Human rights concerns rising in Hungary (again)

Women and girls are literally invisible in conservative Afghan society where many of their fundamental rights are denied, but this week female university students in restive Kandahar province caught the eye of the nation and revive hopes for the future of this war-struck country.

The people in this part of the country that is often referred to as the ‘birthplace’ of the Taliban movement, now seem to have learned the value of women and girls’ education.

In a country where it remains a cultural taboo in many far-flung areas to even allow girls above certain age to leave home and join school, the site of elderly and young men proudly sharing the stage with their newly-graduated female members of the family was simply astonishing. The female students at the city’s Mirwais Neka University after receiving their graduation certificates seemed overwhelmed with the love, respect and freedom they received from their male members of the family.

Not long ago, the world witnessed horrifying images from Afghanistan about the militants beating and even stoning to death women and girls. Though, the law and order situation remains fragile here sixteen years after the fall of the Taliban regime, but thanks to the international support and local craving for education, positive changes are emerging, albeit it is not absolutely perfect.

Women’s literacy in Afghanistan is among the lowest in the world – about 14 per cent. Considering the fact that only 3 per cent of girls previously went to school and now about 36 per cent receive education, it is a lot.

Of late, Afghans have been inspired to seek education and knowledge by many local success stories. The global icon for girls’ education Malala Yosufzai is one of them. Unlike her home country Pakistan, where many still deem her ‘west’s agent’, Yosufzai is adored by the Afghans.

Thanks to the relative peace, the capital city Kabul remains a secluded yet safe place for girls’ education to some extent. The scenes at Kandahar’s Mirwais Neka University therefore means a lot in terms of signifying the scope of the change in mind-set towards girls’ education in Afghanistan.

Photo:UNHCR

A quick glance at a portrait photograph is, apparently, all an off-the-shelf AI tool needs to detect a person’s sexual orientation, and potentially even, political affiliation. Sieving through tens of thousands of images has taught machine learning to be 91% accurate in its detection of homosexual men, and 83% of women.

Circulating around the web for its highly controversial and possibly dangerous consequences is a recently published study by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that revealed machine learning can detect sexual orientation with high accuracy and speed. Stanford University researchers Yilun Wang and Michal Kosinski led the development of this study. Interestingly, Kosinski is also an advisor for the Israeli company Faception, currently developing ‘facial personality profiling’ for the improvement of “public safety, communications, decision-making and experiences” as the company describes it.

With this study, Kosinski and Yilun claim that “faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain”. The research, titled ‘Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from faces’, used over 30,000 images from US dating websites with a specific agenda of creating “links between characteristics and facial features that might be missed or misinterpreted by the human brain”.

Yet amidst the cloud of blurred moral judgements behind this research, is the fact that basically any abstract can be ‘predicted’ by machine learning given it has been fed sufficient background data, often subjective to its research purposes. What shouldn’t be overlooked however, is why facial personality profiling tools are being tested and developed without a consensus from international human rights organisations, or even on a more micro level, national law.

There seems to be little boundaries built in the collection of personal data for the sake of ‘security’. And here, while the researches have been able to liken the tone of their findings to that of Frankenstein’s inventor as they claim “given that companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people’s intimate traits, our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women”, the very negligence of the paper’s publishing proves the care with which potentially dangerous studies are dealt with has been absent from the scientific community.

What concerns me most with this study isn’t its accuracy, or lack thereof; or its potential bias (only white persons were considered for it). What is particularly alarming is the planting and spreading of such fears and ideas, on a global scale. With homosexuality still considered a crime worthy of death penalty in many countries, there is a profound responsibility attached to the public publishing of studies such as this.

Within hours the paper made headlines across international news outlets, transforming an otherwise inconceivable AI programme into a tangible, accessible tool in the minds and consciousness of the mass.

On average, 40% of youth in Africa are jobless, despite a majority of them having attained the highest level of education. On the other hand Africa loses over $50 billion each year to illegal and unethical practices fanned by both governments and private sectors, including grandiose corruption, tax evasion and transfer pricing. This has put brakes on Africa’s quest to address some of the continent’s pressing problems including health, poverty and lack of education. The gap between haves and have nots has staggered to unprecedented levels. In Kenya the phenomenon is christened, a country of ten millionaires and ten million beggars.

Yet this is not a case unique to just Africa. Corporate rent seeking behaviour, economic neoliberalism and warped macroeconomic policies have created an uneven global economy that not only excludes a bulk of the population, but is a precursor to a dangerous trend that could erupt as a result of a sense of disenfranchisement.

It is therefore timely and commendable for the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to have rallied the world behind the need to have a complete overhaul of our understanding and philosophy of global economy, and instead, look to a more sustainable, inclusive and caring economy that has everyone on board. Through its recently released report, ‘The Global New Deal’, the agency roots for going back to the basics that healed and fixed the post-world war II economy. In a bid to rebalance the post war economy, Bretton Wood Institutions, the United Nations and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade teamed up, heralding the launch of the Marshall plan. In a similar arrangement during the 1930s, the United States revisited its approach to economic power, bestowing more voice to society’s weaker groups like farmers, labour organisations and consumer groups. It is the glue that held the superpower.

Decades later this is the only route in a world where millions continue to be born to a reality where jobs have become elusive and new threats like climate change are taking a toll on every facet of our very existence.

The Sustainable Development Goals remain the ultimate bible to transitioning the world to one successful all-inclusive and responsive economy that promises a just world for us and our future generations. That however calls for sobriety, tough decisions and the goodwill of the community of nations.

If you’re a poor migrant or refugee, searching for work, a better life or fleeing war, the ordeals to enter Europe are becoming harder and harder. This reality, however, doesn’t apply to everyone. For super rich foreigners, it’s never been so easy to get a residency permit or citizenship from a European country. And yet they don’t even have to reside there, let alone worry about learning the language or adapting to local traditions.

Countries such as Portugal, Cyprus, Malta, Spain and even the UK have shady ‘golden visa’ schemes whereby the wealthy are awarded EU residency simply from buying a house or investing in funds; a scandalous and extremely unjust programme that leaves the poorest people at Europe’s door, whilst rolling out the red carpet to the rich. And if that wasn’t enough, documents leaked this week show how the schemes has been used maliciously, attracting businessmen involved in corruption and bribery scandals who wish to gain access to the EU.

In Portugal, where the minimum investment for citizenship is 500,000 euros, it was revealed that business executives implicated in a Brazilian corruption scandal, and Angolan tycoons accused of bribery have bought properties in order to become European citizens. Launched in 2012, when Portugal was facing the worst period of its economic crisis, the programme was announced as a way of “attracting foreign investment to the country and reactivate the economy”. The scheme, however, hasn’t achieved its goals, given that out of 5,000 only eight ‘golden visas’ have created employment.

Furthermore, the Portuguese programme had also shown its ability to attract criminals: in 2014, police arrested 11 people in an investigation over allegations that ‘golden visas’ had been issued in return for bribes. The head of the border agency and the president of the Institute of Registries and Notaries were among the detainees. The Minister of the Interior was a suspect and consequentially resigned.

Meanwhile, in Cyprus it has been leaked that Russian and Ukrainian billionaires accused of corruption used similar programmes in obtaining European visas. Also, a Syrian businessman under US sanctions is one of the hundreds of investors who were granted citizenship in exchange for big sums of cash investment.

The immorality of selling off citizenship should be sufficient for governments concerned to eliminate such programmes. The worsening situation, as revealed by its links to criminality, must immediately be addressed.

I have basically had enough of politics. Not politics in the everyday sense: local concerns and community organisations as such. I mean big politics. No no – not interesting, big politics: ideas, treaties, revolutions, and so on. I mean TV politics. Slogan politics. Dead-eyed people on TV reassuring the country about the economy or a parliamentary aide caught in a texting scandal. Rubbish politics. There was too much of it last year, this year, and when things really began mattering, such as in Charlottesville, in Myanmar, off the coast of Australia – big TV politics did what it always does; it smiled, and said it would keep the economy strong.

As much as I dislike it, there's one more election of global consequence coming up. This is the election in Germany. While it would have been disheartening and disturbing to see the Netherlands and Austria go full-Nazi, they wouldn't have necessarily created an actual power shift in Europe. If France, however, decided to invite fascism back into power, then the entire European project may have been under threat. The same is  true for Germany. 

France went for Macron – he still has time to turn that around, by the way. This coming Sunday, Germany will vote in its general election, and the far-right Alternative, Fuer Deutschland (AfD), are set to take at least 11% of votes, mostly concentrated in the country's East. Its popularity in Dresden, Leipzig and other Eastern cities has been noted, with followers wielding flaming torches and shouting about their way of life, which, amazingly, doesn't actually seem to include holding flaming torches. The dissatisfaction with the 'lying elites' of Germany runs so deep that 11% of the country's population is willing to vote for an overtly nationalistic, racist and ethnocentrist party. 

A far-right majority vote would not only go against everything Germany has worked to achieve since the ending of the war, it will also undermine the European project, given that AfD's raison d'etre is to ensure no more German money goes to failing European economies.

It would be tremendously dangerous for Germany to engage in this programme of re-Nazification. And it would also be deeply ironic if the AfD made its way into power just when the EU's economy, including Spain and Greece, is starting to look healthy once again.

German voters cannot pretend they do not know what they're voting for, or that the AfD is 'simply' a protest vote. It is a vote for outright racism. It is a vote for nationalism. It is a vote to reverse the cold, honest reflection Germans have lived by for decades since the war. Hey, with Trump and Brexit behind us – 11% might just be the least of our worries.

Image: Bjorn Hocke, AfD figure, waves, or salutes.

A brazen suicide blast rippled through a crowd of enthusiastic young Afghans queuing-up for a rare sports event, featuring international players in the country’s war-riddled capital of Kabul.

The attack claimed three lives, left many wounded and shattered the dreams of hundreds of thousands of Afghans, who hoped to see public events like this cricket competition flourish in a country that has been reeling with miseries for more than four decades now. Claimed by the so-called Islamic State militants, this terrorist attack, which took place on Wednesday September 15, failed to break the will of the resilient nation.

On the very next day, even larger crowds of passionate and sports-loving youngsters gathered outside the Alakozay International Cricket Ground in Kabul, where the attack took place, to defy the ugly forces of fanaticism, and to embrace the beauty of life. The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) played its due role in ensuring order and continuation of the ‘Shpageeza’ championship festivities in the backdrop of all the hassle, keeping its peoples’ hopes for a better life alive.

The courageous gestures demonstrated by the spectators as well as the sportsmen send a clear and coherent message to advocates of terror: their relentless tactics of hate and terror to impose a self-proclaimed lifestyle on others have failed. The younger generations of Afghans, who have been raised in a war-torn country want to live a peaceful, cheerful and above all independent life that is not chained by ideologies forced upon them with fear.

Within a few years of embracing the British game of cricket, the talented Afghan nation has made its mark on the world stage. The country is now ranked among the top ten cricket teams in the world, and young players from Afghanistan like Rashid Khan Arman and Mohammad Nabi Essakhail are already making headlines with their exceptional skills and dedication.

This achievment needs to be encouraged and promoted, on a global level in order to fight terror's ultimate purpose of numbing and paralising progress for the sake of vague strategic or political goals.

Photo: Twitter

While churches in the global north are in a ceaseless decline, their African counterparts are flourishing into what is now referred to as the modern megachurch. Adopting a likened ethos to that of the American-exported evangelism, pentecostal churches are sprouting across many African countries, quickly becoming one of the continent’s most lucrative and unregulated economy.

Each year, millions of dollars are exchanged in these business-modelled houses of devotion. Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana are now home to churches that can hold up to 200,000 devotees, making the business of God a significant segment of the countries’ economies as they both employ and house by the thousands.

Converting religious worship into significantly positive cash flow has played a major role in almost all religious institutions, but thriving from a failed government is what makes these megachurches so rife in countries such as Nigeria. These churches not only capitalise on belief, they also work within important social sectors systematically neglected by the state. This kind of social work, coined as “social gospel” makes “the modern African church promise a life that is abundant and prosperous – both spiritually and materially.” Reports the Quarts Africa journal.

Following in the shady footsteps of many of Nigeria’s powerful sectors, namely oil and electricity, precisely how much of Nigeria’s GDP is attributed to the modern church remains unclear. “At least six church leaders have private jets, so they have money. How much? No one really knows.” Says economist and CEO of Lagos consultancy Financial Derivatives, Bismarck Rewane. “They don’t submit accounts to anybody.”

Operating under a charity statues, the churches are completely exempt from tax, and furthermore, have no obligation to publicise their accounts. And while there’s been growing dispute over this law in Nigeria – a country still torn by growing poverty and famine – the stronghold of Christianity is currently at 70% of the country’s 170 million citizens, allowing the church to continue its free reign.

Economics aside, the megachurches are also teaching a gospel belonging to a very specific ideal of masculinity and family life, spreading damaging misogynistic rhetoric in a country already struggling with gender inequality.

Not conforming to the limiting schedule of Sunday mass and mid-week services, the churches have adopted, improved and revised their preach across all imaginable media outlets. From radio shows and TV, to books, YouTube channels and international branches. Religion too has attuned itself to neo-liberal tactics of audience outreach and exponential growth strategies.

Jumping off the back of a failed government, the pentecostal churches in Africa have deformed from a socially motivated premise to yet another self-serving entity, aiding a select few, and not the many. Unregulated economies have once again proved their power to sway forces of good and bad alike, and in Nigeria at least, a governance held by regulations is still nowhere to be seen.

2011 saw Kenyans take to Twitter in a national rally to help its people during one of the deadliest droughts the country had ever experienced. This call for action can be attributed to what has, in recent history, been billed as a classic example of the power the Internet has in responding to Africa’s 21st century calamities.

Through the ‘Kenyans for Kenya’ initiative, targeted to raise donations amounting to $5.2 million in a month, the online community marshalled local and international support through tweets and hashtags, which saw the target reached within ten days. The same community would in a later instance fundraise for a university student who had a brain tumour, managing to raise six times the required medical bill in a record six hours. Across Africa, altruism is now shifting from the culture of aid and hand outs to becoming largely orchestrated by the proliferation of the Internet, winning more hearts in a continent where technology has become a force for political freedom and trade.

Blatant plunder of public resources has traditionally eroded the confidence of development partners working with African leaders to alleviate some of the most biting problems. As a result, the African people have then felt left out and disenfranchised, until now.

Dozens of online fundraising and philanthropic platforms are now inspiring a new wave of giving, driven especially by the Kenyan urban and tech savvy youth whose voice now is being heard. Renewed transparency has also seen development partners return. Such landmark gains must be guarded laboriously.

Governments across Africa should now learn and embrace the ubiquitous and pivotal role technology has in future developments of their countries, especially in addressing what affects their citizens.

In the Kenyan example, if the government relied on the traditional fundraising mechanisms, it would have taken too long, leading to a greater number of lives lost to famine and starvation. It is time the empowerment of the Internet is placed at the heart of any country’s agenda. Leaders should embrace it as an integral component of their governance, rather than antagonising it. Only then, will Africa can begin owning the solutions to its problems.

Photo: Akon