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14th October 201915th Safar,1441

MONDAY

Siddiq Taworr: Strong Political and National Will to Make Peace Reality

Egypt: We Support Sudan’s Options and Will in Shaping Its Future

By / Al-Sammani Awadallah

Khartoum - The round of negotiations between the Suda-nese government and the Revolutionary Front will begin today in Juba with the aim of completing the peace pro-cess in Sudan, according to the constitutional document that set the first six months of the interim period for the peace process.According to the constitutional and political document that was signed, peace is a top priority for the transitional government, where the Sudanese government and the Revolutionary Front confirmed their readiness for the ne-gotiating round to turn the page of war, expressing their optimism that peace will be achieved soon because there is a will on both sides to reach it. Member of the Sovereign Council, Siddiq Tawor re-vealed the adoption of the formation of the “Supreme Peace Council” headed by the Chairman of the Sover-eign Council, First Lieutenant General Abdul Fattah Al Burhan, and the membership of some members of the Sovereign Council, ministers and some Sudanese experts, pointing out that the council will be the umbrella spon-sor of all peace files, describing it as a starting point for opening the peace file in terms of the formation of com-missions, committees, delegations and negotiating tracks.”There is a sincere and serious desire to reach peace, and what and stimulates hope and optimism that we do not

deal as parties conflicting on the sharing of power and wealth, but we are partners of one country and partners in the achievement of this change, and that peace and stability are of the requirements of the masses that have achieved this change, It is an obligation for us to relax the masses of armed conflict,” Tawor said.Tawor stressed that there is a strong political and national will to make peace a reality.For his part, spokesman for the Revolutionary Front, Osa-ma Saeed, said, “We expect that the next negotiations to go well and peace will be achieved in a short period after we determined for the first time in the history of the Suda-nese negotiations that the rounds start on October 14 and end on December 14,” adding “For the first time, we see that there is political will on the part of the government, and this was reflected in the declaration of confidence-building measures and the prelude to the negotiation that we signed in Juba on September 11, where we saw a real will from the other side to achieve peace’.He pointed out that the Revolutionary Front is prepar-ing for negotiations by defining its vision in a workshop held in Addis Ababa currently organized by the Center for Public Policy and International Law of the United States, adding, “we determined to achieve peace as soon as pos-sible as agreed and we have 4 tracks in these negotiations, Darfur, two aeas, eastern Sudan and one for northern Su-dan”.

Sudan Vision

Khartoum - The Episcopal Church in South Kordofan has affirmed its support for the peace negotiations between the Sudanese parties, scheduled to be held today (Monday) in the capital of South Sudan, Juba.Pastor Samandi Lumbi-ero Abu Jaga, pastor of Merta Church, referred in a state-ment to Sudan News Agency to the Episcopal Church’s vision for the coming peace, adding that the steps initiated

by the transitional government coincide with the Church’s vision towards the cause of peace.He appealed to the ne-gotiating parties to sign a genuine peace of accepting the other, love and renouncing war and fighting, calling on the negotiating parties to seize the opportunity and reach peace.He pointed out that people pray for peace, express-ing hope that this round of negotiations will lead to a final agreement to avoid and save our country from problems.

Zuleikha Abdul Razeq

Khartoum - Meetings of the joint technical committee for the demarcation of the border between Sudan and South Sudan started here yesterday in cooperation with the Afri-can Union Border Program.The Chairman of the National Boundary Commission of the Republic of Sudan, Dr. Moaz Mohamed Ahmed Ten-gu said, in press statements on Sunday, that the commit-tee has an agenda according to the decisions of the joint commission and that it will prepare a draft, a comprehen-sive booklet on the description of the agreed borders and the required procedures, adding that the committee will

also prepare a report on the five disputed areas and then the Joint Commission for Boundary Demarcation will be considered and discussed in preparation for submission to the leadership of the two countries..For his part, Chairman of the Joint Border Demarcation Commission in South Sudan said that the meeting is a continuation of the previous meetings and that the com-mittee is going in the same spirit it was and will reach positive results serve the common interests between the two peoples, stressing that the demarcation of the border is not to create a barrier between the two countries but to create stable areas, where each state shall exercise its policy within its borders.

By / Khalda Elias

Khartoum - Egypt’s Ambassador to Sudan Hossam Issa said that Egypt fully supports Sudan’s options and will in shaping its future, and that it will always support the brothers in Sudan at this important and historic stage.Issa pointed out to Egypt’s political support also, where Egypt hosted the “Revolutionary Front” and “Sudan’s Call” in order to pave the way for a peace agreement in Sudan.During a sympasium entitled (The future of eternal rela-tions between Egypt and Sudan within the framework of the political change), the ambassador stressed the impor-tance of reaching a peace agreement in order to improve the economic situation in Sudan, pointing out that the trade exchange between the two countries has increased

recently, reaching about one billion dollars, saying that economic relations between the two countries have wit-nessed a recent development, pointing out to the seek-ing to consolidate trade relations between them through the launching of joint economic projects benefiting both countries, which will contribute to economic develop-ment in the two countries, pointing out that Egyptian in-vestments in Sudan amount to more than $ 10 billion, and that more than 300 Sudanese companies are operating in Egypt, including 73 in the industrial sector.He called for the importance of a full coordination and a common policy in the Nile file, which represents a com-mon historical link for the two countries.Member of the Council of Sovereignty in Sudan Dr. Sediq Tawor stressed the importance of the role played by Egypt to achieve peace in Sudan..

Episcopal Church in Kadugli Affirms Support for Peace Negotiations

By / Zuleikha Abdul Razeq

Khartoum - Peace negotiations between the delegations of the Sudanese transitional government and armed movements begin today in Juba, and will last until De-cember.It is expected that the opening session will witness the presence of the President of the Transitional Sover-eign Council, First Lieutenant General Abdul Fattah Al Burhan, at the official invitation of the President of the State of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, in addition to the participation of a number of heads of brotherly and friendly countries. The government negotiating delegation, headed by member of the sovereign council, First Lieutenant Gen-eral Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, headed to the capital of South Sudan, Juba, on Sunday to participate in the peace negotiations sponsored by the State of South Sudan.Spokesman for the Sovereign Council, Mohamed Al-Faki, said, in a press statement, that the talks come in an optimistic atmosphere, pointing out that the delegation includes Mohamed Al-Faki Suleiman, Mohamed Has-san Al-Taashi, Lieutenant General Shams Al-Din Al-Kabbashi, Lieutenant General Yasser Al-Atta, Cabinet Minister Omer Bashir Manis and Minister of Federal Government. The State of South Sudan extended an invitation to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to participate in the peace negotiations between the delegations of the Sudanese transitional government and the armed move-ments, where Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Ambas-sador Bassam Radi said that the Egyptian President re-ceived the invitation to attend the negotiations, stressing

that the Juba ne-gotiations come as a continuation of the meeting, which was spon-sored by Egypt-last September, and included the armed move-ments of the Sudanese Revo-lutionary Front, which discussed the procedural arrangements to start negotiations with the transi-tional govern-ment. For his part, Ad-viser to the Presi-dent of the State of South Sudan for security and political affairs confirmed, in press statements, after the arrival of the govern-ment negotiat-ing delegation to Juba Airport yesterday, confirmed the completion of preparations for the negotiations, pointing to the importance of achiev-

ing a comprehensive and sustainable peace to achieve stability in Sudan, sayingthat the Chairman of Sover-eign Council, First Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al

Burhan to arrive in Juba on Monday for the opening session of the negotiations, along with the presidents of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Peace Negotiations between the Government and the Armed Movements to Begin Today in Juba Amid Great Optimism

FFC Call for Benefiting from Doha Peace Agreement By / Khalda Elias

Khartoum- Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) affirmed that the Doha Peace Agreement will be utilized in the comprehensive and sustainable peace process in Sudan, which will accommodate everyone without any exceptions or exclusions.FFC leading figure, Siddig Yousif stressed that the Doha Peace Agree-ment will be included in the peace programs, and work to complete what was not completed, noting that many files need to be addressed in the areas of land and their uses, and resources to fulfill the completion of the implementation of the agreement, saying that the current peace nego-tiations are to complete the compre-hensive peace with the participation of all and that the steps taken and the positive signals issued by those involved in the negotiations are en-couraging steps in the right direction, and will contribute to reaching the desired peace.Qatar has affirmed its support to the Sudanese government and people and to harness its regional and inter-national relations to achieve peace, stability and development in Sudan.

SC to Sudan Vision: We are Optimistic on Reaching Peace Agreement SoonestBy: Al-Sammani Awadallah

Khartoum- The Spokesman of the Sovereign Council (SC), Mo-hamed Al Faki, has said a number of African leaders are to address in Juba today (Monday) the opening session of negotiations be-tween the Sudanese government and the factions of the Revolution-ary Front.Al Faki said in a statement to Sudan Vision that the two parties are keen to resume negotiations at the set date scheduled since last Sep-tember’s session and the Juba Declaration that had been reached.He stressed that the Sudanese government worked in the past pe-riod to create conducive atmosphere for this round of negotiations through release of the prisoners, opening of the humanitarian corri-dors, formation of joint committees from the two parties and hold-ing of a joint workshop between the government and the factions of the Revolutionary Front in Addis Ababa.Al Faki said that the government delegation is ready to resume this round and that the technical committees have finalized their arrangements for the negotiations, expecting reaching great under-standings during this session and as soon as possible, saying that they are very optimistic and that their partners of the Revolutionary Front have similar seriousness and optimism for reaching under-standings for implementation of what is stipulated by Constitution-al Document that devoted the first six months for peace.Al Faki pointed out that there have been many transformations and the members of the Revolutionary Front themselves have acknowl-edged that what was achieved within 24 hours in Juba last Septem-ber could not be reached in eight years when they were negotiating with the former regime. There is a new spirit among the two parties that paves the way for reaching a peace agreement in Sudan, he said.

Meetings of Sudan, South Sudan Border Demarcation committee

DUP-the Original- Welcomes Resumption of Negotiations with MovementsHOME2

EDITORIAL

Hamdok Affirms Concern to Promote Relations with Eritrea

Monday, October 14, 2019

Sudan Participates in Arab Housing Ministers Meeting

Industry Ministry Moves to Exempt Sugar Production Inputs from Customs Fees

UN Hails Sudan’s Support to Peace Agreement in S. SudanBy: Najat Ahmed

Khartoum- Minister of Foreign Affairs Asmaa Mohamed Abdalla received yesterday Ms. Joanna Wronecka, Chairperson of the UN Sanctions Committee, and her ac-companying team of experts.Ms. Joanna praised the role of the Government of Sudan in support-ing peace agreements in South Sudan and asserting that Sudan has an important role in support-ing the peace process. She also praised Sudan’s hosting of refugees from South Sudan. For her part, the Minister wel-comed Ms. Joanna and her accom-panying delegation and affirmed that Sudan and South Sudan are one people in two countries and that Su-dan is keen on peace in South Su-dan.The Minister explained the political developments in Sudan following the historic transformation of the victory of the December Revolu-

tion, which had a positive impact on the relations between Sudan and South Sudan.The Minister stressed that the secu-rity and stability of South Sudan is security and stability for Sudan and therefore Sudan is keen to support the formation of the Government of National Unity on 12 November 2019.

The Minister tackled the challenges facing the formation of the Gov-ernment of National Unity and the implementation of the South Sudan peace agreement, stressing the need to provide the necessary financial resources to implement the agree-ment, which requires huge financial resources beyond the capabilities of the state of South Sudan.

By: Khalda Elyas

Khartoum- Minister of Industry and Trade Medani Abbas Meda-ni has pledged to make contacts with the Ministry of Finance in a view to exempt inputs of the Su-danese Sugar Company from cus-toms fees to enable it to provide sugar commodity to the citizens at reasonable prices.Medani affirmed at a meeting with the leaderships of the Suda-nese Sugar Company yesterday that the Ministry of Energy and Mining is committed to provide fuel to sugar factories at the sub-

sidized rate, referring to the im-portance of carrying out projects that accompany sugar industry, such as ethanol production, elec-tricity generation and livestock production.The minister directed the admin-istration of the company to map out plans for removing challenges facing performance, referring to the possibility of finding financ-ing opportunities in light of the openness Sudan experiences now to the external world.On his part, the Director General of the Sudanese Sugar Company, Engineer Saif-Eddin Ahmed Suli-

man, pointed out that imported sugar poses the biggest threat to the local production of the com-modity, stressing the need to con-trol the importation of this strate-gic commodity.He expected that the production of the company for 2019-2020 season would reach 217000 tons of sugar, compared to 199,000 tons in the previous season.He explained that the area culti-vated with sugarcane at the com-pany this season amounted to 79,000 feddans, while that of the previous season reached 81,000 feddans.

Saudi Arabia, UAE Ship New Batch of wheat to Sudan

Imam Says Issues of Negotiations Should be Holistic

Khartoum) — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates said they shipped a new batch of 200,000 tons of wheat to Sudan.Last April the two countries announced a three-billion aid package to Sudan including $500 mil-lion deposit into the Central Bank and the rest will be in the form of food, medicine, and petroleum products including 540,000 tons of wheat.workers carry packages of wheat from USAIDThe UAE and Saudi Arabia already shipped 340 tonnes of wheat to Sudan including 140,000 tonnes in August 2019, 200,000 tonnes in Sep-tember 2019.“The food aid over the past three months has strengthened Sudan’s food security and economic

stability that are among the core priorities of the Sudanese government,” said Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, Director-General of Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, (ADFD) in statements to the Emir-ates news agency last Friday.Sudan’s finance minister Ibrahim al-Badawi an-nounced last Tuesday from Abu Dhabi that his government has received half of the $ 3 billion aid.In addition to the $500 million deposit, he said they received $ 1 billion worth of petroleum prod-ucts, wheat and products used by the agricultural sector.He added that his country will continue to receive the remaining half

By / SUNA

Khartoum-Chairman of Sudan Liberation Move-ment –the Second Revolution- Abul-Gasim Imam voiced support to peace negotiations set to be launched on October 14 in Juba, stressing that the issues to be negotiated must be holistic as peace is key and strategic for the country stability , say-ing no development, stability and progress without peace . He said in a statement to SUNA that his movement supports peace process and calls for unification of

stances and holistic issues of the negotiations, while urging the government and the armed movements to cooperate and commence talks with spirit of one team.. Imam said” we are partners of peace process which is connected with the stakeholders and we call for addressing the root causes of the war so as peace not be marred with distortions, saying .“ the main point in the peace process is how to transfer words into actions depending on strong will for achieving inclusive peace away from bilat-eralism..

DUP-the Original- Welcomes Resumption of Negotiations with Movements

Sudan appoints head of peace body

By / SUNA

Khartoum -The Democratic Un-ionist Party (DUP)-the original – has welcomed launching of nego-tiations between the government and armed movements in juba this Monday.The leading figure at the party, Yassin Omer Hamza said in a statement to SUNA that the DUP is looking forward that the parties have will and desire to achieve peace and ending war.

He affirmed support of DUP which chaired by Mohamed Osman Al-Mirghani to peace ef-forts , considering the South Sudan President Salva Kiir’s in-vitation to First Lt. Gen. Abdul-Fattah Al-Burhan, Chairman of the Sovereign Council to attend the inaugural sitting as confirma-tion to Juba concern with is-sue of peace in Sudan, renewing their call for unity and national consensus among all Sudanese components.

It is worth mentioning that DUP recently struck memorandum with People’s Movement led by Abdul-Aziz Al-Helo in Cairo in which talks about unifying ef-forts to achieve peace and co-ordination between the two sides during the transitional period . It also to be noted that the party has historic ties with Peo-ple’s Movement as the two sides reached in 1988 a deal known as Al-Mirghani-Garang Agree-ment.

Title: Damn the Novel

Author: Amr Muneer DahabPublisher: Author House - Blooming, In-diana, USAISBN: 9781546271307Challenging Work on Writing FormsAmr Muneer Dahab presents exciting criti-cal views, as well as Arabic literary history in his provoking work Damn the Novel, pub-lished by Author House in Bloomington, Indiana, USA.Amr believes that liter-ary, media, and cultural atmospheres should not only focus on the Novel as if it is the only genre that deserves attention. Es-sayists, poets, biographers, and non-fiction writers should have more of the light and fanfare that narrative fiction seems to attract.Damn the Novel focuses strongly on Arabic literature, using examples taken from well-known Arabic writers to make the targeted argument of literary gen-res. Student of literature worldwide will find an outstanding chance to know about Arabic literature through this iconoclastic book written by the Sudanese critic and published in December 2018.

Vaccination campaign against cholera kicks off in SudanOCHA

An oral cholera vaccination (OCV) campaign was launched on Friday 11 October 2019 in Blue Nile and Sennar states in response to the cholera out-break in the country. More than 1.6 mil-lion people above the age of one will be vaccinated over the coming five days in both states. Since the announcement of the outbreak by the Federal Ministry of Health on 8 September, 273 suspected cholera cases and eight related deaths have been reported as of 11 October in Blue Nile and Sennar states. No chol-era-related deaths have been reported since mid-September. The first round of the campaign will end on 16 October and will be followed by a second round in four to six weeks to provide an additional dose to ensure people are protected for the next three years. The first round of the campaign will end on 16 October and will be followed by a second round in four to six weeks to provide an additional dose to ensure people are pro-tected for the next three year. The vaccines for the campaign were procured using fund-ing from The Global Alliance for Vaccines International (GAVI). GAVI also provided US$ 2 million to cover operational costs for the campaign. On 6 October, humanitarian partners in Su-dan launched the Cholera Readiness and Response Plan (October - December 2019) seeking $20.8 million to address the current outbreak. The response plan is targeting 2.5 million people in eight high-risk states (Blue Nile, Sennar, Gezira, Khartoum, Gadaref,

White Nile, Kassala, and River Nile). Activi-ties will include case management; health ser-vices; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions. Activities will also include mitigating underlying causes of high mortal-ity like severe malnutrition in children under five years and targeting schools with WASH activities and hygiene campaigns. Towards this plan, the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) allocated $3 million which will provide close to 860,000 people with life-saving assistance over three months—as outlined in the response plan. In addition, the Sudan Humanitarian Fund (SHF)—Reserve for Emergency Allocation, allocated $11 mil-lion for floods and cholera response through-out the country. However, the response plan requires more funding urgently. Humanitarian partners are supporting Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health in responding to the cholera outbreak. Public health teams are

closely coordinating with national health authorities to strengthen dis-ease surveillance, monitor water quality, and chlorinate public water supplies. These measures will help protect people who are at highest risk. As part of ongoing response efforts to contain the outbreak, 14 cholera treatment centres with oral rehydration therapy points and dedicated isolation centres have been established and equipped to manage and treat patients in Blue Nile and Sennar states. Health staff have also been trained to quickly and effectively diagnose and treat patients. To date, more than 160

patients have been discharged after receiving treatment. About 3,560 vaccina-tors, more than 2,240 social mobilizers, and almost 70 independent monitors have been trained and deployed in the two states. Over 240 mobile teams have been sent to carry out the campaign, in addition to 251 fixed sites in health facilities and 258 temporary sites including camps, schools, mosques, market areas and other public spaces. Good hygiene practices and the use of safe water are key to preventing further spread of cholera. Rapid response activities include house-to-house visits by hundreds of commu-nity mobilisers who raise awareness among families on how to clean and store cooking and drinking water safely, practice good hy-giene and hand washing, handle food safely, how to take care of a sick family member, and when to seek medical treatment.

Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Visits the NetherlandsBy: Shadia Basheri

Khartoum- The Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Engineer Yasir Abbas, has held a series of meetings with a number of officials of the Neth-erlands’ government, during his three-day visit to the country.The minister discussed with officials in the Nether-lands’ Foreign Ministry bilateral relations between Khartoum and Amsterdam which has started since the 1950s, lauding the role of the Netherlands in training and development of considerable number of Sudanese irrigation engineers.

Abbas pointed out that his visit to the Netherlands availed an opportunity to discuss increase of the co-operation opportunities which had decreased during the era of the previous regime, urging the Nether-lands government to support the government of lib-eration and change in the Sudan, especially in the water sector. The Netherlands officials welcomed the visit of the minister as the first of its kind by an official of the government of the Sudanese revolution, promising to study a proposal on supporting Sudan in the field of water and irrigation, including in Gezira Scheme to increase production and productivity.

ST

Sudanese government on Saturday appointed Suleiman Mohamed al-Dabello as head of the Peace Commission and rapporteur of the Supreme Peace Council.His appointment comes two days ahead of the expected peace negotiations with the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) and the Su-dan People’s Liberation Movement-North led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu in Juba on 14 October.Al-Dal-bello, born in 1948 in the South Kordofan’s vil-lage of Dabkar. He was graduated in physics from the University of Khartoum, followed by post-graduate studies in the United States of America where obtained master and doctorate degrees in physics from the University of Wisconsin.He was a lecturer at the Department of Physics at Al-Ja-zeera University, Al-Fateh University in Tripoli, Libya, after what he worked in a leading position in several companies in Saudi Arabia. He returned to Sudan in 2005.Also, he was an active political leader. During his stay in Saudi Arabia, he was the chairman of the Misseriya Shura Council of the Diaspora. Fol-lowing his return, he was a member of the South

Kordofan Elders Council and a member of the committee that represented the Government of Sudan before the Hague Tribunal on international arbitration over the Abyei Area.He has many writings on the Sudanese problem, how to achieve peace. Also, he published a book on the Sudan-South Sudan disputed border area of Abyei Area. In this book, he criticized the Na-ivasha peace agreement and its handling of the dispute.In a statement released on Saturday, the Sover-eign Council Spokesman Mohamed al-Faki said that the Supreme Council for Peace will deal with the issues of comprehensive peace, as provided in the transitional constitution.“The Council also develops public policies re-lated to addressing the root causes of the problem and its effects, in order to achieve a just peace,” he stressed.The head of the Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is the Chairman of the Supreme Coun-cil for Peace, which also includes members of the Sovereign Council, the Prime Minister, the Min-ister of Justice, the Minister of Federal Govern-ment and three related experts.

CURRENT3 Monday, October 14, 2019

4 AFRICA IN FOCUS Edited by: Alula Berhe Kidani

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Growing scepticism of Rwanda’s development achievements could erode the president’s international reputation.

BY PETER FABRICIUS

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has been flying high for a while. His repu-tation – mainly international though he wields some continental clout – has been growing. Through skilful diplomacy, he has established himself in the eyes of the wider world at least, as an African leader to be reckoned with.He gets invited to prestigious interna-tional gatherings like Davos. Last year he buried the hatchet with France about its support for Rwanda’s genocidal Hutu government in 1994. And next year Kag-ame will consolidate his already good standing with the Anglo world by hosting the Commonwealth heads of state summit.In Africa his reputation has been a lot more mixed. Kagame has aspired to con-tinental leadership and has achieved some, taking charge of the successful drive to get the African Continental Free Trade Agree-ment signed in record time. But it is main-ly his achievements on the wider stage that have left other African governments per-plexed, annoyed and often rather enviousPaul Kagame’s African critics scoff that he is more phony Francothan FrancophonieThey scoff that he is more phony Fran-co than Francophonie. To snub France (though also, it is said, to sideline the French-speaking Rwandan Hutu) he aban-doned the French language for English. And Rwanda’s accession to the Common-wealth, largely designed it seemed to irri-tate Paris, occurred despite Rwanda hav-ing no British colonial history.Kagame’s international reputation rests ul-timately on the perception that he is doing a great job of developing his own coun-try. Kigali is famous for its clean streets, which epitomise his claim that Rwanda is the Singapore of Africa – somewhat

authoritarian but effective and success-ful. This authoritarianism the world has apparently deemed forgivable – ignoring egregious human rights abuses of all who stand in his way – because he is keeping the peace, curbing corruption and reducing poverty.Officially, at least, that is true. The Rwan-dan economy has been growing by an av-erage 8% a year for a decade. The propor-tion of people classified as poor has fallen by seven percentage points since 2011, to 38% in 2017. Those statistics impress do-nors desperate for good news from African and especially from Rwanda with its trau-matic history. And so the aid dollars pour in, helping fur-ther to buoy the economy, which in turn promotes more aid. The World Bank has committed more than US$4 billion to the country since the 1994 genocide mainly for structural reforms, especially in health, education and agriculture.But now it seems Kagame’s Singapore analogy is starting to wear thin. Human rights defenders have long been warning that Rwanda’s human rights offences are

different to what Western donors seem to believe.Many economists are questioning Kag-ame’s justification that he is lifting his people out of povertyPolitical opposition has increasingly been suppressed, either through arrests or as-sassinations or attempted assassinations of political opponents at home and abroad. These continue to sour relations with im-portant African countries, such as Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. Pretoria expelled four Rwandan diplomats and downgraded diplomatic relations in 2014 after the as-sassination of Patrick Karegeya, Kagame’s estranged intelligence chief; and the third or fourth attempt on the life of his former chief of staff Faustin Kayumba Nyamwa-sa.Last year Kagame and South African Pres-ident Cyril Ramaphosa met and agreed to normalise relations. But this hasn’t hap-pened. In July both sides’ foreign minis-ters decided to separate the legal processes from normalising relations. Soon after, Pretoria, under pressure from its courts, sent Kigali a request to extradite two of

Karegeya’s suspected assassins. Whether that has again derailed normalisation is not yet clear.Pretoria frets that in the absence of a pow-erful pan-Africanist like Thabo Mbeki or Olusegun Obasanjo, Kagame has the field almost to himself. And it worries that Kagame will use the elevated platform of hosting the Commonwealth summit next year to pooh-pooh his critics.Yet South Africa itself has been criticised for helping give Kagame this pedestal. Richard Bourne, writing in Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of Interna-tional Affairs, rebuked the organisation’s members for accepting Kagame’s invita-tion to host the summit. He said Rwanda’s

human rights record was at odds with the Commonwealth Charter. ‘At least three key states – South Africa, the UK and Canada – were aware that this government does not sit easily in the frame of Com-monwealth values. Why did they not [stop this choice]?’ Bourne asks.The World Bank has committed more than US$4 billion to Rwanda since the 1994 genocideSouth African officials turn the table, blaming the West for playing into Kag-ame’s hands. Like many others, they find it extraordinary that despite his fallout with France, Kagame has now so thoroughly made up with President Emmanuel Ma-cron. And they believe that by forging re-lations with Israel, he hasn’t only secured its support but also guaranteed continuing support from the US and UK.Some critics think it’s rich that South Af-rica, of all countries, is skulking enviously in the corner. Especially given Rwanda’s atrocities committed on South African soil, why is Pretoria not standing up and chal-lenging Kagame’s pretentions to continen-tal leadership?

But other circumstances may be conspir-ing to clip Kagame’s wings. A growing army of economists is beginning to ques-tion his justification that he is lifting his people out of poverty. Academic Filip Reyntjens of Antwerp University has ex-amined Rwanda’s claim to have shrunk poverty from 44.9% in 2011 to 39.1% in 2014 – just before a crucial referendum. He found the drop was largely due to ‘comparing apples with pears’ – updating the content of the basket of goods used to define poverty in 2014. Reyntjens said if the same basket had been used in 2011 and 2014, poverty would have increased by about five to seven percentage points.Senior researcher Sam Desiere of the Uni-versity of Leuven in Belgium, meanwhile, concludes that the declining official pov-erty rate is based on a falsely low 5.3% of-ficial annual rate of food inflation. He cal-culated that this rate should be 9.4% a year.‘Other academics looking at the same data reckon that rising prices alone may have increased poverty by seven percentage points,’ The Economist wrote in August. It added that the jumps in poverty calcu-lated by Reyntjens and Desiere would be surprising in light of Rwanda’s rapid GDP growth of 8% a year. But it noted that some academics suggested Rwanda had also ex-aggerated that figure.The Financial Times reported in August that a group of World Bank economists had secretly written to the bank’s leader-ship in 2015, lending their support to the sceptics who question Rwanda’s stellar development statistics. The bank’s leader-ship evidently ignored them. ‘Question-ing Rwanda’s statistics may seem to be no more than quibbling over numbers. But at stake is Mr Kagame’s reputation, and that of the developmental model he embodies,’ The Economist wrote.

By: Matthew Herbert

Libya’s current conflict is emerging as a very different one to what has been fought before in the country, or the world. Fleets of long-range drones carry out strikes, cyber-attacks proclaim the end of gov-ernments, and social media propa-ganda has become all-consuming. The war has devolved into a bloody stalemate, with over 1 000 fighters dead and thousands wounded in grinding urban conflict.Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), a militia coalition based in the east of the country, have been on a mission to seize Tripoli since April. The capi-tal is held by the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), supported by mili-tias from across western Libya.But while it is Libyans who are fighting and dying, foreign actors have largely been driving this war. Turkey and Qatar support the GNA, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Russia and France are behind the LAAF. These foreign backers have contributed diplomatic support, military equipment, mer-cenaries and military personnel, and direct military action to the two sides.The use of drones, cyber-attacks and social media propaganda, among other dynamics in Libya’s conflict, probably portend what armed con-flict in this century will look like – both within and between states.While it is Libyans who are fight-ing and dying, foreign actors have largely been driving this warIn six months, drones have become a mainstay of Libya’s conflict. While they have been fielded by Libyan mi-litias before, including by the LAAF in the battle for the eastern city of Derna, it was not until the present conflict that their use became sys-tematic and militarily important.According to Ghassan Salamé, the United Nations Special Representa-tive for Libya, the current conflict has seen some 900 missions flown by drones fielded by the two sides, and this has increased steeply in recent weeks. Both sides use them for surveillance, long-range strate-gic strikes on arms depots and air-ports, and close-air support to units

enmeshed in urban combat.The GNA and LAAF rely on for-eign actors for their drones. Since May, Turkey has supplied the GNA with more than a dozen Bayraktar TB2 craft, as well as ground con-trol units. The UAE has provided the LAAF with the Chinese Wing Loong II drones. Both Turkey and the UAE are rumoured to have de-ployed personnel to Libya to oper-ate the drones.Armed drones are ubiquitous in Lib-ya, and will be on future battlefields, both due to the relatively high-pre-cision attacks they can undertake and because they are far cheaper than traditional attack aircraft. A Wing Loong II costs US$1-2 mil-lion, and even the pricier Bayraktar is just less than US$6 million.Libya’s current conflict has seen some 900 missions flown by drones fielded by the two sidesMilitaries can therefore more eas-ily purchase and field large numbers of drones, and replace those lost in combat. Other countries – such as the UAE and Turkey – can also provide foreign proxy forces and militias with effective airpower at little cost and limited risk to their own personnel. Recent use by GNA

drones of roads, rather than airstrips, for take-off and landing, shows the ruggedness of the craft, and the po-tential for their use even in austere conditions.Alongside drones, hacking and cy-ber-attacks have been weaponised in Libya’s conflict. The most pub-licised incident occurred in August when the GNA Twitter account was hacked, and a false statement posted proclaiming the GNA had stepped down and security was to be left to the LAAF.In another incident, a hacker culled information from Facebook users af-ter setting up a series of false pages detailing Turkish activity in Libya or spoofing LAAF recruitment sites. The hacker later published secret LAAF documents and the passport information of government officials that had been collected.Similar to drones, cyber-attacks of-fer a low-cost means of achieving conflict goals. The hacking of the GNA Twitter account led to little more than public confusion, but giv-en the increasing importance of so-cial media for government’s public communications – in both Libya and globally – the risk of a future inci-dent achieving greater goals is real.

Similar to drones, cyber-attacks of-fer a low-cost means of achieving conflict goalsLibya’s conflict has also seen a wave of propaganda and disinformation as the GNA and LAAF, and their for-eign backers, seek to shape public opinion to their advantage. Haftar’s initial attempt to seize Tripoli rest-ed as much on the narrative of the LAAF’s might and inevitable vic-tory as it did on raw military power.With this narrative shredded by the LAAF’s failure, propagandists on both sides have tried to reshape pub-lic attitudes and support. Social me-dia posts proclaim their side’s seizure of territory or inevitable victory, or their rivals’ brutality against civilians and foreign connections.A lot of the propaganda is foreign gen-erated, with nearly a third of content around Haftar posted over the past six months coming from Saudi Arabia. Much of this has been disseminated through social media, showing that sites such as Facebook and Twitter are go-to sources for news and infor-mation for many Libyans.Propaganda has long played an im-portant role in conflict. But what Libyan propogandists and their back-ers have shown is the speed through

which new narratives and disinfor-mation can be spread, how social me-dia can be used for this, and how eas-ily foreign actors can influence and engage in public debates in Libya in real time.Each of these factors – drones, cyber-attacks and social media propaganda – have been used to varying degrees individually in different countries over the past two decades. Drones in particular are evolving rapidly into a versatile threat to even highly ad-vanced militaries.However Libya’s uniqueness – and its value as an example of what fu-ture conflicts will look like – arises because all these factors are current-ly being employed together in large amounts, in a conflict being pros-ecuted primarily by non-state armed groups.It is important to closely watch Lib-ya’s conflict to predict future wars. Understanding the contours of future battles, and how foreign actors can intervene, will help prevent and ad-dress conflicts. In Libya’s case, the country needs international support to surmount these conflict dynamics. The successes and challenges it faces will offer valuable lessons for peace-building in future.

Libya’s War Becomes a Tech Battleground:Foreign intervention has brought drones, cyber-Attacks and social media propagan-

da that foreshadow the future of armed conflict

5 ECONOMY

Mohamed Abdalla

Economic Vision

Email: moabd31@yahoo.com

Device Contributes to Gold Exploration without Mercury Invented

Requirements of Tourism, Jebel Marra a Model

The most important economic feature of economic activities related to the Tourism sector is that they contribute to the three high-priority goals of developing countries; the generation of income, proving employment and foreign-exchange earnings.Sudan is qualified to fulfil all these goals if managed perfectly and correctly its tourist resources. To succeed in this field many requirements are needed. Tourist attractions and sites, antiqui-ties, wildlife as the components of tourism are distributed in all parts of Sudan. Now it is the start of tourism season. It is high time for Sudan to benefit from the internal stability and the peace realizing after the overthrown of the former regime of Al Bashir that ruled 30 years which ended in April 2019.The new transitional government which was formed a month ago put into consideration Sudan top priorities representing into realizing, the economic reform, curbing corruption, reduc-ing inflation rates and employment.Reform or improvement of economy should be through in-creasing production in all fields. Tourism expects to play a key role as it is one of promising sectors. Services related to tour-ism have direct impact. Transportation and the facilities pro-vided to tourists will help in the success of the tourist season. Promotion through the different mass media will support in spreading awareness with the importance of tourism as one of the pillars of economy, and enhance the State policy for devel-opment; in addition to the spread of tourism culture among the different societies in the rural and urban areas. Jebel Marra is one the most beautiful and attracted tourist sites, it is characterized with its water falls of Galul, Nertity in the center of Darfur. In addition to its Mediterranean climate, with heavy rains most of the year. Being situated in Darfur States prevented it from the visit of tourists for 14 years during the Darfur conflict .It is high time to encourage the internal tourism to Darfur States and the sur-roundings. It is noticeable that many families and visitors or-ganized tours to Jebel Marra at the weekends to enjoy their times.Air and land, railways transport expect to play a major role to attract tourists from all part parts of Sudan, beside foreign tourists. The concerned ministries interior, foreign affairs, civil aviation, travel agencies are to share responsibility to make tourism as attractive sector to youth and graduates. Training is also important to tourist guides. Languages are important for work in this field. We shed light on Jebel Marra as a model. The other tourist attractions and sites are in far north in Jebel Berkel, the in-ternational tourist site, besides Sangeneib Tourist Island in the Red Sea state according to UNSECO. Dindir National Park, the biggest natural reserve in Africa in Sinnar; Bejrawiya, Wa-terfalls and cataracts in Khartoum, River Nile, Northern States and Museums. We urge all the concern authorities to provide all elements of success to this tourist season. We convey deep thanks and gratitude to UNSECO, Khartoum office for partnerships with the concerned cultural bodies in collecting and protecting the intangible Cultural heritage in Sudan. Let us open the door wide to tourists from all over the world. Let us invite them to enjoy the natural scenes in all Sudan. Let us invite them to enjoy the real Sudanese hospitality.

Monday, October 14, 2019

By: SUNA

The young inventor Engineer Al-Fatih Mohamed Abdul-Muttallab has said that his Gold Detector Device invention, if it finds the care and re-sponsiveness of the officials to manu-facture it commercially, would greatly help in the mining of gold and other minerals in Sudan without the use of mercury. Engineer Abdul-Mutallab received several awards and was hon-ored from several parties in Sudan for inventing a Gold Detector Device that works with high specifications and provides safety and security. The young inventor stressed that his invention would contribute to solv-ing the problems of traditional min-ing without the use of mercury and cyanide, pointing out that if it finds welfare and concern, Sudan will be-come one of the first countries in the world that developed mining from traditional to modern, reiterating his appeal to the state to pay attention to young innovators and support them to contribute to the development and progress of the country. He also ap-pealed to the Council of Ministers to support and care for him personally and provide more training sessions for him in the fields of electronic en-gineering, especially the field of (sat-ellite-sensitive linkage) in one of the countries that have expertise in this field such as America, Malaysia and

Turkey for the further development of his invention. Engineer Abdul-Mu-tallab unveiled that the Gold Detector Device was characterized by sensitive and sophisticated specifications, add-ing that it can be installed on a car or motorcycle and conduct a search on a large area of the ground. He added that the device could also be installed on a small solar-powered children’s stroller that is guided by a remote control that sends an alarm when it detects the precious metal if you want to search a small area of the earth. The inventor Engineer Al-Fatih Mo-hamed Abdul-Mutallab descends from Gezira State, Al-Kamleen Lo-cality. He graduated at Al-Nilein Uni-versity and specialized in Electronic Engineering. He is 23 years old. SUNA is to inform that the inven-tion has been officially registered af-ter it has been tested and succeeded by specialists, and now it is waiting for a sponsor to manufacture it com-mercially to be available in the mar-ket. It is worth mentioning that the Council of Ministers instructed, in its regular meeting Wednesday under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister Dr. Abdalla Hamdok, halting of the use of mercury and cyanide in min-ing operations immediately, directing amendments of the agreement with the companies working in the field of mining to allocate a percentage of its profits to the development of local

communities as well as the establish-ment development funds in mining

areas.

Brexit: Pound Surges on Renewed Hopes of a Deal BBC

Sterling surged on Friday to a three-month high amid investor optimism about a last-minute Brexit deal between Britain and the European Union.Against the dollar the pound rose 1.9% to $1.2682, and against the euro was up 1.67% at €1.1489.The currency has rallied more than 3% since Thursday, its biggest two-day gain since be-fore the June 2016 referendum on leaving the EU.Many UK-focused shares also surged, with Royal Bank of Scotland up 11.6%.On Friday, EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he had had a “constructive” meet-ing with UK Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay. That followed talks between the Irish and British prime ministers on Thursday, after which a joint statement spoke of “a pathway to a possible deal”.Deutsche Bank’s foreign exchange strategist George Saravelos said he was “turning more op-timistic on Brexit” and no longer negative on the pound, while JPMorgan said the Anglo-Irish state-

ment may have “changed everything”.“The chances of a deal seem to have improved and the pound has moved accordingly but hurdles still remain,” said Dean Turner, economist at UBS Wealth Management. “Time to thrash out the de-tails of the deal are tight, and then there is the ques-tion of parliamentary approval.”Other analysts cautioned that trading on the finan-cial markets was thin, leading to higher volatil-

ity and a sharp jump in some share prices. Meanwhile, another analyst said the price surges were probably due to algorithms driving the mar-ket.Following the more confident nois-es coming from Brussels, London and Dublin, there were hopes that a meeting between British and EU negotiators will pave the way for a Brexit transition deal at a summit on 17-18 October.The rally in sterling undermined the UK’s export-heavy FTSE 100 stocks, and the blue chip index it-self was up under 0.9%.

But shares exposed to UK growth and consumers soared. Housebuilders Persimmon, Barratt and Taylor Wimpey rose more than 10%. Next rose nearly 8.5%, and ITV more than 6%. The more UK-focussed FTSE 250 index was up more than 4%.The yield on 10-year British government bonds was on track for its biggest three-day rise since 2017.

How to Grow Sorghum-Sudan Grass as a Cover CropBy: Lauren Arcur

This article was writ-ten by: Lauren Arcur to show that is an agricul-tural country, that contrib-utes to enhance the entire economy, more details about sorghum in the fol-lowing report.Cover crops are plants that are grown to help the soil on a small farm. Ben-efits of cover crops may include improving the soil’s structure, adding ni-trogen, conserving mois-ture, preventing erosion, suppressing weeds, or even helping other crops by boosting disease- and pest-resistance. Sorghum-Sudan grass can offer all of these benefits as a cov-er crop.

What Is It? Sorghum-Sudan grass, or sorghum-sudangrass, is a fast-growing cover crop with an extensive root system that thrives in the heat of summer. It excels at suppressing weeds.? Its name comes from the fact that it is a hybrid, a cross between sorghums grown for forage and a type of grass called Sudan grass or Sudangrass, which is native to eastern Africa. Sorghum-Sudan grass grows well in most places in the United States. For growth, the soil temperature must reach 65 to 70 F for two months before frost. The crop is extremely drought-tolerant once established,

but it does need rain or irrigation dur-ing early growth.

Planting Tips

Seed Sorghum-Sudan grass at a rate of 40 to 50 pounds per acre if broad-cast, or 35 pounds per acre if drilled. Plant after the threat of frost has passed in spring. However, for maxi-mum growth potential, don’t wait too long to plant, depending on your cli-mate. In the Northeast, for example, it’s best to plant before July 15th.Soil temperatures of at least 60 F are required for this cover crop to germi-nate. Repeated mowing can increase

the root system, leading to greater penetration in compacted soil. In fact, this cover crop should be mowed sev-eral times in the season to prevent it from setting seed.Maintain your Sorghum-Sudan crop by mowing several times during the season before the crop seeds. Just prior to a killing frost, mow the grass to finely chop it, and then immediate-ly till into the ground while it is still green. Due to the presence of weed-suppressing compounds in the fresh-ly mowed crop, wait several weeks before planting new crops.

Growing Benefits

S o r g h u m - S u d a n grass is a great cover crop for revitalizing worn-out, “farmed-out” soils because it adds a lot of organic matter and bulk to the soil. It grows so quickly, especially in temperate regions, that it creates a thick stand that cannot be penetrated by weeds. It’s also very tolerant of heat and drought, making it hardy. In addition, Sorghum-Sudan grass is killed by the first frost so it’s great to leave it to overwinter as a dead residue to protect against soil erosion.S o r g h u m - S u d a n grass is also excel-lent at penetrating

compacted subsoil and improving the structure of the soil. It’s often recommended to follow Sorghum-Sudan grass with a legume cover crop, such as clover, to restore soil health.It will add a lot of biomass to the soil, partly because it grows so tall—5 to 12 feet—with stalks up to 1/2-inch-thick. Finally, Sorghum-Sudan grass is an excellent quick forage for pas-tured animals. Be aware that under certain conditions, such as frost or drought or after the grass is cut, Sor-ghum-Sudan grass can contain high levels of prussic acid, which can be toxic to cattle.

Sudan Livestock Sector Background

Sudan Vision

Khartoum - The livestock sector plays a critical role in the Sudanese economy and in the welfare of the whole popu-lation. It yields a flow of’ essential food, brings in a large amount of foreign exchange from export earnings, is a major means of transport, produces draught power in support of crop production and processing, provides dung for fertilizer and fuel and creates employment. For all these reasons and especially from the equity and livelihood perspective it is an important, indeed a major, component of poverty alleviation. The value of exports from the animal sector has consistently been just under 50 per cent of all agricultural exports and just under 30 per cent of non-oil exports. Despite this contribu-tion to the national economy, resource allocations for live-stock and animal health services are not commensurate with the revenues generated by the sector. It is also usual for less than one quarter of the development budget actually being delivered. The livestock sector employs directly or indirectly about 40 per cent of the population and contributes valuable animal protein to the diets of all of Sudan’s people. To com-plement its already substantial comparative advantage the sector’s own foreign exchange requirements are small when compared to those needed for crop production.Livestock are a strategic element in livelihoods, income gen-eration, food security and in agricultural development. They contribute to the national economy and to human welfare and livelihoods via four principal pillars: poverty alleviation, food security, environmental conservation and gender equal-ity.In poverty alleviation they are often the only assets of many of the landless poor; their products (milk, meat, eggs, wool) provide a direct or indirect source of income throughout the year; they are a means of capital accumulation (livestock always appreciate but rarely depreciate) and provide a cash buffer in times of need.In food security they are a buffer against low crop yields and crop failure and are thus an important element in risk man-agement; produce milk and eggs that are the only agricultural products that can be harvested every day of the year; can be productive year round where crop production is difficult or impossible; provide draught power without which crop production in many areas would be severely compromised; make use of crop and agro-industrial by-products and waste and convert them to high quality human food.

Editorial

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Legal Viewpoint

200-Day Economic Programme

TagelDien AlBalaEmail: altag2009@windowslive.com

Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Badawi announced a 200-day economic program to address the ur-gent issues in the Sudanese economy.

He said the five areas include stabilizing the macro economy, restructuring the budget, stabilizing the prices, lessening the living burden, addressing the is-sues of youth, and shifting from humanitarian aid to sustainable development at the conflict zones.The minister explained that the overall goal is to build Sudan›s macro economy able to achieve added value through industries.Last week the Council of Ministers in its regular meeting approved the government’s plan for the coming six months covering the ministerial sectors of government and administration, economic devel-opment and social and cultural development.The Cabinet has put the plan within framework of a full year program but the matrix set for six months to ease evaluation and assessment as well as su-pervision and accountability by the public opinion.However, the implementation of the five axes men-tioned by the Minister of Finance as an emergency plan in his 200-day economic programme seems to be very complicated and not realistic. Any economic emergency programme is supposed to lay the foundation for achieving medium and long term goals, and this requires years and not months es-pecially within the deterioration of the civil service.Al-Badawi’s ministry will face several problems but it should start with stopping the tremendous hikes of the basic commodities through flooding the market considering that the supply is big then the price will drop according to the supply and demand mecha-nism.This requires increasing the production, but this also could not be done without reducing the government expenditure, the cancellation of the levies which are added to the value of the commodity.Obviously there is no other way than resorting to the IMF, the African Development Bank, Gulf States and other organization to support the balance of pay-ments.The government should work hard for writing-off the foreign debt and get loans with easy conditions.In short, the government should work immediately in reducing the flaccid public departments through restructuring the local governments and replace it by few provinces to save huge amounts of administra-tive expenses.Supporting the exports and reducing the taxation will contribute in flourishing the economy and create job opportunities besides reducing the prices and saving hard currencies.Let us hope that the government succeeds in its 200-day economic programme.

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Mohamed Elfadul Ibrahim

Monday, October 14, 2019

The following seven indicators overshadow reaching the ultimate objective of the nascent revolu-

tion in the transformation to a civilian democratic rule after three years.1. Unjustified delays in all steps taken by the FFC (Forces of Freedom and Change) after the success of the revolu-tion in ousting the Salvation Regime – June 1989 – April 2019. Political agree-ment was reached after months and after the intervention of the Ethiopian PM and AU. The Constitutional Document which was supposed to be signed within few days after the Political agreement was drafted and ratified on August 17, 2019 i.e. after4 months of the success of the revolution. Council of Ministers and PM delayed for one month or more and till now two vacant ministries not filled. Chief Justice and Attorney General were appointed three days ago.2. After less than a month the perfor-mance of the PM and Ministers showed

that the criticism of CVs and qualifica-tions is not enough to warrant the best selection. Other criteria are more impor-tant e.g. political skills, talent, compe-tency, strong character, experience etc. Till now no individual plans or roadmaps were set by any minister. Those plans are supposed to be consolidated in a Master Plan to Guide the Council in the coming three years. The PM, ironically enough, openly announced in a Sudanese expatri-ate meeting in UAE last week that he is still waiting for FFC to provide him with their plans, strategies and guidelines to run the Transitional Period. Whereas the role of FFC should stop at their nomi-nation of the PM and his Cabinet. Any further intervention by FFC will seri-ously jeopardize the needed steps for the Cabinet to address the critical ele-ments of the agony and hardships of the citizens which were the main cause for them to take to the streets will oust-ing the Salvation Regime. Till now al-most all ministers failed to cleanse and purge their ministries of the die-hard elements of the ousted regime who are now the stumbling blocks on the road of the revolution.3. Following the same tactics and poli-cies of the ousted regime in facing the

deterioration of the national currency values. Tactics and policies of shooting around the bush by for example curb-ing imports, apprehending the dollar dealers, fixing official rate of the dol-lar far below the free market rate etc. It is very simple to prove that the im-ports were not the cause of the dollar value hikes – since 2014 imports each year were valued at $ 5 billion. Dollar value in 2014 was SDG 25. In 2019 im-ports stayed at $ 9 billion and the dollar value reached SDG 70 – So there must be other reasons or practices that led to dollar value hike albeit the continuation of imports in its $ 9 billion estimates.4. The detrimental feet-dragging on processes of eradicating the corruption practices and holding accountable all perpetrators of corruption clear cases, smuggling and commissions taken by top officials of the ousted regime on known big futile projects e.g. railway rehabilitation, Public Transport vehi-cles, roads dams etc. 5. The same ambivalent foreign poli-cies are continued especially staying in the Grey Area between the two con-fronting axes in our region – KSA/UAE and Qatar/Turkey. The former axis is unequivocally against the Global Is-

lamic Movement where on the latter is its hub. So no way to stay at equal distances from both and expecting help and assistance from any of them. 6. No specific plan is yet set to solve the chronic economic crisis of Sudan. Three plans should have been set and announced. One- short period of 2 years to deliver the country from the current dangerous economic deteriora-tion, medium plan to prepare studies for the utilization of the resources of Sudan and a long Plan for the imple-mentation of the situation by qualified multi-national companies in any of the known methods that does not involve the Government Payments but through initial and announced revenues e.g. Boot System or Profit sharing agreements.7. Failure to start genuine steps to qual-ify for lifting its name from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism and set-ting specific steps and plans to allevi-ate the growing poverty together with studies mentioned in (6) above the ben-efit from the UN HIPOC programme (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries). Serious plans and commitment to execute it will lead to the writing-off the foreign Debts through the HIPOC programme.

I’m Not Optimistic

The Central Bank of Bahrain CBB, in the process of stream-lining the digital banking trans-

actions and fintech activities, issued regulations to process such activities including the “sandbox” initiative. Sandbox is a virtual space for CBB licensed institutions and firms to test their technology innovative solutions relevant to fintech or the financial sec-tor. The duration of the sandbox is up to 9 months with a maximum exten-sion of three months. Lately CBB an-

nounced that “Tarabut Gateway”, is the first to complete the sandbox stage suc-cessfully and to receive the confirma-tion under the “Open Banking” regula-tory framework. The announcement of the first company passing the sandbox stage, coincides with the issuance of the final rules on “Open Banking”, which will create opportunities for building synergies between financial institutions and fintechs, thereby, delivering effi-cient financial services sector in Bah-rain. The successful graduation of the first company from the regulatory sandbox highlights the continuous efforts un-dertaken by Central Bank of Bahrain, to update and develop the fintech eco-system and to enable industry players to create innovative and forward look-

ing fintech products while maintaining the overall safety and soundness of the financial system in the country.“Tarabut Gateway” was one of the first companies to enter the sandbox to test its technology innovative open banking solutions and provide connectivity for banks to assist customers in accessing account information across different banks on a single platform, in accord-ance with the open banking regulations. Such platforms are the latest fintech trends in the industry globally, and Bahrain, in adopting these technolo-gies, will be at the forefront of these developments.Sandbox is, technically defined as, a testing environment that isolates un-tested code changes and outright ex-perimentation from the production en-

vironment or repository, in the context of software development including Web development and revision control. Sandboxing protects servers and their data, vetted source code distributions, other collections of code, data and or content, proprietary or public, from changes that could be damaging to a mission-critical system or which could simply be difficult to revert. Sandbox-es replicate the minimal functionality needed to accurately test the programs or codes under development. After the developer has fully tested the code changes in their sandbox, the changes would be checked back into and merged with the repository and made available to other developers or end users of the software.

Role of Sandbox Stage and Fintech

If we are serious to rise, we should take the necessary steps and meas-ures towards achieving that long-

dreamed of goal. Nothing can be done, unless we harness every means to en-grain the value of hardworking in every individual and community. While, by the grace of Allah, Sudan is endowed with exceptional natural resources, stupendous work awaiting its people to build its desperately and urgently needed infra-structure, in fact, almost there is non-infrastructure. And it is widely known fact that no one can set your house in order other than yourself.All the third world countries that took

the decisive decision to take off and pull out towards the destination of development and prosperity have in-stilled the culture of hardworking in their people. The examples are there quite obvious; Japan, South Korea and others. They had had the spirit of hard-working disseminated over the whole nation. Even extended to sport. We see how Brazil, the kings of volley ball has been beaten very easily by the South Korean team 3-1. This couldn’t be done by luck. It is a result of hard exer-cising for long hours to raise the physi-cal, technical and mental standards. This explains how our backwardness in sport is matching ours in every field. While they have done miracles in mak-ing their economies among the biggest in the world. A country as South Korea, which by nature is deprived from any ounce of iron, took the decision to be one of the biggest manufacture of ve-hicles, as worked it out magnificently

.There is no other tack to do that other than hardworking. Of course beside improving the laws and regulations and making optimal policies.Hardworking value falls within admin-istration. Disciplining administration is the way forward for realizing good outcomes in fields of planning and ex-ecution of good planning, which are vital elements of good governance. It is most important to hue closely to the line of best practices of administration on the international arena. And they are they packaged and are ready to be delivered and monitored by interna-tional organizations working in these spheres. The simplest example is to enforce the process of daily reports of performance by every civil servant. Pun-ishment and reward process should be fol-lowed impartially and indiscriminately. As everywhere, there are fast-track employ-ees. They are motivated by their goodwill, motivated by their unique service orien-

tation and the desire to deliver more and excel. Nevertheless, the principle of equal-ity of motivation is highly vital, if applied taking into account the element I have just touched on. The private sector are free to choose their methods to manage their business. I am sure they are more keen to preserve their interest, and to see their business flourish and prosper. The bonuses and promotions should be bases on these daily reports of performance. The time has gone or should have gone for good when other criteria were used. The politicization of civil service has opened the door widely for introducing nepotisms, and other mal-practices that have dealt damaging blows to the ideal and solid system of civil ser-vice founded by the British colonizer. It is true all the previous political regimes, sadly, without exception had failed to maintain that wonderful legacy. Although the deterioration, not to say collapse, hap-pened gradually, every regime disman-tle a brick or bricks.

Rewarding Hardworking

With the emergence of dem-onstrations in Iraq, opposing voices started to warn and

sound the alarm… Some pointed to “US fingers” behind the protests, while others said those were driven by “hidden agen-das”. Many, of course, have blamed the alleged “intruders” of being part of the “fifth column”.These opinions have reminded observ-ers of the same voices that were heard during the Syrian revolution. In its early beginnings, there was shame and confu-sion accompanied by the regime’s call for reform.Reform, regardless of its content and di-rection, strengthens the regime and calms protest. However, without Bashar Assad initiating any serious reform, the revolu-tion escalated its criticism, which gradu-ally became a veto: doubt, accusation, treason and support for armed interven-tion against it and incitement.Observers also remembered the Libyan revolution, which was known as the

“NATO uprising.” There are also those who turned back two more years to evoke the “green revolution” in Iran in 2009, described by the opponents them-selves as a conspiracy against the people of Iran. We put aside the Khomeinists in their many variations, and some Arab na-tionalists and Baathists, who are a natural extension of the Iranian and Syrian re-gimes.We also exclude opportunists of all kinds, who know where their interests lie and how they best serve them.Here, we talk about those who associate themselves with a “revolutionary left”, a left that claims to change the world but stands against every change.Those, who are relatively few, still consti-tute the loudest voice in theorizing the op-position and providing it with arguments of two categories: One that travels the world to confirm the validity of its «stra-tegic» position alongside Vladimir Putin and the late Chavez, and a class sailing in previous experiences to discover that its position is only in the rising line of history.One thing is different however: revolu-tions, which are always adored and which gave the revolutionaries their name, have become something hateful. Strangely, revolutionaries have become counter-rev-olutionaries!In fact, the revolution, according to their

weird dictionary, is not about calls for freedom, dignity and better livelihoods. Above all, it is an alignment in interna-tional conflicts that puts the concerned countries against America.Some of those who studied the trans-formation of the Soviet Union from the country of the revolution to a conservative anti-revolutionary state have seen that be-hind this transformation was the predomi-nance of geopolitical and strategic factors. But they also noted a cultural part in that prevalence. Hostility to the West surpasses politics to affect culture, ideas and way of life.To us, this transformation is based on three bitter ideas: The bitterness of the collapse of the Soviet Union itself and the inability to replace the dead. The bitterness result-ing from a shift in the meaning of revolu-tions which started three decades ago. In Central and Eastern Europe, where a doz-en of regimes fell, the revolution did not adopt violence, nor was it led by a polit-buro headed by a leader, nor called for the destruction of a particular class. It chose the goal of democracy and reconciliation with the West and its model.The third bitterness is based on a local cause: Revolutions no longer recognize the old way of managing the conflict with Israel. That’s because the above men-tioned approach attaches all national is-

sues to that one file. Thus, societies are being oppressed, impoverished and ruled by tyrants, under the pretext of fighting against the Jewish state.On the other hand, revolutions are evoked once they are based on a plurality that breaks the unilateral monopoly of the “revolution” and promises to promote Arab societies and their freedoms. Thus, by strengthening these societies, the Arab negotiating position is reinforced against Israel, and the Arab world’s appeal to the world increases.With the one “revolution”, one or two sys-tems control the lives of millions, and with the many revolutions, millions of lives are freed from the control of one or two sys-tems.All of these feelings of bitterness show a deep desire to restore the Cold War world and its equations. Here we can validate the theory that says that “revolutionism” is a type of extremist conservatism that wants to return to the previous status quo.This deep tendency is compounded by a strong national dose of Arab revolution-ary ideas, a dose that describes the way to the future as a path to “authenticity” and “roots”, and a nostalgia for the pre-West era.Those ideas inspired Iran’s religious revo-lution, which harmed women’s freedoms and agrarian reforms.

Revolutionaries Who Hate Revolutions

7 REPORT Monday, October 14, 2019

THURSDAY

By Adam Ward

Historically, efforts to build rules-based international orders have emerged out of conflict, only for each sys-tem to falter when a new crisis emerges. At issue today, with the post-1945 multilateral system under strain, is how to modernize the making and application of rules to break that cycle.

But by giving special privileges to the victors, princi-pally through veto rights held among a small group of permanent Security Council members, the UN reflected and perpetuated a certain historical circumstance: there was no formal institutional adaptation in its highest structures to account for a progressive redistribution of international power, the rehabilitation of defeated coun-tries, the rise of the decolonized world or the desire of emerging powers to assume international responsibili-ties commensurate with their heft. Rather than a mech-anism for international governance, it remained an intergovernmental body through which states pursued their specific or collective priorities.Indeed, the dominant questions around order in the first five decades of the UN’s existence were those posed by the Cold War conducted by the US and the Soviet Union and their respective allies and satellites, while the UN in effect was a prominent arena in which this global antagonism was carried out. The world order was bipolar in concentrating power in two camps, with a swath of neutrals, non-aligned and swing players in between; and bi-systemic in the complete contrast in the ideological affinities and economic models that were promoted. Nuclear weapons raised the stakes as-sociated with direct conflict to an existential level, and so pushed armed contests to peripheral theatres or on to skirmishing proxies.The collapse of communism in the early 1990s ushered

in a new dispensation. Those who divined the arrival of a ‘unipolar moment’ for the US were perhaps more ac-curate in their choice of epithet than they knew. At least on the surface, the US be-came by far the preponderant power. The decline and 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, in consequence of its economic decrepitude and strategic overstretch, not only removed the US’s peer competitor, but also opened up avenues for promoting economic liberaliza-tion and democratic government. This shift was mani-fest in particular in changing dynamics in Europe. The US had sponsored the reunification of Germany and was a patron of its subsequent embedding in an inte-grating, democratic and liberal region. Over time, this drew the former Warsaw Pact members into EU and NATO structures (albeit at a pace and with a complete-ness that Russia’s strategic calculations could not be accommodated to).And yet, despite these advances, in retrospect the chief development of the 20 years after the Cold War was a different one: globalization had at a gathering pace prompted a redistribution of political power, while its interlocking economic structures created a dense web of interests and dependencies that moved in all di-rections. It was likely in these circumstances that the appearance of any major emergency would produce insistent voices demanding what they saw as a more inclusive, legitimate and effective form of international order.Crises duly arrived, first in the shape of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which strained alliances and stirred controversial debates about the justice and per-

missibility of military interventions and the need for constraints on US power; and then in the form of the financial meltdown of 2008, seen by many as a princi-pally Western debacle calling for new global economic governance structures as instanced in the improvised G20. Neither set of debates was conclusively resolved, but each persisted against the backdrop of quickening systemic change.The ‘America First’ posture of the Trump administration has upturned the central feature of the system. The dilemmas about the shape and maintenance of a rules-based order with multilateralism at its core have since only deepened. The world is pulling in different directions. It entails a distaste for multilateral agreements, a disavowal of traditional no-tions of US leadership, and an insistence on the unimpeded exercise of American power in pursuit of defined national interests. China asserts the centrality of multilateralism, and practises it selectively, but on the whole favours binary dip-lomatic transactions where it holds asymmetric advantages; it has used this approach in the construction of its Belt and Road Initiative, as well as on other fronts. Europe has cre-ated in its continent a rules-based order par excellence in the shape of the EU, but its energy has been sapped and its intro-version fed by a succession of crises, of which the amputa-tion of the Brexit-bound UK is simply one. The EU has yet to chart its future course or define a global strategy to uphold and advance the multilateralism which has been at its core. Russia unabashedly is subverting the rules-based order as part of a programme of aggrieved self-aggrandizement. Ja-

pan champions the principle of a rules-based system, but the country has been disoriented by its abrupt detachment on this issue from its traditional US partner; while Japan has sought to engage like-minded countries in the West, they have not forged a concerted practical plan of action together.Among other regional powers, Brazil has a populist gov-ernment that echoes many of the Trump administration’s instincts, and India, whatever its preferences, has yet to ac-quire a foreign policy or presence on the global stage equal to its demographic weight and economic potential. Prominent points of risk in this fragmenting picture are the multilateral trade system, efforts to address climate change, and collec-tive measures to deal with entrenched conflicts.One obvious consequence of the attrition of the rules-based system through the indifference or ambitions of the great powers is that it will leave smaller states much more exposed and hostage to the vagaries of geopolitical competition. A key question therefore is whether such states will choose and be able to defend a system which gives them a measure of protection. Over recent decades, a variety of regional group-ings – ASEAN, the African Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Organization of American States – have evolved as species of rules-based mechanisms and in order to gather their collective weight. They make a ready constituency for those who would build a coalition for multilateralism. But it is also clear that the support of smaller regional players for such n approach depends on a revision of the rule-making system towards greater inclusivity and a broader say as to the issues it should address.

Adapt or Die (2)

By Calum Inverarity and James Kearney

The effectiveness of the ‘respon-sibility to protect’ principle risks being undermined by apathy on the one hand and by the perception of it as enabling ‘intervention by the back door’ on the other. Could an alternative approach, focused on conflict prevention and wider stakeholder engagement, garner international support and reener-gize a failing norm?

This year, 2019, marks the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Con-ventions and the 20th anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1265, the fist to address the pro-tection of civilians in armed con-flct. Upon these foundations, and in response to the mass atrocities witnessed at the close of the 20th century, in 2005 the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) was codified by all UN member states to prevent such horrors from occurring in the future. R2P is defied by three pil-lars which emphasize, first, the pri-mary responsibility of the state to ensure the safety and security of its civilians. The second pillar stress-es the responsibility of the interna-tional community to support states in this aim. The third iterates that the international community has the obligation to ensure the protec-tion of civilians when a state has manifestly failed to do so; or when a state has targeted and attacked its own citizens.Since its adoption, R2P has been criticized both for failing to mobi-lize interventions when necessary, and at other times for providing a smokescreen for possible viola-tions of state sovereignty. In large part, this can be attributed to the interpretation of R2P’s third and most contentious pillar. From in-terventionism during the 2000s to more recent international respons-es to situations in Georgia and Ukraine, this pillar has been sub-ject to misappropriation by a vari-ety of actors – which in turn has harmed the R2P principle more broadly.This has led to the present situa-tion in which questions loom over R2P’s relevance and legitimacy, compounded by ever-growing challenges to the international rules-based system. It should not, however, take another mass atroc-ity on the scale seen in Rwanda or Srebrenica to encourage the inter-national community to acknowl-edge the present failings of R2P.

An examination of the challenges associated with R2P’s interpreta-tion and implementation is imper-ative if workable solutions are to be found to ensure the most impor-tant of human rights: the right to live securely.

To prevent is to protect

Recent discussion has shifted to-wards the provision of preventa-tive action, as articulated in R2P’s second pillar. This seems logical given that the act of protection is, by definition, preventative, and given that a broad consensus al-ready exists as to the legitimacy of such approaches. It is therefore worth considering strategies that emphasize this particular element of R2P as an entry point for efforts to improve protection: in other words leveraging interest in, and tolerance of, pillar two to facilitate development of a more sustain-able and robust framework. Such an initiative would, however, have to be approached in a pragmatic manner, given the reduced appetite for international norms As such, it should take the form of a recalibra-tion of R2P, with the second pillar explicated and developed to reflect the increasingly multifaceted na-ture of governance.The primary obstacle to revital-izing R2P in this way is the like-lihood that such action may be interpreted as ‘upstreaming’ inter-ventionism, which would equate to little less than the transposition of pillar three at an earlier stage. To address this, policy develop-ment would benefit from increased cooperation between the UN, re-gional groupings and civil society organizations (CSOs). There is an opportunity for the UN to redis-cover its role as the coordinator of such action, given that regional leadership on R2P has been lack-ing in the EU and has gone un-supported in, for example, West

Africa.[9] Key aspects of this role could involve the UN promoting capacity-building efforts and de-veloping joint-response mecha-nisms with regional organizations When undertaken in a preventa-tive capacity, these efforts would benefit from the legitimacy af-forded by the UN, while utilizing the local knowledge and resources available within each region to prepare responses to future crises. The resulting structures and mech-anisms might then serve as ‘trip-wire’ warning mechanisms and deterrents respectively which, if compromised, would bolster any subsequent case for action under pillar three.Complementing this work, the role of CSOs should be clarified to diversify the pool of those re-sponsible within the international community for ensuring the pro-tection of civilians. Meaningful cooperation between the UN and civil society has thus far been un-dermined by ambiguity over what the protection of civilians’ means and uncertainty as to the optimum role of CSOs within R2P.However, some operational CSOs are already widely perceived as key players in the early-warning process and at a minimum should therefore have this important function more formalized. Capac-ity-building and response mecha-nisms involving in-country CSOs would benefit from such groups’ ability to sound the alarmon nascent threats to security. This approach would also bolster the transparency of preventative ac-tions by diversifying the range of stakeholders involved. It would provide a legitimized, independ-ent source of reporting and verifi-cation on instances of instability.This could provide the UN with the evidence required to recog-nize threats to civilian lives and increase political will among UN Security Council members to dis-

charge their responsibilities – in line with the UN Charter, and as validated in the Sustainable Devel-opment Goals. Through broaden-ing the base of authorized actors, the responsibility can be shared, acknowledged and acted upon.Although R2P is frequently viewed as peripheral to many national in-terests, it should be considered crucial to the security of all states.The conflict in Syria, which has forced millions of people mostly westwards, continues to challenge the capacity of neighbouring states to absorb and care for the dis-placed. Ongoing threats to human security in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa have forced other people to flee to countries includ-ingCyprus, Greece, Italy and Spain.Reactive response has become the norm, at the expense of effec-tive prevention measures. Efforts such as the Focal Points Initiative, which has encouraged each state to appoint a senior civil servant to lead national efforts to galva-nize R2P, have had limited impact. Countries such as the UK have come under criticism for failing to appoint an official who is suffi-ciently senior, or wholly dedicated to mainstreaming R2P across rel-evant government departments.More encouraging have been ini-tiatives born out of work by the High-Level Advisory Panel on the Responsibility to Protect in South-east Asia. Many members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are beginning to develop and integrate R2P-pertinent curriculums into training courses conducted in, for example, police and justice agencies. Other states have improved early-warn-ing systems.Similarly, states facilitating devel-opment aid projects in fragile con-

texts would do well to countenance the security needs of the benefi-ciaries of such work. For example, if key community facilities are be-ing constructed by donor agencies or NGOs in established towns, can these facilities be safely accessed along main routes from nearby vil-lages or rural communities? Small changes could provide significant security benefits in areas where in-stability persists.

Conclusion

R2P is presently vulnerable to the dual forces of disinterest within an international community that is in-creasingly at odds with itself and the presence of actors who may look to exploit this lack of coher-ence. As the foundations of the rules-based system are placed un-der greater strain, R2P runs the risk of sliding further into irrelevance. While a lack of consensus prevails at the state level, this safeguard of human security must instead be reinforced through alternative structures which are more agile and capable of responding within present geopolitical confines. In-decision and infighting cannot be permitted to trump the protection of civilians. R2P must be reinvig-orated, not abandoned, by the in-ternational community.When undertaken in a preventa-tive capacity, these efforts would benefit from the legitimacy af-forded by the UN, while utilizing the local knowledge and resources available within each region to prepare responses to future cri-ses. The resulting structures and mechanisms might then serve as ‘tripwire’ warning mechanisms and deterrents respectively which, if compromised, would bolster any subsequent case for action under pillar three.

Recalibrate the Responsibility to Protect

8 SCIENCE Monday, October 14, 2019

Officials Warn About Invasive Snakehead Fish Found in Georgia: ‹Kill It Immediately›

Find lots more fun things to do at: www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglishkids

Tongue twisters are difficult to say. Can you say it five times quickly without making any mistakes?

TONGUETWISTERS

red lorry yellow lorry

Helen Murphy

An invasive northern snakehead fish, a crea-ture native to Asian countries like South Korea and China, has been found in Geor-gia for the first time, prompting a warning from local officials to kill the animal “imme-diately” if located.On Tuesday, the Georgia Depart-ment of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division said that the fish was found in a pond on private prop-erty in Gwinnett County earlier this month. Gwinnett County is located in the northern part of the state, just outside of Atlanta.“Our first line of defense in the fight against aquatic invasive species, such as the northern snakehead, are our anglers,” Matt Thomas, chief of fisheries for the Wildlife Resources Division, said in the statement.“Thanks to the quick report by an angler, our staff was able to investi-gate and confirm the presence of this species in this water body,” Thomas continued. “We are now taking steps to determine if they have spread from this water body and, hopefully, keep it from spreading to other Georgia waters.”Though it’s the first confirmed sight-ing of the species in Georgia, snake-

heads have been reported in 14 states. The long, thin fish has a dark brown blotchy appearance and can grow up to three feet in length, officials said. Northern snakeheads can also breathe air and are able to survive on land.The snakehead is a non-native inva-sive species, meaning it has the po-tential to negatively impact native species by competing for food and habitat.Officials said it is illegal to possess, import or sell any species of snake-head fish in Georgia without a li-cense.The Georgia DNR’s Wildlife Re-sources Division also advised any-one who believes they have found a northern snakehead to “kill it imme-diately” before freezing it.“If possible, take pictures of the fish. Include close ups of its mouth, fins and tail,” state officials said, adding that the finding should then be report-ed to local Wildlife Resources Divi-sion offices.

AFP

STOCKHOLM: Canadi-an-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz on Tues-day won the Nobel Physics Prize for research that in-creases the understanding of our place in the universe.Peebles won one-half of the prize “for theoreti-cal discoveries that have contributed to our under-standing of how the uni-verse evolved after the Big Bang,” professor Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told a press conference.Mayor and Queloz shared the other half for the first discovery, in October 1995, of a planet outside our solar system — an exoplanet — orbiting a solar-type star in the Milky Way.“Their discoveries have forever changed our conceptions of the world,” the jury said.Developed over two decades since the mid-1960s, Peebles’ theoretical frame-work is “the basis of our contemporary ideas about the Universe.”Peebles built upon Albert Einstein’s work on the origins of the Universe by looking back to the millenia immedi-ately after the Big Bang, when light rays started to shoot outwards into space.Using theoretical tools and calculations, he drew a link between the temperature of the radiation emitted after the Big Bang and the amount of matter it cre-ated.His work showed that the matter known to us — such as stars, planets, and our-selves — only make up five percent, while the other 95 are made up of “un-known dark matter and dark energy.”

“This is a mystery and a challenge to modern physics,” the academy said.Peebles is Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University in the United States, while Mayor and Queloz are both professors at the University of Geneva. Queloz also works at the Uni-versity of Cambridge in Britain.Using custom-made instruments at their observatory in southern France in Octo-ber 1995, Mayor and Queloz were able to detect a gaseous ball similar in size to Jupiter, orbiting a star around 50 light years from our own Sun.Harnessing a phenomenon known as the Doppler effect, which changes the color of light depending on whether an object is approaching or retreating from Earth, the pair proved the planet, known as 51 Pegasus b, was orbiting its star.The Nobel jury noted that the discovery “started a revolution in astronomy” and since then over 4,000 exoplanets have been found in our home galaxy.“Strange new worlds are still being dis-covered,” challenging our preconceived ideas about planetary systems and “forc-ing scientists to revise their theories of the physical processes behind the origins of planets.”

In a statement, the two astrono-mers hailed their win as “simply extraordinary,” saying the dis-covery was “the most exciting of our careers.”The prize consists of a gold med-al, a diploma and the sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about $914,000 or 833,000 euros).The trio will receive the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Al-fred Nobel who created the priz-es in his last will and testament.In 2018, the honor went to Ar-

thur Ashkin of the US, Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of the US for laser inventions used for advanced precision instruments in cor-rective eye surgery and in industry.This year’s Nobel prize season kicked off on Monday with the Medicine Prize awarded to Americans William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza, and Britain’s Peter Ratcliffe.They were honored for research into how human cells sense and adapt to chang-ing oxygen levels, which opens up new strategies to fight such diseases as cancer and anaemia.The winners of this year’s Chemistry Prize will be announced on Wednesday.The Literature Prize will follow on Thursday, with two laureates to be crowned after a sexual harassment scan-dal forced the Swedish Academy to post-pone the 2018 award, for the first time in 70 years.On Friday the action moves to Norway where the Peace Prize is awarded, with bookies predicting a win for Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg on betting sites such as Ladbrokes.The Economics Prize will wrap up the Nobel prize season on Monday, October 14.

Nobel Physics Prize Honors Dark Matter and Exoplanets

Matt Smith

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Bioland is on a mission to popularize organic pro-duce, selling food from its four farms for prices that are a little above the going rate for conventionally grown crops and meat.“Organic food shouldn’t be sold as a luxury; it’s just returning to the way our grandparents used to farm and eat before commercial agricul-ture became the norm,” said Gilbert Khoury, general manager at Bio-land.“Not using chemicals and artificial fertilizers might only reduce yields by 10-15 percent, so there shouldn’t be such a huge margin on organic food.”Today, Bioland’s farms produce 80 certified organic products includ-ing fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat, poultry, eggs, olive oil, honey and aromatic herbs.The company — which also operates three shops, a restaurant and a bakery — is the creation of founder Henri Bou Obeid, a French-trained Lebanese engineer.Returning to Lebanon in 2003, he bought a plot in the village of Sghar, around 60 km north of Beirut, to start a family farm that five years later was yielding so much produce he decided to launch Bioland.Obtaining organic certification from internationally renowned Italian firm CCPB, Bioland began delivering organic produce to customers in the surrounding area.In 2014, the brand’s first organic shop opened in Beirut’s Achrafieh district, while today it also supplies around 70 business customers and serves around two-thirds of Lebanon’s major cities. In all, the company has 600,000 square meters of organic land under cultivation.“When we opened our first shop, the awareness over organic food and the benefit of its consumption was very low,” said Khoury.“Now, perhaps 80-90 percent of people are convinced about eating or-ganic, but far fewer can afford to do so. That’s why our shops sell or-ganic produce cheaper than you’ll find elsewhere,” he added.“Our slogan is ‘organic for all,’ so we’ve always strived to grow our own food and transport and sell it ourselves to keep the costs down. There are no middlemen taking a cut.”The yield from fruit trees such as walnuts and almonds are almost the same whether they are grown organically or conventionally.For the likes of tomatoes and cucumbers, the yield difference is usually 10-15 percent, says Khoury.“The problem is if a crop gets any sickness or pest infestation, there’s no organic solution. Two years ago, we had to throw away 15 tons of to-matoes,” he added. “Other than that, we’ve not faced any big problems with organic agriculture.”At one farm, Bioland has planted 10,500 orange blossom trees via the permaculture method in which little landscaping is done in order to maximize water retention and reduce the need for water irrigation.At other farms, the company has planted nitrogen-fixing trees such as carobs throughout the land, and built lakes to support biodiversity and attract the likes of birds and butterflies.“Our chickens are free range and we don’t use growth hormones. We don’t use GM crops or artificial fertilizers and chemicals. We don’t harm bees or other insects. We don’t spray,” Khoury said.“We just plant other trees like neem to deter insects, and sometimes we release ‘good’ insects to kill the ones that eat our crops.”Among the challenges the company faces are the high cost and dif-ficulty in importing organic feedstock for its animals, which sells for around 3.5 times the price of conventional feedstock.Bioland imports organic powdered cow’s milk. Another difficulty is sourcing non-plastic packaging in order to export produce abroad.“We’re planning to export abroad, especially eggs. We’re also working in essential oils — we already export to the UK and South Korea, plus orange blossom water to France,” said Khoury. “People are now more aware about eating organic, and how organic food is grown.”

A Family-owned Lebanese Farm Seeks to Popularize Organic Food

WORLD NEWS9 Monday, October 14, 2019

Sky NewsThe capital of Ecuador has been placed under mili-tary curfew after masked protesters attacked the na-tional audit office and a TV station, which they tried to break into as terrified employees cowered inside.President Lenin Moreno ordered troops on to the streets of Quito after a major escalation in dem-onstrations over a recent rise in fuel prices, with a newspaper headquarters among the sites targeted.Anti-austerity protests have taken place across Ec-uador throughout the week, with people unhappy about a sudden surge in the cost of fuel.But the marches were hijacked by dozens of masked men on Saturday, who broke into the national audit office and started a fire inside.More than 20 masked men swarmed the offices of private TV station Teleamazonas, setting fires on the grounds and trying to break in, and security guards at the newspaper El Comercio were seized and tied up.The president has blamed the violence on drug traf-fickers, organised crime and backers of predecessor Rafael Correa, who has denied allegations he is try-ing to topple the government.Mr Moreno was the vice president to the left-wing Mr Correa before taking the top job and the two men went through a bitter split because the former want-ed to introduce sweeping measures to tackle public debt.The rise in fuel prices formed part of an International Monetary Fund-backed austerity package, angering indigenous people who had expressed a willingness to negotiate before the violence escalated.Mr Moreno appeared on national television to insist he did not blame the indigenous protesters for the violence, but said the army would not hold back in its bid to bring the ugly scenes to an end.Soldiers have used tear gas since being deployed in Quito, which has been littered with makeshift bar-

ricades, and have been tasked with restricting move-ment.The president added: «I have ordered the Armed Forces Joint Command to immediately undertake all the necessary measures and operations. We are go-ing to restore order in all of Ecuador.»Despite the curfew, leading indigenous protest group Conaie has said its demonstrations will continue - but it acknowledged that proposed talks with Mr Moreno were now at risk.In a statement posted on Twitter, the group said: «There’s no real dialogue without guarantees for the safety of indigenous leaders.«We’ll carry out approaches to try to repeal the de-cree, but we will hold protest actions nationally, ex-horting the government to provide necessary guar-antees.»Mr Moreno, 66, has not indicated when the curfew in Quito might end, but has said a «good part» of the capital has been returned to calm since the army arrived.He has not said when talks with indigenous leaders might now take place, but has indicated he would be willing to try and reach a compromise - includ-ing requiring private companies to pay employees a monthly $20 bonus.Before the demonstrations, which have resulted in more than 1,100 arrests, he had been reluctant to reconsider his austerity policies, having signed a $4.2m loan deal with the International Monetary Fund.The scale of the unrest - which has also led to five deaths, more than 1,000 people being injured and the closure of some oil wells - has forced him to change tact.Mr Moreno has been delivering his addresses from the coastal city of Guayaquil, having moved his government base from the capital as a result of the protests.

16 Killed in Burkina Faso Mosque Attack

APHelicopters, boats and thousands of troops were deployed across Japan to rescue people stranded in flood-ed homes as the death toll from a ferocious typhoon climbed to at least 19 with more than a dozen missing.Public broadcaster NHK said 14 rivers across the nation had flood-ed, some spilling out in more than one spot.The casualty toll was compiled by Kyodo News service and was higher than one given by the gov-ernment spokesman earlier on Sun-day, a day after Typhoon Hagibis made landfall south of Tokyo and battered central and northern Japan with torrents of rain and powerful gusts of wind. ‘The major typhoon has caused immense damage far and wide in eastern Japan,’ government spokes-man Yoshihide Suga told reporters, adding that 27,000 military troops and other rescue crews were taking

part in the operation. News footage showed a rescue helicopter hov-ering in a flooded area in Nagano prefecture where an embankment of the Chikuma River broke, and streams of water were continuing to spread over residential areas.The chopper plucked those strand-ed on the second floor of a home submerged in muddy waters.

A stretch of Fukushima, in the city of Date, was also flooded with only rooftops of residential homes vis-ible in some areas, and rescuers paddled in boats to get people out. Parts of nearby Miyagi prefecture were also under water.The Tama River, which runs by To-kyo, overflowed its banks, flooding homes and other buildings in the

area.Authorities warned of a risk of mudslides. Among the reported deaths were those whose homes were buried in landslides. Other fatalities included people who got swept away by raging rivers.Mr Suga said recovery was on its way. Some 376,000 homes were without electricity, and 14,000 homes lacked running water, he said.Boats as well as helicopters were sent to the flooded areas, while rescue crew dug through dirt else-where to try to get people out from homes buried by landslides.Several train service in the Tokyo area resumed, although others were undergoing safety checks and were expected to restart later on Sunday.Ruling party politician Fumio Kishida said the government will do its utmost in rescue operations, including making sure that those who moved to shelters were taken care of.

AFPOuagadougou: Sixteen people died and two were seriously injured in an attack on a mosque in Burkina Faso’s volatile north, security sources said Saturday.Armed men attacked the Grand Mos que in Salmossi on Friday evening, a source told AFP, adding that 13 died on the spot and three succumbed to their injuries later.Two of the wounded are in critical condition, the source added.A resident from the nearby town of Gorom-Gorom confirmed the attack, saying Salmossi residents had fled their homes afterwards.Although hit by extremist vio-lence, many Burkinabes oppose the presence of foreign troops - notably from former colonial ruler France - on their territory.On Saturday, about a thousand-strong crowd marched in the capi-tal Ouagadougou, «to denounce terrorism and the presence of for-eign military bases in Africa.»

«Terrorism has now become an ideal pretext for installing foreign military bases in our country,» said Gabin Korbeogo, one of co-organ-isers of the march.«The French, American, Canadian, German and other armies have set foot in our sub-region, saying they want to fight terrorism. But despite this massive presence... the terror-ist groups... are growing stronger.» Until 2015, landlocked Burkina Faso was largely spared violence that hit Mali and then Niger, its neighbours to the north.But extremists - some linked to Al-Qaeda, others to Daesh - started infiltrating the north, then the east, and then endangered its southern and western borders.Combining guerrilla hit-and-run tactics with road mines and suicide bombings, the insurgents have killed nearly 600 people, ac-cording to a toll compiled by AFP. Civil society groups put the tally at more than 1,000.

Typhoon Leaves 19 Dead and 16 Missing in Japan

India, China Vow to Deepen Bilateral Ties with Focus on Trade Trudeau Wears Protective Vest after Unspecified Threat

NEW DELHI: At the end of their second informal summit in southern India on Saturday, Chinese Presi-dent Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said they would deepen their bilateral engage-ment and work toward a rules-based and inclusive in-ternational order. The leaders also agreed to set up a ‘high-level econom-ic and trade dialogue mechanism with the objective of

achieving enhanced trade and commercial relations, as well as to better balance trade between the two coun-tries.’The two-day summit took place in the ancient temple city of Mamallapuram, a UNESCO world heritage site close to Chennai, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu.The meeting will ‘add great momentum to India-China relations. This will benefit the people of our nations and the world,’ Modi tweeted after the summit.The first meeting between the two leaders was in the Chinese city of Wuhan last year, where they held six rounds of talks, in addition to some delegation-level discussions.The summit, whose date was announced just two days prior to the meet, came on the backdrop of the recent tensions between India and Pakistan over New Delhiís decision to revoke Jammu and Kashmirís autonomous status on Aug. 5. Beijing supported Pakistan in raising Indiaís action in Kashmir at the UN General Assembly and criticized New Delhiís unilateral actions in Kashmir. Xiís visit to India came just two days after his meeting with Pa-kistanís high-level delegation led by Imran Khan in Beijing. Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told the media after the summit that the Kashmir ‘issue was not raised and discussed and India-China relations are not predicated to a single issue.’Gokhale said that Xi apprised Modi of Khanís visit to Beijing earlier this week.A statement issued by the Indian Foreign Ministry af-ter the summit said that both the leaders ‘evaluated the direction of bilateral relations in a positive light and discussed how India-China bilateral interaction can be deepened to reflect the growing role of both countries on the global stage.’Trade seems to be the focal point of discussions be-tween the two leaders, with the high-level ministerial level mechanism aimed at reducing trade gaps between the two neighbors.According to Indiaís Commerce Ministry, Indiaís ex-ports to China amounted to $13.33 billion in 2018, compared to imports of $76.38 billion.

‘The mechanism will be led by the Indian finance min-ister and Chinese vice president ... the discussion will be on how to balance trade, how trade deficit will be addressed,’ Gokhale added.To take the bilateral relations to a new height, both the leaders ‘decided to designate 2020 as Year of India-China Cultural and People-to-People Exchanges and agreed that the 70th anniversary of the establishment of India-China ‘relations in 2020 will be fully utilized to deepen exchanges at all levels.’International affairs expert Harsh V. Pant, of New Delhi-based think-tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), termed the summit as ‘quite underwhelming.’‘The Wuhan summit was far more substantive, at least on paper, than the Chennai one and this reflects reality of relationship at the ground. It is a very, very difficult relationship,’ Pant said.‘The summitry of this kind is good between the two large neighbors where two leaders can exchange views. However, I donít think it alters the reality at the ground,’ he said.Pant said that two major takeaways were ‘the discus-sion on trade and radicalization. Apart from this the talks were really generic.’In the last summit ‘there were some proposals of In-dia and China cooperating in some third countries, like Afghanistan, Bangladesh and all, but this time there was no such talk. This is the reality of Sino-India rela-tionship today. For all the theater the reality is some-thing different.’Pant, however, welcomes the regular interactions with the top leadership of both the nations.Manoj Kewalramani, a fellow at Bangalore-based think-tank the Takshashila Institution, said that the meet was ‘high on optics and there were hardly any tangible outcomes.’However, he said that ‘high-level engagement has man-aged to instill some sense of stability in the bilateral relationship. Unlike the past summit few substantives issues have been discussed in the delegation level talks this time. Both sides emphasize peace at the disputed boundary and work together amid the changes under-way in the international political and trading order.’

APONTARIO, Canada: Ca-nadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau donned an armored vest and ap-peared with a heavy secu-rity detail at a major elec-tion rally on Saturday.Officials would not reveal the nature of the threat. It resulted in a 90-minute delay before Trudeau appeared before about 2,000 supporters who had turned out as the election campaign ahead of the Oct. 21 vote. Trudeau wore a suit jacket rather than his usual rolled-up sleeves and loosened tie, and was wearing a vest, which was noticeable in photos taken at the event.Trudeau was escorted through crowd by a large number of plainclothes

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers as well as Mounties dressed in green tactical gear.RCMP spokeswoman Stephanie Dumoulin said for security reasons they do not comment on secu-rity measures given to the prime minister. A spokes-woman of Trudeau also declined comment.Prepared remarks had indicated that Trudeauís wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, was to introduce the Liberal leader. She did not appear or take the stage during the rally.Opposition NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh tweeted his concerns.‘Any threat made against @Justin-Trudeau, or any leader, is troubling to all of us,’ he wrote.

Ecuador Protests: Army Moves into Capital Quito to Combat Increased Violence

After Rare Debate, Tunisia Gears for Presidential Runoff

AFPTUNIS: Tunisia prepared for Sun-dayís presidential runoff after the two finalists, both political outsid-ers, went head-to-head in a rare television debate in a last bid to woo the countryís 7 million vot-ers.Friday nightís showdown between conservative law professor Kais Saied and business tycoon Nabil Karoui was widely viewed, inject-ing new life into a hectic campaign before it wrapped up.They had both come out on top in the Sept. 15 first round on anti-es-tablishment platforms in a country grappling with a stagnant econo-my, high unemployment, failing public services and rising prices.The debate was held just days af-ter Karoui was released from jail Wednesday to a heroís welcome. He had been held since August in connection with a probe into mon-ey laundering and tax evasion.Last week Saied said he was putting his campaign on hold to avoid an unfair advantage over Karoui.Broadcast on the majority of local channels, as well as some interna-tional ones, the debate filled cafes in the capital Tunis, where a rapt, largely young audience tuned in.‘This is a dream come true. I am truly almost in tears,’ said Aly Mhani, a young civil society ac-tivist.

‘This debate is decisive. Now that Nabil Karoui is free, I want to hear what he has to say,’ said Tarek Neffeti, 33.‘One thing is sure, we have had enough of the promises of the system. The advantage with Kais Saied is that he is outside of the system,’ he added.Broadcast on the majority of local channels, as well as some interna-tional ones, the debate filled cafes in the capital Tunis, where a rapt, largely young audience tuned in.While the country has succeeded in curbing deadly militant attacks that rocked the key tourist sec-tor in 2015, its economy remains hampered by austere International Monetary Fund-backed reforms.Unemployment, which primarily affects the young, hovers around 15 percent and the cost of living

has risen by close to a third since 2016.Hours before, thousands of sup-porters of both finalists rallied separately in the heart of Tunis, under the watch of a strong secu-rity contingent.Tunisiaís second free presidential poll since the 2011 Arab Spring revolt are the countryís first to be accompanied by televised debates ó a rare event in the Arab world.Throughout, media magnate Ka-roui appeared relaxed but occa-sionally hesitant, and speaking in the Tunisian dialect he stuck to his key themes ó fighting poverty and economic liberalism.Saied, serious but at ease, de-fended decentralization of power and criticized the partisan system, delivering his answers in classical Arabic.

Nepal’s President Bidhya Devi Bhandari shakes hands with China’s President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony at the airport in Kathmandu on Saturday. Xi is making the first state visit by a Chi-nese leader to Nepal in 23 years following his two days of talks in India. (AFP)

Introduction

Held annually on 5 October since 1994, World Teachers’ Day (WTD) commemo-rates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. This Recommendation sets forth the rights and responsibilities of teachers and standards for their initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment, and teaching and learning conditions. To com-plement the 1966 Recommendation, the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel was adopted in 1997 to cover teaching and research personnel in high-er education. The Sustainable Develop-ment Goals (SDGs) on quality education and lifelong learning for all, in particular the dedicated target (SDG 4.c), recognize teachers as key to the achievement of the 2030 Education Agenda. This acknowl-edgement was reaffirmed in the Final Dec-laration of the 11th Policy Dialogue Forum of the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, held in Montego Bay in November 2018, and the Final Outcome Statement of the Global Education Meeting held in Brussels in December 2018 (the Brus-sels Declaration). This year, World Teachers’ Day will celebrate teachers with the theme, “Young Teachers: The future of the Profes-sion.” The day provides the occasion to cel-ebrate the teaching profession worldwide, to take stock of achievements, and to address some of the issues central for attracting and keeping the brightest minds and young tal-ents in the profession. The official event will take place on Monday, 7 October at UN-ESCO Headquarters in Paris in collabora-tion with the convening partners, including UNICEF, UNDP, the International Labour Organization and Education International and will be celebrated globally with various events. World Teachers’ Day 2019 Young Teachers: The Future of the Profession Con-cept Note WTD 2019 – Concept Note Page 2 of 7 Rationale for the choice of the theme The early twenty-first century is not an easy time to be a teacher. While teachers were once highly respected professionals, valued, trusted and accepted as inspirational role models for young people, nowadays they too easily serve as scapegoats for the failures of education systems. Indeed, in societies that tend to glorify celebrities, we are more likely to see praise heaped on performing artists, sports personalities and social media influ-encers than on outstanding teachers. There are, without doubt, considerable challenges to the occupational, social and legal status of the teaching profession worldwide.i Cer-tain western countries also report a decline in public perception and respect for teachers more generally, suggesting that families no longer automatically support teacher’s au-thority over their students in the classroom.ii Teachers and education staff can experience intimidation from their students and family members. In some countries, the public’s negative perception of teachers is such that education staff regularly face the threat of violence. If this weren’t enough, prominent

academics are urging us to rethink the very notion of ‘expertise,’ proposing that technol-ogy, artificial intelligence and automation will soon make redundant many human tasks that were once the historic preserve of ‘pro-fessions’. While teaching and learning will always offer the greatest rewards as a form of social interaction, it is true that technology is significantly changing how we work and live, even as these technologies raise ethi-cal questions about privacy and how humans connect with each other. Taken together, all of this points to a profession under threat. With large percentages of teachers likely to retire from practice in the coming decade, a major concern is that not enough young can-didates are coming in to the profession to replace them. Over 69 million teachers must be recruited by 2030 for primary and second-ary education to meet the SDG 4 education targets. Of this number, 48.6 million new recruits will be needed to replace those who are to leave the profession either through re-tirement or voluntarily.iii In South and West Asia, and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, acute shortages exist. These challenges and transformations in the 21st century are very real. As we commemorate World Teachers’ Day 2019, we must take time to look at the future of the profession and the role of young teachers in it - taking onboard the changing climate of education and schooling, the need to draw in and retain a new generation of dedicated educators, and to prepare them for the 21st century challenges of ‘teaching in diversity’ and ‘diversity in teaching.’ WTD 2019 – Concept Note Page 3 of 7 The chal-lenge of attracting a new generation of bright minds to teaching Attracting young candi-dates to the teaching profession is a major challenge around the world and this is not just a supply-side issue. For many potential young candidates under the age of 30, the world of work is now a much different place. In years past, young school leavers and graduates may not have doubted teaching as

their first career choice. Now, they are less convinced as they witness friends and peers attracted to higher paid jobs in more lucra-tive sectors at home and abroad. For those who do join the profession, the report on the ‘Global Status of Teachers and the Teaching Profession’iv highlights the serious problem of attrition in many countries. As many as 71% of teachers unions in the African region report high attrition rates, but industrialized countries are also affected. Complementary data from the United States for example, based on a representative sample of 50,000 teachers, indicates that over 41% of teach-ers (primary and secondary education levels combined) leave the profession within five years of entry.v While the factors cited for teacher dissatisfaction depend on context, common factors across countries include a mixture of poor work-life balance, scarce opportunities for professional development, low salaries, limited inputs to decision-mak-ing, feelings of being unsupported and unap-preciated, attacks on teachers’ employment terms and conditions and constant pressures created by out-of-phase curricular and exam reforms. Asking the questions that matter most to young candidates Given the chal-lenges for attracting, recruiting and keeping young people in the teaching profession, it is crucial that countries consult with, and take into account the opinions of their youth, re-cent graduates and teacher training academy students on how to plan more dynamic re-cruitment and training strategies, and how to make the teaching profession more attrac-tive overall. The dialogue might begin with: What kind of incentives might help to attract the most qualified and committed young tal-ents into teaching? What kinds of contractual relationships, remuneration and rewards are qualified candidates looking for, and how do existing policies line up with their ambitions and expectations for career progression? What could be envisaged to generate more flexibility in recruitment, teacher education

and deployment policies to work with young people in meeting the teacher gap?Although teaching is no longer a first-choice career for many, we are also in a time where career changes are more and more common. The future of teaching must envisage entry points for young and mid-career profession-als with sought-after academic backgrounds who can add value to education systems in under-staffed subject areas. For these po-tential recruits, who may be second or even third-career changers, what kinds of flexible re-training and professional support strate-gies may tempt them towards a more fulfill-ing career in the education sector? Last but not least, and given the known impacts of female instruction on girls’ enrolment and learning outcomes at primary and secondary levels, how can we attract suitably qualified young women into the profession to teach at education levels, and in subject areas, where education systems are struggling to recruit and hold on to female teachers in the class-room? Conversely, how can we attract men into female-dominated fields such as early childhood education? All of these questions and issues require closer investigation. If we do not take time to dialogue with young people themselves on possible solutions to closing the teacher gap, we may miss out on yet another generation of talented recruits and creative minds choosing to become ed-ucators in countries where they are needed most. Governments also need to understand the types of incentives and rewards that mo-tivate young teachers in their work and keep driving them forward to make a difference in the classroom Many young teachers have so much more pressure and demands on them than before, especially in high-income coun-tries. National education reforms increas-ingly focus on standards and learning out-comes and teachers are expected to keep up, sometimes at lightning speed. Meanwhile in low income countries, pupil/trained teacher ratios can be very high.

WORLD DAYS10 Monday, October 14, 2019

Held annually on 5 October since 1994, World Teachers’ Day commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommen-dation concerning the Status of Teachers. This Rec-ommendation sets benchmarks regarding the rights and responsibilities of teachers and standards for their initial preparation and further education, re-

cruitment, employment, and teaching and learning conditions. The Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel was adopted in 1997 to complement the 1966 Rec-ommendation by covering teaching and research personnel in higher education.With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education, and the dedicated target (SDG

4.c) recognizing teachers as key to the achievement of the Education 2030 agenda, WTD has become the occasion to mark progress and reflect on ways to counter the remaining challenges for the promo-tion of the teaching profession.World Teachers’ Day is co-convened in partnership with UNICEF, UNDP, the International Labour Or-ganization, and Education International.

Joint Message from UNESCO, ILO, UNICEF, UNDP and Education International, With the theme: “Young Teachers: The Future of the Profession,”

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. ”Today, following the lesson of Albert Einstein, we celebrate the expertise, energy and passion of teachers, who are the cornerstone of the education systems of the future. How-ever, they are also central to the regen-eration of the profession itself. Without a new generation of motivated teachers, millions of learners will miss out, or continue to miss out, on their right to a quality education. With teachers being underpaid and undervalued, attracting and retaining talent is a challenge. Attrition rates are rising rapidly

worldwide, due in part to precarious em-ployment and scarce opportunities for continuous professional development. Furthermore, there is a lack of resources for children with special education needs and disabilities, refugees and multilingual pupils. Today, it is urgent to take action.. The figures given by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) are quite worrying: the world needs al-most 69 million new teachers to meet the Education 2030 Agenda. Global ine-qualities could directly increase, as 70% of sub-Saharan countries face acute shortages of teachers, rising to 90% at secondary level.

Such problems are even more promi-nent in rural and crisis-affected ar-eas in developing countries. Teachers, particularly women, risk isolation and violence. The resulting flux of teachers to urban areas leave rural schools short-staffed. To counter this situation, the pivotal role of teachers in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals was reaffirmed at UNESCO’s Global Education Meeting and at the 11th Policy Dialogue Forum of the In-ternational Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030. To succeed in this, education systems need an in-jection of fresh thinking on how to

recruit, train, incentivize and retain the brightest minds for 21st century classrooms. The media and new tech-nologies must be instrumentalized to elevate the teaching profession, and to demonstrate its importance for hu-man rights, social justice and climate change. Governments must also improve employment and working conditions.With the theme: “Young Teachers: The Future of the Profession,” we recognize the critical importance of reaffirming the value of the teaching mission. We call upon governments to make teaching a profession of first choice for

young people. We also invite teacher unions, private sector employers, school principals, parent-teacher asso-ciations, school management commit-tees, education officials and teacher trainers to share their wisdom and experiences in promoting the emer-gence of a vibrant teaching force. Above all, we celebrate the work of dedicated teachers around the world whocontinue to strive every day to ensure that “inclusive and equitable quality education” and the promotion of “lifelong learning opportunities for all” become a reality in every corner of the globe.

Young Teachers: The Future of the Profession Concept Note (1)

World Teachers’ Day 5 OCT 2019

11HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Edited by: Alula Berhe Kidani

Monday, October 14, 2019

The Growth Report:Strategies for Sustained Growth and Inclusive Development (7)Commission on Growth and Development

Since 1950, 13 economies have grown at an average rate of 7 per-cent a year or more for 25 years or longer. At that pace of expansion, an economy almost doubles in size every decade. This report is about sustained, high growth of this kind: its causes, consequences, and internal dynamics.

Resource mobility and structural transformation

A countryís comparative advan-tage will evolve over time. In any period of fast growth, capital, and especially, labor moves rapidly from sector to sector, industry to industry. This mobility of resourc-es was a feature of all the 13 high-growth cases. Governments did not resist (although they may have tempered) the market forces that pulled people into the urban ar-eas or destroyed some jobs, while creating others. In Malaysia, for example, agricultureís share of em-ployment fell from 40 percent in 1975 to about 15 percent in 2000. Only a quarter of Malaysiaís peo-ple lived in cities in 1957, the year of its independence; by 2005, 63 percent did. Even in China, where the household registration system placed some restrictions on mobil-ity, vast shifts of population have taken place.Economies do not grow smoothly and evenly, maintaining their shape as they increase their size. Instead, fast-growing economies go through a tumultuous process of creative

destruction, breaking into new in-dustries even as they abandon their traditional industrial strongholds. The challenge that each of the 13 governments faced was how to shield people from the worst of this tumult, without retarding the economy in the process.

Leadership and governance

Growth is about more than eco-nomics. It also requires committed, credible, and capable governments. ì[I]n the long run it does not pay to build an economic mansion on a foundation of political sand,î writes Benjamin Mkapa, former president of Tanzania, in a paper written for the Commission. The high-growth economies typically built their prosperity on sturdy po-litical foundations.Their policy makers understood that growth does not just happen. It must be consciously chosen as an overarching goal by a countryís leadership. In Singapore, for ex-ample, the pursuit of growth has served as an organizing principle of the countryís politics for the past 40 years, according to a recent speech by Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, a member of the Com-mission.The government and other institu-tions have constantly sought to an-ticipate the actions required to sus-tain the economyís momentum.Does that make Singapore unusu-al? After all, most political leaders advertise their commitment to eco-nomic development. But in their choices, if not their words, many governments prize political tran-

quility over the economic upheaval that growth can entail. Others carry out plausible economic reforms for their own sake. If growth does not ensue, they do not experiment with something else; they simply de-clare victory and go home.In the fast-growing economies, by contrast, policy makers under-stood that successful development entails a decades-long commit-ment, and a fundamental bargain between the present and the future. Even at very high growth rates of 7ñ10 percent it takes decades for a country to make the leap from low to relatively high incomes.During this long period of transi-tion, citizens must forgo consump-tion today in return for higher standards of living tomorrow. This bargain will be accepted only if the countryís policy makers communi-cate a credible vision of the future and a strategy for getting there. They must be trusted as stewards of the economy and their promises of future rewards must be believed.Their promise must also be inclu-sive, leaving citizens confident that they and their children will share in the benefits. In Botswana, for ex-ample, Seretse Khama handed over diamond mining rights from his own tribe to the government, which gave every tribe in Botswana a big-ger stake in the stateís success.10 Other governments forged an im-plicit or explicit social contract in support of growth, offering health, education, and sometimes redistri-bution. These contracts were kept, if not in detail, then at least in spirit. Absent this kind of political foun-dation, sustaining the policies that

promote growth is very difficult if not impossible.Such leadership requires patience and a long planning horizon. In several cases, fast-growing econo-mies were overseen by a single-party government that could expect to remain in power for decades to come. In a multiparty democracy,

on the other hand, governments typically look no further than the next election. But democracies can nonetheless preside over remark-able passages of growth. Todayís India is the most prominent exam-ple. But Ireland and Australia also provide some instructive lessons.Australiaís Productivity Commis-

sion was established by an act of parliament in 1998, although it can trace its roots back 30 years. An in-dependent state agency, it regularly evaluates government regulations and microeconomic policies, ana-lyzes Australiaís long-term growth prospects, and helps bring people together to craft proposals for re-form. The Irish Social Partnership, which arose out of the countryís economic stagnation in the 1980s, brings employers, unions, and the government together every three years to rethink and renegotiate the nationís economic strategy. Once these deliberations are ratified, they become the framework for policy making for the next three years.These latter cases show that de-mocracies can be surprisingly far-sighted. Rival political parties can, for example, agree on a bipartisan growth strategy, which they each promise to follow when it is their turn in power. Even if a formal pact is never made, a successful growth strategy, commanding the confi-dence of the public, may outlast the government that introduced it.Committed to the goal of high growth, governments should be pragmatic in their pursuit of it. The policy makers who succeeded in sustaining high growth were pre-pared to try, fail, and learn. Sin-gapore, for example, did not turn outward until it had first tried turn-ing inward, encouraging domestic firms to compete with industrial imports. In China, Deng Xiaoping reportedly described his approach as crossing the river by feeling for the stonesóan oft-repeated phrase in China.

Human Development in Africa (2)Human development goes beyond the accumulation of wealth. It embodies the process of enlarging

peopleís choices to live their lives in a way that is equitable, participatory, productive and sustainable

AfDB

The African Development Bankís Af-rica Economic Outlook 2016 the bank Flagship report had a Special Theme: Sustainable Cities and Structural Trans-formation. The report Chapter 4 focused on Human Development in Africa. This chapter for its importance is reviewed in this page.

Weak enabling conditions

Persistent low human development is strongly correlated with the relatively high population growth rate in low human development countries. High population growth mitigates the positive impact of economic growth and social progress on human development. Low human devel-opment countries have the highest fer-tility rates and twice the average annual population growth of medium and high human development countries. The aver-age annual population growth rate for low human development countries is 2.6%, compared to 1% and 1.9% for high and medium development countries, respec-tively (UNDP, 2015a).High population growth leads to high dependency and a delayed demographic dividend. High fertility implies that the burden on the working population to sup-port the aged and the young is unlikely to decline rapidly. In Africa, children under the age of 15 account for 41% of the pop-ulation (UN DESA, 2015). High depend-ency reduces the potential demographic dividend from the growing number of youth entering the workforce, usually characterised by rising levels of national productivity and diversified economies. This is because high dependency diverts time, resources and investments away from productive activities towards care-related activities and household consump-tion, which slows the pace of economic diversification and human development.Policy responses and determined action are required to tackle population growth and create productive employment oppor-tunities to harness the youth bulge and use this demographic dividend for Africaís development. Africa faces critical hurdles to creating the enabling conditions for hu-man development in terms of effective public participation in governance and non-realisation of rights. The annual Ibra-him Index of African Governance (IIAG,

2015a) shows that participation remains one of the lowest scoring areas for most African countries. This is particularly true for the indicator on ìpolitical rightsî, which measures the extent to which citi-zens are free to ìparticipate in the political process including the right to vote freely for distinct alternatives in legitimate elec-tions, compete for public office, join po-litical parties and organisations and elect accountable representatives.Another key enabling condition for human development is environmental sustaina-bility. However, significant environmental

threats to human development persist in the region including the unsustainable uti-lisation of Africaís rich natural resources, which constitute the cornerstone of Afric-aís economic growth. African experts have prioritised sustainable land, biodiversity and waste management, and an effective response to natural disasters and climate change, as key areas of intervention for Africaís sustainable development.The persistent gender gap in economic opportunities, human development, and law and institutions poses an additional threat. The weakening of legislation on

violence against women overrides the positive impact of improvements in gen-der equality that have taken place in edu-cation, the labour force, politics and the judiciary. These effects are demonstrat-ed in the Africa Gender Equality Index (AfDB, 2015) and the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance Gender sub-index (IIAG, 2015b). Progress and gaps inrelation to gender equality are covered in Table 26 in the Statistical annex of this report, with data from the African Devel-opment Bank, OECD and UNDP.

Inequality threatens long-term develop-ment

Africaís human development progress is hampered by inequality in the distribu-tion of opportunities and outcomes with-in countries. This reduces the impact of interventions aimed at promoting human development. When inequality in the dis-tribution of health, education and income across the population in each country is taken into account, every region in the world registers a drop in the value of hu-man development. This gap between the human development value and the ad-justed human development value can be expressed as an overall loss in human de-velopment due to inequality.African countries display the highest in-equality gap in human development fol-lowed by South Asia, the Arab States and Latin America (Figure 4.6). East Asia and the Pacific and Eastern Europe and Central Asia present the smallest gap in human development due to inequality. These regions have low levels of inequal-ity in health and education outcomes. As such, reducing inequality remains a critical focus for African countries in the implementation of the Sustainable De-velopment Goals (SDGs), including the two dedicated goals on inequality: Goal 5 (gender equality) and Goal 10 (reducing inequality within and among countries).African countries with high human devel-opment have the lowest overall inequal-ity gap. For example, Cabo Verde and Mauritius ñ countries with medium and high human development, respectively ñ have the lowest levels of overall human development inequality. Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Guinea Bissau and Sierra Leone ñ all countries with low human development ñ have high levels of overall human development inequality.

However, the relative importance of in-equality for each dimension of human development varies across high, medium and low development countries. In low human development countries, inequal-ity across the population is highest in education and health compared to in-equality in income. In medium develop-ment countries, however, the disparity is highest in income compared to education and health. For high human development countries, the disparities are highest in education compared to income and are lowest in health.Income inequality has immediate and long-term implications for human devel-opment. It has a decisive impact on eco-nomic growth, human capabilities and opportunities, and the transfer of poverty and poor human development outcomes across generations. Melamed and Sam-man (2013) provide a comprehensive re-view of the relationship between income inequality and growth. In particular, they highlight the emerging consensus that income inequality has a negative im-pact on poverty reduction at all levels of growth. For example, between 1981 and 2005, economic growth enabled millions of people to escape poverty. However, growth in income inequality ensured ap-proximately 600 million people remain trapped in poverty (Hillebrand, 2009: 7).Income inequality in the absence of ef-fective distributional mechanisms con-tributes to unequal education and health attainment. There is evidence that higher income inequality contributes to lower growth, as lower income households are less able to lead healthy lives and access education (Dabla-Norris et al., 2015). This variation in health and education outcomes could be a result of disparity in individual access to economic resources, as well as inequality in the allocation of resources by geographic location, gender and economic or social group.This inequality in education and health outcomes becomes a long-term barrier to human progress. The negative impact extends to inequitable access to employ-ment, decent wages, entrepreneurship and opportunities to participate in decision making. These all contribute to the inter-generational transfer of low human de-velopment, which dampens the poverty-reducing impact of economic growth and transformation and promotes an ongoing cycle of social exclusion and poverty.

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KSA Pledges to Fight Child Abuse during UN Meeting

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Terminally-ill Man Marries Fiancee in Dream Wedding Donated Entirely by Well-wishers

Manchester United were back at the top with the launch of the Aerow II, but it was Chelsea’s Didier Drogba who top scored with 20. (Photo credit should read JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP/Getty Images)

SPANEW YORK: Saudi Ara-bia has pledged to the UN its ongoing international commitment to combating all forms of child abuse, the Saudi Press Agency re-ported. During a meeting of the UN General Assemblyís Third Committee, dedicated to social, humanitarian and cultural issues, the Kingdom reaffirmed that its laws and regulations relating to child protection covered matters including neglect, discrimi-nation, and exploitation.Addressing the committee, Reem bint Fahd Al-Omair, third secretary and mem-ber of the Kingdomís per-manent mission to the UN, also confirmed her countryís commitment to providing a safe and sound environment for children to develop their skills and abilities and pro-tect them psychologically and physically.Her comments came in a general debate on childrenís rights, during the 74th ses-sion of the General Assem-bly in New York.Al-Omair said the King-domís rules were aimed at fighting any kind of abuse toward children as part of its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Saudi Arabia signed up to in 1996.She highlighted a law which protected children from all sorts of violations, harm, and exploitation, stressing the importance the King-dom attached to human rights. She pointed to cases of exploitation and discrim-ination against children and called for measures to com-bat them.

Yahoo News UKA terminally-ill man mar-ried the love of his life in a dream bucket-list wedding after well wishers†donated the entire ceremony.Myles Harrison, 27, was diagnosed with a brain tu-mour at the age of 18 but his condition worsened and he was told by doc-

tors that there was noth-ing more they could do to help him.The news prompted Myles to pop the question to fian-cee Liz, 29, in a ceremony that was entirely donated by well-wishers.The couple had no plans at all for their big day, with the focus remaining on

The Russian Federation Ambassador Visits Sudan Vision Premises Sudan VisionPhoto: Alsir Mukhtar

Khartoum - Last week Sudan Vision staff was delighted by the visit of H.E.Mr. Vladimir Zaltov Ambassador of Russian Federation in Sudan, Dr. TagelDien AlBala Gen-eral Manager of the paper who gave the Ambassador a brief to the Ambassador on the future vision of the newspaper and the way Su-dan Vision as an English newspaper could help the new government in pro-moting Sudan abroad es-pecially in economics and tourism fields. Later the Ambassador took a tour around the different sec-tions where he met the jour-nalists and they explained their work. In the end of the visit Sudan Vision staff gave H.E memorial gift as symbol of permanent rela-tion between the embassy and newspaper.

Oprah Winfrey Steps out with Partner of 33 Years in Rare Date Night

Yahoo Celebrity UKOprah Winfrey and her partner Stedman Graham have been pictured out together in a rare date night.The 65-year-old business-woman, actress and chat show host usually flies solo on the red carpet, but at the opening gala for Tyler Perry’s studio in Atlanta she was accompanied by her partner of 33 years.Oprah and Graham even recre-ated a classic ëprom poseí with the 68-year-old businessman standing behind Oprah with his hands on her waist.Oprah - who Forbes estimated to be worth $2.7 billion (£2.2 billion) - looked elegant in a simple, fitted navy blue dress with long sleeves, a v-neck-line and fishtail skirt. Graham wore a black suit and tie with a white shirt.

The couple have been to-gether since 1986. They were engaged to be married in No-vember 1992 but the ceremony never took place.Oprah told†Essence Magazine†in 2003, “The truth of the matter is, had we gotten married we wouldn’t be to-gether now, because in no way is this a traditional relation-ship.”Stedman, who runs an educa-tional marketing and consult-ing firm and has published several self-help books, told Ellen DeGeneres in May this year that he was happy for Op-rah for being such a huge glo-bal success.He said: ìThe thing about our relationship is I want the best for her. So, I’m dedicated to her happiness, and so, that’s great for her,’ he said. ‘I want her to be the best she can pos-sibly be, and she’s done a pret-ty good job of doing that.’ìSo, for me, I’ve been able to find my own happiness and to find my own skills, my own talents, my own abilities, and I’m satisfied with that. I’m happy with that.ìThe combination ñ when you have a partner that’s able to self-actualise their potential, and you’re able to self-actual-ise yours, then you know, one, and one equals about six.î

Myles’ ongoing treatment until wedding planner Louise Hedges stepped in and organised everything including the venue, food, drink, hair, make up, trans-port, photography - and even a honeymoon.Within two weeks the wedding was planned and the happy couple became Mr and Mrs on August 11 at Castle Hill in Filleigh, Devon.Myles said: “We’re at the point where unfortunately there’s nothing that can be done. I’ve always wanted to marry Liz, ever since we got together I knew she was the one.“It was so great (at the hospice) that I decided it would be a great place to do it. I went down on one knee and proposed to Liz.”Louise, who publishes the North Devon Wed-ding Planner magazine, managed to organise for people to donate every el-ement of the wedding free of charge.Myles said: “How on earth they managed to sort eve-rything out and do what they did in such a short period of time - they are amazing, amazing people.“We can’t believe what

they’ve done and how much they’ve improved our lives.”Both Myles and Liz are big rugby fans and season ticket holders at Exeter Chiefs and their rugby he-roes even recorded special video messages for them.Liz said she was over-whelmed by people’s gen-erosity.She said: “It is amazing what they have managed to arrange in such a short space of time, and at such a very difficult time for us.“It is absolutely incredible and I want to say a huge thank you, particularly to Louise and everyone at North Devon Hospice.”