'I am Hindustan... I am ashamed’

Vincent lives in Derry, Northern Ireland, where he usually guides tourists through some of the areas most hit by the Troubles. Although his activity immerses him in the history of the armed conflict that for three decades saw Catholics and Protestants opposed against each other, he has been optimistic that in recent years the two communities have taken important steps towards reconciliation. With a smile, the republican confides: "I have three daughters and all three are married to Protestants".

This week Northern Ireland is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. It was on the 10th of April 1998 that the historic multi-party deal between Irish and British forces put an end to the violent clash that killed 3,500 people and injured more than 20,000.

However, despite the advances reached between both communities in the past 20 years, Brexit is now calling into question many of the achievements. Two years after the vote that decided the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, the possibility of the return of a hard border along the 500 kilometres that separates the North and the South of Ireland is generating anxiety among communities still struggling to overcome ghosts of a bloody past. They fear the return of violence to a territory where wounds remain open.

Today, residents of cities such as Belfast or Derry live peacefully, but the violent past is still alive in people’s memory and the polarisation remains stark. The so-called "peace walls" erected to protect the population from sectarian violence continues to divide Catholic and Protestant communities in Belfast, while children still attend a system of education characterised by religious segregation.

That is why today, when we celebrate the progress brought by the historic agreement reached 20 years ago, it is important to keep peace at the top of the agenda.

In many ways, watching Mark Zuckerberg testify in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday and Wednesday, 10-11 April, felt like history in the making. Myself, alongside millions of others, found ourselves glued to the live-streaming of the event—ironically, my fix was being televised through Facebook. Because Facebook is where I, alongside 45% of American adults, get at least some of our news. Which feeds into and plays a large role in this extraordinary moment in time.

Following the Cambridge Analytica data breach expose and the data protection mechanisms that this event has set in motion, both in the U.S. – Zuckerberg’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees is but a trophy of this – and in the EU with the nearing GDPR law, this is a turning moment for what we understand as data protection and hopefully a eureka moment for us all.

“How will Facebook and other companies take greater responsibility for what happens on their platforms? How will you protect users’ data? How will you inform users’ about the changes that you are making? And how do you intend to proactively stop harmful conduct instead of being forced to respond to it months or years later.” Senator John Thune said in his opening speech. “We are listening, America’s listening, and quite possibly the world is listening too.”

At the time of the testimony, as chairman Mr. Grassley acutely noted, despite collecting enormous amounts of data from its users, including consumers’ contact lists, networks, location and third parties, the company’s data policy is only a few pages long. Banian examples embellish the policy section, such as ‘Connecting with friends’. But in depth explanation of the complex web behind how this data is collected, handled and used is entirely absent.  

When asked why the company doesn’t disclose to its users all the ways in which their data might be used by Facebook, or any other third parties, Zuckerberg said it was for the benefits of user accessibility. His reasoning being that too much information – particularly legal language that breaks down the enormity of claus and policies – will disengage users and make the data policy section daunting.

From Cory Booker's questioning of the CEO on the ProRepublica 2016 investigation that revealed Facebook allowed advertisers to target consumers by race, to why the company did not notify its users in 2015 when it realised Camridge Analytica had misused their data. The motivations behind Facebook’s negligence of data protection for its 1.4 billion daily users are manyfold. But for me, Zuckerberg’s comment on the company’s seeming efforts to simplify data policies for the benefits of its users is key. What if companies’ ethos was to empower the lives of their users while working to educate them too? Yes, data policies are complex, but basic understanding of what exactly we consent to is invaluable – just as it is achievable. As we learn how to navigate through present and nearing future realities that are raising very important ethical questions about human rights, tech tycoons are as blind as the consumers, policy makers and regulators; it is a level playing field that demands as much vigilance from users as it does from Facebook’s executive developers. We can no longer afford to have policies simplified for us – this is the age of information. And this historical moment is when we should awake from autopilot and start living up to its tag line.

Photo: CC BY 2.0, via flickr/Andrew Feinberg

The first ever Africa Climate Week that took place last week is coalescing various players with a rallying call to move from planning to action in the implementation of the Paris Agreement, while keeping a pulse on the commitment of the continent to achieve Sustainable Development Goals.

The gathering is timely, coming at a time when Africa has been identified as the continent that will be greatly affected by weather vagaries, leaving a majority of its population vulnerable and its key economic sectors, such as agriculture, at risk.

But it is also an opportune time for Africa to have a candid conversation about its contribution to climate change acceleration. From South Africa emitting more carbon than Britain, Zambia’s obsession with energy sources that have seen it destroy more of its vegetation than Brazil, to numerous African countries that are in the process of setting up coal fired power stations that further exacerbates environmental damage, it can no longer be business as usual when it comes to raising awareness around polluting and destructive industries in the continent.

As the clarion call to leave no one behind in the climate change debate gains momentum, a proactive plan on how the continent needs to handle this is of utmost importance and urgency. Numerous technologies that oscillates around adaptation and mitigation have been developed, many by a new generation of innovators working to advance their communities. This is also the generation who is set to be hardest hit by the changes in weather. Yet currently many noble innovations have stalled at concept stage as a result of lack of resources and requisite support.

Many of the forums around climate change that have taken place before have produced dozens of documents with impressive recommendations, yet until now, these new solutions only end up gathering dust in libraries. This new forum must dare to be different by going back to the basics, having conversations with those expected to take the greatest hit from climate change: farmers, pastoralists and small businesses and work towards targeting interventions from their grass root perspective.

With just twelve years to the deadline of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, we must start having tangible results, otherwise our aspirations for a safer, cleaner planet are just words on paper. The Africa Climate Week, which is projected to be an annual meet, must position Africa to lead from the front in global climate action.

Photo: ECA

Rumbling around the vast belly of the internet is the undigested statistic that 11% of the world's gold is owned by Indian housewives. There's of course no way of knowing whether this is true or not, but nevertheless, commentators have transformed this estimate into a fact; such is the power of an online statistic. 

A more substantial fact is to say that India is obsessed with gold. Gold imports have risen year on year since the early 2000s, and the only time gold purchasing fell below its regular phenomenal sales rate was during the 2016-2017 cash crisis, which saw middle class Indians unable to withdraw cash due to the government's poor cash handling. 

Gold is an inviolable symbol of the Indian good life. There may be no single analogue in the west: a good job, a nice car, a big house, club memberships, money — all single elements in the western good life, but none of them as singular and all-encompassing as gold is for Indians. Perhaps tulips in 17th Century Amsterdam or high-quality mushrooms in Japan can act as suitable analogues. 

With such a high value placed on gold and jewellery in India, it's no surprise that smaller, parasitic markets thrive on the back of the mammoth. These include markets for fake gold, fake jewellery and a black market for stolen objects. These may seem like the innocuous and expected consequences of such a popular market, but they belie much darker truths. 

70 children have recently been saved from an imitation gold jewellery factory in Gujarat, a west coast state in India. The jewellery was due to be sold in the U.K., U.S. and European markets. Had not two children run away from the factory to alert the police, it surely would have been way on its way to those markets. According to The Guardian, "Questioning of employers and the children was in turn revealing other workshops that employ children in the nearly £109m industry with which Rajkot has become synonymous."

Detection of children in supply chains is difficult, especially in industries and countries where work is informal and outsourced. Nevertheless, the government and police hope to save more children from a lifelong sentence to slavery in the manufacture of cheap ornaments. Gold industries, like the diamond ones, may have to start doing much more to show how and where their objects come from.

Image: Children working in an imitation jewellery factory, Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images

Hundreds marched the streets of Tel Aviv on Tuesday, April 3, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abrupt decision to deport thousands of migrants from Israel, just hours after agreeing with the U.N. to help resettle them in the west and in the country. Israelis alongside migrants, asylum seekers and refugees protested. Some legal, some not. Most of them are Eritrean and Sudanese, technically protected from deportation under international law, pushed forward by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). They are marching for their right to live in dignity. But what might not be as apparent, is that they are also marching for the future of Israel.  

There are currently around 38,000 documented Eritrean and Sudanese migrants living in Israel, many of whom have entered the country illegally by foot through Egypt before the highly secured fence was completed in 2012. These are individuals who have left the turmoil in their own country, endured inhumane conditions and payed huge sums of money for this journey to Israel – which often includes human trafficking, work camps, rape, loss of family members and violence. Without this crucial U.N. agreement to resettle 16,000 migrants in western countries and give temporary residency to an equal number in Israel, these individuals – some of which have built a new life in Israel, learnt the language, integrated into work (although this work usually entails low paid manual labour) – are now facing a future of legal limbo within Israel. Or worst, deportation back to their birth country, or a third country. Many face prosecution if they are returned home.

Netanyahu’s jolting change of hearts on the agreement with the U.N. has put him, his Likud party, and the country he is running under unprecedented scrutiny. Yes, Israel is indeed always under fire from international parties, yet this time round, and perhaps more importantly, it is the repercussion Netanyahu’s decision has had locally that’s worth noting.

The initial agreement came as a surprise to many Israeli citizens, attracting a high level of media attention from the get go. Since February, under a deportation initiative pushed forward by the hardliners in Netanyahu’s coalition, African male migrants were issued cold warnings, notifying them of a two-month evacuation period or prosecution. As reported by the Washington Post, “The migrants were offered $3,500 to relocate to an unnamed “third country” — widely reported to be Uganda or Rwanda — or return to their home country.” The policy was temporarily halted on March 15th as a result of pressure put on the Israeli government by local advocacy groups working on behalf of migrants in the country.

What Netanyahu’s shocking incoherence revealed to his country’s citizens is that the man sitting in the high office is unable to stand against the pressure of his own party and coalition. And most importantly, that his decisions are derived from his desperation to maintain the keys to that office. Naftali Bennett, Minister of Education and leader of the nationalist Jewish Home party, currently in coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud, tweeted Tuesday that the Prime Minister should “cancel it altogether” and “Its approval would cause generations of crying and set a precedent in Israel granting residency for illegal infiltrators,”. With the quick rise of hardliners in the country, Netanyahu could not let this U.N. agreement destroy his credibility within the right – and with that, allowing Bennett – his potential competitor – to grab a slice of his approval rates across the country.

Beyond the tragic inhumanity of this deportation policy and disregard to the country’s responsibility to aid human life – of any nationality or religion – what Netanyahu’s actions reveal is that he has no hesitation to expose the true political agenda of his so-called ‘right-wing’ party. It is a nationalist extremist mechanism working to negate equality and fuel hatred; to point out our differences rather than commonalities; to separate any idea of peace and co-existence from the idea of an Israeli country and ultimately – to create a Netanyahu autocracy. At any cost.

Photo: zeevveez

Despite living in an era of increasing abundance and production of greater quantities of food than ever in history, one in seven people are still officially labelled as ‘undernourished’ by the United Nations. Instead of decreasing starvation rates, thanks to the supposed benefits of intensive farming, the truth is that hunger has been on the rise since 2014. The appalling irony is that the vast majority of the world’s starving people (75%) are agricultural workers.

Hunger, therefore, is a huge paradox of modern times: if the world today produces enough food to sustain the nutritional requirements of 12 billion people, how can we explain that around the world 30,000 people die of hunger every single day?

The figures, provided by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, demonstrate that agriculture is an industry of tragic contradictions.

Today, the most significant challenge in fighting global hunger is not related to food production, but rather distribution, as a lack of access to food is what most greatly perpetuates hunger. By turning agriculture into a profitable business, now in the hands of a few multinationals, food has become a commodity. Agricultural modernisation has, consequently, failed to eradicate hunger and has, instead, had disastrous environmental impacts, resulting in the homogenisation of food, whilst promoting monoculture dedicated to export markets and not providing sufficient food for local populations.

The model of intensive farming has failed because it hasn’t achieved its principal goal: to feed people. This is why, in order to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030, patterns of agricultural production and distribution must be fundamentally altered so they are no longer subject to the logic of market forces.

Moreover, the distribution sector must take a large share of the blame. Intermediaries have been allowed to become too powerful in past decades, having been able to make decisions that greatly affect the global population, deciding on what is eaten and how much producers are paid.

It is for all these reasons and many more that several world-class collectives have organised themselves in the defence of models of implementation of food sovereignty, focussing on diversity, consuming local produce, regaining freedom of choice and limiting dependence on external food markets. So that the right to eat becomes the priority.

The recent decision by African countries – under the ambit of African Union – to open up their borders and allow free movement of people, goods and services within the continent has heralded one of the largest world free trade agreements after the Word Trade Organisation, while positioning Africa to reap more from global commerce.

With a combined population of 1.2 billion people and a cumulative GDP of over $2 trillion, Africa is set to flourish from an arrangement that further emboldens the integration resolve as captured in the United Nations Africa Agenda 2063 blueprint.

The continent currently functions within some of the most rigid and bureaucratic trade rules that have seen it ranked dismally in the cost of doing business indices. Non-tariff barriers for example, the greatest threat to free trade, have had the concomitant effect of threatening continental integration. The end results is that trade within Africa is less than 20 percent, compared to other established global blocs, whose intra trade is up to four times higher.

It is easier for foreigners to do business in Africa than it is for Africans to trade with themselves. The continent is continuously hailed as one to watch, with seven of the world's ten fastest-growing economies being African. The unprecedented infrastructural growth, the vibrant and highly skilled young generation and the burgeoning middle class gives the continent a competitive edge that needs to be tapped, locally.

The implementation of free trade laws is set to be a long journey. It will be a delicate balancing act as countries, traditionally used for protectionist policies, now cede their borders. But commitment to the overall good, translating political declarations into tangible actions and the courage to envision a bigger Africa must be the guiding light during every step of the journey. In the words of Rwandan president and African Union Chairperson Paul Kagame: “Profit and power are not an end in themselves, they are a tool for creating prosperity for every African.”

Photo: Our Africa

Returning home after years of living away can be an exciting experience for anyone, except for Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel laureate in history, who has returned to her home country of Pakistan for the first time after almost six years. 

The global icon for girls’ education, Malala Yosufzai (named after the brave Afghan girl of Maiwand who mobilised her countrymen against the invading British army in the 19th century) touched down in her hometown Swat last week. Celebrated worldwide for her courage and dedication towards education in the wake of brutal Taliban militancy, the young woman was surrounded by a handful of government officials under army-controlled security during this landmark visit.

In an emotional address, Malala dubbed her homecoming as a dream-come-true moment. "Today is the happiest day of my life,” she expressed in her mother-tongue Pashto.

In October 2012, Malala — then 15 years old — was shot in the head at point-blank range by Taliban gunmen as she was returning from her school in Swat valley. She suffered bullet injuries and was admitted to the local military hospital, but was later flown to the U.K. for further treatment.

In spite of her rapid rise to fame, or perhaps due to her global reputation, a significant number of people in Pakistan, a country of some 200 million citizens, still see her as a foreign ‘stooge’, which mounts to prevailing Westophobia in the backdrop of the west's growing Islamophobia. 

In Lahore, Pakistan’s second biggest city, ‘I am not Malala Day’ was celebrated to condemn the arrival of the Nobel laureate. The President of All Pakistan Private Schools Federation, Kashif Mirza, representing over 200,000 private schools embarked on this mission over Malala’s alleged anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam views. While the top leader of the group who has openly taken responsibility for the attack on Malala, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), remains in control of security forces. Ehsanullah Eshan, a former mouthpiece of the (TTP) has proudly claimed responsibility for a number of brazen militant attacks across the country for years, leaving scores of civilians, including women and children, dead and wounded.

In a recent New York Times op-ed on the matter, Mohammad Hanif, a leading Pakistani journalist was completely removed from the NYT’s edition published in Pakistan last year. Hanif had written that with Ehsan’s appearance, the Pakistani Army seemed to be sending this message: "You can kill thousands of Pakistanis, but if you later testify that you hate India as much as we do, everything will be forgiven."

Photo: Change.org