By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 2023 – The UN agency, which advocates women’s rights and gender empowerment, has predicted that gender equality is “300 years away.”

Addressing the UN Commission on the Status of Women last March, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres not only quoted the estimates provided by UN Women but also warned that progress toward gender equality is “vanishing before our eyes.”

“Women’s rights are being abused, threatened and violated around the world,” he said.

But a new report — the 2023 fourth edition of the global Women Peace and Security Index (WPS Index)—released October 24 draws on recognized data sources to measure women’s inclusion, justice, and security in 177 countries—covering over 99% of the world’s population.

“No country performs perfectly on the WPS Index and the results reveal wide disparities across countries, regions, and indicators. The WPS Index offers a tool for identifying where resources and accountability are needed most to advance women’s status – which benefits us all”, says the report.

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The Index finds that societies where women are doing well are also more peaceful, democratic, prosperous, and better prepared to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Denmark leads the 2023 rankings as the top country to be a woman, scoring more than three times higher than Afghanistan which is at the bottom.

Afghanistan ranks worst of 177 countries– in terms of the status of women, according to this year’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Index launched in New York.

The five highest ranking countries were Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and Luxembourg. And the five lowest ranking countries were Afghanistan, Yemen, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

Published by Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) and the Centre on Gender, Peace and Security at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the WPS Index uses 13 indicators to measure women’s status, ranging from education and employment to laws and organized violence.

The United States ranks 37th this year, scoring similarly to Slovenia, Bulgaria and Taiwan in the second quintile.

Dr. Purnima Mane. Ex- President and CEO of Pathfinder International, and former Deputy Executive Director (Program) of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS the WPS Index emphasizes the sobering realities which different sectors of society –- including academic institutions, the United Nations, the media and civil society in general – have emphasized repeatedly over the years:

She said many countries which rank low in women’s status continue to remain so over time, despite global advocacy for gender equality

“Growing conflict and lack of security in countries could even worsen the situation for women and will not ensure adequate results in our efforts to boost women’s status. The relationship between peace and security and women’s overall wellbeing remains critical and demands adequate attention and investment.”

Data from the WPS Index, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs show evidence of this relationship between peace and security and women’s status.

A clear example is the countries that rank high and low in this Index –not surprisingly the countries that rank low in women’s status are the very same countries in which peace and security are at an abysmally low level, she added.

Sanam Anderlini, Founder/CEO of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)* told IPS according to the index, in 2017, Afghanistan was ranked 152 out of 153 countries, with Syria coming last.

In 2019/2020, it was 16th out of 167, with Yemen coming last, and now in 2023, Afghanistan is coming at the bottom of the index.

‘This indicates that Afghan women were facing a long struggle even prior to the Taliban, but given that 60% of Afghans were under the age of 25, and many young women were in universities and entering professions including law, medicine and education, there was hope that the country’s overall ranking could also improve over time.’

She pointed out that Taliban’s takeover has set them on a downward generational spiral. The tragedy is that this decline was a result of the US’s loss to the Taliban at the negotiating tables in Doha.

“It is a result of the diplomatic community’s unwillingness to heed the warnings of Afghan women about the Taliban, or uphold their own commitments to the women peace and security agenda’s first tenet — the participation of women in peace processes.”

“But despite the darkness, we cannot forsake and forget Afghan women and girls. They are still fighting and finding ways to access education, healthcare and livelihoods,” said Anderlini.

“Now, more than ever, the international community must double down on engaging them and ensuring they are present and fully participating in the decision-making pertaining to the future of their country — not only in the humanitarian space, but also on economic, social and political and security matters. There are plenty of Afghan women – inside and outside the country — ready to take on this challenge,” she declared.

Elaborating further, Dr Mane said a range of reports prepared by a variety of sources, including the UN and academic institutions have been referenced in this Index using 13 different indicators on women’s status, to show that societies where women’s economic, social, and political situation, formal and informal justice for women, and the status of the security of women at the social and community level are doing well, are the very same societies, which overall, are more peaceful, economically stronger, have more democratic systems in place and are also dealing better with the impacts of climate change.

The WPS Index and its data, she pointed out, identify clearly areas where further investment is needed to boost women’s status. But what about general conflict and lack of security which adversely impact women particularly hard, along with others who are marginalized in different societies?

“The Index clearly demonstrates that all of the bottom 20 countries have experienced war and armed conflict of some sort, between 2021 and 2022 with more than half the women living in or near zones of conflict”.

With armed conflict growing in many countries over the last few years and the continuation of a generally negative climate in terms of women’s status in several countries such as Afghanistan, she argued, one cannot hope for a change in the status quo for women unless countries take a hard look at their policies and investments in both national peace and security and in women’s status.

“Any real change is possible only if the world acknowledges that the link between the two is critical, and paying attention to both is vital for improvements in national wellbeing as well as gender equality”, said Dr Mane, a former UN Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG) and an internationally recognized expert on gender, population and development, and public health, and who has devoted her career to advocating for population and development issues and working on sexual and reproductive health.

“With its scores, rankings, and robust data, the WPS Index offers a valuable tool for people working on issues of women, peace, and security,” said Elena Ortiz, the lead author of the WPS Index.

“Policymakers can use it to pinpoint where resources are needed. Academics can use it to study trends within indicators and across regions. Journalists can use it to give context and perspective to their stories. And activists can use it to hold governments accountable for their promises on advancing the status of women.”

All of the bottom 20 countries on this year’s Index have experienced armed conflict between 2021 and 2022. In most of these countries, more than half of women live in close proximity to conflict.

“Since 2021, Afghanistan has ranked the worst in the world to be a woman. Afghan women wake up each day to no jobs, no education and no autonomy over their lives. This report should serve as a wakeup call to world leaders that a nation of women is imprisoned.” said Torunn L. Tryggestad, Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo’s Centre for Gender, Peace and Security.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Edgardo Ayala
CHIRILAGUA, El Salvador , Oct 25 2023 – Insufficient wastewater treatment systems in El Salvador have taken a toll on the environment and the health of the population for decades, but some municipalities are putting more attention on processing their liquid waste.

Various reports warned as early as 2014 that in El Salvador, a country of 6.7 million people, only 8.52 percent of wastewater receives some form of treatment, and the picture has not changed much since then.”My job is to provide the proper maintenance so that the plant works well and we make sure that the environment is not polluted.” — Eduardo Ortega

It is not surprising, then, that only 12 percent of the rivers have good quality water and that dozens of people die each year from diarrhea: this year, as of Sept. 30, 63 people had died from this cause, of a total of more than 164,000 reported cases.

Wastewater includes what is generated in domestic activities, such as the use of toilets, sinks, washbasins and laundry. Wastewater is also produced by industry, but due to its characteristics it requires more complex treatment.

With international assistance

Few municipalities and communities have their own wastewater treatment systems, in some cases created as collective efforts that included their own funds as well as financing from international institutions and from the central government.

“My job is to provide the proper maintenance so that the plant works well and we make sure that the environment is not polluted,” Eduardo Ortega, who runs one of the few treatment plants located in eastern El Salvador, told IPS.

Ortega works in maintenance in the plant located next to La Española, a rural settlement in the municipality of Chirilagua, which borders the Pacific Ocean, in the south of the department of San Miguel.

La Española, a village of 40 houses, was built with Spanish aid funds for 40 fishing families affected by Hurricane Mitch, which left a trail of death and destruction in Central America in October 1998.

The housing project, financed by the government of the southern Spanish region of Andalucía, included a basic sanitation system that is unusual in rural areas: a sewage network that transports wastewater, including human waste, to the treatment plant.

A nearby similar initiative of 278 houses built for 1,500 people, called Flores de Andalucía, in the vicinity of Chirilagua as well, was also financed by humanitarian aid from the regional government of Andalucia.

There are currently 196 “ordinary” treatment plants in the country, in other words, plants that treat wastewater from domestic activities.

Of these, 90 are private, 78 are public and 17 are community-run, among other categories, according to the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources.

Eduardo Ortega (L), in charge of the treatment plant located near Chirilagua, in the department of Usulután in eastern El Salvador, and Edwin Guzmán (R), head of the municipality’s Environmental Unit, are mainly responsible for ensuring that the liquid waste treatment plant is operating at 100 percent. The station was built with financial aid from Spain as part of a housing project to benefit victims of Hurricane Mitch, which devastated large areas in Central America in October 1998. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Bacteria and gravel filters

The process begins with a hydraulic structure that removes sand and other small particles which, before passing into a tank, are filtered through a screen, Edwin Guzmán, head of the environmental unit of the local government of Chirilagua, a municipality of 25,000 people, including the local capital and outlying villages, told IPS.

The liquid then runs into another tank containing bacteria that eliminate the organic matter that has been dissolved into particles before reaching the tank.

After this, the waste passes to the biofiltration areas: rectangular ponds two meters deep, filled with layers of volcanic rock and gravel.

Finally, everything goes to another pond with “percolator” filters, which contain more bacteria to eliminate any remaining organic matter.

“This treated water will not contaminate the San Román river, which is about three kilometers away,” Guzmán said.

He added: “If this treatment plant were not here, there would be terrible pollution of the river, which is one of the few in the area that always has a good flow of water.”

And if the river were polluted, it would also affect the waters of the Pacific, where it flows into from this small Central American country that only has coasts on that ocean.

A view of part of the infrastructure of the treatment plant set up next to Jardines de Andalucía, the second housing project built in 2003 mostly with Spanish aid near the Salvadoran municipality of Chirilagua, on the coastal strip of the eastern department of Usulután. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

A cleaner sea

The larger Flores de Andalucía plant also receives sewage from El Cuco, a beach located about two kilometers to the south, visited by tourists drawn by its kilometers of gray sandy beaches and the gentle waves of the sea.

The inhabitants of El Cuco have always been dedicated to fishing, but there are also businesses, small hostels and restaurants, whose wastewater no longer goes directly into the sea.

The wastewater is collected in a tank and, fueled by a gasoline engine, is pumped uphill through a pipeline to the plant, its final destination.

“Before, all that water went straight to the sea,” José Henríquez, one of the plant’s operators, told IPS.

“It is important to treat the water, because otherwise we are contaminating ourselves,” said Henríquez, while cleaning the plant’s pipelines.

But despite this initiative, it is estimated that only 60 percent of the wastewater from El Cuco and surrounding areas is treated, as there are people and businesses that, for some reason, bypass the regulations and continue the old practice of dumping their wastewater on the beach.

Moreover, the municipalities near Chirilagua do not have treatment plants and, consequently, much of their waste is discharged into the rivers, which carry it to the sea.

Official figures show that 61.5 percent of Salvadoran households throw gray water, from washing clothes, hands, dishes, etc., into the street or outdoors, 33 percent dispose of it through sewage systems and 2.3 percent through septic tanks. The remaining 3.1 percent discharge their gray water into rivers or use other means.

El Cuco beach, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador, is a community whose wastewater is pumped through a pipeline uphill to the treatment plant located in Jardines de Andalucía, near Chirilagua, to prevent contamination generated by the villlage’s shops, homes, restaurants and hostels from reaching the sea. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

A bay without pollution

Further west on the Salvadoran coast is Jiquilisco Bay, the country’s main wetland, a place of exuberant natural beauty covering more than 600,000 hectares, home to numerous marine-coastal plant and animal species.

The municipality of Puerto El Triunfo, population 20,000, is located on the edge of the bay’s estuary in the south of the department of Usulután. A treatment plant that has been processing the municipality’s wastewater since the end of 2009 is located nearby.

The Puerto El Triunfo plant was also partially financed by aid from Spain, which contributed approximately 50 percent of the cost of the work, which totaled 660,000 dollars.

The rest of the investment came from the municipal and central governments.

“The water used to be dumped untreated into the mangrove swamp and into the bay; now it is discharged treated, cleaner,” Evelio Álvarez, in charge of the Environmental Unit of the Puerto El Triunfo municipal government, told IPS.

Álvarez said that in 2010, due to financial problems, the municipality could no longer afford to run the plant and ceded control to the government’s National Aqueduct and Sewer Administration, which has managed it ever since.

The facility also processes liquid waste from Jiquilisco, a municipality of some 50,000 inhabitants located about eight kilometers north of Puerto El Triunfo, from where the wastewater is pumped down to the station.

In the past, the waste from Jiquilisco went directly into the El Paso River, which flows into the bay.

Only 8.52 percent of the wastewater generated in El Salvador receives some type of treatment, and much of the waste is dumped untreated into rivers and streams, which end up depositing it in important wetlands in the country, contaminating ecosystems and affecting people’s health. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“Most of the families make their living from fishing, and all that pollution was going raw into the mangroves,” agro-ecologist Etelvina Pineda, head of the environmental unit of the Jiquilisco municipal government, told IPS.

From the mangrove swamp and its web of canals the pollution spread to the lowlands bordering the bay, and as a result the homemade wells that supplied the coastal communities in the area had high concentrations of Escherichia coli, a bacterium present in human feces.

In addition, in the mangroves, “we ended up contaminating the mollusks, crustaceans and all the marine fauna that live there, through feces and heavy materials,” said Pineda.

As a result, people got sick from eating improperly cooked seafood. The pollution also decimated the marine fauna, a source of income for local families.

However, as in Chirilagua, Pineda pointed out that the pollution has not been stopped 100 percent.

She stressed that this would require a broader and more comprehensive effort, including the other four municipalities with an impact on the bay: Usulután, San Dionisio, Concepción Batres and Jucuarán.

In addition to the lack of financial resources to carry out such a program, Pineda argued that there is an absence of political will on the part of local governments and the central government, which she said are not committed to solving the environmental problems of this area or the country as a whole.

By Siti Sarah Abdul Razak and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 25 2023 – Policy approaches relying solely on voluntary actions to address urgent needs are unlikely to succeed. Depending on optional compliance to address global warming will not fix things in time.

Regulation for transformation
Tariq Fancy, former Chief Investment Officer for Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, had created a storm with his criticisms of ESG (environmental and social governance) ‘greenwashing’, remaining wary of voluntary corporate-led reforms.

Sarah Razak

Nevertheless, judicious and effective regulation based on ESG principles, combined with changing incentives and increased public awareness, can incentivize companies to do better.

Fancy believes changing rules for better regulation is essential for better outcomes. Limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is essential to ensure responsible governance aligned with the long-term public interest.

Investment managers have several responsibilities – including fiduciary duties, legal obligations, and financial incentives – requiring them to prioritize short-term profitability rather than sustainability.

Fancy believes imposing financial costs will provide stronger incentives for corporations to pursue greener alternatives. After all, voluntary measures are rarely enough to ensure sufficient adoption of sustainable practices.

Changing regulations to incorporate sustainability considerations should require portfolio managers to prioritize social and environmental concerns, and make choices supporting long-term sustainability goals.

Profits not aligned with public interest
Fiduciary duties oblige company managers to always act in the best interest of shareholder profits. This means ESG initiatives will only happen if they help, or at least do not hurt, profitability.

Fancy noted managers are not allowed, by law, to sacrifice potential profits from shareholder investments. They are legally obliged to never sacrifice shareholder interests, especially profitability, for anything else.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Social, cultural and media shifts in the West have undoubtedly influenced transnational business behaviour. The popularization of ESG discourses reflects these trends, but there is no strong evidence of their efficacy and positive impact.

Fleeting episodes of public attention cannot even ensure long-term protection of the public interest. With managers constrained by their fiduciary duties, relying on corporations to do the right thing is neither reliable nor sufficient.

Relying on corporate social or environmental responsibility may well become a distraction, delaying urgent and much-needed efforts. This failure underscores the need for government regulation and corporate compliance to achieve vital social and environmental goals.

Quick fixes delay progress
Fancy found many people believe safeguarding investment portfolios from climate risks prevents global warming. But safeguarding finance from climate risks is not the same as mitigating climate change.

De-risking finance means protecting the financial value of an investment portfolio. This includes protecting against asset damage, or reducing the risk of lower investment returns, but certainly not climate change mitigation.

Mitigating climate change requires proactive measures to reduce GHG emissions. This includes measures to generate and use clean, especially renewable energy.

Financial protection is important for financial asset owners, but it cannot replace the efforts needed to fight climate change. Worse, believing such measures address the climate crisis serves to delay government interventions and other changes needed to do so.

Climate inequity
Climate change exacerbates inequality, which in turn delays progress. The intergenerational distribution of the burden of climate risks disproportionately affects younger and future generations.

This deters proactive measures, as older generations are less inclined to spend more now for future generations who will suffer more from global warming. Instead, they may prefer measures to better adapt to its contemporary effects.

Aside from younger and future generations, the more vulnerable will also bear its worst effects. Thus, for example, small farmers in developing nations will have to cope with increased droughts, floods and crop failures.

Thus, further progress on climate change is delayed due to financial short-termist thinking, business interests, limited contemporary accountability for future consequences, as well as political and cost considerations.

Developing nations, with much smaller per capita carbon footprints, typically lack resources, leaving them more vulnerable. Meanwhile, developed countries, the major historical greenhouse gas emitters, have more resources to slow and adapt to climate change.

Can ESG principles help?
Will businesses maintain commitments to ESG ‘principles’ over the long term? They are legally obliged to maximize shareholder interests, especially profits, and also know public interest, attention, sentiment and priorities are always changing.

Business leaders may only commit to ESG principles in the long term if compelled to embrace them owing to the pecuniary costs of ignoring them. Obligations to other stakeholders – including investors, customers and employees – can also help sustain ESG commitments.

Establishing clear governance arrangements for ESG oversight, setting measurable and achievable goals, reporting regularly, and ensuring comprehensive organizational accountability should also help.

But ultimately, regulation should appropriately advance social and environmental responsibility, with such commitments sustained despite shifting public attention, fads and profit concerns.

Are voluntary efforts enough?
The COVID-19 experience has also taught us to prioritize proactive, systemic and mandatory measures, rather than rely solely on voluntary efforts. While voluntary efforts can advance sustainability efforts, the pandemic experience suggests they will not be sufficient to achieve needed changes soon enough.

A systemic approach can induce businesses and individuals to do the needed. Policy interventions, especially regulation, are essential to drive systemic changes on a large scale, and to align businesses and individuals with ESG principles.

Clear communications, transparency and collaboration – among governments, businesses and civil society – are crucial for achieving long-term sustainability and progressive social change.

To control the pandemic, governments adopted ‘all of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approaches, imposing strict mandatory lockdowns, but also providing vaccinations to all, and support to the vulnerable.

Similar top-down approaches may be needed to effectively address social and sustainability challenges. This could involve implementing regulations, standards and incentives promoting, even requiring, sustainable practices.

IPS UN Bureau

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