A Saharawi refugee camp in the Tindouf province of Algeria / credit: European Commission DG ECHO
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s analysis about a disputed area known as “Western Sahara” and was produced byGlobetrotter.
In November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the Guerguerat area, a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. The presence of Moroccan troops “in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area” violated the 1991 ceasefire agreed upon by the Moroccan monarchy and the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi. That ceasefire deal was crafted with the assumption that the United Nations would hold a referendum in Western Sahara to decide on its fate; no such referendum has been held, and the region has existed in stasis for three decades now.
Map of the disputed Western Sahara, with a red pin marking the location of Guerguerat, a town on the border with Mauritania / credit: Google
In mid-January 2022, the United Nations sent its Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, to Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania to begin a new dialogue “toward a constructive resumption of the political process on Western Sahara.” De Mistura was previously deputed to solve the crises of U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; none of his missions have ended well and have mostly been lost causes. The UN has appointed five personal envoys for Western Sahara so far—including De Mistura—beginning with former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, who served from 1997 to 2004. De Mistura, meanwhile, succeeded former German President Horst Köhler, who resigned in 2019. Köhler’s main achievement was to bring the four main parties—Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and Mauritania—to a first roundtable discussion in Geneva in December 2018: this roundtable process resulted in a few gains, where all participants agreed on “cooperation and regional integration,” but no further progress seems to have been made to resolve the issues in the region since then. When the UN put forward De Mistura’s nomination to this post, Morocco had initially resisted his appointment. But under pressure from the West, Morocco finally accepted his appointment in October 2021, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita welcoming him to Rabat on January 14. De Mistura also met the Polisario Front representative to the UN in New York on November 6, 2021, before meeting other representatives in Tindouf, Algeria, at Sahrawi refugee camps in January. There is very little expectation that these meetings will result in any productive solution in the region.
Abraham Accords
In August 2020, the United States government engineered a major diplomatic feat called the Abraham Accords. The United States secured a deal with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates to agree to a rapprochement with Israel in return for the United States making arms sales to these countries, as well as for the United States legitimizing Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. The arms deals were of considerable amounts—$23 billion worth of weapons to the UAE and $1 billion worth of drones and munitions to Morocco. For Morocco, the main prize was that the United States—breaking decades of precedent—decided to back its claim to the vast territory of Western Sahara. The United States is now the only Western country to recognize Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.
When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, it was expected that he might review parts of the Abraham Accords. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear during his meeting with Bourita in November 2021 that the U.S. government would continue to maintain the position taken by the previous Trump administration that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara. The United States, meanwhile, has continued with its arms sales to Morocco, but has suspended weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates.
Phosphates
By the end of November 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and from the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 percent of the entire phosphate reserves in the world (the second-highest percentage of these reserves is in China, which has around 6 percent). Phosphate, along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer, a key element in modern food production. While nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is not merely about national pride, but it is largely about the presence of a vast number of resources—especially phosphates—that can be found in the territory.
Detailed map of Western Sahara, showing borders with Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania / credit: Kmusser, based primarily on the Digital Chart of the World, with UN map and commercial atlases (Rand McNally, Google, Encarta, and National Geographic) used as references
In 1975, a UN delegation that visited Western Sahara noted that “eventually the territory will be among the largest exporters of phosphate in the world.” While Western Sahara’s phosphate reserves are less than those of Morocco, the Moroccan state-owned firm OCP SA has been mining the phosphate in Western Sahara and manufacturing phosphate fertilizer for great profit. The most spectacular mine in Western Sahara is in Bou Craa, from which 10 percent of OCP SA’s profits come; Bou Craa, which is known as “the world’s longest conveyor belt system,” carries the phosphate rock more than 60 miles to the port at El Aaiún. In 2002, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs at that time, Hans Corell, noted in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.” An international campaign to prevent the extraction of the “conflict phosphate” from Western Sahara by Morocco has led many firms around the world to stop buying phosphate from OCP SA. Nutrien, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the United States that used Moroccan phosphates, decided to stop imports from Morocco in 2018. That same year, the South African court challenged the right of ships carrying phosphate from the region to dock in their ports, ruling that “the Moroccan shippers of the product had no legal right to it.”
Only three known companies continue to buy conflict phosphate mined in Western Sahara: Two from New Zealand (Ballance Agri-Nutrients Limited and Ravensdown) and one from India (Paradeep Phosphates Limited).
Human Rights
After the 1991 ceasefire, the UN set up a Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). This is the only UN peacekeeping force that does not have a mandate to report on human rights. The UN made this concession to appease the Kingdom of Morocco. The Moroccan government has tried to intervene several times when the UN team in Western Sahara attempted to make the slightest noise about the human rights violations in the region. In March 2016, the kingdom expelled MINURSO staff because then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an “occupation.”
Pressure from the United States is going to ensure that the only realistic outcome of negotiations is for continued Moroccan control of Western Sahara. All parties involved in the conflict are readying for battle. Far from peace, the Abraham Accords are going to accelerate a return to war in this part of Africa.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Grayzone.
Ilhan Omar was greeted with vigorous booing during a July 2 Minneapolis concert featuring Somali singer Suldaan Seeraar in Minneapolis. The booing was so profound and so sustained that it was impossible to mistake it for cheering, or all the thumbs down for thumbs up. It reportedly went on for ten minutes or more, punctuated with, “Get out!” and “Get the f*ck out of here!”
Ilhan smiled, gesturing at the crowd to tamp it down, as though the adulation was just too much. Her husband, Tim Mynett, stood at her side looking awkward and confused, then someone who seemed to be a concert manager gestured at the crowd more emphatically to tamp it down. Some say the booing went on even longer while Ilhan went through the process of presenting Suldaan Seeraar with some sort of award.
The singer shifted uneasily from one leg to another, seeming startled and unsure what to do, then reached out to gesture at the crowd, also asking them to tone down their gestures of disapproval. This seemed to be more than he had bargained for when he agreed to share the stage with the congresswoman.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was booed last night by thousands of the Minneapolis Somali community last night at a Somalia Independence Day celebration concert.
Seeraar is extremely popular in the Somali community and was playing to a packed house; he’s unaccustomed to boos. This was his first concert in North America and he’s likely unfamiliar with Ilhan’s record in the House and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights, where she serves as vice chair. (Karen Bass currently chairs the subcommittee, and vice chairs the National Endowment for Democracy, the regime change wing of the U.S. government, and is all but certain to become the next mayor of Los Angeles come November.)
Ilhan, an African immigrant and the only Black person on the subcommittee besides Bass, is a shoe-in to become chair if Democrats hold onto the house, unlikely as that may seem.
Many Africans shudder at the thought, however –– not only in Somalia, her country of origin, and the rest of the Horn of Africa, but also in the African Great Lakes Region and in diasporas from both regions.
When I organized a Twitter space discussion with Somali American activists on Ilhan’s record, I heard an outpouring of anger not only over her perceived neglect of her district, where violent crime is surging, but also over her role in the removal of Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and her support for a candidate affiliated with her personal clan. This was but one of examples of the congresswoman’s role in advancing U.S. meddling in the Horn of Africa.
Ilhan Omar Meets with Kagame and Tedros As They Plot Against Ethiopia
In Rwanda on a private visit, Congresswoman Mrs @IlhanMN stopped by our offices today, for a presentation of the Foundation and other programmes, initiated by Our Chairperson @FirstLadyRwanda. pic.twitter.com/HNQBffJDy1
David Himbara, a former economic advisor to Kagame, and Tom Zoellner, author of Rusesabagina’s biography, slammed Ilhan in a Minnesota Post op-ed, writing that her relationship with Kagame threatened “to throw her entire stance on the U.S. criminal justice system into a light of hypocrisy.”
On April 7 of this year, the congresswoman met with former TPLF Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to “discuss global health security challenges, including the status of the global COVID response, the global hunger crisis, and ways to improve digital technology to broaden healthcare access.”
Yesterday, we met with @DrTedros to discuss global health security challenges, including the status of the global COVID response, the global hunger crisis, and ways to improve digital technology to broaden healthcare access. pic.twitter.com/VfifvVrcSL
Tedros has relentlessly abused his global platform as Director of the World Health Organization, in violation of UN rules about political neutrality, to advocate for Tigray— home of the TPLF — as though it were the only Ethiopian region suffering the consequences of the war. He never mentions the immeasurable suffering caused by TPLF invasions of Amhara and Afar Regions, both of which I traveled through in April and May.
On several occasions, Ilhan has asked the State Department for “legal determinations” as to whether the Ethiopian government is guilty of atrocities. Meaning, in fact, illegal determinations, because the assumption she has advanced is that the U.S. has the right to rule that international crimes — most of all genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — have been committed and action must be taken, as in Libya and Syria. According to international law codified in the UN Charter, only the UN Security Council can do that.
On December 21, 2021, while questioning Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee, Ilhan requested an illegal “legal determination” regarding Ethiopian atrocities, called for an arms embargo on Ethiopia, which would make it unable to defend itself, and proposed a “carrot and stick approach” to bringing Somalia to heel.
Ilhan Omar Backs Cold War-Style Measure to Bully African Nations Into Submission
The House passed H.R. 7311 roughly two months after 17 African countries either voted to abstain or did not vote on a UN resolution condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, and Eritrea dared to vote no. The African states voting no comprised just over half of the 35 UN member nations that opposed the measure.
House Resolution 6600, a harshly punitive bill that would sanction Ethiopia and Eritrea, is now pending in the House Foreign Relations Committee. According to Ilhan’s constituents, she has not spoken out against it, although she did make a splash by voting against the embargo on Russian oil.
Why Was Ilhan Omar Booed at Suldaan Seeraar’s Minneapolis Concert?
This writer joined a July 6 Twitter space opened by Somali American community organizer Abdirahman Warsame; 294 Somali Americans and a few Somalis — despite the distant time zone — joined the space. Many of the Somali Americans participating were from Ilhan’s Minneapolis district, and some of the younger ones had attended the concert.
Abdirahman told me that activists with the #NoMore Global Movement for Solidarity in the Horn of Africa had planned to get a few front row seats at the Suldaan Seeraar concert to boo Ilhan and that once they started, it was like a match in a haystack.
Everyone in the Twitter space was furious because Ilhan did her best to help the U.S. displace President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo, whom they described as a decent, responsible, corruption-fighting anti-imperialist.
Farmaajo had joined Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in signing the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, which ended the long-running war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and promised a new day of regional cooperation between the three largest nations in the Horn of Africa. It said:
“Considering that the peoples of Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea share close ties of geography, history, culture and religion as well as common interests, the three countries shall build close political, economic, social, cultural and security ties. The three governments hereby establish a Joint High-Level Committee to coordinate their efforts in the framework of this Joint Declaration.”
That, however, was more peace and independence than the U.S. government could tolerate, as many on the Twitter space angrily confirmed. Now, with Farmaajo out of office, the alliance is considerably weakened. The peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea still stands, although the U.S.-backed TPLF keeps skirmishing with its troops on their common border, and Eritrea is helping Ethiopia in its civil war with the TPLF in Welkait.
Ilhan put an enormous effort into getting rid of Farmaajo in a parliamentary election, which many in this Twitter space said was actually clan-based and manipulated by bribery.
Last year, on December, she quote-tweeteda State Department threat to take action if Somalia did not hold elections immediately, stating: “Farmaajo is a year past his mandate. It’s time for him to step aside, and for long overdue elections to proceed as soon as possible.” Her comment was widely republished to make the case against Farmaajo in the U.S. press.
Farmaajo is a year past his mandate. It's time for him to step aside, and for long overdue elections to proceed as soon as possible. https://t.co/f08bSjOJrm
Both the president and the parliament were at that time in office past their constitutional terms. That made Farmaajo interim president, but the states of Puntland and Jubaland refused to recognize his authority. Elections had been repeatedly planned but postponed due to disagreements between parties and lack of election infrastructure. In addition, the Islamist Al-Shabaab was continuing to oppose the existence of a secular Somali state, and the U.S. was still bombing on occasion.
According to those in the Twitter space, Farmaajo had been fighting to establish a direct, one-person-one-vote electoral process to replace the corrupt system of parliamentary election. They said he would have won in a landslide had he succeeded.
As soon as Farmaajo was defeated on May 15 — even before the formal transfer of power — Biden announced a plan to reintroduce troops to Somalia. The New York Times reported the news without raising an eyebrow, but the fury expressed in the 194 reader comments was palpable.
Most commenters were Americans outraged that the U.S. would be introducing more troops anywhere after the Afghanistan debacle, but they also included this response by a Somali American (edited very slightly for punctuation and grammar):
Somalia’s federal government just re-elected former president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud less than 48 hrs ago.
The former president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, who was previously a U.S. citizen and resident of Buffalo, NY, has lost the election due to parliamentary bribery, corruption, and foreign nations’ interfering, spending millions of dollars to overthrow Farmaajo. Those nations included Kenya, U.A.E., & others.
It’s not surprising news to witness the Biden administration seeking to have U.S. military presence in Somalia, since Hassan Sheikh’s election because President Farmaajo would’ve opposed it. Furthermore, this move will only increase security risks and destabilize the Horn of Africa. Sending U.S. military troops now to Somalia is unnecessary, and those troops will be viewed as enemies to the nation and its serenity.
The Somalia army has been fighting Al-Shabaab and all terrorist activities within the region. The army are well trained by the U.S., Turkey, Eritrea, and so on, but the Somalia government is faced with an arms embargo which limits its abilities and its operations. If President Biden wanted to offer solutions or a hand, then the approach would’ve been totally different than resending American troops back into a hostile situation. Former U.S. President Trump’s hands-off position in foreign affairs was exceptionally appreciated.
Also as soon as Farmaajo was gone, and even before the formal transition of power, an oil and gas extraction contract with a U.S. corporation that Farmaajo had blocked was back in play.
The July 6 Twitter space on the booing of Ilhan Omar contained similarly angry commentary by Somali Americans about her imperialist foreign policy positions. After the discussion, several participants sent over the following pointed statements:
Deeqa, @Deeqa_lulu
I am a Somali woman and I think I would have obtained my rights and my future would have been better in Somalia if I had the opportunity to vote for President Farmaajo, but we didn’t have the one-person-one-vote system that he was trying to put in place. Ilhan Omar is originally from Somalia and she has a daughter my age who can vote for her own president in America. She says she believes in democratic principles and she’s a member of the Democratic Party, but she didn’t support a very important right for me, the right to vote in a one-person-one-vote election.
Is this about the Democratic Party or about U.S. foreign policy toward Somalia? Either way, I feel bad and frustrated that she hasn’t changed that. Why would I expect Joe Biden to understand my problem if Ilhan Omar doesn’t? I contacted my family in America and told them not to give their votes to the Democratic Party or to Ilhan. Our 2022 election here in Somalia was eye opener for us about the Democratic Party policy toward Somalia.
We want to vote here in Somalia. That’s one of my biggest dreams now. –Deeqa
Mohammed Caanogeel, @MCaanogeel1
Ilhan Omar is being used by the Democratic Party, whose foreign policy has been aggressive and counterproductive towards Somalia.
She got booed at the concert for two reasons:
Domestically, she promised the East African community help with gun violence and drugs in our community and she hasn’t helped us with that at all.
Internationally, she undermined our sitting Somali president, President Farmaajo, by tweeting and making speeches that he was no longer the president of Somalia even though the constitution of Somalia gave him legitimacy to continue until another president took over. She was helping the U.S. government undermine this president who had captured the hearts and minds of all Somali people.
Farmaajo enjoyed 90% popularity for good governance. This president introduced reforms into the economy to win debt relief from the IMF and World Bank, but Ilhan voted against debt relief here in the United States.
Farmaajo asked the U.S. to lift the arms embargo so that our army could fight the Al-Shabaab fundamentalists, but Ilhan refused to vote for that.
President Farmaajo was loved for his stability, transparency, and fairness. He made us proud by building the military and making our intelligence one of the top 10 in Africa. He built institutions back after 30 years of war, invited foreign embassies into Somalia, and established embassies abroad.
He became such a role model president that the Somali people bought him a home, library, and offices for future campaigns. Even poor people loved Farmaajo so much that they gave to this fund drive for him.
Ilhan joined U.S. policymakers in rejecting all his good deeds, rejecting what the Somali people wanted, rejecting one-man-one-vote, and instead threatened to cut off aid. She and the rest of the U.S. government seek only the worst for Somalia. As we write to each other, the U.S. military has overtaken Berbera Airport and brought a warship to Berbera shores. -Mohammed Caanogeel
Ilhan Ignores the Boos in a Safe Blue District
After the booing episode, Fox gleefully hosted Ilhan Omar’s Republican challenger Cecily Davis to mouth meaningless platitudes about how her opponent is “out of touch with her constituents,” claiming “they are ready for change and are seeking someone who represents their conservative values.”
Davis appeared to be completely ignorant about why an audience of Somali Americans might boo their Somali American representative. The same was true of other right-wing outlets who framed the booing as confirmation that Ilhan’s woke identity offends her own community and that their candidate was therefore a serious contender.
Shukri Abdirahman, a conservative Republican who previously ran to unseat Ilhan, also highlighted the congresswoman’s “woke” positions on social issues as a source of local resentment, but also made sure to point to Ilhan “becoming an election-meddling dictator in the foreign affairs of Somalia – a sovereign nation.”
🧵 Understanding The Booing
Ilhan Omar getting booed and being told to get the f*ck out by our Somali community is not just a revolt against Ilhan selling her soul to the devil and becoming an election-meddling dictator in the foreign affairs of Somalia – a sovereign nation. 1/3
— Shukri Abdirahman (@ShuForCongress) July 5, 2022
Abdirahman Warsame (no relation to Shukri) told me that some culturally conservative Somalis had told him they were uncomfortable with Ilhan’s defense of abortion and LGBT rights, but no one expressed that discomfort in the Twitter space.
Minnesota’s 5th District is the bluest in the state, so the incumbent merely has to win the August primary to win the election, and she is expected to, though perhaps not by the margin she’d like. However, the House is all but certainly turning red, so the next chair and vice chair of the House Foreign Relations Subcommittee will in all likelihood be someone other than Ilhan Omar.
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace through her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. She can be reached on Twitter @AnnGarrison and at ann(at)anngarrison(dot)com.
A coastal village in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. While the poorest of the world will be the hardest hit by climate change, the wealthiest countries struck down at COP26 the possibility of compensating for related losses and damages / credit: Rishika Pardikar
What left many grumbling at the 26th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP26) held in November in Glasgow was rich countries like the United States and those in the European Union striking down the Glasgow Loss and Damage Facility, a body created to address how to compensate developing countries for climate change-related losses and damages. Wealthy countries have been found to be most responsible for causing the climate crisis and face litigation as well as ensuing liabilities and payouts.
But the demand to recognize loss and damage remains alive. A good indication being many climate-vulnerable developing countries have referenced loss and damage in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit NDCs to detail their national action to address global climate change, including steps to adapt to a changing climate and the form of financial assistance needed to undertake such action.
A geotextile tube (engineered coastal defense mechanism) located in the state of Odisha, along India’s eastern coast, to keep out rising sea levels caused by climate change / credit: Rishika Pardikar
Small-Income and Developing Countries Hard Hit
A report published in October, 2021 found one-third of the 250 NDCs that were analyzed explicitly mentioned loss and damage. Most were from small-island developing states and least developed countries in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. The report was supported by the European Research Council’s Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) project.
“NDCs are political documents and not just technical submissions [under the Paris Agreement],” said Elisa Calliari, a co-author of the report.
Developed countries tend to focus on mitigation action, like the deployment of renewable energy. But that hasn’t been the case for the majority of the world’s states.
“Developing countries have pushed hard for the inclusion of adaptation in NDCs because, for them, this is more of a priority than mitigation,” Calliari pointed out. “So you can see the politics.”
For people living in an island nation like Sri Lanka, “key loss and damage impacts are felt in food systems and other vulnerable sectors, like the coastal and marine sector and water resources. These impacts have already resulted in migration interlinked with or induced by climate change among vulnerable communities,” said Vositha Wijenayake, executive director of the SLYCAN Trust, a non-profit think tank working in Asia, Africa and Europe. Its work focuses on climate change, biodiversity and ecosystems, sustainable development, and social justice.
Sri Lanka is classified as a lower-middle income/developing country. Given that it is also an island, its exposure to climate-related risks is high. These two factors make it extremely vulnerable to climate impacts and the ability to withstand them.
So, Wijenayake added, it is important for countries most vulnerable to climate change that loss and damage is a “key component” in addressing climate change processes, both negotiations and climate action. And this is why Sri Lanka was among the first countries to have a separate section allocated to loss and damage commitments included in its first NDCs submitted in September 2016. Building on this, the updated NDC of Sri Lanka submitted last July includes a separate section on loss and damage.
Interestingly, the report says upper-income countries like Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay also have cited loss and damage in their NDCs.
And outside of NDCs, many developing countries have explicitly stated loss- and damage-related demands. For instance, consider India’s environment ministry laying out ahead of COP26, “There should be a compensation for expenses incurred, and it should be borne by developed nations.”
An island created by rising sea levels off the coast of Mirissa in Sri Lanka / credit: Youhana Nassif on Unsplash
How to Fund Loss and Damage
A question that usually rears its head with respect to addressing loss and damage is how to “operationalize” it, or what processes and institutions could be set up at the global and national levels to address loss and damage.
“[One way would be] to look at NDCs for a bottom-up approach to understand how countries themselves are looking at loss and damage,” Calliari said.
Of the NDCs that explicitly mention loss and damage, around half specify loss- and damage-related responses and initiatives like data gathering, analysis and assessment, and institutional capacities to address loss and damage. For example, Sri Lanka’s NDC has a whole section on loss and damage. It mentions strengthening its weather and climate forecasting systems, plus improving data management to record loss and damage. Meanwhile, Honduras’ NDC puts forth a “gender-responsive agricultural insurance mechanism for loss and damage.”
Wijenayake also stressed “inclusive and participatory processes,” in which the voices of those vulnerable to climate change are taken into account in the national and international policy-making processes. As is “ground-level implementation,” she added.
And so, country-specific NDCs could potentially be a good starting point to determine how to put mechanisms in place to address loss and damage on a global scale.
The other gap that exists today is how finance can be mobilized to fund efforts that compensate for climate change-related loss and damage. A recent study by the Stockholm Environment Institute offers potential solutions.
The researchers propose finance should be provided based on the following:
Solidarity,
“polluter pays” principle that is based on “historical responsibility,” and
CBDR-RC means that while climate change is a shared concern, rich countries with a history of emitting carbon—like the United States and those in Europe—have a greater responsibility to take climate action than the poorer countries.
The “polluter pays” principle has only been used to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for environmental destruction. It implies more strict liabilities than “historical responsibilities,” which outlines broad principles based on past emissions.
The authors stress a combined approach that deploys the principles of solidarity, polluter pays and historical responsibility, as well as using the framework of CBDR-RC, to finance loss and damage.
A strictly liability-based approach would be “politically infeasible and communities cannot wait for years to prove the liability,” said Zoha Shawoo, an associate scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute as well as one of the authors of the SEI report.
The research team also looked at methods of recovery and rehabilitation that communities would need after financing efforts to cover losses and damages. Those efforts can include planning the relocation of communities, assisting with migration and providing affected people with alternative livelihoods. Here, too, NDCs could help with granular details like national-level entities and processes that could assist local communities with issues like displacement and loss of livelihood.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India. She had reported for Toward Freedom from COP26 in Glasgow.
Ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan with Russian President Vladimir Putin / credit: Twitter / Kremlin
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Multipolarista.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused a top U.S. diplomat of threatening his government as part of a “foreign conspiracy” to overthrow him.
This March, opposition politicians in Pakistan tried to push a no-confidence motion through the National Assembly, seeking to remove Khan from office.
Khan, who was democratically elected in 2018, said the U.S. government was supporting these opposition lawmakers in their attempt to oust him.
“I’m taking the name of U.S., the conspiracy has been hatched with the help of America to remove me,” the Pakistani prime minister said, in Urdu-language comments translated by the media.
In a meeting with leaders of his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Khan singled out Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
According to the prime minister, Lu threatened Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed, warning that there would be serious “implications” if Khan was not ousted.
Washington allegedly told Majeed that U.S.-Pakistani relations could not improve if Khan remained in power.
Khan accused the U.S. embassy of organizing Pakistani opposition lawmakers to vote for the no-confidence motion in the National Assembly.
In previous comments, Khan had also said that Washington sent a letter threatening him for rejecting its attempts to create U.S. military bases in Pakistan.
Khan hinted that the soft-coup attempt was aimed at reversing his independent foreign policy. Under Khan, Pakistan has deepened its alliance with China, greatly improved relations with Russia, and maintained staunch support for Palestine.
Washington has rejected these allegations. However, Khan’s comments are bolstered by testimony that Lu himself gave in a March 2 hearing of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Near East, South East, Central Asia and Counterterrorism.
A video clip of Assistant Secretary of State Lu in the hearing, which went viral on Twitter, shows him admitting that the U.S. government had pressured Pakistan to condemn Russia for its military intervention in Ukraine.
Lu’s video testimony confirms that Washington is angry because of Islamabad’s growing relations with Moscow.
Imran Khan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Beijing Olympics. The Pakistani leader subsequently took a trip to Moscow on February 24, the beginning of the military campaign in Ukraine.
After his visit, Khan announced that Pakistan would be expanding its economic ties with Russia, importing its wheat and gas, while ignoring Western sanctions.
Although the country is a close ally of China, Pakistan has for decades had a difficult relationship with Russia. Under Khan, Islamabad’s tensions with Moscow have significantly softened.
Pakistani scholar Junaid S. Ahmad published an article in Multipolarista analyzing the numerous reasons why Washington would want to remove Imran Khan from power, including his growing alliance with China and Russia, his refusal to normalize relations with Israel, and his gradual move away from Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan’s opposition is trying to overthrow Prime Minister Imran Khan with a no-confidence motion.
Khan says he has proof of foreign funding for a regime-change op to reverse his independent foreign policy – especially his alliance with China and Russiahttps://t.co/wdIqWDlqss
The deputy speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly, Qasim Suri, suspended the opposition’s no-confidence motion, arguing that it was unconstitutional because it was part of a “conspiracy” supported by “foreign powers.”
This means that Khan has 90 days to hold snap elections.
There are worries in Pakistan, however, that the soft-coup attempt against Khan could escalate into an old-fashioned military coup.
Pakistan’s army is very powerful, and notorious for overthrowing civilian leaders. An elected Pakistani prime minister has never completed a full term.
Pakistan’s military is also closely linked to the United States, and frequently acts to promote its interests.
In concerning comments made in the middle of this controversy, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa praised the United States and Europe. Breaking with the elected prime minister, he criticized Russia over its war in Ukraine.
These remarks suggest that Khan may have lost the support of top military leaders.
General Bajwa: ‘We share a long history of excellent relationship with the United States which remains our largest export market; UK/EU vital to our national interests; Russian aggression on Ukraine is very unfortunate, this is a huge tragedy.’
