Nigeria is ramping up its environmental education efforts as floods and soil erosion increase due to climate change. The latest education initiative is a card game called Play, Learn and Act Now, or PLAN. Gibson Emeka has this story from Abuja, Nigeria.
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Day: October 23, 2023
The coming election to choose the World Health Organization’s next chief of the South-East Asia Regional Office, or SEARO, has become contentious as the person who takes up that post could influence the health of billions of people.
The daughter of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is one of two candidates for the SEARO position. Saima Wazed’s nomination has sparked controversy with many health experts calling it “nepotism,” and expressing concern over the election process to fill senior roles at the U.N. health body.
A candidate for the SEARO post should have a “strong technical and public health background and extensive experience in global health”, according to the WHO website. The candidate should also have “competency in organizational management” and “proven historical evidence for public health leadership”, the website says.
The next SEARO chief will be elected through a secret ballot by the region’s 11 member countries, which include Bangladesh, Nepal and India. The vote is scheduled to take place in New Delhi during a WHO regional committee meeting Oct. 30-Nov. 2.
Countries in the region nominate candidates to head the WHO regional office.
Wazed was nominated by the government of Bangladesh.
In addition to Wazed, who is a mental health advocate, only one other candidate has been put forward: Shambhu Acharya, a public health expert and senior WHO official who was nominated by Nepal.
Questions have been raised about the disparity between the candidates’ qualifications.
Wazed has a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Barry University, a school in Florida. She has spent nearly a decade serving as an adviser to the director general of the WHO on mental health and autism issues.
Acharya has been with the WHO for almost 30 years. He has experience working with the U.N. body in senior positions and holds a Ph.D. in public health, health policy and financing from the University of North Carolina.
Sixteen public health experts in Nepal issued a statement saying that Acharya “is the better fit” of the two candidates vying for the SEARO director’s position.
“[Acharya] possesses a very strong public health background and has extensive leadership experience in tackling global health issues,” the statement said.
“He knows the public health and medical challenges of our region intimately, having worked for three decades to strengthen responses at local, national, regional and global levels, including in Nepal, Bangladesh and India, apart from his responsibilities at [the] WHO headquarters in Geneva.”
So far there have not been any public statements of support for Wazed from public health experts in Bangladesh.
Right now a strong anti-Hasina wave is sweeping Bangladesh, ahead of next general election all likely to be held in January. With the US closely monitoring the forthcoming election in Bangladesh many believe the ruling Awami League party will not be able to rig the elections this time and lose power. In such a situation many, long-known as pro-Awami League groups, are not speaking in support of Hasina, her party and family members now.
However, AK Abdul Momen, Bangladesh’s foreign minister spoke in support of Wazed’s candidacy several days ago.
In an interview with the Indian newspaper The Hindu, the minister demanded that Nepal withdraw its candidate from the contest for the WHO-SEARO post.
“[Nepal’s candidate] had been working in the WHO for the last 30 years and was in a decision-making position. So why have [health indices] not improved in the whole of the South East Asian region, even though he himself is a person of South Asian origin?” Momen asked while adding that Acharya should “step down” from the race for the WHO-SEARO post.
Wazed, who has held advisory positions at some Bangladesh government mental health bodies, rebuffed accusations that her nomination was “fueled by nepotism” because her mother is the prime minister. She said those critical of her nomination were overlooking her experience and achievements in the field of mental health.
“They ignore that I have been an adviser to WHO’s DG on Mental Health & Autism, or that I have been a member of the WHO’s Expert Advisory Panel on mental health for almost a decade,” Wazed wrote in an Inter Press Service opinion piece earlier this month.
“They do not mention that I am [the] chief adviser to Bangladesh’s National Mental Health Strategic Plan, or that I was a technical expert for Bangladesh’s National Mental Health Act of 2018,” she wrote.
Bangladesh’s nomination of Wazed has also come under scrutiny by several activists and public health experts.
Bishow Parajuli, former U.N. resident coordinator and U.N. Development Program representative in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, said that Wazed has limited experience and qualifications to assume such a leadership position.
“In a country with so many qualified and competent health professionals, the nomination of Ms. Wazed, and her use of the Prime Ministerial Office to engage with the various world leaders, also shows nepotism and the influence of her mother’s office in the process. …The selection must be made ‘on the basis of merits,’” he said in emailed comments.
Paris-based Bangladeshi social activist and physician Pinaki Bhattacharya said Wazed has none of the required qualifications for the WHO-SEARO post.
“Hasina and her daughter are not aware that while being a descendant of the powerful can give one political advantage, the position of a professional international health leader requires the necessary education, skills and talent,” he told VOA.
In recent weeks, Wazed accompanied her mother, Sheikh Hasina, on a high-profile diplomatic tour attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York and the summit in New Delhi of the 20 biggest economies, known as the G20. Wazed accompanied Prime Minister Hasina during her meetings with U.S. President Joe Biden, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Wazed said she is used to being held to different professional standards than men, and having her identity reduced to simply being “her mother’s daughter,” which is blatant sexism, Wazed said.
Wazed has not responded to a VOA email requesting direct comment on the nepotism issue.
Kent Buse is director of the Global Healthier Societies Program at The George Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London. Buse told VOA that the rules governing the selection of directors across all WHO regions need considerable reform to ensure public confidence in the merit-based nature of the organization.
“This relates to improving transparency and delivering enhanced oversight of the election process. This should include better scrutiny of the candidate’s compliance with the existing codes of conduct governing the campaign processes.”
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Countries are deadlocked over how to design a fund to help countries recover and rebuild from climate change-driven damage, with just over 30 days left before crucial United Nations climate negotiations kick off in Dubai.
Two dozen countries involved in a committee tasked with designing a “loss and damage” fund wrapped up the last meeting in the early hours of Saturday in Aswan, Egypt, with developing and developed countries at odds over central questions: which entity should oversee the fund, who should pay and which countries would be eligible to receive funding.
The committee was expected to draft a list of recommendations for implementing the fund, which was agreed in a breakthrough last year at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and would be the first U.N. fund dedicated to addressing irreparable climate-driven damage from drought, floods and rising sea levels.
Instead, the group agreed to meet one more time in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 3 before the COP28 U.N. summit begins in Dubai on Nov. 30 to try to bridge divisions, which could set the tone for the two-week climate negotiations.
“The entire COP28 negotiations could get derailed if developing countries’ priorities on funding for loss and damage are not adequately addressed,” said Preety Bhandari, a senior adviser on finance at the World Resources Institute.
Among the most contentious issues last week was whether the World Bank should host the fund – a position pushed by the U.S. and developed countries – or whether the U.N. create a new body to run the fund, as developing countries have urged.
Housing a fund at the World Bank, whose presidents are appointed by the United States, would give donor countries outsized influence over the fund and result in high fees for recipient countries, developing countries argue.
“Its operational culture, the way in which the World Bank has been assisting countries in their development policies, I think it’s not fit for purpose in relation to what we’re looking for from this new climate facility,” said Cuba’s U.N. Ambassador Pedro Pedroso Cuesta, chair of the G77 (developing countries) and China.
He said the creation of a “new independent entity” to run the fund is the core of its position.
In response to these criticisms, a spokesperson for the World Bank told Reuters: “We are supporting the process and are committed to working with countries once they agree on how to structure the loss and damage fund.”
The United States, the European Union and others want a more targeted fund. The EU wants a fund dedicated to the most “vulnerable” while the U.S. has said the fund should focus on areas like slow-onset climate impacts such as sea-level rise.
Countries are also split over who should pay.
Brandon Wu, director of policy & campaigns for NGO ActionAid USA called on the United States to back off its insistence that the World Bank house the fund.
U.S. negotiator Christina Chan, a senior adviser to Special Envoy on Climate John Kerry, pushed back on criticism that the U.S. is obstructing progress on loss and damage.
“We have been working diligently at every turn to address concerns, problem-solve, and find landing zones,” she said.
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Kenyan developers have designed a mobile phone application that police say is helping to safeguard smartphones from theft, recover stolen cell phones and prevent loss of data. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo
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