By Farhana Haque Rahman
TORONTO, Canada (IPS) – Do you sometimes feel like a hamster on its wheel, or perhaps stuck on a runaway train hurtling towards the abyss? Whatever metaphor one might choose for our world looking back on 2024, rainbows don’t easily spring to mind.
Wars and conflicts already in full spate a year ago got even worse, with horrific violence inflicted on civilians, especially women and children, and millions displaced. Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sahel, Haiti. A long list getting longer.
The COP29 talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, were ostensibly about trying to find agreements on how to tackle the global climate crisis. Two weeks of negotiations, covered in detail by IPS, came close to collapse, ending just short of total failure.
As 2024 raced towards a place in the record books as the planet’s hottest year on record, a meaningful Baku accord on climate finance for poorer nations was once again stymied by powerful nations and their geopolitical rivalries, squabbling about accountability against a backdrop of already rising debts.
In the words of Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, the rich world staged “a great escape in Baku with no real money on the table and vague and unaccountable promises of funds to be mobilised.” (One might also add that major emitting countries like China and India, which project power and wealth but refuse to be defined as ‘rich’, also got off lightly in Baku).
Disputes over finance for a new fund also sank the COP16 biodiversity summit held in Cali, Colombia, where exhausted delegates failed to reach consensus.
In a blow for those seeking to prevent mass species extinction, countries also failed to agree on a new framework for monitoring progress on tackling biodiversity loss.
A landmark new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns that deep, fundamental shifts in how people view and interact with the natural world are urgently needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and safeguard life on Earth.
The IPBES Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity – also known as the Transformative Change Report – builds on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report, which found that the only way to achieve global development goals is through transformative change, and on the 2022 IPBES Values Assessment Report.
Critical in terms of their contributions to humanity, but confined to the sidelines in these big power orchestrations, organizations like OCHA, the IOM and WHO act both as harbingers of doom while attempting to carry out essential repair and maintenance work amidst the wreckage.
Greg Puley, head of the Climate Team at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) issued a clarion call for an ambitious and fair global climate finance goal at COP29. “This year alone we witnessed devastating floods in the Sahel, extreme heatwaves in Asia and Latin America, and drought in Southern Africa,” he told IPS.
Also going unheeded was an appeal to Israel in November to halt its assault on North Gaza. Fifteen UN and other humanitarian organizations described the crisis there as “apocalyptic”. In that context the World Health Organization said its second round of polio vaccinations in the Gaza Strip had been partially successful.
Analysis by the UN Human Rights Office showed that nearly 70 percent of those killed in the war in Gaza were women and children.
“Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on November 6. “More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades. More United Nations aid workers have been killed than in any comparable period in the history of our organization,” he added.
Over 10 million people have been displaced by conflict inside Sudan while an additional 2.2 million have fled the country. Warring parties regularly attack civilians, inflicting terrible violence against women. Madiha Abdalla, an activist journalist forced to flee Sudan, wrote for IPS describing how women human rights defenders have been targeted.
Despite the scale of the suffering in Sudan, international attention is waning and aid has been blocked. Russia vetoed a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution.
As the world observed the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, UN Women data showed almost one in three women around the world have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their life.
Individual activists like Abdalla are particularly vulnerable with little or no backup during conflicts. But 2024 has also seen entire organizations up sticks and leave. Haiti is an example. More than 700,000 people have been displaced there as gang violence has escalated, particularly since deployment of the underfunded Multinational Security Support mission.
Doctors Without Borders, active in Haiti for over 30 years, said it was suspending critical care in the capital Port-au-Prince following repeated threats from local law enforcement towards staff and patients. The UN also ordered the evacuation of its staff from the capital in what it somewhat euphemistically called a temporary reduction of its “footprint” in Port-au-Prince. UNICEF said an unprecedented number of children had been recruited by gangs.
Refugees from Haiti even became a weapon in Donald Trump’s US election campaign when he accused Haitian immigrants of eating the cats and dogs of residents in Springfield, Ohio. Trump’s false claim – widely debunked – apparently did nothing to derail his ultimately successful campaign in which the former president repeatedly proclaimed his intention to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants if elected president.
Paradoxically, his deportation plans might be spurred on further by the International Organization’s World Migration Report 2024 detailing unprecedented numbers of international migrants worldwide – estimated at 281 million. In turn this has led to a spike in remittances to their home countries worth hundreds of billions of dollars, making up a “significant” chunk of the GDP of developing countries.
Trump’s disdain for international organisations and binding commitments involved in membership makes it likely that he will repeat the drastic steps taken in his 2016-21 term in office, such as the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and freezing of contributions to the WHO.
As 2024 draws to a close with the ominous spread of renewed war in Syria, a more isolationist US under Trump reminds us of the value of those lesser known organisations slipping under the radar, such as the Sasakawa Foundation campaigning to end leprosy and its stigma; IITA/CGIAR and their commitment to small farms and transforming food systems in Africa; the scientists developing a new vaccine to boost immunity to malaria.
A long and positive list this time. Even on the climate front, progress should also be recognized and nurtured, even if coming too late and too slowly, such as the expectation that the world might see a peak in annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2024, thanks in part to giant leaps in solar and wind capacity.
People do have the powers to make a difference too, whether to elect a Trump or oust a corrupt would-be autocrat, as 2024 demonstrated.
Dr Muhammad Yunus, 84-year-old Chief Advisor of Bangladesh’s interim government and Nobel peace prize laureate, spoke in his first address to the United Nations of the “power of the ordinary people”, especially the young, to forge a “new Bangladesh” after mass protests against government corruption and violence ousted then prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August.
We might be on that train heading to the abyss but we do possess the knowledge and tools to apply the brakes. If only we could learn the lessons.
Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
INPS Japan/ IPS UN Bureau