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Happy New Year! Will it be a happy one for the U.S. Congress? Color us skeptical.
Also in today’s edition: What does women’s gold jewelry in India have to do with climate change? We explain.
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If we were to apply that adage to the U.S. Congress and you thought that things would somehow work more smoothly in 2024 than they did in 2023, well, I’m not saying you’re a fool, but …
In all seriousness, lawmakers could theoretically get their act together for a less batty, more productive legislative year, but the odds are stacked against them given the corrosive political environment — both in terms of internecine feuds within the Republican Party and the usual sniping between Republicans and Democrats. Plus there’s the fact that lawmakers kicked the can of most everything down the road, leading to a massive, time-sensitive pileup. Not to mention it’s a presidential election year, meaning emotions will be boiling over.
This doesn’t bode well for foreign aid-related business — including the 2024 budget, the reauthorization of the key U.S. global HIV/AIDS initiative, and the farm bill — that was punted into 2024, my colleague Adva Saldinger reports.
So, what do some of the experts she talked to think?
“The bipartisan consensus on foreign aid is being tested. It may still hold, it hasn’t collapsed but it feels like it’s eroded,” says Justin Fugle of Plan USA.
“There is a big gap that has to be bridged, and I think they’ll find a way to bridge it, but it’s going to be the usual last-minute fire drill,” says Bill O’Keefe of Catholic Relief Services.
Liz Schrayer of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition has a stark warning: “There’s literally red warning lights that are flashing for 2024 and whether it’s terrorism, authoritarianism, global hunger, if we ignore it we do so at our peril.”
Read: Foreign aid 'red warning lights' to watch in the US Congress in 2024 (Pro)
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Women’s gold jewelry is special not only because of its financial worth but also because of its sentimental value. This is particularly true in countries such as India — the world’s second-largest gold market — where the precious metal has deep cultural significance.
But the cherished commodity has become collateral in the battle against climate change — literally.
As weather extremes such as heat waves, droughts, and floods hammer crops in India, farmers are increasingly turning to loans where gold jewelry is offered up as collateral. This gold is a gendered asset that is often gifted to women when they marry.
“The gold is given to them by their parents, so the women don’t want to sell it but they have no other asset. ... Given that the society is patriarchal they have no choice but to listen to their husbands and give away their gold,” Shubhangi Rathod, an agriculture officer in India, tells Devex contributor Disha Shetty.
Disha spoke to several women farmers in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, and the interviews threw up a similar pattern: Weather destroyed the crops, so they mortgaged or sold their gold jewelry to tide the family over and keep the children in school.
The importance of gold and farming for Indian women is hard to overstate. Gold gives women the financial security to leave their husbands. Meanwhile, 80% of women in rural areas work in agriculture, although only a small fraction own the land, limiting their agency and leaving them dependent on an asset that can be seized whenever the weather doesn’t cooperate.
Read: Women’s jewelry acts as a buffer against climate change in India
In the race for COVID-19 vaccines, Africa was left behind. It’s trying to catch up before the next pandemic strikes.
German biotechnology company BioNTech recently unveiled its new $150 million modular messenger RNA vaccine manufacturing facility made up of a set of stacked shipping containers in the Rwandan capital of Kigali — part of a campaign for the continent to achieve pharmaceutical sovereignty.
Within two years, the Kigali facility is expected to be able to produce up to 50 million mRNA vaccine doses per year, my colleague Sara Jerving reports.
“Vaccine inequity hit Africa hard during the pandemic,” said Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the ceremony. “We found ourselves knocking on every door in search of doses. The situation was intolerable.”
In the thick of this crisis, the African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention spearheaded the Partnership for Africa Vaccine Manufacturing to ensure the situation would never repeat itself. The partnership aims to elevate the continent from locally producing only about 1% of the vaccines consumed by its population to 60% by 2040.
Read: BioNTech unveils its first mRNA manufacturing facility in Africa
Somalia has long been seen as a dysfunctional nation — and while it’s still no Shangri-La, it has made tremendous strides.
One of the biggest came Dec. 13, when the Horn of Africa country completed a sweeping debt relief deal under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, or HIPC, Initiative. This collective International Monetary Fund-World Bank effort slashed Somalia’s external debt to under $700 million from around $5.3 billion in 2018. To put that into perspective, that means debt will plunge from 64% of gross domestic product to less than 6% of GDP.
“The Somali authorities deserve credit. Successive Somali governments over the last 10 years have built the systems and capacities and undertaken ambitious reforms,” writes Alexia Latortue, assistant secretary of international trade and development at the U.S. Treasury Department, in an opinion article for Devex. “They did this all while coming out of decades of civil war, facing a global pandemic and multiple climate shocks, and battling the extremist group al-Shabab, which continues to inflict harm on the Somali people.”
Opinion: How Somalia’s historic debt relief achievement came about
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South Africa filed a landmark case at the United Nations’ top court, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and seeking an order to cease attacks. [AP News]
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution urging the appointment of a special envoy for Afghanistan, aimed at enhancing engagement with the country and its Taliban leaders. [France 24]
Burundi is the latest country to push against LGBTQ+ rights globally, and its president, Évariste Ndayishimiye, also asserts a stance against foreign aid tied to supporting LGBTQ+ relations. [Bloomberg]
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