Anna Pokorná – DDRN

The Power of Literature in the Times of Climate Crisis

Anna Pokorná — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 17:30:10 +0000

The power of literature in human history has been seen many times and, in many places, demonstrating that a novel or a poem can inspire powerful actions and has the power to move the world. Literature can change people’s minds and hearts and make them feel connected to a greater cause.

But what is the effect of climate change in literature and can we, through it, aspire to be involved in climate action movements? How does it influence people and society in terms of thinking and feeling about nature and its connection to humankind?

Kenneth Toah Nsah, a Cameroonian known under his pen name Nsah Mala, is a literary scholar, writer, author, and poet, originally from the anglophone part of Cameroon, also known as the Mbesa kingdom. He recently graduated with his PhD in comparative literature at Aarhus University in Denmark. His dissertation examines novels, plays and poems in English and in French written by 10 authors from the Congo Basin, using the theoretical framework of ecocriticism and postcolonial ecocriticism applied around the Congo Basin.

By looking deeply into those texts, he aimed to find answers on the possibilities of how humanities, literature, and cultural studies can help with the climate crisis and environmental breakdown we are facing today. These 10 authors come from five out of six central countries of the Congo Basin. Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville and Congo Kinshasa, and Equatorial Guinea.

Kenneth says that the youth climate movement has come to be epitomized in the Western world for example by Greta Thunberg. But there are many young African people who are into youth climate activism, even prior to the rise of it in the western world. For example, in Uganda, Vanessa Nakate spearheaded the campaign to save Congo’s rainforest, which is facing massive deforestation.

Readings can inspire climate actions

“ , I’m looking at how those writings represent and respond to the issues of climate change and the environmental or ecological breakdown but as well as how those books think about biodiversity, sustainable development, the rights of indigenous people and youth activism for climate change.”

Those writings could offer a source of inspiration, motivation and hope to young people, through them they could understand that they have a role that they can play in the climate emergency. “Literature intervenes in so many challenges in the world throughout centuries and decades. There is no argument about how big a role literature and art have played. For example, Virginia

Woolf in the feminist movement has come to influence and shape people’s perceptions and mentalities about feminist issues. Literature has been very fundamental in our combating colonial fights, whether in India or Africa. In Africa literature was raising awareness, making people come back to themselves and realize their worth and their value.”

“What we can also see throughout the world is that writers who write on certain sensitive things like expanding political issues are usually arrested or disappeared. And why is that? It’s because politicians know the influence of literature on the lives of people. We don’t even need to measure it, quantify, or verify that in any other way. One proof is just the fact that dictators don’t like writers who write about political issues because it gives people knowledge and liberation,” Kenneth concludes.

Why we need to talk about the Congo Basin

“Talking about climate change, what comes to mind of most people is the Amazon. After the Amazon, they will tell you about Indonesia or other parts of southwestern or southeastern Asia, but the Congo Basin, won’t be known anywhere. So, I thought that it’s important through my research to help in bringing international visibility to a place that is very present, but also very invisible. Present through the things that are extracted from there, but very invisible when it comes to discourses, meetings and summits talking about climate mitigation.

The Congo Basin is present everywhere, for example the raw materials used to produce our laptop and phones are extracted there. But at the same time, we are talking about climate mitigation and nature protection”. The Congo Basin is one of the most important pieces of land we have on our planet. It is the second largest tropical rainforest sometimes called the second lungs of the earth because of its capacity to store carbon.

However, presently some researchers argue that the Congo Basin could be our primary carbon sink because of the large present deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. In 2017, researchers discovered the world’s largest peatlands are in Congo Basin 145,500 sq km – an area larger than England.

These peatlands hold almost 30% of the world’s tropical peatland carbon, which is the equivalent of 20 years of the fossil fuel emissions of the United States of America. That carbon has been building up in the Congo Basin’s peat for nearly 11,000 years. If the peatland complex was to be destroyed it would release billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The Congo Basin is not only important in terms of sequestration but also in terms of biodiversity, species of plants and animals, many of which are only found in the Congo Basin and nowhere else. There are approximately 10,000 species of tropical plants, and 30 per cent are unique to the region. The endangered wildlife includes forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas.

Finally, the Congo Basin has been a place for humans for more than 50,000 years and now it provides food, fresh water and shelter to more than 75 million people and 150 distinct ethnic groups. The Baka people are among the most well-known representatives of an ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Green colonialism in Africa

Africa is often seen as the last agent on Earth, projected usually only as a place for wildlife and exotic animals, full of lions, elephants, and wilderness. This idea is almost always trying to zoom out of human beings and presenting Africa only as a pristine, pure, and virgin place. The reality, as Kenneth says, is that those national parks full of wilderness created by international, non-governmental organizations are forcibly and violently displacing indigenous and local people from places they have inhabited for years. He also points out that behind the terms and concepts of sustainable development and the aim to living harmoniously with nature is hidden neoliberal fatalism and the commodification of nature.

“When Western science and Western knowledge are applied in Africa and all over the world and also has been established as superior, that means it’s the only way to know the world and to study the world. But there are alternative economic systems – for instance indigenous people in the Congo Basin, such as the Batwa who do not own anything. They have economies that are built around harvesting and sharing they do not harvest for profit.” There are rich mineral resources in the Congo Basin, including crude oil, cobalt, diamond, and gold, which explains why there is an eternal war going on in parts of the Congo Basin, the Central African Republic, or the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is the western power and industrialized nations of the world that are using these raw materials whether it is lithium, uranium to make atomic bombs, or cobalt and coltan to make the phones and the laptops that we use in Europe or in America most of these things are coming from Africa”, Kenneth points out. “The theory that I use, postcolonial ecocriticism, is dealing with color societies in Africa that have gone through the painful experience of colonization and are still going through even today. My approach to literary scholarship is such that I want as much as possible to make my scholarship relevant to real-life problems. I think that I singularly emphasized that dimension, that because, for me, what is the point in reading poems about elephants or reading poems about pollution and reading poems about poaching if at the end of the day nothing will change? It is important to read novels and poems and to analyze them in ways that can potentially influence policy and influence action and make life better for humans and the environment.”

Anna Pokorná is a MSc student in Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden

The Working Poor

Anna Pokorná — Wed, 04 May 2022 11:54:33 +0000

Reasons to migrate can vary but they are often rooted in similar motives. Migrants may be attracted by high-quality education and promising careers or by finding a stable job to provide a better future for their families. Nordic countries are known to have the world’s highest standards of living, welfare policies, and the best working conditions, therefore, they often come to be the first choice of many migrants coming to find a better life. But sadly, often so, the reality of finding a job in Nordic, can be very tough, unfair, and tremendously challenging.

Researchers from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway cooperate to investigate the loophole of migrant exploitation both politically and legally. The research funded by the Nordic Research Council for Criminology is aiming to contribute to better working conditions for migrants and strengthen the labour market laws. The research will compare the differences and similarities of each Nordic country’s legislation approach to the prevention of social dumping and conduct policy analysis on governing national policy documents. Isabel Schoultz, the head of the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University in Sweden, is the project leader and coordinator of this research project called “Law in action – Policy and legal responses to the exploitation of migrant workers in the Nordic countries”.

In the following three articles on The Working Poor theme, we’ll introduce the work migration from various points of view, such as: What are the struggles of migrants and how hard is it to find a job coming from the Global South? What are the common practices of employers making migrants easily exploited, how hard it is to tackle migration, what is the legal framework and how can migration can change one’s personality?

In the first article, Krishnanunni Mavinkal Ravindran presents how difficult it is to find a job in Denmark for recent graduates from The Global South who often find themselves in very similar positions and situations of insecure jobs and working conditions. Due to their vulnerability they can be easily exploited by their employees. How fair is the Danish labour market and is it accessible for everyone?

The second article, by Anna Pokorná, talks about the situation and experiences of migrant workers in Sweden.

Common practices and exploitation used by employers are further explored and shared in an interview with one of the biggest Swedish working unions, SAC Syndikalisterna. The article is connected to outgoing research funded by the Nordic Research Council for Criminology aiming to tackle migrant exploitation and labour policies.

A broader view of migration is presented in a third article by Marta Apablaza R. in an interview with a researcher from the Law department and Centre for Human Rights at the University of Chile where the migration is being observed from the perspective of human rights. The article further explains the differences and similarities between the migratory phenomenon in Latin America and Europe by looking at migration in terms of countries, states, governments, and society.

Anna Pokorná is a MSc student in Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden

Nordic Working Poor – the Case of Sweden

Anna Pokorná — Wed, 04 May 2022 11:35:51 +0000

How Nordic countries with one of the finest working welfare policies exploit their migrants

Maine Buying has come to Sweden to find a better life and brighter future for his wife and children. He was hoping to find a job that could support his family, soon after Maine came to Stockholm he started to work for a restaurant chain Indian garden where he spent every single day of his employment, working. Maine was paid very poorly and lived in a storage room above the restaurant together with his family. One day, all of the sudden, after a couple of months of working, his employer told Maine that he must move out together with his family because there is no longer a place for them.

Xafis Sharipov is another migrant coming to Sweden from Uzbekistan with the hope of a better job and living conditions. He started to work as a cleaner for one of the biggest supermarket store chains in Stockholm. Xafis worked every day from 6:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. Only a couple of hours in the middle of the day was all the free time he had. After a while of very intense working conditions, he ended up with a mental breakdown.

“In the case of Maine, this company has a collective agreement with about 140 employees. Nobody from the restaurant chain is a member of the traditional union. We helped Maine to get his wages back and managed to get economic compensation from the restaurant. We also negotiated with the company where Xafis worked and we were able to get compensation as well” (Emil Boss, negotiation secretary of SAC Syndikalisterna)

Nordic countries are globally seen as countries with good working conditions, high living standards and well-regulated labour markets stressing the protection of workers’ rights. Therefore, Nordic countries attract many migrants to seek a bright future, aiming to find a job, build a career and start a new life. Unfortunately, the reality is not anywhere close to their hopes. Many of those workers are exposed to exploitation and abuse by their employers. According to the report of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2019 (FRA), the most common things the majority of the exploited workers experience are very little or no pay, very long working hours, working conditions that violate labour standards and compromise access to medical care, lack of a contract or a contract provided in a language that the worker did not understand, being given tasks that had not been agreed upon initially and accommodation in unsanitary or degrading conditions. According to the report, there is no uniform supranational legal framework regulating severe labour exploitation.

The trade union experience

Emil Boss is a Negotiation Secretary of SAC Syndikalisterna, a trade union in Stockholm and he shares the investigatory project about migrant worker conditions in Sweden.

How would you introduce your organisation?

We are a small, democratic and grassroots-driven trade union, we don’t have any high salaried staff and we have about a thousand members in Stockholm. We mainly work with migrants in the construction, cleaning and restaurant sector but we are open to all trades. For the last two years, we have been doing an investigatory project about the lower segments of the general working industries in Stockholm, trying to find out what the conditions look like, and to try to see what kind of new union tools would be needed to handle workers’ problems in these new situations.”

What are the conditions migrant workers are typically used to experiencing?

The problems that we encounter are the same in all industries. Workers work for extremely low wages or simply don’t get their wages at all. They tend to work far above the limits, they work overtime and they are humiliated and harassed in different ways. The problem occurs in every traditional union branches trade in Sweden, in transport, agriculture, restaurants, cleaning, construction work and so on. As far as we can see, there is no difference between big companies and small companies. Companies violate laws and rules and depress specifically migrant workers. There is an uneven power balance between the owners of these companies and the migrant workers and this imbalance is so big that no laws and regulations or union collective agreements are working in practice anymore. The problem is paternalism and the power relation. Most people are not even aware that they can complain or protest. We know from our experience that it works perfectly fine to fight labour crime with traditional union tools in an effective way to help the migrant workers, but it will also demand some changes in the unions. There is a need to include multiple languages for communication with migrants and an urgent need to a change of rules and regulations we have in Sweden.

What is the process you are going through when a client comes to your union asking for help?

We can help about 70% to 80% of the people coming to us. They usually need an interpreter to tell their story and they would also need to show us some proof or evidence regarding the complaint. Then we would call the company to negotiate and the company must come within two weeks. Either we would agree on the negotiation, if not we would take the case to the court. We can also expose them in the media or protest. Restaurants, for instance, are extremely sensitive to protest.

What can you do for undocumented migrant workers coming to your union?

There is a law in Sweden, it’s just a couple of years old and it’s one of the most progressive laws regarding undocumented migrants I have ever seen. This law says if there is a dispute about how much the undocumented worker has been working it shall be calculated as three months of full-time work at the collective agreement level. The problem is that undocumented workers cannot use this law, because society doesn’t let them. We just say there is this law, but we are not saying how the migrants can use it.

You said that the most common labour market sectors where migrants are most likely being exploited are mainly construction work, restaurants or cleaning sectors. Are there any others?

Yes, for sure. The whole agricultural sector, mainly the seasonal agriculture sector in Sweden. Picking strawberries, and blueberries in the north and vegetables, the lumber industry and the work in the woods, and also the beauty industry and massage salons, the health care with personal assistance and the whole transport sector.

Where are these workers usually coming from?

Sweden is a magnet for people looking for a job in Europe, and this creates a problem with mixing work migration and asylum migration. For example, last year, the second biggest group coming to Sweden seeking asylum were people from Uzbekistan. They partly knew that they wouldn’t fulfil the requirements for the asylum but they also knew that it usually takes a year until their case is solved and during this year they are entitled to work. All the Uzbekistani members are coming here to work in the construction sector and they are sending the earned money back home to save their families from poverty.

How can we tackle the exploitation of migrant workers in Sweden?

It almost feels like nobody is interested in helping undocumented workers. All the investigating journalists I met who focused on this issue agreed that it’s so hard to find people who want to talk. We have the opposite problem, too many of them want to talk to us. The issue is that the unions can’t accept undocumented workers as full members so there is a help centre in Stockholm for them, in Stockholm only, this centre is very well financed and last year they only helped 26 people to solve their problems, out of maybe 100,000. And I believe it is so, because of the controversy of the issue. Many people simply don’t want to help undocumented workers get their black wages back.

The law loophole

Social scientists from Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway are now cooperating to investigate how these countries approach and target the problem of migrant workers’ exploitation, both politically and legally. Still, ongoing research is funded by the Nordic Research Council for Criminology aiming to contribute to better working conditions for migrants, strengthen the labour market laws and combat the exploitation of migrant workers. The research will compare the differences and similarities of each Nordic country’s legislative approach to the prevention of social dumping and conduct policy analysis on governing national policy documents – such as legislation, official national strategy plans, annual reports, evaluations and action plans – and later on, collect and analyse court cases from each country.

Isabel Schoultz is the Project leader and coordinator of this research project called “Law in action – Policy and legal responses to the exploitation of migrant workers in the Nordic countries”. Isabela is the head of the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University in Sweden and works in research areas of corporate crimes and the processes of denial, exploitation of migrant workers and access to justice and legal aid. Isabel’s current research is focusing on policies against human trafficking, forced labour and exploitation of migrant workers in the Nordic region.

Anna Pokorná is a MSc student in Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden

Women’s voice in media still missing

Anna Pokorná — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:32:40 +0000

“Women and girls are half of humanity. Giving equal time and weight to their stories is an important part of creating a better, freer world for all of us.”– Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director.

Gender stereotyping in the media is still very present. The media gender gap is widely open and misses the women’s perspective. Women continue to be denied their right to be heard or to take up leadership. The study of Missing Perspectives of Women in News (MPWN) published by the International Women’s Media Foundation in 2020 found that men are the vast majority of quoted experts and sources in news coverage. Between 2005 and 2015, women were fewer than one in five experts in global news. Top positions in the newsroom remain largely reserved for the men only, which makes almost all of the decision-making process absent of female voices. The study examined four following indicators: women as sources and as figures in news stories, diversity in the workplace, newsroom leadership and coverage of gender equality issues in six couriers: India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Britain and the U.S. and analysed more than 2,000 articles, 12,000 publications and more than 56 million stories including news content and academic articles. Workplace diversity, for instance, failed heavily in all of those countries.

Today, according to the study, men are quoted in online news five times more often than women in Nigeria, and six times more in India. The researchers found that women have the best coverage in lifestyle stories and least in articles linked to policymaking or current affairs. Women also tend to cover topics like education, environment, and issues of poverty and development. But quite fewer women investigative reporting on the economy or politics. MPWN study also found that in each of those six countries except for India, gender representation in political news coverage is lagging behind women’s actual position in political life especially in Kenya, the U.S., South Africa, and the UK.

Another research The Global Gender Monitoring Project (GGMP) in 2020 found that only 24% of expert voices in the news are women. GGMP study, released the percentage of experts commenting on foreign policy, global affairs, national security, war, development, human rights, global trade and commerce, bilateral and multilateral issues in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, across three one-year periods: 1996, 2006, and 2016. This study reveals that women remain shockingly underrepresented in these themes in the news coverage.

Still prevalent gender stereotypes

The United Nations Development Programme in their Gender Social Norm Index revealed highly prevalent prejudice against women, showing that 91% of men and 86% of women across 75 countries covering 80% of the world’s population hold at least one bias against women. Raquel Lagunas, acting director of United Nations Development Programme’s gender team: “UNDP is very conscious of the backlash against women’s rights. We are aware and we are concerned.”

The media can play a crucial role by addressing and recognizing gender stereotypes. However, they often portray women only as victims or simply as homemakers. What the GGMP study says is that even in stories that affected women such as gender-based violence, the man’s voice still prevailed. Women in news are most likely cited in a position of “ordinary people”. But not as experts or figures of authority.

Traditionally, areas such as banking, cyber, defence, economics, engineering, entrepreneurship, finance, investing, national security, nuclear war, science and technology are staying male-dominated. The lack of involvement of women in media and the imbalance of using women’s perspectives in news is linked with a higher percentage of men in positions of power and authority, lack of women’s leadership across industries and still heavily persistent gender and cultural bias.

Media worldwide and the participation of women

The Gender Equality in the News Media Index (GEM Index or GEM-I) calculates the average gender equality gap based on six indicators: people in the news (subjects and sources), participation as reporters, voice as experts and as spokespersons, and presence in economic and political news. Transnational media perform poorly concerning the inclusion of women as subjects and sources. Women were only 13% of subjects and sources in the television newscast monitored and 21% in the digital news stories and tweets from Al Jazeera, BBC News -World, CNN International, France 24, Reuters, RT News, TeleSur and The New York Times. While some women’s involvement has improved over time, women’s invisibility remains still very low in influential international media. If all conditions remain the same, it will take at least a further 67 years according to the GMMP research to close the average gender equality gap in traditional news media.

From a historical point of view, there has been some progress in women’s engagement, especially in European news media and North American media. However, we can see a different picture in Africa’s media when they largely failed to address the presence of women’s voices over time. Asia and the Middle East is largely lacking women’s perspectives, especially in print and broadcast news. The only region and topic where gender parity in subjects and sources has been attained are in North American digital social legal news.

Voices of minority and historically marginalised women

Teams in 81% of the participating countries of the GMMP study collected data on indicators of interest in the national context to understand news media treatment of subjects and sources based on their other identities such as race, religion, class/caste, immigration and disability status. The finding shows that women are underrepresented across all the identity groups. In Latin America only 3% of the people in the news are from Indigenous or tribal groups and of these only one in five is a woman. Although indigenous peoples are estimated to be at least 8% of the region’s population, and women at least one half of the indigenous population.

Call for change: why is the women’s voice essential ?

Excluding women from the media has various consequences. First of all, women are being devalued and not recognized for their work, practice and expertise in public. Secondly, prioritising men means that the transparency of information in the media is missing and that most of the world media are labelled as being biassed and not fully objective if they need to prioritise their sources as experts.

Women can bring unique and insightful expertise which is rarely reflected in global news. Hearing and seeing more women’s voices in the news in the role of experts, leaders or authorities is crucial for breaking down and pushing against gender stereotyping.

Twenty years ago, 189 UN Member States recognized the central role of media in shifting the gender stereotypes that influence how we think and act. They made women and media one of 12 critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action. It was agreed that the number of women in the media must increase, including in decision-making. There has been some progress since the Beijing Conference but we still have a long way to go.

By repressing women’s perspectives journalism tends to perpetuate the existing biases in societies that universalize men’s perspectives. There is an urge for change in journalistic values. There is a call to action for journalists to not let women’s voices remain marginalised and to produce news that empowers girls and women to believe that their voice is valued. The failure to represent the diversity of people and opinion in society influences public discourse and decision-making and also plays a big role in a name of trust in news journalism. Full gender equality is insufficient without the improvement of journalism from a gender perspective.

Anna Pokorná is a MSc student in Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden

Tracking environmental crimes in Ghana

Anna Pokorná — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 16:20:08 +0000

Ghana is the leading producer of minerals, especially gold in Africa. But more than 35% of the country’s minerals are extracted by small-scale miners, most of them operating illegally. Pollution from mining has contaminated water sources across the country with mercury and heavy metals. Mining in Ghana represents many security, environmental, humanitarian and health challenges.

A new research project from Copenhagen university is aiming to target environmental crime in regard to illegal minded minerals in Ghana by examining minerals used in a global supply chain of technological devices which are being sent back to Ghana as e-waste and ending up on one of the biggest world e-waste dumps.

This research project was granted by the Denmark Independent Research Fund aiming to target the consequences of irregular mining and the grey zone phenomenon following this issue. The project is headed by Professor Henrik Erdman Vigh from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen.

What is the core issue in the research you want to look into?

What we are looking at is how irregular or illegal movements go across countries. Environmental crime is the perfect example of such a crime. First, because environmental pollution does not care about borders. When we have this crucial phenomenon in some situations it becomes difficult for us to untangle what is legal and what is illegal. And this is a part of the problem here. The fact of being able to camouflage the status of those mined minerals. What we experience now is that in some situations the amount of minerals we are using in technological devices exceeds the number of minerals that are legally mined. That opens an interesting opportunity for investigation.

What kind of activities are meant by the term “irregular” mining?

Irregular mining is a terminology used here due to the fact that this kind of mining is quite varied. When we have this crucial phenomenon in some situations it becomes difficult for us to untangle what is legal and what is illegal. And this is a part of the problem here. The fact is that it is easy to camouflage the status of the minerals. We can also say that even when the companies have the right to mine on the ground of Ghana and they do follow some kind of regulations they still have very negative environmental consequences. And this is the grey zone of environmental crime. From a criminological perspective, we could say it is not that important if it’s legal or illegal mining. What is important is that it creates environmental harm and captures the grey zone phenomena in this issue.

How is irregular mining in Ghana connected to e-waste and technological products?

Ghana is also home to one of the world’s biggest e-waste or tech waste dumping grounds. That means when we look into the mining industry and we follow the mineral into the technological product, in some cases, we can follow the same product back to Ghana directly to the e-waste dumps. And what is also interesting is when we look at the e-waste we see that it is being actually mined once again for its mineral remains and that again brings up great environmental consequences. People mine batteries and take out the remaining minerals. They burn off the plastic on wires to collect them. And those minerals are again moving in the same circuit of irregular mined minerals that come out from Ghana.

How do you connect environmental crime and pollution in the research?

One of the ways to approach irregular mining regarding pollution is to look at it in terms of environmental harms and follow a more Zemiological (Zemiology is a branch of criminology studying the social harm caused by actions) than a criminological approach. For instance, as one of the negative environmental impacts of illegal mining, we can look into water sources. Drinking water is contaminated using quicksilver to separate minerals in mining activities. That’s the consequences on a social and political level for the locals living in these polluted areas. This project also moves us into risk and compliance officers and regulations and policymaking.

Are you also planning to look at health issues regarding pollution and mining into consideration?

Absolutely, we are trying to map the consequences of the mining and part of them are health issues. It is a large public health hazard, so we are definitely looking at that as well.

When we look at it from a social scientific perspective it’s clear that much of this artisanal mining seems to provide livelihood – also the e-waste dumps. But an interesting thing as a paradox is that doing so has negative impacts on other people’s livelihoods such as farmers. Those paradoxes are very much what we are looking at as well.

What are the steps you need to undertake in the research process, how do you plan to track the minerals?

We are trying to understand how this whole circuit works. Part of that is for instance looking at the supply chain. The technological industry is dependent on these minerals which means we are going to do an ethnographic study of how this mining is done, who is engaged and how it is negotiated. Following the supply chain allows us to understand how these minerals are moved and how do these minerals lose their illegal status and become incorporated into the legal product?

What is the cooperation with Ghana going to look like and what is a so far stage of the research?

The research is going to start next year. We are still in a start-up phase. We work very closely with a regional research group from a technical university in Ghana with a senior lecturer George Bob-Milliar. What we are trying to do now is to figure out what minerals already constitute a problem and which of these would be the most feasible for our investigation and that is something we are going to do with close contact with people and researchers in Ghana where we have a quite excellent research team. Also, we will be cooperating with our postdoctoral Assistant Professor Humphrey A. Asamoah who is a Ghanian from our department. (Professor Henrik E. Vigh)

Joel Agbesinyale is a master student of development studies at Lund University in Sweden coming from the Volta region of Ghana. As a Ghanian, he shared the outlook from his point of view.

‘’Illegal mining in Ghana has been a big concern as far as I can remember. The local name for that is Galamsay, a term used for small scale miners. What I have seen in Ghana, were rivers going from crystal clear to dark brown colors in just a couple of years. My grandfather lived in the western region of Ghana where we have the famous river Pra. Back in the day, when we used to visit him. I remember, the river was crystal clear and used for domestic needs, for the cattle and as drinking water because of the high quality. But a couple of years ago, I would say around 2012 the quality drastically decreased. The river is extremely polluted and dangerous to use.”

“We do have an institution called the Minerals Commission. In conjunction with the Ministry of Lands, they oversee the issuance of mining licenses and leases. Before a person receives a license for mining in a particular place the Minerals Commission needs to look at other environmental factors, for instance, the distance from a water body, but unfortunately, these factors are being very much overlooked.”

In the 1980s, Ghana implemented mineral sector reforms to attract foreign direct investment into the large-scale mining sector. Together with the large-scale mining sector, artisanal and Small-Scale mining has been rising steadily as well. In 1989, it accounted for 2.2 per cent of total production. By 2014 and 2018, the figure rose to 34.4 and 41.1 per cent of total country production. Of the total number of 1.1m artisanal and small-Scale mining operators in Ghana, 60 per cent are illegal or unregistered. To minimize production costs, the miners use technologies harmful to the environment and negatively impact the health of those who are involved. The environmental damage such as pollution of water bodies, damages to aquatic and terrestrial ecological systems, land and rainforest degradation and air pollution is highly concerning. Mining operations damage riverbanks, divert rivers and streams from their natural courses and further contribute to the floods in mining communities. Furthermore, miners are exposed to injuries and death due to inefficient protection and highly dangerous conditions. Another factor adding more harm is the poor enforcement of mining laws and regulations by governance institutions.

Artisanal and Small-Scale and large-scale Mining is an important economic activity in several gold-rich developing countries. In Ghana, this type of mining has provided jobs and livelihoods for many people, especially in rural communities. But the current practice of this kind of mining generates many negative externalities which occur regardless of whether the mining operation is formalized or not. That’s why the importance of targeting those environmental and humanitarian harms is even more urgent.

Anna Pokorná is a MSC student in Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden

SUPPORT DDRN SCIENCE JOURNALISM. DONATE DKK 20 OR MORE(APPLICABLE IN DENMARK ONLY)

Photo: Dame Yinka. Wikimedia Commons

Professor Henrik Vigh. Photo Anna Pokorná

Girls drop out of school because of menstruation

Anna Pokorná — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:07:15 +0000

Silence about menstruation

In many countries in the Global South menstruation is still perceived as taboo. During the time of menstruation girls and women must face many challenges, discrimination, harassment, social exclusion, and perceptions such as describing menstruation as shameful and dirty. Taboo, silence, and stigma that still exists in many countries in the Global South continue to disempower girls and women, harmfully affecting their life, education and health.

Menstruation restricts mobility, girls tend to stay home because there is no other option. It affects their freedom and their choices, excludes them from school attendance, social and community life and among others, health-related issues cause stress and anxiety.

What is Menstruation hygiene management?

Menstruation hygiene management (MHM) means that women and adolescent girls use a clean material to absorb or collect menstrual blood and that this material can be changed in privacy as often as necessary for the duration of the menstrual period. MHM includes soap and water for washing the body as required, and access to facilities to dispose of used menstrual management materials.

School is not a place to menstruate

Lack of basic services such as access to toilets, clean water or sanitary pads are having an impact on daily life and also causes many health issues. Toilets in the schools are mostly without doors and there is no place where to throw out used materials. That means that very often girls are forced to put the used pads into the plastic sacs and then to burn them in secret when they arrive home. Often, they do so with that plastic as well, which makes it even more dangerous for them and the environment.

“I used to miss one week of school every month,” says one of the schoolgirls in Tanzania. “I didn’t want to shame myself in front of my peers.”

“It’s difficult to talk about menstruation and sanitary pads openly because it’s not something we do. I try to save money for pads, but if it runs out, I use pieces of cloth,”- says a school girl in Tanzania

“We always ask them to go home… to go home and take care of themselves at home, since we don’t have any facilities in the school“- school female teacher, rural area of Nigeria

Period teasing – “periods are unnatural”

According to a research article about period teasing of adolescent boys and girls in Northern Tanzania 13% of girls have experienced period teasing, and more than 80% fear being teased, mainly by male classmates. Furthermore, 47% of girls left school early during their last period, 31% did not participate in class as much as usual, and 33% of them concentrated less in school while having a period.

Boys and men also often including the teachers tend to perceive periods as embarrassing and strongly inappropriate for a girl to talk about a period with males. 20% of boys reported “periods are unnatural” as one of the reasons for teasing. 79% of boys answered that girls would be ashamed to reveal their menstruation to male classmates. 66% of boys answered that women and girls in their homes, while being on their period, are restricted from daily activities such as cooking (50% of households), touching water sources and animals, touching plants, passing through planted farms, washing dishes and attending public gatherings.

“When I started my own menstruation, I was asked to not even touch a man because if I touch any man, I will be pregnant. So, when my junior brother touched me, I went out crying and I said that, my brother touched me. So, I will be pregnant, they said no, if it is your blood brother. But if somebody touches you outside. Since you have started menstruation, you have to be very careful don’t allow any man to touch you.” – says the mother of a schoolgirl. Fear, shame, cramps and pain, are common reasons to be absent in the classroom. Students are required to stand up when answering questions that potentially reveal that they are menstruating. 9% of girls report being afraid to stand up. “Sometimes when I am seeing my menstruation. I can’t even sit down because my mind will be like if I sit down, it will touch that cloth I am wearing.” – says one of the schoolgirls. “Sometimes, they don’t sit down properly. They don’t want to sit down because they don’t like staining their cloth, they don’t feel comfortable. They used to sit halfway.’’ – school teacher

Transactional sex for a pad and other health-related issues

In some traditional households, girls are discouraged from bathing or touching their genitals during menstruation, which makes menstrual hygiene and the universal approach to personal hygiene during menstruation quite challenging and can lead to higher levels of urogenital infection. Regarding stigmatization of menstruation itself, drying and washing reusable sanitary pads in secret, in girls rooms under unhygienic conditions result in higher infection rates.

The alarming fact is that in some cases girls offering transactional sex to be able to buy sanitary pads, especially younger, economically dependent girls and women. Regarding women’s health, this rapidly increases the risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases as well as unintended pregnancy and school dropout.

A pilot study in Tanzania

Sara Gabrielsson is an Associate senior lecturer and researcher in Sustainability Science at Lund University (LUSCUS) in Sweden. Her research is mainly focusing on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) delivery and services and sustainable development in Africa. Together with the cooperation of a local Tanzanian organisation she has decided to find out what menstrual product would be the most effective and suitable for girls in Tanzania to make life for them easier. This type of research was very unique and the first of its kind and Menstrual cups were perceived as the best suitable option for the local girls. “I can even play football, I can go to school, I can go outside, I feel free.” Those were some of the reactions of girls starting to use the menstrual cup.

This pilot study was focusing on many cultural and management challenges of different menstrual products in the rural area of the Mara region, Tanzania. Together with the cooperation of local organisation Maji Safi this research was based on a comparison of three menstrual products: disposable sanitary pads, washable fabric and the menstrual cup. The testing period was 30 days for a single product each and it was tested by three groups of girls in age 11 to 18. In every group, there were 30 girls in total. Before the actual pilot, girls were also educated about how to correctly use the different products. There was a survey done between 175 schoolgirls, discussions and interviews with teachers and practitioners.

Menstrual cups can collect blood safely for up to 8 hrs., so it enables girls to stay in school during menstruation, it also increases mobility and participation, reduces shaming, the risks of vaginal infections, produces no waste and lasts for up to 10 years. Although the initial price of the cup could be quite high, even unaffordable for some girls. The study also pointed out that the inefficient state of the school’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities is one of the main reasons why girls stay home during their period. It was also found that the menstrual cup was seen as the most preferred option for how to handle menstruation. Sara also made a short film about this study in Tanzania – Break the silence

How to Improve MHM:

The study also mentions the suggestions for improvement: Such as preventing and stopping menstrual shaming by talking about menstruation with both boys, girls, men and women. Access and availability to clean toilets with doors and bins in schools and public areas for disposal of menstrual products and access to clean water and soap. Provide information about menstruation in school curriculums. Increased distribution of menstrual products in rural and urban areas and make them more affordable.

MHM is having an impact on:

Education: MHM has a negative impact on girls’ educational performance. On average girls stay home 2-4 days during their period. More than 98 million girls are missing school across the world.
Economics: Menstrual Health Management has impacts on economic growth and development. According to the World Bank, 30 trillion dollars are lost in productivity and earnings due to limited educational opportunities for girls.
Health risks: Inefficient sanitation in schools and public areas, lack of water and soap and bins makes it difficult for girls to manage their period and higher the risk of vaginal infections. When water is not available, and I am menstruating and when I change the thing and my hand is stained with blood and will not see water to wash my hands, I will now use the toilet tissue and clean up my hands. We normally wash our hands with sand on the ground” – says a schoolgirl in Nigeria
Environmental pollution: Poor waste management, clogging of sanitation systems, unsafe disposal methods put extra pressure on the environment.

MHM in the SDGs

MHM is now considered as one of the burning development issues. Over the last 15 years, the awareness of MHM has been increasing, especially the attention to HMH in human rights. The discussion is taking its part in international development frameworks, national policies and also in public in general. What it seems to be missing is a clear given and more comprehensive goal and cross sectoral collaboration opportunities and straightforward policy.

Menstrual hygiene management is touching and connecting with many of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) MHM is indirectly included under goal number 6 (Clean Water and sanitation), 5 (Gender Equality), 4 (Quality Education), 3 (Good Health and well-being), 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and 12 (Responsible consumption and production).

Anna Pokorná is a MSC student in Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden

SUPPORT DDRN SCIENCE JOURNALISM. DONATE DKK 20 OR MORE(APPLICABLE IN DENMARK ONLY)

Materials used by schoolgirls to collect blood during menstruation. Photo by Sara Gabrielsson

Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash

Photo by Doug Linstedt via Unsplash