By SeiMi Chu
Stanford, Aug 9 2022 – During Todd Bernhardt’s visit to Ukraine’s conflict zones, he encountered untold damage to hospitals, healthcare clinics, and communities. The Senior Director of Global Communications at the International Medical Corps also encountered enormous courage.

On one of his visits, Bernhardt met Dr Svetlana Alexandrova, Medical Director of the Psychoneurological Hospital in Chernihiv, a city about two hours northeast of Kyiv that saw fierce fighting during the early weeks of the invasion.

He said Alexandrova was a defiant and committed leader who was not afraid to confront Russian soldiers and tell them to stop destroying the hospital, which treats critically ill patients. Hospital staff proudly told Bernhardt that as the soldiers were getting ready to retreat, they told the staff members that they had a “tough boss.”

“The patients in this hospital have developmental, mental health, and physical challenges that have led to them being hospitalized. In some cases, they are quite old and frail. And during this time, they had to shelter in the hospital basement—a damp and dark place where you would not want to live,” Bernhardt said. He described how hundreds of patients with 30-40 staff were trapped in the basement during the Russian bombardment.

They had to stay in this basement for 40 days and 40 nights without access to water, heat, and electricity. The staff occasionally went out and managed to forage for food during lulls in the fighting. In fear of being shot, they would cook over open fires during the day while being undercover.

A destroyed residential building in Dnipro. Credit: World Food Programme

International Medical Corps’ involvement with Ukraine goes back to 1999 when it provided medical training to doctors and medical supplies and equipment. Now International Medical Corps operates hubs in seven Ukrainian cities—Chernihiv, Dnipro, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Stryi, and Vinnytsia—that provide relief services and training across the country.

International Medical Corps’ mission is primarily to be a first responder. A big part of its approach is to work within an existing health system, support it, and strengthen it. It also provides medicine or medical equipment, trains doctors, staff, and clinicians, and builds water and sanitation systems.

“We are a first responder. We go in, respond to the disaster, and stay to help strengthen existing systems, to make sure that the community is left stronger than when we first came in,” Bernhardt said, elaborating on International Medical Corps’ mission.

During the Russo-Ukrainian War, International Medical Corps so far has helped 122 hospitals, delivered more than 136,000 water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and non-food items (NFI), provided 53,661 medical services to healthcare facilities, provided 46,592 health consultations, and trained 914 people in psychological first aid.

“We’re trying to provide services to support the most vulnerable populations who suffer during a conflict. That can be children. That can mean the elderly. That can mean the disabled. It especially, unfortunately, means women and girls. We are working as hard as we can to ensure these vulnerable populations get the services they need. And, of course, we’re doing everything we can to ensure that we prevent that kind of violence from occurring in the first place,” Bernhardt said.

Another organization working within the war zones is the World Food Programme (WFP). It focuses on the broken commercial food supply chains providing food, supporting people with cash so people can make their own choices when buying food, and stabilizing and restoring public and private institutions and services.

People gather to receive food from World Food Programme’s food distribution. Credit: World Food Programme

In June, they assisted 2.6 million people in Ukraine through food distributions or cash where markets are functioning. Since March, WFP has transferred over 200 million US dollars in cash and cash vouchers to vulnerable Ukrainians. Fifty-five million US dollars of this was provided in July to close to 800,000 people. Internally displaced people receive 75 US dollars per person for up to three people per family.

WFP has also helped more than 115.5 million people in over 120 countries and territories. They were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in ending hunger.

“At this time, one in three households in Ukraine is food insecure, and the existing systems in Ukraine that feed tens of millions of people are falling apart. Our goal is to see an end to this conflict. Our job as humanitarians is to feed people and save lives. We’re willing to stay there as long as it’s needed to support the population and the most vulnerable people in Ukraine,” stated Kyle Wilkinson, Communications Officer for the WFP.

Kerri Murray, President of ShelterBox, was part of the organization’s first team in Kraków, Poland. ShelterBox provides emergency shelter and essential items to set up households, such as temporary shelters, mattresses, blankets, water purification, tools, solar lanterns, and hygiene supplies.

The Ukraine war has internally displaced nearly 6.5 million people, and ShelterBox focuses on projects to meet the needs of internally displaced people. It also has a project that is helping refugees who fled to Moldova, which has received the most refugees per capita of any European country.

ShelterBox has provided hygiene kits to displaced families – mainly women, children, the elderly, and the disabled. During this displacement crisis, it also provides cash to families fleeing Ukraine into Moldova to buy food, prescription medicines, and basic necessities.

ShelterBox has supported tens of thousands of people in Ukraine and hundreds of families in Moldova.

“Rapidly launching this response in Ukraine was challenging,” Murray said, noting that securing a supply chain and delivering aid into the country was difficult. “But we were absolutely committed to helping these families.”

Artem and Maksim play hockey in Hungary. Credit: Katie Wilkes, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

As the crisis unfolded and intensified, Red Cross supported more than 15 million people in Ukraine and surrounding countries. By teaming with several groups, such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Red Cross helped the wounded with medical care and provided first aid training in Ukraine. Red Cross also had a cash voucher assistance program.

“More than 700 ICRC staff are working in 10 locations across Ukraine to deliver relief items to people displaced from their homes, providing medicines and supplies to health care facilities, restoring water supply for millions of people, and other lifesaving activities,” Susan Malandrino, Communications Lead at American Red Cross. “For its part, the American Red Cross has contributed over 50 million US dollars to Ukraine crisis relief efforts and an additional 7.5 million US dollars to partners on the ground to provide meals and medical supplies within Ukraine.”

Malandrino recalls how a colleague on site met two young brothers from Kyiv, 15-year-old Artem and 10-year-old Maksim. When the war started, Artem and Maksim were at a hockey tournament.

They are currently living in one of the Red Cross shelters.

“While here, they play hockey to take their minds off the stress of missing family left behind in Ukraine. Artem says he talks to his father and grandmother daily and misses walking his dogs, including his favorite small highland terrier,” Malandrino explained.

The Hungarian Red Cross ensures each room has a small refrigerator, private bathroom, clean and fresh sheets, and provides wholesome meals from its restaurant.

“Because of Red Cross support, Artem and Maksim have a comfortable place to live and, for a few moments each day, play hockey and just be kids.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 9 2022 – The mandatory initial permit granted by Brazil’s environmental authority for the repaving of the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, intensified the alarm over the possible irreversible destruction of the rainforest.

The 885-kilometer highway is the only overland route to Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas with a population of 2.25 million in south-central Brazil. The road runs to another Amazon rainforest city, Porto Velho, capital of the state of Rondônia, population 550,000.”Restrictions arose that limited the public hearings to evaluate the studies as early as 2021, and so far there has been no solution to these problems. In addition, the participation of affected populations was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulties in attendance, especially for indigenous people.” — Carlos Durigan

The highway emerged as part of the plans of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship to integrate the Amazon rainforest with the rest of the country, through several highways crossing the then almost unpopulated jungle and the promotion of massive internal migration from other regions.

Due to heavy rains and frequent flooding many sections of the road and a number of bridges have fallen into disrepair. Twelve years after its inauguration in 1976, BR-319 was recognized as a largely impassable road, undermined by neglect.

Local interests tried to repave the road and obtained the support of the central government from the beginning of this century.

However, in 2008 and 2009, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) rejected three environmental impact studies, whose approval is essential in Brazil for projects that affect the environment and that have a social impact.

But a fourth study, presented in June 2021 by the National Department of Transport Infrastructure, was approved and the required initial permit was granted by IBAMA, despite criticism from environmentalists.

In recent years IBAMA’s credibility has suffered due to the openly anti-environmental far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, which weakened the environmental agency by cutting its budget and appointing officials lacking the necessary qualifications.

The Brazilian army always deploys members of its engineer brigade to repair roads in remote areas, such as the Amazon rainforest. But in the case of the BR-319 highway between Manaus and Porto Velho, millions of dollars in investments and costly maintenance services are necessary, which prevent its concession to private companies. CREDIT: Brazilian Army

Doomed project

“Restrictions arose that limited the public hearings to evaluate the studies as early as 2021, and so far there has been no solution to these problems. In addition, the participation of affected populations was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulties in attendance, especially for indigenous people,” said environmentalist Carlos Durigan.

The environmental impacts assessed were limited to the vicinity of the road, without considering the entire area of influence of the construction work, the director of WCS Brazil, the national affiliate of the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society, told IPS by telephone from Manaus.

Moreover, no prior and informed consultation was held with the indigenous peoples and traditional communities that will be affected, a requirement under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), he said. This incompliance is likely to lead to lawsuits.

The initial permit was obtained under promises of greater protection, inspection and oversight of protected areas – not very credible at a time of weak public authority in environmental questions, with low budgets and reduced human resources, said Durigan, a geographer from southeastern Brazil who has lived in the Amazon rainforest for two decades.

These and other criticisms form part of the evaluation carried out by the BR-319 Observatory, a coalition of 12 social organizations involved in activities in the road’s area of influence. The 14-point review identifies irregularities in the permit granted by IBAMA and the violated rights of the affected population.

The proponents of the BR-319 highway tried to avoid the requirement of impact studies under the argument that it is only a matter of repaving an existing road, with no new impacts. But the courts recognized it as a complete reconstruction.

In fact, of the 885 kilometers, 405 kilometers will have to be repaved and bridges and animal crossings will have to be rebuilt. The remaining 480 kilometers – the two stretches near Manaus and Porto Velho – are already passable.

But the rains and floods that have occurred since last year have broken down the asphalt on many stretches near Manaus, leaving large cracks and holes. Even without repaving, many people venture to travel along the BR-319 in cars, buses and trucks. But it takes two or three days to drive, and often causes damage to vehicles.

One of the potholes in the BR-319 highway, where the asphalt laid in the 1970s has disappeared. Inaugurated in 1976, the Amazon artery became impassable a decade later and attempts to repave it have so far failed. CREDIT: Tarmo Tamming/Flickr

More deforestation

Environmentalists fear that deforestation, illegal occupation of public lands and the invasion of indigenous lands, which are already occurring along nearly 200 kilometers of the southern section, will spread along the entire highway and its surrounding areas.

This region close to Porto Velho is the area where deforestation in the Amazon has grown the most in recent years.

A usable BR-319 would spread environmental crimes, forest fires and violence generated by land disputes in the middle section of the highway, activists warn.

In fact, 80 percent of Amazon deforestation occurs along the highways that are the arteries leading to the settlement of the rainforest, along with smaller roads branching off from the highways, environmentalists say.

Such effects are already well-known along other Amazonian highways in areas that are more populated and deforested than the territory between Manaus and Porto Velho, bathed by the Madeira and Purus rivers, two of the major tributaries of the Amazon, both of which have their headwaters in Peru. The Madeira basin also extends through much of central and northern Bolivia.

A stretch of the BR-319 highway with an ironic sign pointing to the nearby town of Realidade (Reality). The 885-kilometer road that runs between the Amazonian Madeira and Purus rivers requires high maintenance costs due to frequent flooding, since most of it is located on land that floods in the rainy season. CREDIT: Alberto César Araújo/Amazonia Real

Doubtful economic feasibility

BR-319 faces another uncertainty, which is economic viability. It crosses what is at least for now a sparsely populated area, except for Manaus. The cost of repaving is not small, as the effort includes many bridges and earthworks to stabilize land that floods during the rainy season along many stretches, even though the road is located on higher ground between the Madeira and Purus rivers.

The highway also needs continuous upkeep, as is already the case in the stretch near Manaus, where the necessary repairs have not yet been completed after flooding caused by heavy rains that lasted from October 2021 until well into this year, Durigan pointed out.

Even so, the demand for the repaving of the central section of the highway is very popular, enjoying almost consensus support, the activist acknowledged. The argument in favor of the road is that Manaus is isolated by land, and depends on air or river transport to connect with the rest of Brazil and to be able to export its industrial production.

Since the 1960s, Manaus has had an industrial park and a free trade zone, supported by large subsidies that are regularly extended and will remain in force at least until 2073. These benefits shore up the electronics, motorcycle and beverage industries in the city, despite its remote location and distance from the main domestic markets.

In addition to a reduction in the city’s isolation, the population of Manaus hopes to see a drop in food prices, thanks to a workable road that would allow better access to products from Rondônia, an Amazonian state where agriculture and cattle raising have been developed.

But the beneficial effect of agriculture 900 kilometers away is doubtful. Other Amazonian cities, such as Belém, capital of the eastern Amazon jungle state of Pará, also pay dearly for their food, particularly fresh produce, because they have not developed horticulture.

New anti-Amazon wave

Along with the repaving of BR-319, Brazil’s Amazon rainforest faces other threats from infrastructure projects.

Another resurrected plan is a road through a conserved forest area on the border between Brazil and Peru. It would cross the biodiversity-rich Serra do Divisor National Park.

This plan also looks unfeasible because of its questionable economic viability and due to the severe environmental restrictions it would face.

Three railways are also planned for exports from Mato Grosso, the southeastern Amazonian state that is Brazil’s largest producer of soybeans, corn and cotton, and small and medium-sized hydroelectric plants are projected, especially in the states of Rondônia and Roraima, the latter on the border with Venezuela.

In addition to resistance from environmentalists and indigenous peoples, these projects now face a new stumbling block, or a new counter-argument: climate change, said Sergio Guimarães, coordinator of the Infrastructure Working Group, a network of 47 social organizations.

This is a variable that requires at least a review of all these projects, he told IPS by telephone from Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso.

By External Source
Aug 9 2022 – The under-representation of women in research is well documented. Emerging evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this inequality and disrupted the research enterprise globally.

But none of these studies, mainly from the global north, provide detailed explanations for the scale of this decline.

Our research offers the first comprehensive study to shed light on the complex reasons for the decline in research during the pandemic-enforced lockdown.

The single most important factor affecting the academic work of female academics appears to be having younger or multiple dependants in the home. Overall, the pandemic has most affected academic work among women with children

We surveyed 2,029 women academics drawn from 26 public universities in South Africa. Other studies have shown that there are heightened expectations that women take on the role of primary care giver in families and sacrifice parts of their careers due to this role. Similarly, women in the academy are expected to fulfil this role in caring for students, taking on greater teaching and learning responsibilities compared to men.

Overall our findings showed that having younger or multiple dependants at various educational stages and the demands of home schooling had a negative impact on the outputs of women academics. Competing roles such as teaching online and caring for students, together with the sharp increase in teaching time, placed a massive burden on female academics. Their research outputs suffered.

Women also acknowledged the lack of emotional support they got as working academics.

What we found

The single most important factor affecting the academic work of female academics appears to be having younger or multiple dependants in the home. Overall, the pandemic has most affected academic work among women with children. Of the respondents in our study, 54% indicated they had children living at home with them.

From our study, it’s evident that the age and educational stage of the children was a significant contributor to the decline in productivity among female academics. The demands of caring for toddlers and the schools’ expectations of homeschooling took their toll. Academic mothers were caught up in the demands of competing roles. These included teaching online, nurturing vulnerable students, comforting anxious children, taking care of toddlers, and finding time to do research and writing.

A key finding in our survey was the sharp increase in the demands on teaching time during lockdown. This took up time that female academics would have spent on research. Academics perform many different roles, including teaching, research, grant-proposal writing, administrative duties, and other tasks depending on their rank and discipline. Our survey showed that the distribution of teaching and research was not at all even.

Our study suggested that the pandemic affected researchers differently according to their disciplines. Those in the “bench sciences”, such as chemistry, biological sciences and biochemistry, were explicit in stating that the closure of laboratories or facilities affected their research productivity. Disciplines that are less lab and equipment-intensive were also affected. But these cases were often related to individual circumstances such as the ability to do fieldwork in particular social science fields.

Most women (75.1%) indicated that doing their academic work (teaching and research) was “somewhat” to “extremely” difficult during the lockdown. About 16% reported that it was easier. In further analysis of participants who indicated that work was easier, it became evident that these perceptions were correlated to the following factors: having children, and their ages; career stages; commuting conditions; and work arrangements prior to lockdown.

Overall, a total of 40.5% of the participants indicated they needed much more – or significantly more – emotional support as working academics to cope with the demands of the job. Several respondents expressed feelings of unending exhaustion. This reduced their ability to focus and to be productive. The feeling of despair and a sense of the unfairness of workload distribution was a key theme that emerged from our data.

The lockdown has had a profound effect on women’s academic productivity – 31.6% reported having made “no progress”. Over a fifth indicated they’d made “some progress” towards completing a significant academic product. This will likely affect the prospects of academics for promotion and advancement.

Career prospects

A large number of women in our study (48.1%) indicated that the lockdown would negatively affect their academic career prospects. This points to the need for institutions to track the effects of the pandemic, and provide support.

Leaders in academic institutions need to be aware that female academic staff view the lockdown as yet another barrier to equity. They also need to consider the effects of the pandemic on career challenges in recruitment and promotion decisions.

A major theme that emerged was how women academics’ role as nurturers played a critical part in the intersecting functions of caring for their students and their families during the pandemic. Our study showed how the emotional, psychological and educational needs of students drew academic women into extensive nurturing roles, beyond caring for their families. This had a negative impact on academic work.

It also showed the workings of the symbiotic relationship of giving care (by women academics) and requiring care (by students) in a pandemic. Furthermore, the study highlighted the precarity of academic women’s work under pandemic conditions.

Going forward

Although the respondents in this study were based in South Africa, it’s evident from this – and prior research – that the pandemic has had an effect on the academic enterprise globally.

The pandemic poses a lasting threat to gender equality in academia. We call on institutional leaders, science councils, academic societies and funding bodies to implement policies to mitigate the career risks that female academics encountered during the enforced lockdown.

It’s not only the introduction of new policies but the attitudes towards those policies that needs attention. Achieving gender equality in the academic enterprise requires institutional commitment, as well as knowledge and competence to achieve organisational change.

Cyrill Walters, Research fellow, Stellenbosch University; Armand Bam, Head of Social Impact and Senior Lecturer, Business School, Stellenbosch University, and Patrizio Piraino, Economist, University of Notre Dame

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.