Month: March 2023

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says he would not “object” to designating Russia’s Wagner mercenary group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, calling its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a “war criminal.”

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Garland was asked by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, if he agreed that the Wagner group “should be a Foreign Terrorist Organization under U.S. law.”

“I think they’re an organization that is committing war crimes, an organization that’s damaging the United States,” Garland said, noting that the designation is made by the State Department.

Graham, along with a bipartisan group of senators, is sponsoring legislation that would direct the secretary of state to designate Wagner as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Pressed by Graham if he would “object to me making it a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” Garland said, “I don’t object, but I’d defer in the end to the State Department.”

Although the Justice Department is not directly involved in designating foreign terrorist groups, Garland’s comments amount to an endorsement in the case of Wagner.

Before making a designation, the secretary of state is required to consult both the attorney general and the treasury secretary.

“The fact that he would not object, I think, is important because what that indicates to me is the fact that in his view … the activities of the Wagner Group throughout the world, I’d say, primarily in Africa, meet the statutory definitions,” said James Petrila, a retired CIA lawyer now an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School.

Founded in 2014, the Wagner Group is run by Prigozhin, a sanctioned oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

With an estimated 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, the majority recruited from Russia’s prisons, the paramilitary force has become a veritable arm of the Russian military in Ukraine. It is also accused of committing war crimes and other abuses in Ukraine and elsewhere.

In recent months, the U.S. government has sought to crack down on the Wagner Group.

In December, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken designated the group as an “entity of particular concern.”

In January, the U.S. Treasury Department labeled it a Transnational Criminal Organization, a designation that allows the government to seize and block its assets.

But Graham and others pressing for designating Wagner as a Foreign Terrorist Organization say these measures don’t go far enough.

Of far greater consequence for the group, they say, would be an FTO designation.

Among other things, it would make providing support of any kind to Wagner tantamount to the provision of “material support to terrorism.”

“What that means is that individuals who provide material support, which is broadly defined, to an FTO, have violated the material support to terrorism statutes,” Petrila said.

While the designation won’t end all support for Wagner, it could make some legitimate businesses that currently do business with the group more reluctant, Petrila said.

The State Department has not said whether it is considering applying the designation to Wagner. But in a recent interview with VOA, Beth van Schaack, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice said, “It’s extremely important that the most serious consequences that we have in terms of sanctions and accountability criminal accountability, also be focused on the Wagner Group.”

Prigozhin has long been in the Justice Department’s crosshairs.

In 2018 he was indicted in connection with Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

As part of the effort, the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based “troll farm” controlled by Prigozhin, allegedly created hundreds of fictitious online personas and used the stolen identities of Americans.

The FBI is offering $250,000 for information leading to his arrest.

Branding Prigozhin a “war criminal,” Garland said, “Maybe that’s inappropriate for me to say as a judge before getting all the evidence, but I think we have more than sufficient evidence at this point for me to feel that way.”

Source: Voice of America

The number of children without access to social protection services is increasing every year, putting them at risk of poverty, hunger and discrimination, according to a new report published by the Organization Labor International (ILO) and UNICEF.

The report, More than a billion reasons: The urgent need to build universal social protection for children , warns that between 2016 and 2020, another 50 million children aged 0-15 did not receive basic social protection benefits (particularly child benefits, paid in cash or through tax credits), bringing the total number of children under 15 in this situation to 1.46 billion globally.

“Ultimately, strengthening efforts to ensure adequate investment in universal social protection for children, ideally through universal child benefits to support families at all times, is an ethical and rational decision, and it sets us on the right path towards sustainable development and social justice,” said Shahra Razavi, Director of the ILO’s Department of Social Protection.

According to the report, child and family benefit coverage rates declined or stagnated in all regions of the world between 2016 and 2020, meaning that no country is on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of achieving broad social protection coverage by 2030. For example, in Latin America and the Caribbean, coverage dropped significantly from around 51% to 42%, while in other regions it has stagnated or remains low. In Central Asia and South Asia; East Asia and Southeast Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; Western Asia and North Africa, coverage rates are around 21%, 14%, 11% and 28% respectively since 2016.

When they do not receive adequate social protection, boys and girls are more exposed to poverty, disease, lack of schooling and malnutrition, and are more likely to fall prey to early marriage and child labour.

Globally, children are twice as likely as adults to live in extreme poverty (those struggling to survive on less than $1.90 (PPP*) a day), approximately 356 million children. One billion children also live in a situation of multidimensional poverty or, what is the same, lack access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water. The number of boys and girls living in multidimensional poverty increased by 15% during the COVID-19 pandemic, which represented a setback in the progress that had been made to date in reducing child poverty and underscored the urgent need to grant them social protection.

In addition, the pandemic made it clear that social protection is a fundamental response in times of crisis. Almost all the world’s governments introduced new social protection programs or quickly adapted existing schemes to support children and families, but most failed to make permanent reforms aimed at ensuring protection against future crises, according to the report.

“When families face economic hardship, food insecurity, conflict and weather-related disasters, universal child benefits can be vital,” said Natalia Winder-Rossi, UNICEF Director of Social Policy and Social Protection. “There is an urgent need to strengthen, expand and invest in child-sensitive and crisis-responsive social protection systems to protect children from poverty and increase resilience. of the most vulnerable households.

The report shows that all countries, regardless of their level of development, have two options: “a best path”, or an investment strategy that strengthens social protection systems; and “an easy way”, a strategy that skips the necessary investments and leaves millions of children behind.

In order to reverse the negative trend, the ILO and UNICEF urge policymakers to take decisive steps to achieve universal social protection for all children, through measures such as the following:

Invest in child benefits, which are a proven and cost-effective way to combat child poverty and ensure children thrive.

Provide a range of child benefits through national social protection systems that also connect families with essential health and social services, such as high-quality free or accessible childcare.

Develop rights-based social protection systems that are gender-sensitive and inclusive and capable of responding to crises to address inequalities; and that offer better results for girls and women, migrant children and children subjected to child labour, for example.

Guarantee sustainable financing for social protection systems through the mobilization of national resources and increasing the allocation of budgets for children.

Strengthen social protection for parents and carers by ensuring access to decent employment and adequate benefits, such as unemployment, sickness, maternity, disability and retirement benefits.

Source: UN Children’s Fund

Last year, one of the world’s largest refugee camps quietly achieved a remarkable feat. Nyarugusu refugee camp hosts more than 130,000 refugees, almost three times its original capacity. Despite this, not one woman died while giving birth in the camp.

What makes this a notable success is that Tanzania has a relatively high maternal mortality ratio of 524 deaths per 100,000 live births (2017). This is much higher than the global average of 211 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, and also the regional average for East and Southern Africa, of 391 per 100,000.

The camp’s zero maternal death rate bucked the trend.

How a woman at risk was kept safe

To understand the importance of this achievement, we considered the case of Faila Kashindi, 27, who has lived in the camp since her family fled the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo when she was five years old.

While pregnant with her fourth child, Ms. Kashindi received regular visits from community health-care workers, who provided critical information to guide a healthy pregnancy.

She followed their recommendation for timely antenatal care visits. During one of these sessions she became concerned, as an ultrasound scan showed her baby was large.

“I was worried, but the doctors and nurses provided counselling, and then I relaxed,” Ms. Kashindi said. The ultrasound was reassuring: “I could see that my baby was okay.”

When it came time to give birth, she underwent a Caesarean section due to her baby’s large size. In attendance during the procedure was a skilled health-care worker trained in providing Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (CEmONC), and infection prevention and control.

All went according to plan. “The baby and I are healthy and doing well,” Ms. Kashindi said.

What’s behind Nyarugusu’s high success rate?

More than 99 per cent of deliveries in the refugee camp are conducted by skilled health-care workers, an exceptional rate made possible by high community awareness of the importance of receiving early medical assistance. Well sensitized, the camp’s inhabitants have developed appropriate medical-seeking behaviour.

It is also the result of the 15 skilled nurse midwives deployed to the camp with UNFPA support, the ongoing CEmONC training nurse-midwives receive to boost their capacities and the consistent stocking of maternal health supplies. All of these critical elements for a zero maternal death rate are supported by UNFPA and members of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Sub-Working Group for the refugee operation in North-western Tanzania.

A steady decline preceded the road to zero maternal deaths. In 2019, the camp recorded five maternal deaths, then four in 2020 and four in 2021, according to Health Information System data.

In the year 2022, the goal of zero maternal deaths was reached at the camp.

Achieving this transformative result can be explained through the eyes of Benedicta Kweslema, a nurse-midwife with 28 years as an enrolled nurse, who has attended to mothers and newborns during delivery in Nyarugusu’s main hospital maternity wing for the past two years.

The key to getting to zero

Ms. Kweslema and her colleagues improved their skills through two recent UNFPA-supported training sessions. The first, on CEmONC, covered emergency preparedness, obstetric emergency response, and essential new-born care. The second built capacity in infection prevention and control, including hand hygiene, prevention of surgical site infections and injection safety.

Their ability to care for mothers has been strengthened.

“This training expanded our technical skills and knowledge on monitoring of labour and early detection of danger signs to make deliveries safer,” she said. “I am better able to identify direct and indirect needs, and more effectively care for patients.”

As a direct result, Ms. Kweslema has built better relationships with mothers and the refugee community, increasing their health-seeking behaviour – a self-reinforcing cycle.

“The training improved nurse-patient relationships, and enhanced trust from the refugee community, leading to an increased number of women seeking health services, and an increased number of safe deliveries at our health facilities.”

A strong team effort

UNFPA, sister UN agencies, local and international NGOs, and development partners support the Government of Tanzania in delivering quality comprehensive maternal health care. Funding for maternal health care is provided by the Government of Ireland, UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), and UNFPA, with further funding to support Kigoma refugee camps provided by the Governments of Norway and Sweden, KOICA, and UN agencies.

In 2021, 47 health workers in Kigoma refugee camps (Nyarugusu, Nduta, and Mtendeli) received specialized UNFPA-supported training in monitoring labour, infection prevention control and focused antenatal care. This enhanced their knowledge and competence in the monitoring of labour and delivery using a partograph, and in provision of quality antenatal care.

For the timely interventions at Nyarugusu, Ms. Kashindi and her husband are grateful. “I thank the health-care workers, nurses and doctors for the high quality, thoughtful services they provided during labour and delivery, and for welcoming my baby into the world,” she said.

Source: United Nations Population Fund