Batya Ungar-Sargon

Batya Ungar-Sargon, Opinion Editor, Newsweek | USA

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the Opinion Editor of Newsweek. She is the author of “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” and the forthcoming “Promised Land: The Working Class Struggle for the American Dream.” Formerly, she was the Opinion Editor of the Forward and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, the New York Review of Books Daily, and many other publications. Batya Ungar-Sargon has appeared numerous times on MSNBC, NBC, the Brian Lehrer Show, NPR, and at other media outlets. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Video Link:

Event Title: SDGs Conference 2023 Date: Sept 20, 2023
 

SPEECH

State of Press Freedom under Autocratic Regimes: State`s control of media as a venue of propaganda

There are many autocratic regimes across the globe that you will hear about but they do not recognize freedom of the press or even the sanctity of human life, where speaking the truth can cost a journalist his or her freedom. I think a lot of us must have heard about Evan Gershkovich, an American Wall Street Journal Reporter who is imprisoned by Russia. These countries routinely inflict human and civil rights abuses against journalists and its unspeakable. 

12 journalists were reportedly killed last year for reporting on the war in Ukraine and Russia. 13 journalists were killed in Mexico in 2022. Nothing that I am about to underline should be seen as in any way making an equivalence between what happens in those countries and what happens in Western democracies. Human rights abuses against journalists, murder, culture of violence, and impunity are atrocities that cannot be compared to anything else. Unfortunately, many democratic regimes have begun to engage in a culture of oppression and incrimination, often ironically in the name of fighting misinformation and disinformation. I would like to be extremely clear this is in no way comparable to killing and jailing journalists or allowing cartels to get away with killing and torturing journalists. 

Yet, when a government engages in efforts to suppress the truth about those in power and is met by a willing journalistic cast that has decided to assist in this suppression in the name of fighting misinformation, one can end up with a similar effect when it comes to the electorate. In other words, if the point of a free press is a free electorate whose freedom is in part predicated upon some level of being informed, then the sad truth is that journalism can be stifled by journalists if they are unwilling to stand up to government overreach, even when that overreach does not come in the form of imprisonment or physical threats. What we have learned in the US of late is that social threats, social status, and class solidarity can have a similar chilling effect on free speech and a commitment to diversity of thought. 

Autocrats are very adept at suffocating free speech and a free press with state-sponsored violence. However, in democracies, class interests can also suppress free speech while perhaps not as evil, terrifying, or violent as physical violence, it can result in a similarly conformist and unfree civic society, one that should horrify people committed to a free press, especially, we Americans, with our First Amendment in the US State Agencies, have routinely intervened to spread or silence journalistic stories of late most famously. 

I will present one example of how this happened in the name of fighting misinformation. In the run-up to the 2020 Presidential Election, President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden left his laptop in a computer repair shop, we now know by his own admission that it was his laptop that contained compromising information. The laptop was full of images of Hunter where he could be seen in compromising positions, as well as emails that showed a vast enterprise of influence peddling with representatives of foreign governments. 

Some of them are adversaries that may have implicated Joe Biden, we do not know yet. Yet when this story first came out, it was vigorously ignored, voluntarily by the mainstream legacy press so much so that as a candidate, President Biden was never even asked to deny that this was his son’s laptop, which it turned out it was. Instead of robust coverage, the media ran cover for the Biden campaign, which also colluded with a former acting director of the CIA, again, this is all reported. This is his own admission that got 50 intelligence officials to spread the lie. We now know that the laptop was Russian disinformation. Twitter then locked the account of the newspaper that had published the story to keep that vital information from spreading. 

Emails have subsequently revealed how often the Biden administration reached out to social media companies like Twitter and Facebook successfully petitioning them to ban the accounts of established journalists for the sin of publishing stories unfavorable to the administration, the White House successfully petitioned Facebook to remove post discouraging people from getting the COVID vaccine or discussing what turned out to be the almost certain actual origin of COVID-19 and others were booted from Twitter at the White House behest. Autocrats also are very good at protecting the free speech of people who agree with them. The US government participated in this regime of censorship so aggressively that recently a Federal Appeals Court said that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment. 

Again, I want to make it very clear that none of this comes close to jailing or killing journalists, but again, we are not here to discuss the evils of murder but rather the evils of suppressing the freedom of the press and silencing speech against our constitution. It is all the more egregious when that speech turns out to be true and yet with silence because of political purposes. Of course, the test of free speech is always when it comes to speech you disagree with, every autocrat can protect the speech of people they agree with. The worst part is that the media in America has been completely complicit in all of this. 

None of this would’ve been possible if the media had simply stood up to what we all were after, the benign requests from a Democratic government or even no requests at all. As in the case of the Hunter Biden laptop story, in repressive regimes, the media is forced to report things that they know are lies but here the tragedy is that members of the media cast have come to believe whatever the administration wants them to and the reason for that is very simple, capture. The American media has become deeply captured by a socio-economic elite that is almost uniformly ultra-progressive and no longer believes that free speech is an absolute value and that political debate is the sacred bedrock of a democracy. Some 96% of American journalists who gave political donations gave them to the Democratic Party, even though they only got 25% of the electorates’ votes. 

96% of journalists speak from the same position as a quarter of Americans, the majority of them have graduate degrees. They make at least twice the median income, although most of them make much more, and vanishingly a few of them believe that those they disagree with deserve to make their case unimpeded to the American people. A lot of that is being done again and they use the terms misinformation and disinformation and push a political and economic agenda. American journalists routinely end up protecting the very people they’re meant to be holding to account while smearing and silencing the working class who tend to be more socially conservative. American journalists are now on the side of those in power. They go to the same elite universities as the tech billionaires and politicians they are supposed to cover and their children end up in the same elite schools and they end up in the same neighborhoods at the same time. 

97% of political donations that came out of Silicon Valley, surprisingly went to the Democratic Party. So, there are two ways to stop the truth from emerging in a free press. One is to kill journalists in jail and the other is to wait for them to become part of the same elites that benefit from the status quo and then they have a vested interest in protecting the lies of those in power to whom their own status is bound, making them reactionary; conservatives who will defend the Biden Administration or the Obama Administration before them. 

This panel is about the UN General Assembly’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are noble goals including reducing all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere. However, the American press would not report the skyrocketing levels of violent crime plaguing low-income Americans, especially black Americans, and here is the worst part about it. They did not need to be told by a democratic administration not to report on the crime wave, which is highly localized in democratic cities. They did not have to be threatened with prison to not report on it. It came naturally to them. 

It is how they protect their elite status with ideas like defunding the police, which proliferated in 2020 and 2021. If you are a working journalist who knew people whose lives had been destroyed by crime and dared to speak up against it, you were ostracized, humiliated, and shamed into silence by your fellow journalists. Stories about crime are rife with misinformation and racism. They declared at the federally funded NPR a sentiment that was echoed over and over by the Legacy media. Now, imagine being the victim of rape or carjacking or the family member of a person who was murdered and having to read that headline. 

I am sure everybody thinks education is a vital goal. Yet, thanks to the censorship of the Biden Administration, a compliant press, and complicit social media companies, the disastrous impact of learning loss due to school lockdowns on low-income children was hidden from view, as was how little children were in danger of negative outcomes from COVID-19. It will take a generation for black children to make up the impact of losing two years of school while rich white kids were back in school within six months. During these lockdowns, which got no pushback from the mainstream media, physical abuse of children skyrocketed and so did suicide attempts. What about Target 5.2, eliminating all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public in private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation? One fact you will not read about in the American media is the fact that one-third of all women crossing our southern border illegally admit to being raped. 

Imagine what the actual number is as a third of these women admit that they were raped on the way here, including children as young as eight years old. Under President Biden, the US is seeing more human trafficking and more sex trafficking than we have certainly in my lifetime, probably in our entire history. Why don’t you hear about it in the press class? Solidarity American journalists are in the class that consumes cheap illegal migrant labor, not the class who are competing for those jobs. The point I am trying to make is that there are many ways for a regime to control the media for purposes of propaganda and not all of them are violent. Not all of them occur under autocracies and even functioning democracies can have a dysfunctional press. 

All it takes is for the people tasked with holding power to account, to get a taste of power, to cultivate deep contempt for the citizens they’re meant to be informing. All it takes is for journalists to think it is their job to tell people how to think or what to value instead of supplying them with facts so they can make up their own minds, the way you do with somebody you respect. Autocrats have contempt for human life and human rights but nothing compares to the atrocity that represents and the atrocities it results in. However, if you have contempt for the values of your fellow man because they do not agree with you, you can end up robbing them of the truth too, and using journalism to spread misinformation in the name of defending the truth. I hope this goes without saying to me, but for an American, the government should never ever be involved in the business of fighting misinformation.

Tania Bozaninou

Tania Bozaninou, Journalist, To Vima Newspaper | Greece

JeniTania Bozaninou is a journalist from Greece working since 1997 for To Vima on Sunday, as its Editor-in-Chief. Ms. Bozaninou covers a variety of topics, from diplomacy, foreign affairs to human rights and migration. She has reported from several countries in the Middle East, including Afghanistan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and Europe. After completing her studies of Economics at the University of Athens, Tania Bozaninou received an MA in Journalism and Communications Policy from City University in London.

 

Video Link:

Event Title: SDGs Conference 2023 Date: Sept 20, 2023
 

SPEECH

In the 25 years I have been working for To Vima, in Greece, the last six as an editor-in-chief, I have been in a position to witness the developments in journalism, some good and some bad, but also the undeniable decline in press freedom. 

I will begin my speech by giving you two definitions of press freedom, not because I think you do not know what press freedom is, but because I want to show you the evolution of the definition of freedom of the press through the decades. The first one is by George Orwell, who lived in the first half of the 20th century: “Freedom of the press means the freedom to criticize and oppose” – as simple as that. 

Definitions of the 21st century, such as the latest one from Reporters Without Borders, describe press freedom as “the ability of journalists to select, produce, and disseminate news independent of political, economic, legal, and social interference and in the absence of threats to their physical and mental safety”.  The definition of press freedom had to be broadened in this century in order to encompass the more complex threats that journalists face today. 

I come from Greece which ranks in the worst position of all European Union countries concerning press freedom. According to this year’s World Press Freedom Index, which evaluates 180 countries, Greece is in position 107. Unfortunately, my country is not an exception but it is the norm: the environment for journalism is bad in seven out of ten countries in the world today, and satisfactory in only three out of ten.

According to an analysis by UNESCO of data on freedom of expression, around 85% of people live in countries where press freedom has declined over the past five years. Several of the most populous countries have declined from very bad to atrocious, such as China, Egypt, Turkey, and Russia. 

The entire American continent, including the United States, no longer has any country where press freedom is deemed good. In the Asia-Pacific, there are some of the worst countries regarding press freedom. In Africa, nearly half of the countries are problematic. Last in the regional ranking is the Middle East and North Africa, which continue to be the world’s most dangerous region for journalists. 

Europe continues to be the best continent to work as a journalist, but even there the situation is problematic in some cases. I suppose you have heard of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, Jan Kuciak in Slovakia, and Giorgos Karaivaz in Greece, who were all murdered in the last six years because they were doing their job. They were investigating corruption and they were murdered because their investigation displeased the corrupt networks. 

Even in Germany, which has a good ranking in the Press Freedom Index, number 21 out of 180, a record number of cases of violence against journalists were recorded last year. In Greece, just in the last five weeks, two journalists were beaten up in public places, one in a restaurant where he was eating with his family and one in a sports stadium. The second one is a colleague of mine. He was physically attacked by a businessman and his bodyguards, who were displeased by one of my colleague’s articles. In both cases, the journalists sustained non-life-threatening injuries. But the point was not to kill them. The point was to threaten all journalists in Greece not to mess with these particular people. 

Everything I have mentioned so far concerns the “traditional” threats that curtail press freedom: murder and attacks. Unfortunately, there are many more modern threats that might not harm journalists physically but they do harm press freedom. 

For example, in 118 out of the 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index, politicians are involved in massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns, which results in blurring the difference between true and false. This is made possible thanks to new technology. But apart from new technology, those who want to mess with press freedom have many other tools at their disposal. I would like to introduce just two of them. 

One is media capture, which describes the way politicians and businessmen collaborate in order to control the media. Instead of a government directly controlling or closing down a newspaper or a TV station because they are too critical of its policies, it colludes with friendly businessmen who buy the newspaper, the website, or the TV station. Under the new owner, the news medium stops being critical of the government, and the journalists who do not comply are simply fired. 

Media capture is one of the gravest and most intractable new threats to press freedom around the world. In country after country, collusion between governments and wealthy media owners has become the preferred method of control over the media. In countries such as Turkey, Hungary, and Russia it is already the dominant form of media ownership. 

The second new tool used to curtail press freedom I would like to mention to you is SLAPPs, which stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation or, more simply, intimidation lawsuits. These are lawsuits against journalists with the purpose of censoring, intimidating, and silencing them by burdening them with legal costs. 

In a typical SLAPP, the plaintiff does not even care to win the lawsuit, because the goal is to exhaust the journalists financially and psychologically with mounting legal costs so that the journalists themselves decide to stop being critical. SLAPPs are a very real threat to press freedom even in places where journalists are generally respected, such as in Western Europe. 

The people who want to control an “annoying” journalist are mostly politicians or public servants. They use strategic lawsuits often based on overstrict libel laws or vaguely drafted privacy rules, and more often than not they succeed in silencing their target. This form of harassment is used mainly against reporters and human rights defenders.

I would like to end on a positive note. In an effort to stop such misuse of the legal system, the European Commission drafted an anti-SLAPP directive which will hopefully be adopted next year – things go slowly in the European Union. Canada, Australia, and more than 30 American states, including New York, have anti-SLAPP laws in place. 

Jenifer Vaughan Fenton

Jenifer Vaughan Fenton, Spokesperson/Senior Media Adviser, UN Special Envoy for Syria | Switzerland

Jenifer Vaughan (Fenton) has been the spokesperson at the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Syria since May 2019. Ms. Vaughan attends the SDGs Conference in her personal capacity. Previously, she worked for Al Jazeera in Doha and New York, and CNN in Atlanta, Jerusalem, London, and Abu Dhabi, holding senior positions, including an Executive Producer. Ms. Vaughan also worked for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Palestine, and the UN Refugee Agency in New York. Vaughan held the Yale Poynter Fellow-in-Residence for the 2017–18 academic year. She has won several major industry news awards, including multiple Peabody Awards.

 

Video Link:

Event Title: SDGs Conference 2023 Date: Sept 20, 2023
 

SPEECH

Strengthening media institutions and political commitments for sustainable peace and security

The Secretary-General noted in his annual report that peace and security are threatened by the evolving nature of conflict, shrinking civic space, misinformation, hate speech, unregulated cyberspace, the climate emergency, and the rollback of women’s rights. The political will has been lacking. Clearly, journalism plays a pivotal role in conflict resolution, safeguarding human rights, and fostering sustainable development. Sadly, journalism is a risky and far too deadly endeavor. Media is consistently attacked and undermined in many contexts. Numerous studies have noted that across the world, female journalists and media professionals encounter escalating online and offline assaults. Gender-based acts of violence encompass stigma, stigmatization, misogynistic hate speech, cyberbullying, physical aggression, sexual assault, and tragically even murder. 

Strengthening media institutions and media freedoms is essential for the promotion of democracy to enable the free flow of information and to protect the interests of society. The United Nations has among its primary objectives, preventing conflict and promoting international cooperation and since its founding, it has evolved to take on a wide range of global issues, including the vital role of media. The UN also recognizes the critical role that media plays in conflict resolution, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding. The news media dictates what conflict and its aspects get covered and how much airtime or front-page news coverage a conflict receives. Who speaks about the conflict in the media? Do we use the main or auxiliary players in the conflict aid agencies, terrorists, or the civilians who are impacted? The media can frame a matter in a way that makes it more intractable. Media can act as a weapon of violence, spreading hate and false information. It can also assign and employ stereotypes and give people labels that are dehumanizing. News media can also provide accurate information in conflict zones, which is critical to help civilians stay safe and to access other necessities. 

It can also reduce conflict and help aid with resolution by providing accurate information in a timely manner. Also, it sheds light on the root causes of conflict and provides a path for meaningful dialogue. It can also hold parties to account, expose abuses of power, violations of human rights, and crimes of war, and act as a watchdog. The Secretary-General noted in his annual report on the organization that the UN has created mechanisms in an effort to bolster media development in places of conflict and countries. The report also highlights the work being done to fight back against the miss and disinformation, as well as hate speech and efforts, of course, including monitoring and training. Partnerships play an important role and include media, social media companies, and civil society organizations. 

Obviously, the media variables are very complex. News media environments are varied. For example, there are government or quasi-government media monopolies, and large media conglomerates. The news values differ at different outlets as well as to the extent to which governments control communication through mechanisms such as strict penal codes, and legal frameworks that restrict or enable the freedoms of the press. There is also communication infrastructure that may be limited or advanced and may suffer from more related or other damage. The interests and motivations of media outlets and journalists, of course, are wide-ranging, and communication methods also differ depending on the country and the region. Communication Technology continues to change the media landscape, and it is challenging to manage the volume of information that we are receiving. There is, of course, a lack of political will to achieve these goals.

There are not only legal protections for the freedom of the press but also constitutional guarantees. Journalists and media workers have the right to be protected from harassment, violence, and censorship. There needs to be a political will to establish conditions where journalists can carry out their work without retribution. Alongside these information laws, political commitments are needed to strengthen the freedom of information to help ensure government transparency and accountability for journalists, citizens, and affected persons to request and access public documents. Regulatory bodies need to have clear mandates that can help ensure fairness, as well as accountability in the media industry and international organizations.  

Other countries and bodies also should encourage and share best practices and resources. Media organizations also need to self-regulate adhering to ethical codes of conduct and also diverse funding and independence. To the degree possible, funding should be diverse and media outlets should try to reduce their dependence on single revenue streams as this runs the risk of making them vulnerable to external pressures. So, a combination of philanthropies, subscriptions, memberships, grants, and other funding to investigative journalism projects is critical, especially ones that aim to uncover corruption and hold powerful entities accountable. Media pluralism is also critical. We need to promote a diverse media landscape and have independent and community-led efforts. Education and media literacy are becoming increasingly essential programs, including at schools, teaching members of the public, engaging civil society, and combating disinformation and fake news. 

Along with holding the social media platforms accountable, it needs to be fostered and media outlets need to prioritize. Public interest reporting, and strengthening media institutions must be a process that is ongoing, combining a number of things that I underlined, including legal affairs as well as regulatory framework. A trustworthy and vibrant media ecosystem is one in which there is both freedom of the press and responsible journalism. Governments, international organizations, and civil society must work together to create an environment where media can operate freely and responsibly. Media must be strengthened and protected.

Dr. Ranjana Kumari

Dr. Ranjana Kumari, Director, Center for Social Research | India

Dr. Ranjana Kumari is the Director of Centre for Social Research as well as Chairperson of Women Power Connect. Dr. Kumari has dedicated her life to empowering women across the South Asia region, and is also a prolific writer of many well‐known publications. She has served as the Coordinator of the South Asia Network Against Trafficking (SANAT) in Persons and is a member of the Central Advisory Board on “Pre Conception and Pre Natal Diagnostic Tests Act, 2001”, as well as the Central Advisory Committee for Prevention of Trafficking in Women and Children. Dr. Ranjana Kumari combines the two roles of a women activist and scholar with great felicity and panache. Having dedicated her life to significant social causes, Dr. Ranjana Kumari continues to impact the lives of many with her dedication and zeal. She has her MA, M.Phil and Ph.D in Political Science from JawaharLal Nehru University.

 

Video Link:

Event Title: SDGs Conference 2023 Date: Sept 20, 2023
 

SPEECH

Sounding an alarm for urgent action on increasing internationally comparable, gender-disaggregated, available data collection

20 September 2023 marks a very critical day for Indian women. I would like this achievement to your attention because it is earned after a fight and struggle. Women’s lives are full of struggle, but this one was for getting women political power. Unless women hold 50% of decision-making positions at various levels, I do not think we would be in these circumstances.

Today, while I am participating at the SDGs Conference, at the Parliament of India, a bill that has been fought for the last 27 years has been passed following Prime Minister Modi’s proposal and 554 Members of the House have accepted it. As a result, we have 33% of seats reserved in India’s parliament for women, which is going to make an impactful difference. This is a point where I would like to bring in the importance of gender-desegregated data and its impact. However, the sad news is that we have not been able to achieve even one-fifth of what we set out to achieve seven years back.

The pandemic was a big disruption for the setback in the implementation of the SDGs, but  I do not think we can blame everything that went wrong because of the pandemic. At its halfway point, the SDGs are failing because most of the countries did not muster the political will and put their resources in the place that they should have put to achieving the Global Goals. We must look at what happens when we do have the correct, accurate, scientifically generated information and data. It is not only that 70% of the countries do not know what the status of women’s gainful employment is but also, 40% of countries are not aware of land rights or land ownership of women.

I can continue commenting on how many countries reported when SDGs data was collated together. How many areas of progress have been too slow at the current rate? What will happen to women if the data comes to us? If we analyze that data, then we are looking at an estimated 300 years to end child marriage. It will take 286 years to close the gap in legal protection and remove discriminatory laws. However, this is achievable. Every country can set up a committee, or an expert board to review the laws from the gender lens and a gender perspective.

There are various laws that we inherited as we have spent 200 years as a British Colony. We continued to implement those for the past 75 years since independence. We need amendments for women to be represented equally in positions of power and leadership. India has made some steps towards achieving this; however, it took 47 years to attain equal representation in parliament. What is missing here is the political will of the nations to make progress and to get women equal opportunities. When we have the data we can tailor the strategies and be able to change that situation if we have that information available. 

In India, We had to build a whole data set from independence till now addressing the question of where women are in terms of power and decision-making. When we presented the data that we started on the eve of independence, 75 years back, only 3% were women in comparison to today`s participation rate of 14%. Where are we in terms of women getting represented, how do you call it a democracy if women are not even sitting equally to make all types of decisions? Are women only there to vote and to bring others to power? Is the role of women household work only or is it more than that? If it is more than that, then look at this data and notice what is going wrong. 

In post-pandemic so many girls have dropped out of school, especially from the lower income group communities. They started working with their mothers. So many girl children are never sent back to school because they are pushed into earning that income as it is needed for the survival of the family. They did not have enough resources to survive. In so many countries across the globe, the girl children are still in that position. On top of this situation, there is a concern for those children in terms of physical safety and sexual security. Eventually, the majority have been pushed into child marriage and thus the data is escalating about child marriage. The dropout rate has gone up, now we need to know the exact percent. 

When we started working in gender-critical districts in our country at the Center for Social Research, nobody agreed with us and denied the fact that girls have dropped out. When we looked at school rosters we asked where the girls were. Almost 20% of girls have never gone back to school and it is a very high number for a country that has decided to give the right to education as a constitutional guarantee. When you have the data, you have informed policies. On the other side, you have informed advocacy and it is extremely important for all of us who are working on different kinds of human rights themes. 

Accurate data collection is required because we have to all go back after reviewing the current concerning status of the SDGs that we have not been able to achieve more than 15%, to start working. So, we in fact need more gender-disaggregated data. Data has immense power. If the community is aware of what is happening, then there is not only sensitization and advocacy that happens, but also policymakers are enabled to design accurate policies. They are able to design correct interventions and, of course, impact assessment is extremely important. 

There is one UN initiative that oversees gender budgeting in all of our countries. India adopted this and when we do gender budgeting, then every penny spent will have to be seen from the perspective of who it is benefiting. What is the problem standing in front of us as are we not able to collect gender-disaggregated data? The first important issue is that we do not have the kind of understanding, index, or scale on which we are able to collect that data. So, many of our data collection machinery is not equipped with this working methodology. 

When we started talking about women-headed households, everybody in the government questioned the meaning of women-headed households. Our data does not show any women head households. It is only men as they are the farmers. Women are not the farmers and surprisingly 70% of agriculture is handled by women only. Whether men are working or are out of their homes and working in different cities because of migration and migrant labor, women are left behind with children to make all the decisions, from agriculture to health and education. It took years for us to convince our census data collection which happens once in 10 years and because of COVID disruption, we have not been able to do that. The data that we were supposed to compose in 2021 was accepted to be collected in an area where our numerators go and ask who is the head of the house. However, in India, women are used to saying that either their husband or any elder male member is the head of the household. They tell us that their spouse is not there, he is in Bombay or Kanpur, wherever in the country but he is the head of the household. Women do not even think if they are the main providers or they do not consider themselves as the head of the household. 

I think if women-headed households were included in our census as one of the categories for data enumeration it would be driven by the cultural social understanding of how we collect our data. Now, the other fact that is very important is resources to get extensive data collection. We are making a lot of conjectures and observational calculations. I feel that it is important to understand the kind of data collection and so many aspects of it where we need to invest in improving the data infrastructure.

My call to action is to invest in a well-functioning data infrastructure because, without that, it is only a blind game. That is why only 15% in seven years are still not even one-fifth the way. Standardization is important because data needs to be comparable. A lot of data was sent when we were collating reports in the country. They are not comparable. There must be the same standards when you are looking at the data and it has to be global, so we can get a universal picture of what is happening. Most of the low-income countries are suffering because of these issues and there is not much progress because of resource crunch, debt crisis, war, and economies have gone down after the pandemic. Additionally, we have to take responsibility for capacity building, data collection, and numerators. There is no way that we can get the right data unless they understand how to obtain it. There is a lot of good research that has been generated but there is a majority of people who are ignorant about those facts and those kinds of studies and research. 

To conclude, the urgency of increasing internationally comparable gender-disaggregated data collection cannot be overstated. It is a call to action that demands the attention of governments, organizations, and academics worldwide. By working together to close the data gap, we can take meaningful steps towards a more equitable and just world. It is time to sound the alarm and take action. Now with the availability of artificial intelligence and the technology that we have in hand, there should not be any excuse. The gender-disaggregated data will tell you that we are sitting on climate negotiations and women are missing, one or two in the corner of the table. Men create war and women suffer but we don’t have any way to play a role in stopping that war we want to. 

Patricia Garcia AO

Patricia Garcia AO, Partnership Development Manager, Institute for Economics and Peace | Australia

Patricia Garcia is the Partnership Development Manager of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). Patricia has worked for more than 20 years in some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan and the Thai-Burma border. She has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2016 and was a finalist in the 2016 NSW Australian of the Year awards for her contribution and services to the international humanitarian aid and development sector over the past two decades. Patricia Garcia was a Human Rights Research Fellow at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies from 2000–2002 and designed the Human Rights course for the Master of Peace and Conflict Studies at CPACS. Ms. Garcia is also an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney where she is a sessional lecturer on peace and human rights with a passion to promote and advance the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Agenda.

 

Video Link:

Event Title: SDGs Conference 2023 Date: Sept 20, 2023
 

SPEECH

Contemporary challenges of development in the transitioning era of geopolitical complexities and conflicts

On the occasion of the International Day of Peace, I would like to call on all of the stakeholders to take action and be part of the solution to this SDGs agenda, commit to both personal and collective action that can contribute to advancing the SDGs 2030 agenda. For those who have been following the SDGs agenda, it was in 2015, seven years ago that all 193 countries formally adopted it. These are the 17 SDGs with 169 targets to transform our world for a better future. Our previous speakers have said that the SDGs have presented us with a roadmap of the 17 goals, with the signposts being these 169 targets. We have been passionate advocates of the Sustainable Development Goals and still, we have seen that over these last seven years, we have not performed well. In contrast, several countries have in many ways deteriorated the condition. So, there is a sense of urgency for us with time running out with only now at the midpoint of seven years that we have to accelerate our efforts. 

I think it is really important now that we look at how we can be able to find innovative ways and ways to collaborate to be able to address the enormous global challenges that we are facing today; whether it is the climate crisis, economic inequality, the growing societal polarization, geopolitical tensions or conflicts that we are all facing. We need to look at the SDGs as not only a roadmap but also a vision of hope for a world where we can build a peaceful, equal, and sustainable future for all. 

The SDGs for me represent the five Ps: people, at first and then the planet, peace, prosperity, and partnership. With these five, it is very important to understand that these are universal goals. They belong to all of us and because of that, it is a shared responsibility that we must take to be able to advance these goals and to be able to achieve all 17 goals. The nature of these goals when they were first developed was based on consultations all around the world. I think the importance of these goals is that they provide a common language for all of us to be able to address these global challenges in a way that we have, a common language to express how we can find solutions, how we can take action, and how we can collaborate. 

My role at the Institute for Economics and Peace is as a Partnership Development Manager. So, the word partnership is central to my work and while working with the Institute for Economics and Peace, I have been so privileged to be able to meet with many of the people we have here yesterday and at the beginning of our SDG Summit to hear all the wonderful work that many of us are doing to be able to advance the SDGs, particularly, Goal 16, the goal of peacebuilding, peaceful and inclusive societies with access to justice for all and also strong, transparent and accountable institutions at all levels. This is such an important goal because it is the goal that is cross-cutting across all 17. Many of you might know that the whole approach of the SDGs has been based on what we call “systems thinking”, where we try to shift people’s thinking from not looking at a singular cause-effect relationship of how we deal with issues but looking at issues as being a system. 

With the system, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and this system’s thinking is what also informs, the Institute for Economics and Peace in the way in which we measure and analyze peace and the economic cost of violence. I would like to start with just some explanation of the SDGs, many of you might also understand that there have been some constraints in being able to advance these SDGs and one of them has been the lack of financing. We heard earlier a speaker about the importance of having innovative financing mechanisms, whether it is increasing our overseas development assistance or looking at building public-private partnerships but we need to look at different ME financing mechanisms to support the SDGs and EEGs. The other area is often the lack of measurement. How can we measure progress on how we are going with the 17 goals? 

This is where the Institute for Economics and Peace is an independent global think tank that measures and analyzes peace and the economic cost of violence and provides metrics to measure peacefulness in 163 countries. We hope through our measurements of peace and analysis of peace, we can also provide a better understanding of the social, economic, cultural, and political factors that drive peace. So, just a little bit of an example of showing you how one of the examples of the tools that IEP has been able to develop is called the ‘Positive Peace Framework.’ 

As I mentioned earlier, the Institute for Economics and Peace was established in 2008 and we pioneered the empirical study of peace. In other words, with the organization, we were able to measure and analyze peace and the aim of the organization is to undertake research to show how peace is a positive, tangible, and achievable measure of human well-being and progress. So, think of this concept of peace as something positive, tangible, and achievable, and also a measure of human well-being and development. The ‘Global Peace Index’ was our first report and many of you might know this is the report that measures and analyzes the absence of violence or the fear of violence in 163 countries. The Index represents 99.7% of the world’s population. So, I would like to just show you how we rank the 163 countries. 

We use three domains, these domains are International and Domestic Conflict, Safety and Society, and Militarization. For those of you who want to look at understanding conflict and particularly the drivers of conflict and particularly want to know the changing nature of where we see the world going in, how we understand conflict, the Global Peace Index provides the evidence and data to show the trends of where countries are going in the issues of conflict. 

In the 2023 GPI, we saw that 70 to 84 countries had improved and 79 had deteriorated. The key highlights of this 2023 Global Peace Index showed that Iceland remains at the moment and has been for many years, the most peaceful country in the world. We have Libya and Burundi with the largest improvements, Middle East and North Africa have improved in the last three years. Also, Europe has remained the most peaceful region and recorded only a slight improvement since last year. Afghanistan remains the world’s least peaceful nation and has also recorded just in this last year. Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, there has been some improvement only in this last year but it remains the least peaceful country in the world. You might be surprised to know that the Taliban has criticized IEP because of that ranking. This year, we got strong criticism from the Taliban government. This is the 10 most peaceful countries. 

Then, we have the 10 least peaceful countries. We have seen a decline in peacefulness over the last 13 or 15 years since IEP has been established and not very sobering news to be able to say that this deterioration has continued consecutively over the last 13 years. Unfortunately, the scenario is not looking good. Also for the future, there are 23 indicators that we use to measure – the militarization, social security and safety, and the international and domestic conflict domains of each country. 

Last year, the total number of battle deaths, as there has been an increase in conflict deaths and battle deaths since last year, primarily in Europe, Ethiopia, and Ukraine. When we people are looking at conflict and we are looking at war, we are not only looking at the actual conflict of fighting, battles, military, and security. People have to look at conflict and war as also being what we call military-industrial conflicts. It is the whole business of war. 

IEP also measures the economic cost of the violence that the world spends each year and this figure, 17.5 trillion was the cost of violence for the last year. It is a huge figure. Many of you would be not surprised to know that most of this cost is coming from military expenditure and where does the military expenditure come from? It mostly comes from governments. So, who do we need to approach when we’re talking about financing? We need to be looking at why governments are spending so much money on military expenditure that is contributing to more violence in our society. That figure of 2,200 per person is the equivalent of 17.5 trillion and I just wanted to mention that 2,200 per person is what that cost of violence is equivalent to 2,200 per person spent on violence. 

Many of you might know that that is even more than the per capita income of people in developing countries. This is quite an important figure to be able to remember and what we could do if we just took 10% of that 17, 1% of that 17.5 trillion. If we could use that money instead of spending it on violence, think of what we could do to make the world a better place, and what we could do with spending that money on doing good things. So, positive peace is what IEP has been measuring on what we call the actual peace of the state of the world today. IEP calls that negative peace because it is looking at the broken bits in a society, the dysfunctional aspects, conflict, violence, and fear of violence are what we call the dysfunctional aspects of society. However, we found that it is not enough to understand peace if you only look at the broken bits of a society. 

In other words, it is like looking at the human body. Yes, medical science and doctors have been able to discover wonderful ways to deal with our illnesses and diseases but as you know, to look at health, to make a healthy body, you also have to look at what makes a body healthy. We also know that good exercise and a regular diet make our body healthy. This is what we call now a positive piece. We not only look at what is broken, we also have to look at what are the positive elements and IEP is researching what comes up to be the most common characteristics in peaceful countries and what makes peaceful countries peaceful. We came up with what we call the set of eight interrelated factors or pillars of positive peace. 

The Global Peace Index measures the absence of violence or the fear of violence but now we also need to look at what we call positive peace. Positive peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. We should look at it as two sides of a coin. You need two sides to the coin and we need negative and positive peace to be able to address peace and to be able to contribute to building peace. These eight pillars, as you can see here, are well-functioning, government, equitable distribution of resources, free flow of information, good relations with neighbors, high level of human capital, acceptance of the rights of others, low level of corruption, and sound business environment. 

These eight are all interrelated, they do not work individually because they are all interrelated. Working together and putting the information together for these eight pillars contributes to creating a peaceful society and a peaceful community. We have been able to provide that evidence and data which is so important in being able to advance the sustainable development goals so that you can show how you can contribute to the sustainable development goals by using this positive peace framework, what we call a monitoring tool or an advocacy tool. 

What are the benefits? Why would we have this and why is it important to have a positive peace framework? Well, we found that through our research, the benefits of being able to use and contribute to positive peace lead to higher per capita income, stronger resilience within the communities, better environmental outcomes, higher measures of well-being, and better performance on the sustainable development goals. So, this positive framework can actually be a practical tool for you to use in your monitoring and advocacy for the Sustainable Development Goals. This is some of the information that you can find in our report, which I brought, just to show you, this is the Global Peace Index and this is the Positive Peace Report from which I have taken the information. 

The majority of the eight pillars are correlated to the 12 targets of SDG 16. They are very strongly aligned with the positive peace framework and the pillars. What we have been able to show is that you could also use the positive peace framework as a critique of the 17 goals to show whether the goals are performing or not performing. One of the things that we have been able to show is that the issue of corruption which you would think is a serious issue is only mentioned as one of the targets out of the 169 targets in the Sustainable Development Goal. For us, this is quite surprising when you know the seriousness of corruption and the importance of how corruption can drive conflict and all sorts of tensions and also contribute to the crisis and global crisis that we are facing today. 

Yet, it is only one target out of the 169 and it is in Goal 1, so this is why IEP is focusing also on the low levels of corruption as one of its key pillars. The data that you can use from our reports could contribute to how you could address this issue of corruption which is an underlying goal and target as part of the SDGs agenda. Another example is the increasing lack of media freedoms around the world, which we already discussed in detail yesterday and this is an important area. The lack of media freedoms is a concerning issue and it is one of the issues that are part of SDG 16. This is why at EIP, we measure the issues of the free flow of information and how we need to have a society where there is a free flow of information. 

The lack of media freedom that we have been facing presents a challenge for us to see how we can address that issue. Using the positive piece framework, we can provide evidence and data to support how we can address this issue of lack of media freedom. Many of you might know, that with digitalization, the rise of what we call now misinformation and disinformation. It is presenting a huge challenge for the world now in being able to have access to freedom of information. These are some of the organizations that IEP partners with to be able to work on how we can contribute to building peace in the communities. 

Goal 17, Global Partnerships, is the glue that links all the goals. This is why Goal 17 which I just like to stress for many of us, is the actual goal that we must all be able to contribute to because it is the glue that connects all of the goals. When we are talking about partnerships, we are talking about building collaborations and connecting with the count. There is a shared responsibility for us to be able to develop partnerships, collaborations, and particularly international solidarity on so many of the issues that we are dealing with from climate, and economic inequality, to the displacement of refugees, mass migration, or governance affairs including corruption. 

We need to work in partnership as diverse thinking leads to better solutions. We need to work together in a way that we can show leadership, we can work with advocacy and influence and also we connect with communities, people, and organizations to build cultures of learning. A crucial aspect of the SDGs, especially in the context of the International Day of Peace, is the strong link between advocating for sustainable development goals and the fundamental principles of human rights. 

The Sustainable Development Goals are really rooted in human rights principles, with the “leave no one behind” principle being particularly important. Therefore, I would like to end with a poem that is based on the principle of ‘leave no one behind’, this was written by an Aboriginal woman who is a writer and poet, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and she is from my country. 

“All One Race”

Black tribe, yellow tribe, red, white or brown,

From where the sun jumps up to where it goes down,

Herrs and pukka-sahibs, demoiselles and squaws,

All one family, so why make wars?

They’re not interested in brumby runs,

We don’t hanker after Midnight Suns;

I’m for all humankind, not colour gibes;

I’m international and never mind tribes.

Black, white or brown race, yellow race or red,

From the torrid equator to the ice-fields spread,

Monsieurs and senors, lubras and fraus,

All one family, so why family rows?

We’re not interested in their igloos,

They’re not mad about kangaroos;

I’m international, never mind place;

I’m for humanity, all one race.