By Aimable Twahirwa
Kigali, Sep 12 2022 – The 2022 Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) Summit ended in Kigali, Rwanda, with policymakers, activists, researchers, business leaders, and agricultural experts divided over the right pace to build resilient agri-food systems on the continent.

While some believe that mobilizing private and public investments, innovations, and country-based solutions is still crucial to moving forward the transformation of Africa’s food systems, others observe that the agricultural revolution on the continent needs to start from the bottom up, from the inside out, starting with small-scale farmers.

“The Green Revolution is an imported, top-down approach reliant on imported fertilizers and other inputs,” Dr Timothy Wise, a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute of the US-based Tufts University, told IPS.

Wise adds that the bias in public policies toward the private sector works against small-scale farmers, even though they, too, are technically part of the private sector.

“Markets [in Africa] can benefit farmers, and farmers need fair markets, but they cannot be dominated by large corporations and middlemen,” he says.

Latest estimates by the African Development Bank (AfDB) show that for the green revolution to happen in Africa, there is an urgent necessity to increase productivity and to move up the value chain into processed foods. Africa cannot feed itself while getting only a quarter of its potential yields and without processing what it grows, the bank says.

Africa’s green revolution’s main purpose is to transform African agriculture from a subsistence model to strong businesses that improve the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers across the continent.

The ambitious plan, according to officials, aims especially at advancing the commitments made at the Malabo Heads of State Summit and working hard to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on improving the income and productivity of farmers with concrete actions that can build sustainable and resilient food systems to feed nearly 256 million reportedly suffering from severe food insecurity on the African continent.

While the Malabo declaration, to be attained by 2025, stresses concerns over Africa’s growing dependence on foreign markets for food security, arguably due to changes in consumption patterns, some experts believe that African Governments need to promote territorial markets that provide a level playing field to small-scale agroecological producers and entrepreneurs.

The Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), one of the continental frameworks under Agenda 2063 of the African Union to help countries eliminate hunger and reduce poverty by raising economic growth through agriculture-led development, but activists say there remains much unexploited intra-African trade in agricultural commodities.

According to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), an organization that brings together small-scale farmers from across Africa advocating for food sovereignty, seed and trade issues are highly politicized and complicated on the continent with a lot of baggage to unpack.

Africa is on the verge of losing its diverse crop varieties due to restrictive and draconian laws that prohibit the centuries-old free exchange of seeds between farmers, it said.

With the importation of seeds in the name of high-yielding and climate-smart varieties becoming common policy for most countries; activists point out that their performance is intricately and heavily dependent on the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

In a brief interview with IPS, activists from AFSA said the adoption of these solutions in most African countries has proved ineffective because they end up creating dependency among farmers, forcing them to lose their own farmer varieties, and forcing them only to plant monocultures, all of which contribute to food insecurity.

The most pronounced opposition came from Leonida Odongo, an activist from Kenya Haki Nawiri Africa, who observed that thousands of hectares of land in Africa are owned or leased to plantations that grow what is not eaten on the continent.

The major challenge, according to Odongo, is that most of the western companies producing seeds and agrochemicals come to convince African farmers to buy seeds and chemicals, and, in some cases, they get these as loans in form of these imported agricultural inputs.

“If Green Revolution is working for Africa, why are the rates of hunger soaring, and if climate-smart technologies are working, why does Africa continue to be ravaged by droughts?” she asked.

Both Odongo and Tim are convinced that the kind of intensification Africa’s small-scale farmers need is ecological, not based on the adoption of costly inputs.

This is because subsidizing purchases of expensive inputs, which are two to three times more expensive, and which are derived from fossil fuels, as is the current case in most African countries, is bound to fail.

While reacting to the current efforts to achieve food security in Africa, Hailemariam Desalegn, the former Prime Minister of Ethiopia and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) chair, noted that while some African countries have shown commitment to support food systems transformation, collective action would be needed to accelerate progress and real change.

“African governments should lead these efforts by prioritizing and integrating policies […] that call for healthy and nutritious diets, decent income for the farmers, and that address climate fragility,” Desalegn told delegates at the AGRF summit.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame agreed; he noted that Africa should not be struggling with food insecurity, given “our” natural endowments.

“By transforming food systems [in Africa], we can feed ourselves, and even feed others,” Kagame said.

With current preferential trade liberalization through the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA), some members of the business community observed that there were still challenges to linking food-deficit areas with food-surplus areas across the continent.

Latest estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that Africa is a net food-importing region of commodities such as cereals, meat, dairy products, fats, oils, and sugar, importing about USD 80 billion worth of agricultural and food products annually.

Gilbert Musonda, an agribusiness manager from Zambia who processes oil from sunflower, told IPS that in his experience, smallholder farmers are the first ones to be part of the solution, but also governments should support the private sector and ensure there are dynamic regional markets established.

African Heads of State and governments are committed in 2014 to triple intra-African trade in agricultural commodities and services by the year 2025. Recent evidence by the World Bank suggests that the export of agro-processed and other value-added goods made in Africa is greater in regional markets than in external markets outside Africa

“There is still an urgent need to invest in agribusiness in order to sustainable Africa’s food systems,” Musonda told IPS.

With a new five-year strategy adopted on the sidelines summit in Kigali to build Africa’s food system, activists say there is little attention to farmers’ needs.

“The anecdotal evidence from farmers in Africa shows that the promises of high yields distribution are not working,” says Odongo.
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By Christine M. Sequenzia and Soraya M. Deen
NEW YORK, Sep 12 2022 – In nations lacking certain religious freedoms, the bold multi-faith membership of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable’s Campaign to Eliminate Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws, would be forbidden.

This archaic, and at times, violent fact is driving a biblical justice authority, an international activist and a team of culturally and religiously diverse advocates to raise their voices with member states, just before world leaders arrive for the high-level segment of the 77th UN General Assembly session which commences in New York City September 20.

The trip will highlight the twelve nations currently imposing the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy charges, calling for its immediate repeal.

Freedom of religion or belief is universally regarded as fundamental human right and is protected by international covenants and national constitutions alike.

However, courts continue to mete out unjustifiably long prison sentences and even death sentences to individuals for non-violent, victimless conduct such as committing blasphemy or apostasy.

Recently, Nigerian humanist Mubarak Bala was sentenced to an unimaginable 24 years’ imprisonment for an allegedly blasphemous Facebook post he made expressing his disbelief in an afterlife.

Though the death penalty is not actually imposed upon a convicted individual in a vast majority of cases, the sentence itself relegates convicts to years and decades of prolonged imprisonment on death row, denial of medical care while in prison, withholding of legal counsel, and endless interrogation.

Pakistanis rally in support of Mumtaz Qadri who was convicted and executed for a blasphemy-motivated killing of a former governor, in Lahore, Pakistan, Feb. 2016. Credit: Voice of America

Previously, Asia Bibi, a Pakistani woman, languished on death row for eight years on charges of blasphemy simply for drinking water from a canteen while picking berries with a group of Muslim women.

After her release and acquittal in 2019, Asia was forced to flee her home country in fear of reprisal attacks by radical Islamists.

In 2014, a pregnant Sudanese woman Mariam Ibrahim – who was imprisoned on apostasy charges for her marriage to a Christian man, and as a woman born to a Muslim father – was forced to give birth to her second child while her legs remained shackled to the cell floor.

As a Christ follower, I am reminded of times when God revealed his heart for justice through stories like that of Esther, whom was strengthened to boldly intercede for an oppressed group of religious minorities.

The time is now for United Nations Member States to do the same, through their set own of convictions, in an effort to create communities of human flourishing and safety for those who are persecuted for freedom of religion or belief.

Speaking on Islam’s position on blasphemy, there is much evidence that Prophet Muhammad pardoned his worst critics. Blasphemy laws and inhumane punishments for blasphemy have no legitimacy in the Quran.

The Quran does not command Muslims to kill blasphemers.
Surah (verse) 4:140 of the Quran states – “If you hear people denying and ridiculing God’s revelation, do not sit with them unless they start to talk of other things…”

There is no reference to killing and or issuing fatwas.

Even where moratoriums on the death penalty exist, faith minorities and individuals who express views and perspectives deviating from those prescribed by the majority religion can be in tremendous danger.

Mauritania, which has upheld a moratorium on the death sentence since 1987, convicted blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir of apostasy and sentenced him to death as recently as 2014 for an article he wrote criticizing the use of Islam to justify the caste system in his country. Fortunately, Mkhaitir was released from prison in 2019.

In Pakistan, where the death sentence is often issued to perceived blasphemers – most often Christian and Ahmadi Muslim minorities – but not carried out– laws criminalizing apostasy and blasphemy embolden state and non-state actors alike to commit acts of violence against innocent civilians.

In July 2021, a police constable slashed and killed a man named Muhammad Waqas who had been previously acquitted of blasphemy charges; the perpetrator explicitly stated perceived blasphemy as the crimes’ impetus.

A few months later, in December 2021, a Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara was lynched by a mob and had his body burned by an angry mob in the Pakistani city of Sialkot.

Kumara was a garment factory manager who had been accused of committing blasphemy after removing an Islamic poster from the factory’s walls to prepare for a renovation project.

These non-state actors, fortified by lackluster laws, pose a serious obstacle to human rights, free speech and dignity, creating a system where sometimes even state supported religious leaders call for the death penalty and other inhumane punishments.

A more recent and equally horrific incident occurred in Sokoto Nigeria, when young Christian college student Deborah Samuel Yakubu was stoned to death and set on fire by her very own Muslim classmates.

Days prior, Yakubu had angered the perpetrators by questioning why her school course’s WhatsApp chat was being used to discuss contentious religious affairs rather than focusing on academic issues.

Currently, twelve nations that maintain the death penalty for apostasy, blasphemy, or both; these include Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. * [New Penal Code implemented in 2022 in UAE removes hudud punishments – including apostasy from the penal code]

Additionally, approximately 40% of UN Member States – some of them holding seats in the Human Rights Council – criminalize apostasy and blasphemy, despite their lack of the death sentence for such ‘crimes’.

However, it is not without criticism and attention by human rights and religious freedom activists and even representatives of the United Nations who have emphasized the inhumanity of apostasy and blasphemy laws and called for their repeal.

This includes the UN General Assembly, the UN Secretary-General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, and the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of religion or belief, and on extrajudicial killings, respectively.

Now, civil society is taking matters into its own hands.

Efforts to work toward the abolition of the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy have been a bottom-up grassroots approach. Next week, a delegation of human rights and religious freedom advocates will travel to the United Nations to meet with representatives from the missions of numerous UN Member States, including Luxembourg, Canada, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Niger, and Australia.

Their goal is to increase support among UN Member States for the insertion of language in the UNGA Resolution on Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions stating that “the death penalty should never be imposed as a sanction for apostasy, blasphemy, or other perceived religious offense.

As a capstone to the multifaith, multicultural and multidisciplinary United Nations advocacy fly-in, the group will host an issue briefing pointing to the critical proposed resolution language, calling for the immediate repeal of the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy charges.

The briefing, which is open to the press, will spotlight survivors in their own voice. The development of pluralistic resilient communities which uphold basic human rights and allow for human flourishing amongst inevitable interdependent globalized societies depend on the undaunted actions those in power.

We call upon all Member States to join us in this fight toward international religious freedom by supporting the IRF Campaign’s resolution language today.” More info here.

Dr. Christine M. Sequenzia, MDiv. is Co-Chair, International Religious Freedom Roundtable Campaign to Eliminate Blasphemy and Apostasy Laws

Soraya Marikar Deen, is a Lawyer, Community Organizer, International Activist; HumanRights & Gender Equity Advocate. She is also Co-chair Women’s Working Group @ Int. Religious Freedom Roundtable and Founder MuslimWomenSpeakers

IPS UN Bureau

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By Deepali Khanna and Siddharth Chatterjee
BANGKOK / BEIJING, Sep 12 2022 – The world today faces a future that is in peril. Our challenges have become more complex and interconnected, as we see the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, an uneven economic recovery, a climate emergency, growing inequalities, and an increase in conflicts globally. This year also marks a grim milestone, with over 100 million people forcibly displaced.

These events accompany increasing division in the community of nations which threatens to push the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further out of reach for the Global South.

Adding to these crises, rising food and energy prices driven by the conflict in Ukraine, could push 71 million people into poverty, according to UNDP. The Global South, typically comprised of countries in South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, was already grappling with economic issues now exacerbated by the triple planetary crisis.

With limited resources, high vulnerability, and low resilience, people in the Global South will bear the brunt of our inaction, on climate and elsewhere. Solely depending on external aid from the Global North or G7 countries cannot be the panacea. Here, countries of the Global South can empower themselves and combine efforts to achieve sustainable development.

Cooperating to catalyse change

In the face of global threats, international cooperation remains vital, as highlighted by the International Day for South-South Cooperation. South-South cooperation seeks to complement traditional development models by throwing light on the transformations needed to deliver on priorities, including the SDGs. It offers possible solutions from Global South to Global South.

Countries of the Global South have contributed to more than half of global economic growth in recent times. Intra-South trade is higher than ever, accounting for over a quarter of world trade. It is time to further leverage these partnerships in the development space.

We already saw this while many countries were trying to obtain COVID-19 vaccines. Citizens of low and middle-income countries faced systemic discrimination in the global COVID-19 response, leaving millions without access to vaccines, tests, and treatments. India sent over 254.4 million vaccine supplies to nations across the world, under Vaccine Maitri – a vaccine export initiative.

Likewise, China has supplied over 200 million doses of vaccines to the COVAX Facility, in addition to providing millions of dollars in medical supplies to countries in the Global South, including in Africa, throughout the pandemic.

Informing partnership models with Africa & China

To advance development priorities, partnerships need to be rooted in shared interests that can lead to shared gains, as seen in traditional development models and assistance from the Global North. This dynamic needs to be at the core of the China-Africa relationship as well.

China, an economic powerhouse, has the potential to advance development in the Global South, especially in Africa, by bringing its experience, expertise, and resources to bear, and its assistance must advance both its interests and those of the countries where it operates.

Investments in shared goals are reflected in efforts by China to improve public health in Africa, including in the construction of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Ethiopia, and in clean energy, through projects such as the Kafue Lower Gorge Power Station in Zambia.

China promises to invest US$60 billion cumulatively in Africa by 2035, directed at agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, environmental protection, and the digital economy. This is most welcome, and those planned investments must answer the needs of the local economies and societies.

What works in one country may not work elsewhere, but true collaboration allows for learning from mistakes and sharing successes. This is where the UN’s expertise can ensure cooperation is demand-driven, in line with local expectations and needs, national development priorities, and relevant international norms and standards.

Platforms like the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) can work to improve that essential partnership. This mechanism has identified shared priorities like climate change, agriculture/food systems, global health, and energy security, among others, between China and Africa.

For the first time in FOCAC’s history and with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, the UN in China is engaged as a strategic partner in this bilateral mechanism between China and Africa. The UN in China is continuing similar efforts in close consultation with relevant counterparts, including the China International Development Cooperation Agency.

For The Rockefeller Foundation, it is a nod to its legacy in China dating back to 1914, rooted in redesigning medical education to improve healthcare and its current priorities to advance Global South collaboration, especially in public health, food, and clean energy access—all global public goods.

Beyond the Global South: Action Together

With less than eight years to achieve the SDGs, truly international cooperation is our only hope. Emerging trends in technology and innovation can get us there, along with enhanced South-South cooperation efforts. But doing so requires us to “flip the orthodoxy”, as UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed advised.

The Ebola crisis is an example of where global cooperation, including South-South cooperation, enabled Sierra Leone to defeat the disease’s spread, notably through a brigade of 461 health workers sent to Sierra Leone to support their overburdened system. Later, other countries made similar efforts to support Sierra Leone and nearby countries, such as Guinea and Liberia. This example shows the potential of South-South cooperation, but also triangular cooperation and North-South partnerships. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are another mechanism for financing and capacity building.

This can be seen in Kenya, where the Government and the UN System convened an SDG Partnership Platform with companies such as Philips, Huawei, Safaricom, GSK, and Merck. The outcomes include a downward trend of maternal and child mortality in some of the country’s most remote regions. Similar PPPs can hold promise in unlocking global progress on the SDGs.

Today, while we face a more volatile world, the spirit of South-South cooperation shows a core value that we need: solidarity. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “The last two years have demonstrated a simple but brutal truth – if we leave anyone behind, we leave everyone behind”.

Deepali Khanna is Vice-President of the Asia Region Office at The Rockefeller Foundation. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Sep 12 2022 – “Without recognition of your identity by the State and society, there is no exercise of citizenship or rights,” said Leyla Huerta, director of Féminas Perú, an organization that has been working since 2015 to empower transgender women in the face of the highly vulnerable situation they find themselves in.

She is 44 years old and as a trans woman has experienced multiple situations of discrimination because of her gender identity.

“We have all had the experience of being told ‘I don’t want to discriminate against you, I’m just reading what your identity document says.’ That legalizes discrimination,” she said in her dialogue with IPS during one of the days of meetings and activities held every week at Féminas Perú’s headquarters in Pueblo Libre, a middle-class residential district in the capital.”I am a visible trans person and I have been prey to moments of vulnerability not only of my rights but of my identity, in many ways and places. It is complicated for us to go to the bank, to use health services, to ride a bus, to just walk down the street. You feel people watching you, my body is a disturbance.” — Gretel Warmicha

Huerta said “we saw this clearly in the case of Rodrigo and Sebastián, in which the denial of rights crossed borders and exposed them to extortion, torture and death.”

She was referring to the case of two young Peruvian transsexuals, Rodrigo Ventosilla and Sebastián Marallano, who had just been married in Chile – where same-sex marriage is legal – and were detained upon arrival at the Bali airport on their honeymoon and subjected to cruel treatment between Aug. 6 and 10, according to their families.

The abuse caused the death of Rodrigo, while according to the families and their lawyers the Peruvian government and its diplomats in Indonesia failed them. They have denounced the Peruvian and Indonesian authorities for the crime of torture resulting in death.

The case is considered a hate crime by human rights activists and has helped bring to the forefront the discrimination faced on so many fronts by transgender people from this country.

Féminas emerged with the idea of creating a space for the community empowerment of trans women. Huerta promoted it while coordinating a project to approve a health care model for trans women.

“Instead of continuing to be a target population of NGO projects, we wanted to be the ones to lead them ourselves and with the resources we also wanted to build capacity in our community,” she explained at the Féminas office.

They have met at the organization’s office every Tuesday for the past seven years, offering a safe, welcoming meeting space for learning about their rights, while at the same time taking on the challenge of leading and running their organization.

“It is hard for Féminas to find leaders, people who want to join, because trans people have such pressing day-to-day needs, and the exclusion they face is much stronger,” she said.

Leyla Huerta, a 44-year-old Peruvian activist and trans woman, has achieved through a judicial process the recognition of her right to her lived identity. She has initiated new legal proceedings for the recognition of her gender. The identity documents of trans persons still carry the names assigned to them at birth and the Peruvian government has thrown up barriers to changing them. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Barriers in the State

The Peruvian constitution recognizes the right to equality and non-discrimination, but it is a dead letter for trans people, who face barriers from the State when trying to modify the identity assigned to them at birth.

This South American country of 33 million people lacks an administrative procedure for recognizing an individual’s chosen gender identity and lived name. This legal vacuum forces transgender people to initiate legal proceedings that require financial resources and time.

In 2019, the National Commission Against Discrimination of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights issued a report recommending that civil registry offices rectify their procedures for non-discriminatory access to the National Identity Card (DNI).

It stated that in the case of trans persons, the fact that the information on their DNI does not coincide with their lived identity causes them to receive humiliating treatment, increasing their vulnerability.

However, administrative barriers persist.

The report indicated that by 2019 there were 140 judicial proceedings seeking identity change, of which only nine had been completed and four had obtained rulings.

Only six percent of 400 trans women interviewed had managed to change their identity document, according to a survey conducted in Lima and neighboring Callao, the country’s main port city, carried out in 2020 on behalf of various organizations, including Féminas Perú, and published by the non-governmental Promsex.

A group of trans women involved in the performing arts with whom IPS spoke in the room of a mutual friend of theirs identify as women but still have the male names assigned to them at birth on their ID cards, because they can’t afford the legal proceedings to try to get them changed.

They said they would need at least 775 dollars – money they do not have because of their pressing day-to-day needs.

A group of trans women involved in the performing arts told IPS about their forms of resistance to a system that discriminates against them and leaves them “last in line”. From left to right, Gretel, Brisa, Victoria and Gía are friends, they support each other, share their experiences and they all yearn for a dignified life that “deserves to be livable”. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

“My body is a disturbance”

Gretel Warmicha, 30, is a multidisciplinary artist. She considers herself a trans woman, transvestite and transsexual and she has transitioned – as the process of changing from one sex to another is called – not only in her gender, but in her religion and in “practices that one follows, to detach oneself from this rigid and ignorant masculinity.”

She was living in the Andean city of Cuzco and is now in Lima for work. She considers herself fortunate to have been able to study and to have a support network, but she feels that the most difficult thing is to recognize that she deserves a livable life “due to the heteronormative system” that marginalizes and violates them, and that she and the others experience on a daily basis.

“I am a visible trans person and I have been prey to moments of vulnerability not only of my rights but of my identity, in many ways and places. It is complicated for us to go to the bank, to use health services, to ride a bus, to just walk down the street. You feel people watching you, my body is a disturbance.”

Making the transition to a gender expression that corresponds to their identity and way of life is very difficult for them. Even though in most cases they felt like girls from an early age, they do not have the conditions to live that way in freedom and dignity due to rejection by society.

“In Peru there is no such thing as a trans childhood, many of us transitioned as adults. I did it when the pandemic started,” said Victoria, 32, who preferred not to give her last name.

“They locked us all up at home and I said to myself: how would I want to live if I only had a month left? Is this the life I really want, is this who I really am, is this how I really want to see myself? That was what pushed me to do it, since life is so short and trans life is even shorter, I wanted to enjoy every moment being who I really am,” she said.

To live the identity they identify with means beginning to make changes in their physical appearance that require hormonal therapies. They usually go through this process without proper medical care due to its high cost and their distrust in the system.

“I confess that during the pandemic I had to do sexual service to be able to buy my hormones. Being a trans woman is expensive, you need about 200 soles a month (51 dollars),” she said.

“The state does not give you treatment, only testosterone blockers and condoms, because it is part of the anti-HIV/AIDS program (to which they have access even if they do not have the virus). If there aren’t funds for treatment for HIV, there are even less for us. We will always be the last in line,” she lamented.

She acknowledged that the “word of mouth” system among friends to help each other make the transition is not safe in terms of health because it is likely, for example, that the estrogen that works for one is harmful to another. “But we have no choice, it’s Russian roulette,” she said.

Gia, 33, also gave only her first name. A poet and artist like her friends, she transitioned during the pandemic as well. She recently moved out of the family home due to pressure from her mother; it was no longer a safe environment for her. When asked how she sees herself in the future, she replies: “dead”.

Although if she thinks about what she would like to do in the future, she draws a picture where she owns a television production company and she and her friends have decent jobs. An aspiration shared by all of them, since the precariousness of employment and income is a constant in their lives.

When asked about the life expectancy of trans women, they said the average was 35 years.

“If you don’t die because of health problems, you die because they kill you, which happened to a trans man friend of ours, Rodrigo. He made it to the age of 32, he studied at the university, he had a scholarship to Harvard (in the United States) and a promising future. And despite all that he died for being trans. It’s a reminder that our life is not worth anything,” Gía said, clouding everyone’s faces and plunging the room into silence.