnutrition is a major contributing factor to the huge number of pneumonia deaths among Pakistan’s children and also a huge COVID-19 risk factor. In Tharparkar, an especially impoverished district of Sindh, at least 32 children have died so far this month due to viral infections and malnutrition. Estimates of the number of children killed annually by pneumonia in Pakistan range from 60,000 to 90,000.
