By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2024 – In the midst of Israel’s ground incursion of southern Lebanon, frequent airstrikes have demolished civilian infrastructure, which is only contributing to the increasing rates of civilian casualties and displacement. Humanitarian organizations fear that conditions in Lebanon will soon resemble those of Gaza if a ceasefire isn’t reached soon.

The United Nations (UN) has urged the Israeli military to consider a ceasefire while the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is stationed at the nation’s borders recording security violations and attempting to preserve peace. On October 16, UNIFIL had reported a series of airstrikes in the town of Nabatieh and surrounding areas in south Lebanon.

According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, the attacks caused fifteen civilian casualties, including the mayor of the town, Ahmad Kahil, and members of the Disaster Risk Management Unit. Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati condemned the attacks, accusing the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of intentionally targeting a council meeting. The UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, referred to Wednesday’s attacks as “violations of international humanitarian war”.

Prior to the escalation of hostilities observed in Lebanon in the past two weeks, an IDF spokesperson had informed reporters that the attacks were intended to target Hezbollah military operations only. However, recent airstrikes have been increasingly indiscriminate, targeting densely populated areas.

“We know that Hezbollah many times takes advantage of civilian facilities”, said Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN Danny Danon.

Internal displacement has soared in Lebanon since the escalation of hostilities. UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban told reporters on Wednesday that over 1.2 million people have been displaced as a result of this conflict, including over 400,000 children. Displacement shelters have been pushed to their limits, with over 85 percent of all shelters being at maximum capacity. Thousands of people seek refuge on the streets or in public centers.

The escalation of hostilities has taken a significant toll on Lebanon’s healthcare system. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 23 attacks on medical facilities have been reported in the past month, with 100 hospitals in conflict-affected areas shutting down.

“Attacks on health care debilitate health systems and impede their ability to continue to perform. They also prevent entire communities from accessing health services when they need them the most,” said Dr. Hanan Balkhy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean.

The collective mental health of Lebanese civilians in highly affected areas has declined significantly. Chaiban remarked that this has been particularly difficult for children. “The psychological toll is immense, particularly on the young. Children now grapple with nightmares of bombardment, the loss of loved ones, and the erasure of their homes and schools,” he said.

Additionally, there has been an influx of injured civilians, resulting in a massive demand for medicines, surgical supplies, and psychosocial support. WHO and the Lebanese Red Cross have partnered with Lebanon’s Ministry of Health to provide local hospitals with adequate supplies and establish trauma centers.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has deployed a team of 22 medical workers experienced in handling destructive injuries at the Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut.

“While our surgical team and medical supplies will help ease the burden on healthcare providers, sustained and safe humanitarian aid is urgently needed. The humanitarian crisis deepens by the hour,” said Simone Casabianca-Aeschlimann, the head of the ICRC team in Lebanon.

Humanitarian organizations fear that living conditions will grow more dire in the coming winter months. The UN and its agencies such as WHO, UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) are mobilized to scale up response efforts as the situation continues to change. There have been calls for flexible funding for the humanitarian efforts, such as with UNICEF’S appeal for USD 105 million for the next three months which is currently only eight percent funded. The UN urges donor contributions as hostilities show no signs of ceasing in the near future.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Oct 18 2024 – Juan López was gunned down on 14 September. An environmental activist, community leader and member of the Municipal Committee in Defence of the Commons and Public Goods of Tocoa, he was the latest victim of extractive greed in Honduras. Communities protecting the rivers that flow through the Bajo Aguán region have seen several of their leaders assassinated.

In 2023, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures to López and 29 other members of the Municipal Committee and the Justice for the People Law Firm. In response, the state of Honduras was supposed to consult with those affected and adopt all necessary measures to protect their rights to life and personal integrity and ensure they could continue their human rights work without fear of retaliation. It clearly didn’t do any of that.

🕯️Hoy se cumplen 10 días tras el asesinato de Juan López, defensor ambientalista de @guapinolre y regidor de Tocoa.
Exigimos justicia para él y para todas las víctimas de la lucha por los derechos ambientales en #Honduras.#JusticiaParaJuanLopez pic.twitter.com/JpmuWjZHg8

— CIVICUS Español (@CIVICUSespanol) September 24, 2024

Environmental conflict

López was one of the leaders of resistance against mining in the Carlos Escaleras National Park. When the first licence was awarded in 2014, over 20 local communities began organising, establishing the Tocoa Municipal Committee in 2015.

In Guapinol, near Tocoa, people formed a Community Council in 2018. Since complaints with Congress, courts and government agencies got nowhere, locals began an occupation, blocking access to machinery for the Los Pinares mining company. The army and police cleared the camp twice, and then the company accused 32 protesters of arson, damage, illegal association, kidnapping and usurpation. López was among those charged, accused of being the leader of an alleged illegal association.

López and 11 other activists who came forward voluntarily to testify were detained for several days, while eight others were remanded in custody, spending two and a half years in pretrial detention. They were eventually released in February 2022.

Criminalisation continued: in March 2020, the Court of Appeals reopened the cases against López and four of his colleagues. They were subjected to smear campaigns and threatened by people associated with Los Pinares. Lawyers defending the activists and civil society groups supporting them were harassed, and local community members were intimidated.

Year after year, Global Witness has found Honduras to be one of the deadliest countries in the world for land rights and environmental defenders. Overall, more than 160 people have been killed in the region since 2010. Lethal violence has also affected journalists reporting on illegal extractive practices, including Luis Alfonso Teruel Vega, killed in January after reporting on deforestation.

Entrenched economic power

Entrenched corrupt networks of political and economic interests that act with impunity have long been the biggest danger to Honduran environmental and land rights defenders. There were hopes for change with the November 2021 election of leftist leader Xiomara Castro as president.

But while political power can change hands quickly, economic power is more permanent. Following the change of government, corporate power remained intact and extraction continues to be a key source of elite wealth. Networks of corruption stayed in place, encompassing significant elements of state institutions, including some belonging to Castro’s party Libertad y Refundación (Libre).

López was a Tocoa municipal councillor for Libre, and had recently urged the resignation of Tocoa’s mayor, also from Libre, accused of having links with armed groups working for extractive companies and profiting from facilitating illegal mining in protected areas. The mayor ignored a public town hall meeting’s decision by giving the green light to a huge power plant, part of a megaproject that also includes an open-cast mine and iron oxide processing facility.

Castro ran on a change platform, and when sworn in in January 2022, promised ‘no more permits for open mines or exploitation of our minerals, no more concessions to exploit our rivers, watersheds, national parks and cloud forests’. She promised freedom for the Guapinol political prisoners and justice for Berta Cáceres, a high-profile Indigenous environmental defender murdered in 2016.

Castro’s first steps raised hopes. The Guapinol defenders regained their freedom, and in June 2022 the mastermind of Cáceres’ murder, a former executive of a hydroelectric company, was sentenced to over 22 years in prison.

In a promising move to counter corruption and impunity, Castro led a reform of the selection process for Supreme Court judges so they’d be chosen from a merit-based list drawn up by an independent committee. Castro’s predecessor was extradited to the USA on drug charges.

Castro announced plans to revive the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), created through an agreement with the Organization of American States in response to 2016 anti-corruption protests but disbanded four years later. In December 2022, the government signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN to work towards establishing a mechanism against corruption and impunity. A team of UN experts came to assess its feasibility, and some early progress was made in repealing laws and decrees that impeded corruption investigations and prosecutions.

But key reforms remain pending, and the proposal to recreate MACCIH or a similar UN-led body never took off. The promised protection mechanism for human rights defenders and journalists, meant to replace the existing ineffective one that lacks financial resources and experienced staff with human rights training, hasn’t materialised.

The militarisation of security has made things worse. In November 2022, Castro declared a state of emergency to deal with soaring levels of crime and gang violence. Extended several times, it remains in force. Security gains have come at an unacceptable human rights cost.

Civil society demands

Civil society condemned López’s killing as part of a pattern of violence against environmental defenders and called out the state’s systematic failure to fulfil its duty to ensure their safety. It urged the government to seek the support of regional and international human rights bodies to investigate the facts and hold the perpetrators to account.

Ten days after López’s murder, the Public Prosecutor’s Office issued an injunction against people linked to two companies owned by the same group, Ecotek and Los Pinares. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights welcomed the decision, as did the Tocoa Municipal Committee, although activists also warned that the injunction increased the risk to human rights defenders. The committee reiterated its call for the state to take responsibility for their protection and accountability for all crimes committed against them.

On 4 October, the police arrested López’s alleged killer and one of his accomplices. But this is only a first step, and many more must follow. It’s too late for López, but bringing the perpetrators of his crime to justice – including those who ordered and profited from it – could save the lives of many more.

The government also needs to establish an effective protection mechanism capable of responding to early warnings, rather than trying to remedy serious violations after they’ve occurred.

And even then, it won’t be enough if the root cause of violence – extractivist corruption – remains unaddressed. In February 2024, the government issued a decree to protect areas of the Carlos Escaleras National Park. Local communities welcomed the decision, but continue to demand that all parts of the megaproject be cancelled immediately.

That’s a decision that would require a lot of muscle, because it would hurt very powerful interests. If Castro hasn’t been co-opted and decides to put community rights before business interests, she’ll need strong international support to stand any chance.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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By John Amos
SANTA FE, New Mexico USA, Oct 18 2024 – Two years ago world leaders from nearly 200 countries made a landmark commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land, ocean, and freshwater by 2030 – an initiative known as “30×30”.

From the lush rainforests of the Amazon to the azure waters of the Great Barrier Reef, this ambitious goal aims to safeguard our planet’s tremendous biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and secure vital ecosystems.

This will be the primary focus of the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 16) starting next week in Cali Colombia. (October 21-November 1)

As we embark on this crucial mission, we must recognize that the success of 30×30 hinges not just on reaching a numerical target, but on how we get there. Transparency of information and inclusion of impacted communities must be at the forefront of this global conservation effort.

Historically, conservation initiatives have been top-down, driven by governments and international organizations with limited input from local communities. This approach has sometimes led to the displacement of Indigenous peoples, the disruption of traditional livelihoods, and the creation of protected areas that exist on maps but offer little real protection on the ground.

Now, we must shift this conservation paradigm to prioritize a more equitable and effective approach. One way this can happen is by making 30×30 data free, easy to understand, and available to all.

How well is the world doing on 30×30? How is one country participating compared to its neighbor? What are the promises being made by governments versus the reality on the ground?

These are some of the questions we’re trying to answer with the 30×30 Progress Tracker, a first-of-its-kind open-source platform that captures key 30×30 data all in one place, makes it user-friendly, and enables anyone to get involved.

Now government agencies, NGOs, journalists, frontline environmental defenders, and the concerned public can visualize progress towards the 30×30 goal on land and at sea, spanning coral reefs to forests, grasslands, wetlands, and other vital ecosystems.

This free tool allows conservation experts and non-experts alike to interact with existing protected areas and draw simple maps of potential new conservation zones. Although there are more sophisticated mapping and analysis tools available for designing protected areas, by exploring data on key habitats, species distributions, and climate resilience factors, users can quickly sketch their own lightweight scenarios showing how biodiversity protection could move forward.

The Tracker will add more information as it becomes available, including the land rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, recognizing the critical role they have played throughout the millennia in biodiversity conservation.

When information about conservation progress and challenges is openly available, it enables civil society, researchers, and the public to hold governments and organizations accountable for their commitments. This scrutiny can help ensure that protected areas are not just designated, but effectively managed and enforced.

Transparency also enables more informed decision-making. When data on biodiversity, endangered species, and human use of natural resources is openly available, it allows for better-targeted and more effective conservation efforts.

It can help identify priority areas for protection, potential conflicts with human activities, and opportunities for sustainable resource use. And it can foster trust. When local communities can access information about conservation plans that affect their lands and waters, it can facilitate more productive dialogues between conservation planners and local stakeholders.

Open-source data can play a role in this transformation, but it is just one piece of the puzzle. The real measure of success for 30×30 will not be in the numbers alone, but in how well we’ve engaged and empowered the diverse stakeholders whose lives and livelihoods are intertwined with the lands and waters we seek to protect.

Measuring success is also not just about quantity – we need to scrutinize the quality of protection. We have data for the ocean and are collecting data for the land on both protection levels and management effectiveness so that designated protected areas can deliver real conservation outcomes.

As we approach 2030 the pace of conservation efforts must accelerate dramatically. Globally, only about 17% of land and 8% of ocean areas are now under some form of protection. To reach the 30×30 goal, we need to protect and conserve an additional area roughly the size of Africa in just six years.

This herculean task requires unprecedented cooperation, innovation, and commitment from governments, NGOs, and communities worldwide.

With the democratization of 30×30 data, local communities, Indigenous groups, and grassroots organizations can access the same information as policymakers, empowering them to advocate for the protection of their lands and waters effectively.

Together we can galvanize action, inform policy, and hold decision-makers accountable, transforming the abstract goal of 30×30 into a tangible, achievable target that we can all work towards.

John Amos is CEO, SkyTruth, based in Shepherdstown, West Virgnia, and described as a conservation technology nonprofit that utilizes satellite imagery, machine learning, and big data to make hidden environmental problems visible, measurable, and actionable. SkyTruth envisions a world where everyone enjoys a healthy environment and sustainable livelihood because transparency is the norm: polluters know they will be seen and caught, industries have cleaned up their practices, and governments are vigorously enforcing environmental protection.

Learn more at https://skytruth.org/.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2024 – When Dr Gamani Corea, a former Secretary-General of the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was holding court in the delegate’s lounge, I asked him what he thought of the bitter dispute between then Secretary-General (SG) Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996) and the United States over the Egyptian’s determination to win re-election for a second term.

Dr Corea, a product of two prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, and a one-time Sri Lankan Ambassador to the European Economic Community (EEC) in Brussels, pondered for a while, and declared: “I cannot really figure out why anyone in his right mind would ever want such a demanding job.”

And perhaps he was right.

Trygve Lie of Norway, the first UN Secretary-General, once remarked the SG’s job was “the most impossible job on this earth.”

Still, the post of SG, in contemporary history, has attracted at least three ranking officials from their respective country’s highest political hierarchies: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, acting Foreign Minister of Egypt, Secretary-General Ban ki-moon, a former Foreign Minister of South Korea and the current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal.

The SG, for all intents and purposes, is the UN’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) who is virtually subservient to 193 political leaders, including presidents, prime ministers, reigning monarchs, foreign ministers and even UN ambassadors.

But he also has no means of implementing UN resolutions or a standing army to enforce them.

Guterres, who has taken a strong stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and publicly condemned the devastating killings of civilians in Gaza has come under fire, mostly from Israeli politicians and senior officials, who have not only called for his resignation but also declared him persona non grata (PNG), banning him from entering Israel.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former UN Under-Secretary-General and one-time Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, told IPS the incumbent Secretary-General recently lamented to the media that “Well, it is absolutely true that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has very limited power, and it’s also absolutely true that he has very little capacity to mobilize financial resources. So, no power and no money.”

“That is the reality which every Secretary-General faces and have been aware of”, said Ambassador Chowdhury.

“That is also known generally to the people who follow the United Nations regularly and thoroughly understanding the functional complexity of the world’s largest multilateral apparatus. Why then this reality surfaces and brought to public attention only when the UN leadership fails to carry out the mandated responsibilities?”

This “very limited power”, as worded by SG Guterres, should be highlighted as often as possible to avoid unnecessary and undue expectations of the global community about the UN and its top leadership.

“No Secretary-General has pointed out these limitations as he campaigned for the post and on assuming the office, he said. Current SG Guterres was no exception. He would have been realistic and factual if he had pointed out the limitations – better termed as obstacles – to his leadership as he took office in 2017, and not in 2024 after being in office for nearly eight years.”

Irrespective of the major ongoing wars, the built-in operational weakness and inability of the world’s most important diplomat has always been there, said Ambassador Chowdhury, former Senior Special Adviser to UN General Assembly President (2011-2012) and President of the UN Security Council (2000 and 2001).

Ian G. Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association USA, told IPS it is time for the pandering to stop. Former Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan’s shredding of the UN Charter should have been be taken as Israeli abrogation of the Charter, but barring the Secretary General indicates that Israel has no part in the organization, as should banning UNRWA and the threat to confiscate its assets in Jerusalem to build illegal settlements on occupied territory.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) got Al Capone for tax evasion – and now is the time for Israel to be squeezed out for its manifest procedural breaches of the UN Charter and Vienna Convention even if the two veto holders cover for it on genocide, said Williams.

“Being declared PNG by Israel has probably saved Antonio Guterres’ reputation, which until now has been dimmed by his relative caution in addressing Israeli depredations. To be attacked by an enemy of mankind and international law is no bad thing”.

But now there should be follow-up, he pointed out.

“The members hip of the United Nations should now be carving away at Israel’s membership prerogatives since, even if states are reluctant to act on the state’s egregious violations of international law, it has now clearly broken the basic rules of international diplomacy.”

“Will it take (Israeli Ambassador) Danny Danon dancing across the General Assembly podium with the SG’s head on a platter to provoke action? asked Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA).

Asked about the PNG declaration by Israel, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “We saw this announcement, which we see as a political statement by the Foreign Minister. And just one more attack, so to speak, on UN staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.”

“Look, this issue of PNG has been announced by different countries at different times towards a representative. And as we said every time, we do not recognize that the concept of persona non grata applies to UN staff”, he added.

Time and again, said Ambassador Chowdhury, “I have pointed out that “essentially there are four main constraints to the effectiveness of the Secretary-General”.

Firstly, veto and veto-wielding members of the Security Council, which influences matters in all areas of UN system’s work; secondly, promises and commitments made by the Secretary-General as a candidate to secure his election; thirdly, aspiration to get re-elected for a second term from day one of the first term; and, fourthly, the labyrinthine UN bureaucracy.

“We need to revisit the operational credibility of our much-cherished world body. What was needed in 1945 to be enshrined in the UN Charter is to be judged in the light of current realities.”

If the Charter needs to be amended to live up to the challenges of global complexities and paralyzing intergovernmental politicization, let us do that. It is high time to focus on that direction. Blindly treating the words of the Charter as sacrosanct may be self-defeating and irresponsible. The UN could be buried under its own rubble unless we set our house in order now, declared Chowdhury.

“I am often asked, during ‘questions and answers’ segment following my public speaking, if I want to recommend one thing that would make the UN perform better, what would it be. My clear and emphatic answer always has been “Abolish the Veto!” Veto is undemocratic, irrational and against the true spirit of the principle of sovereign equality of the United Nations”.

In an opinion piece in the IPS Journal in March 2022, I wrote that “Believe me, the veto power influences not only the decisions of the Security Council but also all work of the UN, including importantly the choice of the Secretary-General.”

The same opinion piece asserted that “I believe the abolition of veto requires a greater priority attention in the reforms process than the enlargement of the Security Council membership with additional permanent ones. Such permanency is simply undemocratic. I also believe that the veto power is not ‘the cornerstone of the United Nations’ but in reality, its tombstone.”

Abolishing the veto would also release the election of the Secretary-General from the manipulating control of the veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council.

After choosing nine men successively to be the world’s topmost diplomat, “I strongly believe that it is incumbent on the United Nations to have the sanity and sagacity of electing a woman as the next Secretary-General in 2026 when the incumbent’s successor would be chosen,” he added.

“I would also recommend that in future the Secretary-General would have only one term of seven years, as opposed to current practice of automatically renewing the Secretary-General’s tenure for a second five-year term, without even evaluating his performance,” he noted.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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