By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2024 – The Biden administration, which has come under heavy fire for its unyielding pro-Israeli stand on the nine-month-old war in Gaza, is facing a rebellion within its own bureaucratic ranks—12 and counting.

The 12 government officials, who recently resigned, have accused the US of providing diplomatic cover for the continuous flow of arms to Israel ensuring “our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza.”

This is not only morally reprehensible and in clear violation of international humanitarian law and US laws, but it has also put a target on America’s back,” they continue, arguing that it has put the lives of service members and diplomats at risk.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), and who taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies, told IPS: “I share the overall view of the 12 US government officials who have resigned in protest against the Biden administration’s policy in connection with the Israel-Hamas war”.

They wrote in their joint statement, titled Service in Dissent, that “America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza. This is not only morally reprehensible and in clear violation of international humanitarian law and US laws, but it has also put a target on America’s back.”

https://jointstatement.tiiny.site/

“I have supported Israel’s right to defend itself as well as the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s war efforts, standing by the US’s iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security by providing it with all necessary military aid and political cover.

“I have stated time and again that Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack and Israel’s unparalleled retaliation have reinforced my own view, which I share with many others, that there will be no resolution to the 76-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict short of a two-state solution.

I still hold to the position that it will be impossible to return to the status quo that prevailed before October 7, as a new paradigm was created that offered the inimitable opportunity to recommence the peace negotiations that could lead to a two-state solution,” said Dr Ben-Meir.

Meanwhile there have also been negative reactions in European capitals. Last February, the New York Times ran a story headlined “US and European officials release a Letter Protesting Israeli Policies.”

According to the Times report, more than 500 officials in the US, Britain and the European Union (EU) released a “public letter of dissent” against their (respective) government’s support of Israel in its war in Gaza.”

In an oped piece published on the IPS wire July 18, Mouin Rabbani, Co-Editor of Jadaliyya and Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS), says the Letter of Dissent makes indisputably clear that US policy towards the present crisis has been an absolute failure at virtually every level.

https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/07/us-policy-towards-gaza-crisis-absolute-failure-virtually-every-level/

Not only has it failed to achieve any of its objectives and further consolidate Western hegemony in the Middle East, but it has made the US government directly and actively complicit in the genocide currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, he said.

As the signatories note, the US is “wilfully” violating not only international laws that are binding upon Washington, but is similarly and knowingly violating US domestic law in its fanatic determination to see Israel’s mass atrocities through to the bitter end, said Rabbani, who is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).

“Tellingly, and quite accurately, they also point out that the Biden administration’s determination to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ultra-rightist, annexationist government has led to the suppression of basic constitutional freedoms within the United States,” he declared.

Meanwhile, in an address to the UN Security Council on July 17, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that recent developments are driving a stake through the heart of any prospect for a two-State solution.

“The geography of the occupied West Bank is steadily being altered through Israeli administrative and legal steps. The seizure of large land parcels in strategic areas and changes to planning, land management and governance are expected to significantly accelerate settlement expansion”.

These changes, he pointed out, include the issuance of two military orders at the end of May. These orders transferred powers to, and appointed, a civilian deputy in Israel’s Civil Administration, which is alarming.

This move is another significant advance in the ongoing transfer of authority over many aspects of daily life in the occupied West Bank, and a further step towards extending Israeli sovereignty over this occupied territory.

If left unaddressed, these measures risk causing irreparable damage, he said.

“We must change course. All settlement activity must cease immediately. Israeli settlements are a flagrant violation of international law and a key obstacle to peace. The violence must end, and the perpetrators of the violence must be swiftly brought to justice.

Israel must ensure the safety and security of the Palestinian population, Guterres declared.

Elaborating further Dr Ben-Meir said: “Personally, I was in favor of crippling Hamas militarily. Still, I have also repeatedly stated that while Israel may be able to crush Hamas militarily, it will be unable to destroy it as a political movement that holds a specific ideology that calls for Israel’s destruction.

“However, I have never subscribed to the notion that Hamas will ever be in a position to extinguish Israel for many reasons, including the fact that Hamas leaders know only too well that Israel is a formidable military power whose existence is irrevocable. The war has made it clear that challenging Israel’s right to exist is tantamount to suicide”.

President Biden was the first global leader to affirm that, given the new developing circumstances, a two-state solution is a prerequisite to end this endemic conflict.

As the war continued to grind on and as the Palestinians’ death toll and destruction were mounting, and Prime Minister Netanyahu categorically refused to even mention any solution along the lines of an independent state, the whole idea of a two-state solution was dropped from Biden’s lexicon. But the flow of weapons to Israel, if anything, was increasing without any preconditions.

Moreover, the US vetoed two UNSC resolutions that called for a ceasefire while food, water, fuel, and medical supplies were dwindling, and the displacement of Palestinians by the hundreds of thousands continued unabated.

Meanwhile, Israel’s relentless bombing using American-made bombs, which were killing thousands in densely populated areas, made the US complicit in the horrific carnage. By now, more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed, and more than half of Gaza lies in ruin, Dr Ben-Meir said.

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By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jul 19 2024 – Rights groups have called for governments to do more to combat transnational repression as a series of recent reports show growing numbers of exiled journalists, political dissidents and rights defenders are being targeted by autocratic regimes in an attempt to silence them.

They say governments must do more to deal with the repression, which takes the form of online harassment, surveillance, enforced disappearances, physical attacks and sometimes even killings, to protect the safety of these people.

“We have seen an increase in transnational repression, tied into the rise in authoritarianism around the world in general. Generally, there is a growing awareness of this complex problem among host countries and a willingness to do something about it.

“But more work needs to be done in some areas and governments need to support exiled journalists and understand the vital importance of the work they do,” Fiona O’Brien, UK Bureau Director at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told IPS.

The scale of the problem has been laid bare in a number of reports in recent months.

In February, rights group Freedom House released a report documenting scores of attacks, including assassinations, abductions and assaults, carried out by governments against people outside their borders in 2023.

Naming Russia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Turkmenistan and China as the biggest perpetrators, it also reported on the first known cases of transitional repression sanctioned by a number of governments, including the regimes of Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Myanmar, Sierra Leone and Yemen.

The group said that 44 countries—more than a fifth of the world’s national governments—have attempted to silence dissidents, activists, political opponents and members of ethnic or religious minorities beyond their own borders in the last ten years, with 1,034 recorded direct, physical incidents of transnational repression.

Meanwhile, at the end of June, while presenting a report on transnational repression, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, raised concerns not just about increasing incidents of transnational repression, but host countries’ responses to it.

“Too often, states are either unwilling for political reasons or unable for lack of capacity or resources to protect and support journalists in exile. Journalists should not be treated as political pawns but as human beings in distress who, at great cost to themselves, are contributing to the realization of our human right to information,” Khan said.

Following the report, scores of governments issued a joint statement condemning the repression and committing to coordinated action to help people being targeted and to hold accountable those behind any attacks. But it did not spell out any specific measures that should be implemented to do this.

Rights groups say that concrete steps must be taken by host governments to address the problem both in their own countries, and to confront those regimes perpetrating such acts.

Phil Lynch, Executive Director at the non-profit organisation International Service for Human Rights, said such action should involve host states not only providing comprehensive protection and support to those at risk of acts of transnational repression, but also measures, to undermine the capabilities of regimes to target people abroad.

He said host states must ensure they do not support or acquiesce in acts of transnational repression, such as through extradition or refoulement to states engaged in the persecution of human rights defenders; do not provide or export the tools or technologies of transnational repression, such as spyware and arms, to repressive states; must build awareness and law enforcement capabilities to respond to acts of transnational repression; and publicly denounce, investigate and pursue accountability for acts of transnational repression, including through sanctions and diplomatic repercussions.

“They should also prioritise human rights in foreign policy and relations both at bilateral and multilateral levels, adopting a principled and consistent approach to human rights in all situations, without selectivity and without discrimination,” he told IPS.

The lack of any serious consequences for regimes using transnational repression is helping perpetuate its widescale use, experts say.

“Governments don’t seem to be shying away from using transnational repression. This is likely because there has been very little accountability even in the most well-publicized cases, like the assassination of [Saudi dissident writer] Jamal Khashoggi. Since governments aren’t paying a price for targeting dissidents abroad, there’s little reason for them not to attempt it,” Yana Gorokhovskaia, Research Director, Strategy and Design, at Freedom House, told IPS.

But it is not just host country governments that could do more, experts say.

“Most of the harassment and attacks are online. Big tech have been totally absent from [efforts to fight transnational repression]. Governments have to hold big tech to account on this,” said O’Brien.

“Increasingly, acts of transnational repression occur online or are technology-facilitated. Technology providers have a duty to conduct due diligence to ensure their technologies and tools are not used, directly or indirectly, to restrict or violate human rights, including through acts of transnational repression. Governments should also legislate to mandate that human rights due diligence is undertaken by companies,” added Lynch.

It appears that some countries are becoming increasingly aware of the issue and willing to improve how they tackle it.

O’Brien said this following an RSF report on harassment of Iranian journalists in the UK released earlier this year. British authorities have “shown a lot of interest in how to tackle this problem better,”  while Freedom House has highlighted how President Joe Biden’s administration has made addressing the issue a priority across law enforcement and security agencies.

Gorokhovskaia also pointed out that over the last four years various countries have adopted policies to mitigate the threat posed by transnational repression, including improved training for police and security agencies and more outreach to communities that can be targeted.

“Countries have also become more aware of how international organizations, like Interpol, can be misused for transnational repression and taken steps to address this (by examining Interpol notices from certain perpetrator countries),” she said.

But research from other groups shows a much less reassuring picture.

A report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) said some host country governments were not only failing to ensure adequate protective measures for those at risk but were even actively facilitating transnational repression.

UN special rapporteur Khan also warned of host states becoming enablers “of transnational repression, for instance, by colluding in abductions instigated by the home state.”

Some alleged cases of such facilitation involve ostensibly stable, democratic, western states.

Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi, a political activist and a known dissident, arrived in Bulgaria in October 2021.

A campaigner for human rights and advocate for democratic reforms, he had fled his home country in the wake of mass arrests following the Arab Spring.

But since crossing into Bulgaria and claiming asylum, he has faced a complicated and, he says, at times incomprehensible legal battle over authorities’ continued refusal to grant him asylum and release him from detention at the migration centre despite court rulings in his favour.

He is facing deportation to Saudi Arabia, where, he told IPS, he will almost certainly be killed.

Al-Khalidi believes the Saudi secret service is behind the Bulgarian authorities’ blocking of his asylum. He says that during questioning by agency officials, he was told they were working with Saudi authorities on his case and that Saudi officials wanted him returned to Saudi Arabia. The Bulgarian state security agency has repeatedly said Al-Khalidi is a threat to national security, thereby blocking his asylum and release from detention.

Speaking to IPS in early July as he began a hunger strike while at a migrant detention centre near the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, where he has been held for the last three years, Al-Khalidi had a warning for governments hosting exiled dissidents and journalists.

“We live in a time full of international turmoil in which younger generations believe in anarchism more than they believe in democratic principles. This is very dangerous. The blame for this is fully borne by politicians who benefit from this and whose actions contradict the principles of the state, subsequently raising generations who lose their faith in both,” he said.

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By IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2024 – Student protests over the Bangladesh government’s recruitment system have escalated into violent retaliation from the police from the authorities.

Today (Friday, July 19), violent clashes continued to rock Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, and the northern city of Rangpuras, where university students continued their protest over the government’s civil service recruitment system. AFP reports reports the death toll reached 105.

The quota system, as it is known, now reserves 56 percent of positions in the civil service to certain groups: 10 percent to women, 10 percent to those from underdeveloped districts, 5 percent to indigenous peoples, 1 percent to people with disabilities, and 30 percent to those who fought in the 1971 war of independence, along with their descendants.

In June, Bangladesh’s High Court ruled to reinstate the measure to reserve jobs for the fighters, which had been previously abolished by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2018.

Students and young workers raised concerns that this system did not reward merit but rather favored those affiliated with the Awami League, the ruling party.

Since then, students have been demanding a reform to the quota system. This comes at a time when the unemployment rate is at 40 percent for youth who are neither working nor in university.

On July 14, Hasina implied that the protestors were “razakars,” a contentious term in Bangladesh as it refers to the people who supported Pakistan during the 1971 war, traitors in the eyes of the Bangladeshi people. The comments from Hasina caused outrage among students and they decried them during the protests.

The escalation into violence began on July 15, when protestors were attacked by members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of the Awami League. Reports emerged of heavily armed BCL members attacking indiscriminately against unarmed protestors, including women and younger students.

The government consequently called for all university campuses to shut down amid the tensions. The police force was sent in to suppress the movement, where they have used rubber bullets and tear gas against students.

Protests and the resulting violent clashes have broken out all over the country, including Chittagong, Rangpur, and Dhaka.

On Thursday, the government deployed the military, namely the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Since then, at least 105 deaths have been reported and over 25,000 people have been injured during the protests. This number could be much higher.

Since July 18, internet and phone communications have been shut down, first in select areas and now across the country.

The internet shutdown has also meant that the websites of some major news outlets, such as the Daily Star and Bangladesh have gone offline. Just prior to the shutdown, the BCL’s official website was hacked with a message that reads “Hacked by THE R3SISTANC3.”

There are also reports that the official websites of the police and the prime minister’s office were also hacked with messages reading, “Stop killing students” and “It’s not a protest anymore, it’s a war now.”

Amid the protests, the government announced on Thursday announced that it would be willing to sit down with protestors to discuss their demands for reform to the quota system.

Law minister Anisul Haq said that discussions would be held whenever the student protestors agreed. Student protestors have so far denied this call to action, with one student telling the BBC on Thursday, “The government has killed so many people in a day that we cannot join any discussions in the current circumstances.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk expressed concern for the violation of human rights and has called for impartial investigations into the attacks.

“The government should take the necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of the students participating in peaceful protests, and to guarantee the right to freedom of assembly and expression without fear of attacks against their lives and physical integrity, or other forms of repression,” he said. “Bangladesh’s political leaders must work with the country’s young population to find solutions to the ongoing challenges and focus on the country’s growth and development. Dialogue is the best and only way forward.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern about the violence and called for “restraint on all sides.”

In a statement issued on Thursday, he called for authorities to “investigate all acts of violence, hold perpetrators to account, and ensure a conducive environment for dialogue.”

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By Mouin Rabbani
MONTREAL, Canada, Jul 18 2024 – Usama bin Laden once claimed that the seeds of 9/11 were planted in 1982 as he watched the scenes of mass slaughter emerging out of Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, the bloody conclusion of that summer’s US-supported Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Either Bin Laden’s statement was accurate, or he recognized that appealing to the widespread outrage generated by Western support for Israel’s serial atrocities was the most effective way to generate popular and organizational support for his extremist project.

Bin Laden’s successors are no doubt doing everything they can to capture similar outrage throughout the region about Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. But they will encounter significantly greater challenges deploying it for their own purposes.

The difference between 2024 and 1982 is the overwhelming evidence of popular Western rejection of the policies of their governments. In public opinion polls, in mass demonstrations easily rivalling those organised against the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, in the numerous campus encampments, and, as the recent Letter of Dissent shows, extending even to government bureaucracies and political appointees.

The distinction between ruler and ruled, government and governed, has rarely been more clearly exposed.

The Letter of Dissent makes indisputably clear that US policy towards the present crisis has been an absolute failure at virtually every level. Not only has it failed to achieve any of its objectives and further consolidate Western hegemony in the Middle East, but it has made the US government directly and actively complicit in the genocide currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

As the signatories note, the US is “wilfully” violating not only international laws that are binding upon Washington, but is similarly and knowingly violating US domestic law in its fanatic determination to see Israel’s mass atrocities through to the bitter end.

Tellingly, and quite accurately, they also point out that the Biden administration’s determination to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ultra-rightist, annexationist government has led to the suppression of basic constitutional freedoms within the United States.

That campaign, which has involved Ivy League presidents being forced to resign, students and faculty punished for condemning a foreign state, journalists losing their jobs, and much else, has far exceeded anything observed during the US wars against Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

Calling for the destruction of the United States is, it seems, constitutionally protected speech, but this right that does not extend to calling for the dismantling of a genocidal, supremacist regime located thousands of miles away.

Civil servants, even senior ones, generally have at best marginal influence on policy, particularly in a plutocracy like the United States. In the current context, where US Middle East policy is the personal preserve of Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, McGurk, and very few others, their influence is non-existent.

This explains why the signatories felt they were left with no option other than to resign. To have done otherwise would have made them complicit in their government’s policies, including its participation in Israeli crimes and ceaseless efforts to ensure Israeli impunity for atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The moral and political choice they have made, which must have been agonizingly difficult and exceptionally simple in equal proportion, is one to be admired.

Mouin Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS), and Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).

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By Tanka Dhakal
KATHMANDU, Jul 18 2024 – A group aligned with the mayor of Chhayanath Rara Municipality in the Mugu district of Nepal’s Karnali Province physically attacked Aishwarya Malla for simply asking for a budgetary review of the local government.

“As a deputy mayor, I have the right to know where the budget is allocated, but the mayor’s team attacked me,” Malla said. “They did it only because I’m a woman, but they forget I’m also an elected representative with a responsibility to serve people, especially women and marginalized sections of our society.”

Malla has had an upward battle trying to get her voice heard.

Earlier in May, she requested just a few minutes to lay out her area’s issues related to climate change. She was in the nation’s capital, Kathmandu, where the International Dialogue on Climate Change was happening.

“If you want to know the ground reality, you have to give time to speak,” she said in her loud, passionate voice, but she didn’t get the chance. “We represent the women and lower sections of society, and nobody listens or wants to give us space.”

Aishwarya Malla (left), Deputy Mayor of Chhayanath Rara Municipality, and Shanti Malla Bhandari (right), Vice President of Guthichaur Rural Municipality. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS

In Nepal, local governments have the responsibility to be the first and most accessible authority to serve people, and elected representatives run their constituencies.

In leadership positions (mayor and their deputies or presidents and their vice presidents), women’s representation as candidates is mandatory for political parties. However, only 25 local governments have women serving as either mayors or presidents. Out of 753 local governments, 557 have women as deputy mayors or vice presidents.

Largely, women leaders are forced to remain second in line of power. But as Malla says, women leaders are the ones whom people in need reach out to, but they struggle to find their space within the male-dominant local political sphere.

“This is affecting our efforts to find solutions and adaptive measures to the climate change impact in our community and the same is true of other issues too,” Malla said, expressing her frustrations.

Local Struggle on National Platform

During the International Expert Dialogue on Mountains, People, and Climate, organized by the government of Nepal on May 22–23, experts discussed the importance of locally led adaptation to tackle the impacts of climate change in the community. However, there was no representation from the local community.

Apsara Lamsal Lamichhane, vice president of Helambu Rural Municipality, Sindhupalchowk district, stood up and expressed her frustrations when the floor was opened for questions.

“We are the ones who are suffering from the dire impacts of climate change, and we are trying to find a way to adapt,” Lamichhane angrily said as her microphone was about to be cut off. “But the central government doesn’t even listen to us, and we don’t get a chance to present our ground reality on platforms like this.”

Apsara Lamsal Lamichhane, Vice President of Helambu Rural Municipality, Sindhupalchowk, during the International Expert Dialogue on Mountains, People, and Climate. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS

She comes from one of the most vulnerable areas, where locals are facing the direct impacts of disasters exacerbated by climate change.

Lamichhane, Malla and other women in deputy mayor or vice president posts share the same complaint: that the provincial and central governments don’t listen to their concerns, including the losses caused by climate change.

“At the local level, the Mayor or President tries to silence us. In national discussions like this, we are invited but not allowed to speak. It’s our reality,” says Shanti Kumari Malla Bhandari, vice president of Guthicahur Rural Municipality in Jumla.

The Same Story on the International Stage

Just as there are internal obstacles to getting even a few minutes to present the issues local communities on the frontlines are dealing with, experts and leaders at the national level complain that in international climate forums, their voices are suppressed, and they don’t get enough space to present the reality of the climate plight.

Former Foreign Minister Dr. Bimala Rai Paudyal acknowledges that there is much to do to foster smooth discussion internally and to create a listening environment.

“We are working in isolation; there is an inter-ministerial communication gap, and yes, local representatives have to struggle much to make their voices heard,” Paudyal, who advocates for women’s representation in climate change discussions, says.

“Women are not only frontline victims of the climate crisis but also the first responders. We need to give them space, and then we can make our case in international forums. But there is a long way to go.”

To have better negotiation power in global forums, internal discussions need to prioritize local voices, she says. If we listen to each other here, then we can raise our collective voice with much conviction in international forums like the Conference of the Parties (COP) and climate finance committees.

According to Raju Pandit Chhetri, who works on climate finance negotiation, for countries like Nepal that are dependent on donor countries and agencies, negotiating on the global stage is not easy.

“There is already a giver-receiver relationship, and our psyche may be hesitant to negotiate strongly on climate finance issues. I think that kind of mentality may also exist at the national level too,” climate finance expert Chhetri said. “We have to break that wall of hesitation both internally and on the global stage.”

Note: This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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By Busani Bafana
ADDIS ABABA, Jul 18 2024 – Scientific research has led to social and economic gains worldwide, but the scientists who make it happen face significant challenges.

Science propels development, yet scientists need the freedom to research and advance technology and innovation. Is scientific freedom a cornerstone of development for African countries to remain globally competitive?”

Constraining Science

Growing societal polarization, erosion of democratic processes, and a rise in populism, misinformation, and disinformation are some of the factors curtailing scientific freedom in Africa, a new report by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has found.

In a study, African Perspectives on Scientific Freedom, launched at the Sixth Science, Technology, and Innovation Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in April 2024, UNESCO, highlights worrying trends that have increased pressure on the freedom and safety of scientists.

“When the voices of scientists are silenced, or societies’ ability to produce relevant and unbiased knowledge, to think critically, and to distinguish truth from falsehood is undermined. Without the freedom and safety of scientists, the trust in science and culture of science-driven decision-making are eroded,” said Gabriel Ramos, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Social and Human  Sciences, in a foreword to the study.

UNESCO developed a Recommendation for Science and Scientific Researchers, which noted that for science to reach its full potential, it is crucial that scientists “work in a spirit of intellectual freedom to seek, explain and defend scientific truth as they perceive it and enjoy the protection of their autonomous judgment against undue influence.”

This followed findings that scientific freedom is being constrained by among other factors, declining civic discourse and armed conflicts. As a result of these constraints, UNESCO launched a new programme on the promotion of scientific freedom and the safety of scientists in 2023 to collect data to inform decision-making.

Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the rights of all individuals to “share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” While the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights calls for the protection of the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its application. The Convention explicitly refers to scientific freedom in requiring member states to undertake to respect the ‘freedom indispensable to scientific research’.

There is a caveat. UNESCO says scientific freedom must be exercised alongside responsibility, which is the duty of scientists to conduct and apply science with integrity, in the interest of humanity, in a spirit of stewardship for the environment, and with respect for human rights.

Science ecosystems in Africa are operating in a challenging environment, underscoring the need to restore trust in science and the recognition of scientists in advancing human development, UNESCO says.

Highlighting the restrictions of research freedom, Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Daya Reddy, who reviewed the African Perspectives on Scientific Freedom report, noted the need for increased collaboration between scientists and policymakers to foster science, technology, and innovation.

Reddy said the study focus area was for Africa to develop guidelines and recommendations on scientific freedom after gaining a better understanding of the state of scientific freedom in six African countries profiled under the pilot study. The study assessed scientific freedom in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. It found that scientific freedom was not uniformly understood and appreciated in different national contexts, which necessitated the creation of a robust framework of laws and policies to promote research and publication.

A lack of resources and a critical mass were identified as some factors impinging on scientific freedom which did not have an explicit profile or presence in policies and legal frameworks in the six countries. This is despite the fact that most national constitutions protected a range of human rights and freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, opinion, and information, but were silent on scientific freedom. The Democratic Republic of Congo is an exception and asserts in its constitution, the freedom of access to research results, while protecting the interests of its authors.

Despite representing 12.5 percent of the global population, Africa was contributing less than one percent to global research output and the continent was spending even less on Research and Development. In 2006, African Heads of State and government agreed to commit one percent of the national GDP to research and development to boost scientific innovation. However, none of the African countries have met this threshold, pointing to pervasive low spending on scientific research in Africa.

Building a culture of science

We need to build a culture of science to accelerate sustainable development in Africa, says Lidia Brito, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences. She argues that scientists play a crucial role in promoting the well-being of society and for science to deliver its full potential, scientists must be able to work freely, without any restrictions.

“Science needs space to develop. There is also the need to interact with society to understand their needs and then through scientific endeavors to come up with solutions but in a co-designer, co-participating mode, Brito told IPS, emphasizing that guaranteeing that scientists have the freedom in terms of finance and infrastructure, and the space to develop their scientific programmes is key.

“We want science and scientists to be these heroes who come up with solutions to the pressing challenges we are facing globally,” Brito said.

But how do we promote the culture of science given that in Africa there is poor investment in research and development?

The UNESCO report, African Perspectives on Scientific Freedoms, calls for more investment in science, in scientific organizations, and the training of more researchers in Africa. This will be possible through an enabling environment that fosters the growth of science and scientists to operate.

“It is also about protecting the profession of scientists and about creating a conducive environment to retain the scientists in the scientific career, which is particularly important for women scientists, Brito said, adding that many times women start their careers in science but then leave because the work environment is not conducive for them.

The study noted the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, and research in Africa as an issue that needed to be addressed. Fewer than 31 percent of scientists in Sub-Saharan Africa are women, according to UNESCO.

Plugging the brain drain

Besides, Africa is experiencing a brain drain of its scientists, attracted by better conditions in other countries, especially the global North. The World Economic Forum (WEF) found that Africa has fewer than 100 scientists per million inhabitants and will need to increase this to the global average of 800 by training millions of scientists, technicians, and engineers to post-graduate levels over the next few years.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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