Lise Josefsen Hermann – DDRN

Universities in Ecuador Play an Essential Role in Defending Human Rights

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 11:57:10 +0000

Back in June 2022, an 18-day national strike in Ecuador led by the indigenous movement Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities from Ecuador (CONAIE), practically paralyzed the country.

The protesters demanded better conditions for the many poor in Ecuador, including the indigenous population. The country’s president, Guillermo Lasso, had cut state subsidies on petrol at a time when prices were, and still are, rising worldwide. This plunged many Ecuadorians into poverty, as the price of a gallon in Ecuador rose by 90 percent and the price of regular petrol by 46 percent over the course of a year.

Nearly one-third (32 percent) of Ecuador’s inhabitants live in poverty, with less than 2.8 dollars a day, according to the National Statistics Office. 15 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty on just $1.8 a day.

CONAIE wanted to cancel the price increase on petrol and wanted control over food prices. They also demanded the renegotiation of personal bank loans for nearly four million poor families, as well as lower prices for fertilizers, which increased dramatically since Russia invaded Ukraine. To do so, they called for a nationwide strike and as a result, many roads all over the country were blocked, schools closed, and so on.

When indigenous peoples demonstrate it often happens in a particular way which reflects their values and living conditions. Many live with their families far from Quito in communities in the countryside. They also have a much more collective mindset than that of city-people. So, in June last year, many brought their whole families, including their children, to demonstrate in Quito. This meant that many minors were present during the demonstrations and that there was quite a big logistical issue during the strike – where were they going to sleep, eat and wash themselves, all those thousands of people?

That’s when the universities opened their doors. In June, the Polytechnical Salesiana University (UPS) declared its campus in Quito a so-called Peace Zone.

Juan Cárdenas Tapia, the rector at UPS, explains why his university made that decision: “What would happen if we didn’t do so? We would see children roaming the streets. People with no place to rest, to clean themselves. That would have generated more problems, chaos, disorder in the city, and more filth. I really value the work of students and teachers, this activism from social awareness, sensitivity, and solidarity. They are being empathetic with others, a more socially vulnerable part of the population,” says the rector.

In general, universities taking this kind of position during times of social unrest have religious roots. In the case of Salesiana, it stems from a long Catholic tradition. For the leader of the university, it is very important for the institution to fulfill this role in society: “We try to be faithful to our mission, vision, and institutional values. We will always be on the side of the popular classes and marginalized sectors. We decided to open the doors of the university during the strike, as well as during the last long strike in October 2019. So that the social crisis does not worsen, the university opens its space as a place of human welcome – lodging, health, food, security for indigenous people and peasants,” says Cárdenas Tapia.

So, the Peace Zones of the universities have this very practical and logistical function. However, there is also a dimension of helping avoid serious human rights violations, which took place during this year’s demonstrations and in earlier ones.

According to the Alliance for Human Rights Ecuador, 6 deaths, 77 human rights violations, 115 arrests, and 335 persons injured were recorded during the protests in June 2022. Also, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed deep concern about the use of violence – tear gas and pellets – by Ecuadorian security forces against demonstrators, including minors, during the protests this year.

“As an academy, we cannot remain indifferent; we have a social responsibility that goes beyond the students enrolled, our campuses and classrooms. We can contribute to protecting the integrity of the people and help ensure that the right to demonstrate is respected. Because it is very comfortable, if not, to speak from privilege,” says the rector.

During the 18 days of the strike, there were also counter-demonstrations organized with several incidents of racism expressed publicly against the country’s indigenous population, the indigenous organization CONAIE, and its president Leonidas Iza.

Even the country’s president asked the indigenous demonstrators to return from where they came from:

“To our indigenous and peasant brothers and sisters, who have been brought to Quito under false pretenses. For their safety, and that of their families, we ask them to return to their communities,” said Guillermo Lasso in an official TV-transmission on the 24th of June 2022.

And this development towards a still more divided society worries the university rector: “During this strike, we saw greater expressions of racism, especially through social media. Discrimination and feelings of superiority are challenges for academia – how to continue working on educational processes to reduce such racist expressions for the whole educational system and society in general. Because Ecuador is a multicultural country, and we must understand ourselves as such. How to be able to coexist with different people as a richness, complementarity and not as a problem,” Juan Cárdenas Tapia reflects.

Francisco Montahuano is a political scientist and university professor at Universidad Hemisferios in Quito. He thinks the universities are filling up a necessary vacuum in Ecuador’s relatively young democracy: “It is appropriate that the role of the academy is active and participatory – not only theoretically, but also in action! The unfinished process of Ecuadorian nation-building is an important topic. Universities all over the country are aware of the problem we have, as a state, of not accommodating the needs of our indigenous citizens. We cannot talk about effective interculturality in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian state cannot respond to health, education, or housing for the indigenous peoples. In this inequality between government and citizens – in this case, the indigenous population – it is appropriate that the university is a mediator and a space of refuge,” states Montahuano.

A few months before the COVID-19 pandemic reached Ecuador, another important strike took place in October 2019, also with strong indigenous participation alongside people from other sectors of society. Planned increases of petrol prices were also a part of the demonstrations, which lasted 13 days, and during which at least ten people lost their lives, according to human rights organizations. During that strike, even more universities opened their doors to demonstrators in Quito.

The role of academies in Ecuador is not unique to the region. In countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, universities have also become centers for the organization of social struggles where protesters can gather.

“Universities in Latin America have had a key role in historical processes as allies with society during dictatorships. They have been important and transcendental in those moments where some collective rights are at stake,” states Francisco Montahuano.

When the strike ended on 30^th of June last year, the rectors from two universities – Salesiana and the National University in Quito – were present at the table of dialogue together with representatives of the indigenous movement and the state.

“It shows the faith that both parties have in the church and the universities,” says the rector at the Salesiana Polytechnical University.

Part of the agreement when ending the strike included the creation of ten dialogue tables. The negotiations ended by October 2022. There were some agreements made in areas like the economy, productivity, health and security.

On the other hand, central and complex topics such as employment, fuel subsidies, extractivism, and natural resources did not end with any deal between the two parties.

Lise Josefsen Hermann – a freelance journalist based in Latin America for more than a decade. She is a Pulitzer Grantee, works for the investigative media Danwatch and has published in media like Al Jazeera, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, El Pais, New York Times, and Undark Magazine. Photo: Andrés Yépez, Quito, Ecuador

Ecuador: The highest number of chronic child malnutrition in South America

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Mon, 08 May 2023 11:10:49 +0000

Back there, intertwingled with the clouds, is the snowy mountain of Carihuairazo. The altitude here in the town of Tisaleo is more than 3.200 meters above sea level. Up here the air is dry. This area is known for agriculture, potatoes, beans, peas, corn, blackberries, and strawberries. Here is at first sight no lack of food.

But then again. The province of Tungurahua – of which Tisaleo is a part – has the highest statistics of chronic child malnutrition in the country with 41.34 % of children 0-2 years old, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census in Ecuador (INEC). Most of the food they cultivate is to be sold and consumed elsewhere.

Diana Belén Pilco Pilco, 36, is preparing her son Lucio, almost two years old, for a small Christmas parade through the part of Tisaleo called El Calvario. She is the treasurer at the local CNH group (Creciendo con Nuestros Hijos – Growing with Our Children) in the Calvario sector – a government initiative for vulnerable children regarding malnutrition. The group in El Calvario consists of 16 children and their parents – the majority have a really low income and several are single mothers. They work in agriculture or in footwear manufacturing. Most work daily, seasonally – not with a fixed monthly income. On the days they work they can earn around 12 USD (the currency in Ecuador) per day.

Being a part of the CNH group, they get visits once a week. Sometimes they would get eggs or hens from the group initiative.

The pandemic has been hard on them, Diana recons. And in general, their difficult economic conditions make it hard for them to offer healthy and good food to their families:

“We talk about that among the mums because they give us talks about nutrition for our children they give us training, but as the doctor sometimes tells us, the nutritionist tells us what we have to feed our children, but there are times when we don’t have the access to give them one egg a day. And even worse to buy meat, chicken, and fish because they are more expensive products, and we don’t have enough money to buy them. The doctor told us that we must try to give them as much food as possible, and sometimes there is not enough, we give them what we have at home, and sometimes that is also why this happens with malnutrition in our children.

Diana’s son Lucio suffers from malnutrition and anemia, she tells us. And as a mother, it is really difficult, not being able to treat and feed well your children:

“It is difficult, it is helplessness we feel because sometimes when there is enough, we feed ourselves and we feed good, but when there is not, sometimes, no matter how much we want to, we cannot. We give what we have from our pocket. But sometimes there is nothing. And unfortunately, those who pay the consequences are our children,” says Diana.

But equally, Diana and the other mothers try their best to improve their conditions and get better access to food for their children. For instance, they plant vegetables like chard or peas– which would be too expensive to buy. They also raise guinea pigs to sell – which is a traditional food in Ecuador.

Diana points out another thing that would be a great help for the families in Tisaleo. To get a local pediatrician, so that they would easily and quickly be able to bring their small children to medical checks.

And poverty plays a central role in the predisposition for malnutrition among children. So, explains Betzabe Tello, who is a Family Doctor, has a Ph.D. in medicine, and is a research professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE), where she has published studies related to chronic child malnutrition. She has also collaborated with the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and with the Ecuadorian Ministry of Public health on this topic.

“Chronic child Malnutrition is a serious public health problem in Ecuador, and it is only getting worse. Poverty is the most important determinant of malnutrition. 40% of children under 5 in Ecuador live in the poorest parts of the country. That is quite a lot. Also, the ethnic population, the indigenous population is the most affected – by poverty and by malnutrition. Education of women is also a determinant for the malnutrition of children,” explains the researcher.

According to data from UNICEF, 40 % of malnourished children in Ecuador are indigenous even though the indigenous population only makes it up for seven percent of the total population.

At the level of Ecuador, it is the Central Andean Provinces, like Tungurahua where Diana is living, which are most affected, here half of the children suffer from malnutrition, which is a serious issue. Here lives the poorest population, almost entirely indigenous population.

“There is no quick solution, because of the political panorama, the political decisions are not tackling the structural problems of malnutrition. It is not just about food but also access to healthcare, clean water, and education. For the prevalence of malnutrition to disappear, we must look at narrowing the inequality gap”

Ricardo Fabricio Huaraca is the local doctor in the El Calvario sector, where there are living 2.646 persons. He points out several reasons for the record-high level of chronic child malnutrition in the area:

“We have a high rate of child malnutrition. There are several precarious situations contributing to that, like the water here in the Calvario area in general, is not drinkable. This is a factor that influences malnutrition and in addition to this the parasites that are quite frequent here, that is another important factor that we have,” says the local doctor.

He agrees on the lack of access to healthy food is a key element in the problem, but not the only one:

“Access to an adequate and balanced diet is very complicated at times due to the precariousness of the parents’ access to food. Sometimes it has not been possible to carry out many check-ups, obviously here as the population is quite dispersed and there is not much staff at times to be able to carry out the necessary technical visits by our health personnel,” says Ricardo Fabricio Huaraca.

Another of the members of the CNH group is 23-year-old single mother Erika Lizeth Panimboza with her son Gael, 1. She has been living her whole life in Tisaleo. Being a single mother, is tough, especially economically, she tells:

“We lack food because even though I work hard, sometimes I can’t afford to buy all the necessary things for him, like yogurts, for example, I can’t afford to buy all that,” says the young Ecuadorian mother.

Her son is suffering from malnutrition, she has been told by the doctors:

“My son has short stature and does not have a very good weight. I don’t know what it’s due to, but I’ve been told that it’s because of his poor diet, because he doesn’t eat properly like yogurts, cereals, fruit, and all that because I don’t have a lot of money. I do worry because I don’t have enough money to buy enough things for him,” says Erika.

Another big wish of hers is a hospital in Tisaleo that will attend 24 hours a day, to get better medical attention, especially for small children like her son Gael.

Studies from before the pandemic showed that almost half of Ecuadorian families didn’t have access to an adequate and balanced diet. And during the pandemic, those things got worse. A condition with serious consequences for the children, their families, and the whole country. Something the Ecuadorian researcher is really worried about:

“Immediate consequence of malnutrition can be infectious diseases or even premature death. Then there are the long-term consequences, which are many, obesity, diabetes, and lack of productivity. A small child is not just small in size but also its head, thoughts, and aspirations are small and limited. That can lead to a lack of productivity, lack of access to adequate work, and poor living conditions. And in general, a lack of productivity in the country. Chronic child malnutrition also weighs on the country’s economy in the end. And all this is more likely to be passed on to the next generation, end the end we are doomed to poverty,” thinks Betzabe Tello.

Ecuador is the country in South America with the highest rate of chronic child malnutrition and the second in Latin America (after Guatemala) according to UNICEF. One-third of children in Ecuador are malnourished.

The Ecuadorian doctor points out, that her country could learn something from neighboring Peru:

“In Peru, they seem to have done something right, according to the Ecuadorian researcher: “They have managed to reduce malnutrition because they have had a very strong policy – they kept during different governments, with a strict budget allocation to this area. They managed to reduce malnutrition; they’ve had an anemia policy too”.

The Role of the University in the Transition After the Armed Conflict in Colombia

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:06:48 +0000

When the Colombian government and the guerrilla group FARC signed the peace deal back in 2016, it was only the beginning of a long road towards a, in theory, more peaceful country after four decades of armed conflict. Part of the peace accords involved creating a system of truth, justice, reparation, and non-repetition. The National University of Colombia made agreements to assist in that process as a trustworthy, neutral actor.

Each campus has developed different strategies, such as supporting the writing of reports, working directly with the Truth Commission, or supporting communities in the process of recovering memory. All of these have been issues that the university has addressed through research groups of specific professors.

In the case of the national university in the Department of Cesar, the La Paz campus has supported ten different communities in the recollection of information and the writing of special reports to the Special Justice for Peace.

“We are on the difficult task of overcoming war and building peace in the territory. What is important now is not the paper of these peace agreements, but how people in the local areas are taking over the results of these agreements, how people are living, and what people are doing to build reconciliation. This is the exercise that the University’s Peace Laboratory is doing,” explains Anthropologist, Professor Lucia Eufemia Meneses, who directs the so-called Territorial Peace Laboratory at the La Paz campus.

Armed Conflict in El Toco

One of the communities supported by the National University is El Toco. Let’s take a closer look at its history related to armed conflict.

Toco is a mountainous place, very suitable for livestock farming and for growing all kinds of crops. A group of farmers arrived in El Toco from several places in 1991 in search of land to work on. In 1996 they succeeded in getting ownership of the land. They had two primary schools, one secondary school, and a shop in the village.

In April 1997, the first massacre by the paramilitary group AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) hit the village of El Toco. Many of the villagers fled. One month later, the next massacre occurred: eight people were killed, and even more people left. And three years later, another three persons were killed in El Toco. Unfortunately, this is the story of many, many places in Colombia during the decades-long armed conflict. The country has the third highest number of internally displaced people – after Syria and Ukraine.

According to the Truth Commission, which also was created as a result of the peace process, from 1995 to 2004 more than 8 million hectares were dispossessed or abandoned. The inhabitants of El Toco are now still fighting to get back their land, which they were displaced from 25 years ago. The so-called land restitution basically means returning illegally held land to its rightful owners.

Patterns of Macro-Criminality

As stated by the National Victims Unit, between 1997 and 2003, more than 57,000 people were forcibly displaced and 6,000 killed in the municipalities of the central part of the department of Cesar.

Miguel Ricardo Serna is the leader of the victim’s organization, Asocomparto, from the community of El Toco. He was an inhabitant in El Toco from 1991 until 1997, the year in which the paramilitaries entered the place, killed two people, and forced the peasants to leave their land. Since then, Miguel has been living in the capital, Bogotá, and also in the nearby municipality of Codazzi.

“It was like a romance of peace. We were living in that territory from 1991 to 1997. We had eighty families organized in a working committee, there was a women’s organization and we belonged to a farmer’s organization, too,” recalls Miguel as he sits together with several other former inhabitants of El Toco. We meet just outside the city of Valledupar, in the municipality of Codazzi, where Miguel is living nowadays, some 30 km away from El Toco.

In the case of El Toco, the National University hired two professionals who, together with the victim’s organization, worked with the information for the report, organized it, and helped write it too. For the leader of the Territorial Peace Laboratory, it was an extremely important task:

“Without the support from the University and non-profit organizations, it is almost impossible for these communities to present the reports to the Special Justice for Peace. The real support has been in analyzing the information, putting it into the basic formats requested – and presenting it in a way that is intelligible for the task that the Special Justice for Peace does, which is to find patterns of macro-criminality that allow the guilty to be found and brought to justice. The reports help find these patterns, and organize the information in such a way that there is a revision of these patterns of macro-criminality. The task of the University is to organize and analyze the information to present it in this way, by actors in the conflict, by temporalities, by victimizing events, etc. That allows the information to be intelligible and serve to identify these patterns,” explains Lucia Eufemia Meneses.

The local leader from El Toco, Miguel, will never forget that day in April 1987 that forever changed the lives of the people of the village: “It was something so beautiful until April ‘97, when that happiness came to an end because the paramilitaries arrived and killed two people and displaced us from the territory. It was something like a very big void for the community because we lost the social fabric and the life project we had been working on for several years. It was the biggest rupture of our lives, and we didn’t understand what was going on behind all of this,” tells Miguel.

Only one month later, paramilitaries killed another eight people in El Toco: “That was the biggest chaos in the community of El Toco, because we didn’t understand what was going on behind that war, behind those masks, because the paramilitaries showed up and there were some people who had their faces covered as we do now during the pandemic. So they would point out that this is the leader that is called so-and-so and that we were guerrilleros,” remembers Miguel.

Miguel Ricardo Serna recalls these painful moments of his history and the history of El Toco, in his backyard in what became his home in the municipality of Codazzi. Several other former inhabitants of El Toco are here too, and still, tears fall as they together make this journey through their difficult past, as they have been doing together with the National University. This is also a healing process for part of the millions of victims of the conflict, trying to conciliate and construct a future in peace after decades of violence.

”It is a report which shows the whole process of historical effects that have occurred, and the revictimization that the people of El Toco have suffered. The reports of the special Justice for Peace must follow a specific structure, narrate the affectations in a certain way, time and place, and can annex info of all times. In the case of El Toco, they narrated everything that had happened and contributed all the info they had through maps and topographies to be able to understand all the specific affectations,” explains Lucia Eufemia Meneses, from the Territorial Peace Laboratory.

Furthermore, the reports also serve to show the University’s commitment to the region: ”And it shows how we’re committed to the construction of peace on a small scale and that has helped the communities of the Department of Cesar – to feel that they have an institution that supports them and that is committed to territorial peace,” says Lucia Eufemia Meneses.

Land Restitution Efforts Are Stumbling Along

After the displacement by the paramilitaries, it became known that the local population had been forced to ”sell” their land to members of those groups for small, symbolic amounts like three million Colombian pesos, and then shortly after, the same paramilitaries had sold the same land to the multinational mining firms, Drummond and Prodeco, for millions of millions of pesos. Those companies have been involved in carbon mining in Colombia and in the Cesar department for many years.

Already in 2011, Colombia passed its Victims and Land Restitution Law 1448, which is about returning illegally held land to its rightful owners. The Land Restitution Unit was also established. Basically, this law was also about recognizing the victims of the armed conflict in the country. But in the first ten years since the law was enacted, less than 10 % (around 500,000 hectares) of the restitution goal has been reached

In the case of El Toco, several of the land restitution applications have been rejected. Some of the victims have also been offered money to cancel their restitution reclaim.

For the leader of El Toco, it is something really close to his heart that the State recognizes the victims of the village and gives them back their land, which was violently taken away from them during the armed conflict. “This is about the dignity of our community; it is the dignity of a people. So today these people, represented in the community, ask the whole world to continue investigating the struggle of the victims, because we need it, here out in the corners of the countryside in Colombia.”

The reports from the ten communities in the Department of Cesar and in the southern part of La Guajira, created with support from the university, were handed over to The Special Justice for Peace at an official ceremony at the La Paz campus.

Miguel Ricardo Serna, leader of the community of El Toco. Migue was an inhabitant of one of the plots of El Toco from 1991 until 1997, the year in which the paramilitaries entered the property, killed two people, and forced the peasants to vacate their land. Miguel went to live in the municipality from Codazzi and then to Bogotá.

The Danger of Being a Woman in Ecuador

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 16:26:20 +0000

Every 28 hours a woman is killed in Ecuador, for the simple reason of being a woman in this patriarchal system we live in. So-called femicide. But in 2022, one particular femicide has shocked the country and brought hundreds of people out to protest in the streets. The murder of the lawyer Maria Belen Bernal on the 11^th of September, at the police school in the country’s capital Quito. Her husband German Caseres, a police officer and teacher at the school is the main suspect and he is still missing to this date.

”The case of María Belén Bernal has become an aberration. A woman dies at the hands of her husband who is a policeman, within a police facility, when it is the police who have the legal duty to protect people from being killed. So this is what provokes an accumulation of indignation. The feeling that there is no more protection, that if a woman is killed in the police force, there is nowhere else to turn, then what can we expect? But the most serious thing is all this behavior to cover up,” says Susy Garbay, a feminist lawyer and professor at the public Central University in Ecuador.

The cover-up, that the lawyer is referring to, has been questioned from many sides. How are the police supposed to investigate a crime amongst themselves? Just after Maria Belen went missing, her husband was interviewed by colleagues but released afterwards. Also, the main suspect didn’t allow the police investigators to enter his room to make the investigation. Soon after, he went missing, supposedly leaving the country. Did someone from within the police institution help him to escape?

Maria Belen’s body was found ten days after her murder. Also the circumstances around the findings of the body, the search, and the many days it took to locate it has been questioned by women’s organizations, the family, and the lawyers of the victim.

The case of Maria Belen has gotten a lot of attention, because of the involvement of the police school and institution. But unfortunately, she is just one out of many victims of femicide in Ecuador and in Latin America. 332 girls and women have been killed in Ecuador in 2022 according to the ALDEA Foundation.

Maria Belen died at 34 years old and left behind a 13-year-old son. The aggravating circumstances made it a cause many Ecuadorians claimed and were indignant about.

During the months that have passed since the death of Maria Belen in September, there have been several demonstrations in Quito and elsewhere in the country. ”Señor, señora, no sean indiferentes. Nos matan y nos violan en la cara de la gente” – would the mass yell, at one of those events in the streets of Quito, meaning: ”Sir, madam, don’t be indifferent. We are being killed and raped in people’s faces.

Obviously, the loss and the whole case is really hard on Maria Belen’s mother, Elizabeth Otavalo: ”She was a fighter, a woman full of love with clear visions and objectives, and with ambitions and an appetite for life, a will to live and it was all taken away from her. ”She would have done the same thing I am doing for her; to fight for the truth,” says Elizabeth from the leather couch in what used to be her daughter’s lawyer’s office in Quito.

Let’s have a look at the relatively recent incorporation of the concept of femicide in Ecuadorian legislation. Femicide in Ecuador was only criminalized in 2014.

”But there have always been deaths of women, it’s like a patriarchal policy. So, in fact, the death of women has been covered up by the law itself until the late 1980s, there were even penal figures that exempted the men from the house when they punished women even to death, that is, for example, an adulterous woman who was found with her lover, so to speak, could die at the hands of her husband and the husband had no criminal sanction. This was the case until 1983, and until 1989 there was even another criminal law in force, which said that the father, brother, or grandfather could also kill a daughter, granddaughter, or sister who was found to be carnal and legitimate, there was even legal permission to kill women. These norms that protected impunity in the face of the death of women were declared unconstitutional in the ’80s and ’90s with the debate of the human rights discourses, women’s organizations also demanding greater rights, but obviously, the cultural element of that symbolic universe that was in these norms has not been overcome, for example, the sense of ownership of the man over the woman’s body has not been modified,” says Susy.

”In Ecuador, there was not much interest, let’s say, there was no record of the cases of women’s deaths. Femicides were all prosecuted under the figure of homicide-murder and it was not really possible to show the register of women killed by their partners or in these contexts of power relations,” says Susy.

It is not until 2011, that the first study is made in Ecuador about femicide – women murdered because of their sex. The study was done by an Ecuadorian and Costa Rican lawyer. Femicide is in the actual Ecuadorian legislation described as, when a person who, as a result of power relations manifested in any type of violence, kills a woman because she is a woman or because of her gender. But that doesn’t mean that all gender-based killings of women are registered as so.

”That is the formal dimension of law, but there is more to it. Law has to be seen as a much more complex phenomenon, it is a legal phenomenon that has not only a formal dimension, It has a cultural dimension, it has a structural dimension, so the interpretation made by the justice operators who have the possibility of raising the legal discourse in concrete cases has distorted the penal type. In several cases they do not understand this when they naturalize, for example, instead of placing an act in the pedagogical type of femicide they place it in the penal type of homicide, that is to say without putting into evidence these power relations that characterize femicide.

Another newer (2015 ) study from Ecuador made by the Ecumenical Commission on Human Rights shows how there is too much attention paid to the victim’s behavior, to what the victim did to provoke the death.

Now, let us go back to the recent events in Ecuador. How could femicide happen inside a police school? Several circumstances afterward have risen criticism internationally, for instance from The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights: ”In light of the disappearance and femicide of Maria Belén Bernal in Quito, IACHR urges the State to investigate with enhanced due diligence; to prosecute and punish those responsible; to combat tolerance of gender-based violence in the country.”

The commission wrote in a statement that was sent out shortly after her body was found: ”Given the context of violence against women in the country, the State must prioritize the adoption of prevention measures that address the structural causes, guarantee access to justice with a gender perspective and comprehensive reparation for victims and their families.”

The UN has also commented on the case: ”The United Nations System in Ecuador deeply regrets the femicide of María Belén Bernal. The events that allegedly took place within a police institution need to be investigated in an expeditious and independent manner and punished in accordance with the Constitution and the law. The rights of the victims must also be comprehensively redressed, including measures of non-repetition. This femicide is part of a serious situation of violence against women,” said part of the statement.

Maria Belen’s mother is really disappointed with how the Government and the police have been handling the whole case: ”On the part of the government, there has never been any institutional support. The only thing they wanted to do is to look after the image of the institutions, but not to respond to the basic issue, which is how she could get murdered inside a higher education institution, a police academy, where people are supposed to be trained to provide security for us people. And now come these slow and tedious legal processes of searching, which is even more painful, because I will always have to re-victimize myself, and remembering is hard,” says Elizabeth Otavalo.

And the case has already had high political costs – for instance when president Guillermo Lasso dismissed the Minister of the interior, Carillo. Also, the head of the police Academy was replaced, and 12 police officers were suspended.

On the other hand, on the 29th of November 2022, Lasso made the symbolic name-change of the Human Rights Secretary to The Ministry of Women and Human Rights appointing Paola Flores as the new Minister.

But it is important not to forget the State’s responsibility in the case, Elizabeth Otavalo’s lawyer, Jesús Alberto López points out: ”Let’s not forget that we also have State responsibility here because the State is responsible for the actions committed by its officials in the exercise of their duties. Here Germán Cáceres was an official of the State National Police and was on duty, therefore there exists State responsibility as established in the Constitution of Ecuador and also within the scope of justice. The Ecuadorian State will have to compensate for the rights of María Belén Bernal, especially her son she left behind who is only 13 years old,” says the lawyer.

On one of the last days of the year Germán Cáceres was arrested in the Colombian town Palomino and on the 3rd of January he was extradited to Ecuador and transferred to the maximum security prison in the city of Guayaquil. Days after he was transferred to Quito to take part in expert examinations and on the 12th of January, he confessed to having killed his wife Maria Belen Bernal.

Bolivian Researcher Carla Colque-Little Throws Light on the Superfood-crop Quinoa

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 12:06:50 +0000

Carla Colque-Little specializes in diseases of one of the star crops from Bolivia – quinoa. A plant that many countries – for instance, Denmark – are eager to adapt to cultivate in their farmland – is a crop for the future. But changing the habitat of the quinoa is not without problems. Understanding diseases and plagues is a key to success. And Carla Colque-Little, who did her Ph.D. in Denmark with a scholarship from the Bolivian government, holds important information on that key.

She is dressed in a stylized indigenous skirt and a vicuña wool shawl. Carla Colque-Little recalls how years back she walked around in these same streets of La Paz, the administrative capital of Bolivia, thinking and deciding about the great offer she had got about studying in Denmark. A great step for an Andean woman from Bolivia. “My life changed that day.“ Her face lights up with a big smile when recalling the moment.

But the decision was not easy at all. As a single mother with two children, leaving her country and the rest of her family was an enormous challenge and change. “It has not been without sacrifice,” the Bolivian scientist admits. Also, when she lost her mother while studying abroad that was a tough mark on that road.

Back in 2014, the government of the indigenous president Evo Morales began offering scholarships to 100 people like Carla. Together with Carla, we visit the Ministry of Education in La Paz, where we meet Mario Fuentes Teran, Director of University Education: “With these scholarships, Evo has thought of the Bolivian youth even without having gone to the university. It has been a way of democratizing education in Bolivia to improve development in the country. The initiative is a part of the national policy on science sovereignty,” states Mario Fuentes Teran.

The new government of 2020, led by Luis Arce Catacora, offers 200 scholarships tells the education director. The scholarships will be given in the areas of science, technology, nuclear energy, and health. The deal is that the Government pays for the studies, travel and stay in the host country. In return, the students must work twice as long as they studied – in strategic enterprises back home in Bolivia. It’s the strategic state enterprises – like Lithium Resources, Sugar production, Bolivian Airways, seeds (in the case of Carla), oil – who makes their suggestion to which kinds of specialization is needed for the interests of the Bolivian State.

When the 100-scholarship program was launched, Carla already had a master’s degree from London. She decided to go do her Ph.D. Copenhagen with a scholarship from the Bolivian government: “In Denmark, people didn’t believe me, that coming from a developing country, my government had paid for me to be there. We can now raise our heads. It’s about scientific diplomacy,” says Carla.

She is right now preparing to say goodbye – once again – to her family and country. She returned to Bolivia last year and she managed to negotiate to go back to Denmark; her specialized knowledge about diseases in quinoa is sought after.

While we meet Carla, she shows us around her beloved city La Paz – where she went to school and did her studies at the University. Her connection with her roots and her country is clear and strong. Quinoa is a product of worldwide interest. Carla is a phytopathologist, which means she studies diseases of plants. This research area is about genetic breeding when searching for disease resistance. But it did not have prestige , according to Carla: “The general idea is that you just identify the disease, the insect pest, for instance, you look for a cure – could be chemical – or sometimes it doesn’t impact the yield performance sufficiently to be worried about. And that’s it,” says Carla.

And the same happened in the area of quinoa: “The global interest – outside the Andean countries – was about adapting the quinoa to places with long days – in Europe – Germany, Denmark. And in China, Corea, and Japan to the conditions, they have there”. A great change from the conditions in Bolivia, where there is almost no difference between the time for sunrise and sunset.

And scientists have succeeded in adapting quinoa to these new conditions. “They have made advances – actually they have published about the genes related to the conditions for long days and its chromosomal location. This is a step ahead on making the necessary stable adaptations so that the crop can grow under these conditions”.

But it quickly turned out that it is not that simple just to move a plant from one part of the world to another, a completely different one. This is where Carla and her colleagues’ research comes into the picture: “Thanks to our research we have managed to show that the adaptation, the domestication of the plant, the crop has had a biological penalization. That penalization refers to a loss in beneficial microorganisms, and of greater resilience of the plants towards diseases”.

Basically, the research shows how the quinoa grows well and healthy when it is together with its many organisms in its native environment, explains Carla: “In the original environment of the plant, it is not alone. There is a complex of organisms that lives together with it. We know that in the soil there is a great quantity of bacterizes – other microorganisms that favor the plant. In this symbiosis, the plant is living in balance. But then, when you take this plant and you want to adapt it to other systems – to a completely different place – it’s possible, yes – but there is a biological penalization – it loses a lot of these good microorganisms, which then give more space to those bad ones – the diseases”.

So then, the diseases that earlier were not very important (to study) suddenly get important, tells Carla: “In my thesis, our research has found the scientific evidence for this, and it has important implications because the diseases infect the grain, they produce mycotoxins”. So suddenly the demand for a profile like the one by Carla increased: “The global interest towards quinoa will look for researchers who are up to date on those aspects of the quinoa. And in diseases, there are not a lot of people because that was the least important for a long time”.

When I ask her how she could use what she learned in Denmark, she answered promptly that “it’s rather what I could teach them – about the quinoa which is from my country”. This goes both ways, she insists. “This kind of exchange should always be done like this – both ways. It also increases the possibilities of scientific discoveries. Because researchers in the Andes, are in contact with our intuition, and we can communicate this to the people in Europe. This is really interesting,” Carla points out.

It’s easy to notice how Carla has a different background and cosmovision than that of a typical European scientist. She tries to link intuition – or call it observation – with known or unknown facts, for instance how she dreams of being able to speak with the plants to be able to understand them better. Before leaving for Denmark, she first paid visits to the important places for quinoa to collect information. She went to Puno, close to the Titicaca lake in Peru. She visited Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and many other places in that country. Also, the trip passed Lima, and she visited an experimental station for quinoa in Peru.

Carla expresses herself, her work, and her connection with nature in a way far from the European academic world. “I would like to listen to the plant in its place – it is a living being that I wish I was able to communicate with. That it enriches me and tells me about it. It is the same when I am in the lab, I also wish I could communicate with the organisms – they are alive! They are interacting.” Carla is clearly very excited about this part of her work. She shows a photo of when you look in a microscope at microorganisms. “These things move, they are alive. For me, it doesn’t serve for anything just the letters – without looking at the plants, without feeling them.”

Via the computer screen, Carla proudly shows me the paper of her thesis. It includes Andean symbols such as the Bolivian mountains: Tunupa, Illimani, and Illampu, and then drawings of the quinoa, llamas, and the Bolivian flag. “This work is really important for me and for my government,” says Carla.

The conclusion of her thesis includes how this scientific research and exchange between the Andean Region and Europe is necessary. It enhances the process of discovery that will prevent and reduce infections in European grains and produce food safety. And without this exchange, it’s going to take longer to discover this. On the other hand, from the Bolivian side, they need to improve their performance and good prices and to get acknowledgment of the quinoa with a denomination of the origin. “The fact that I was in Europe with the knowledge about the Andean quinoa, facilitated that we could manage this. Us Andean people know more about quinoa than Europeans”.

And just the detail that Spanish is her mother language makes it possible for her to include other sources, which have enriched the articles and research. On the other hand, it was possible for Carla to get to learn about new technologies and experts in genetic improvement which were only accessible in Europe. She could not have done that if she just stayed in Bolivia. Both in literature and songs, there is this specific term, Lamento Boliviano – meaning Bolivian Sorrow. Something many Bolivians relate to – Carla as well, referring to when Bolivia was colonized by Spain 500 years ago. “We are all illegitimate children here in Bolivia because we are a mix of indigenous and white people. It’s about not knowing where you belong. But I always had this clear, Colque (her surname) is an indigenous name, which means Silver, because my father’s family came from the silver mines”.

She recalls being bullied in her school time for going to school with that surname – such a girl did not belong there, according to the other children, she says. But then, when indigenous Evo Morales came into power in 2005, these things began to change. “This was a historical moment really”, says Carla. “Back in 1970, indigenous people were extremely discriminated here. And now someone with an indigenous surname could even accede to scholarships”.

“Sometimes I ask myself, how can all this be happening? It is not easy for a Bolivian to travel. It was expensive. As a girl, I wanted to travel, and explore – and that is what is happening! It is still a dream for me! We need to think differently about the world. Because we have potential and talent in Bolivia. I have hope that we will succeed in this in the future.”

At this moment Carla is preparing to say goodbye to her family and country again. To return six months to Copenhagen to continue her work on diseases in quinoa to represent her strategic enterprise for seeds, “Empresa Estrategica de Semillas”. She questions the model of compulsory work in national companies in Bolivia after ending her studies with the scholarships, which the director of the Education Ministry talked about:

“I want to suggest to my government a new way of working. I want to continue with international work and establish collaborative projects, together with my strategic Bolivian enterprise. I dream of working between Bolivia and in this case Denmark. I don’t want to leave my country, but also, I do not want to be in a cave without access to what I have in Copenhagen. The University of Copenhagen has been like a platform for me. It would be great to continue with these contacts from universities in Italy, Saudi Arabia, etc. to increase exchange also for other young people. We need to get away from the idea of returning to an orthodox work in an office upon returning to Bolivia,” reflects Carla.

As the cherry on top of the pie, she proudly shows a letter she got from the current president of Bolivia, Luis Arce. “This is one of the letters I feel most appreciation for. It’s a letter from my president. It says… Congratulations on your Ph.D. in Copenhagen about diseases in quinoa and on regaining Bolivian identity. This work will for sure be really useful for society.”

Mercury: The Silent Death in the Bolivian Amazon

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 11:39:14 +0000

Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are affected by mercury contamination in Bolivia due to small-scale gold extraction. The women are some of the most vulnerable – and at the same time the ones handling the mercury most directly. Is there a possible alternative?

The roads are crooked, and the vegetation is overwhelmingly green. Here the surroundings of the village of Guanay dominates tropical rainforest and a jumble of green shades. But then again – in this part of the Bolivian Amazon, most people think of anything but trees and plants. All they think of is gold. Gold fever is raging, and big machines are working at full speed, degrading the landscape indiscriminately.

While the poisonous heavy metal, mercury, is banned in many of the world’s countries, it is still legal for use in Bolivia. Hence, Bolivia is the largest mercury buyer in the world according to official statistics. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 2020, gold mining in Bolivia discharges around 100 tons of mercury per year into rivers. The UN officially criticized Bolivia on this account. During the 183rd session of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which took place in December 2021, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxic Substances and Human Rights, Marcos Orellana, urged the Bolivian government to present its plan of action to reduce the use and commercialization of mercury in extractive activities.

The Special Rapporteur warned that the increase in the use, commercialization, and trafficking of mercury from Bolivia to countries in the region not only frustrates the efforts of the international community to comply with the Minamata Convention but also generates a serious regional problem in South America. The UN Minamata Convention on Mercury entered into force in August 2017 and is an international treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury. It is named after the Japanese Minamata bay, where in the Mid 1900s mercury tainted industrial wastewater and poisoned thousands of people, which became known as the Minamata disease.

Juan Carlos Almanza is responsible for a project promoting mercury-free gold mining in Bolivia and which is being implemented by the Plagbol Foundation, with funding from the Danish NGO Dialogos. He is highly worried about the situation with mercury in his country:

“I imagine that something like what happened in Minamata is going to happen because Minamata released 5000 tons of mercury in the factory. Every year we are throwing out a similar amount. Every year. I think that in 20-30 years, the consequences are really going to be terrible and not only for us. These rivers reach the Amazon, they reach Brazil and from there they flow into the Atlantic, so the issue is going to be quite complicated. Our main objective is to make the general population aware of the damage that mercury has caused and to look for alternatives for gold production by reducing or eliminating mercury,” says Juan Carlos.

The Bolivian Amazon is being seriously affected by small-scale gold mining and the human rights of the indigenous peoples in the area are being violated by mercury contamination from this gold mining in their rivers. Indigenous women have learned to extract gold practically from the waste of the companies. One of them is Kenia Argandoña Machicado, 38. She belongs to the indigenous Leco-people, from the village of San José de Pelera, near Guanay. She and her partner have been miners for all her life – and so have her parents She recalls when they began to use mercury around her seven years ago: “We began to use mercury when they started to extract gold by means of machines around here,” Kenia tells.

With naturalness, she shows us how they – everyone – is using mercury as a part of their daily routine in gold mining. With mercury, they get to catch all the tiny bits of gold that they get from panning the sandy material from the river. Mercury is mixed with the material containing gold. A mercury-gold amalgam is then formed. When heated, the gold remains – one of the problems is toxic fumes from the mercury.

“With mercury, not even a spark is lost; on the contrary, everything is rescued. With most of it we use mercury because we don’t know about other ways, so that’s all we do. We find the gold in very tiny bits. That’s why the mercury was brought here for the miners to be able to catch the gold. Before all this gold-digging, the area had crystal clear rivers with fish. We don’t have that anymore, we can’t fish in the river anymore,” tells Kenia.

But there are alternatives to mercury, and in Guanay they are beginning to grasp that. Now they are receiving workshops from the Bolivian organization Plagbol, supported by the Danish NGO Dialogos teaching the miners how to use borax (sodium tetraborate) in the gold extraction process as a much lesser contaminating matter than mercury. Borax is often used as a component in laundry detergent and is a combination of boron, sodium, and oxygen.

Part of the workshops also teaches about health risks. Mercury vapour affects the nervous, digestive, and immune systems as well as the lungs and kidneys, and it can be fatal. It can be felt from inhalation, ingestion, or even just physical contact with mercury. Common symptoms include tremors, difficulty sleeping, memory loss, headaches, and loss of motor skills. Most people in gold extracting areas in Bolivia – such as Guanay – do not know a lot, if anything at all, about the risk of using mercury. In addition to this, mercury can be bought freely in many shops throughout the country, without special permission.

”We didn’t know anything about the risks of mercury, nothing. Now that the Internet is accessible for us out here, we can learn about it but can you imagine how it was five years ago? Now we can search Google for it, for instance. Now we know that mercury is harmful. Even sometimes we would be handling mercury while eating because we didn’t have the knowledge that this substance was harmful to us,” says Kenia.

”We no longer burn wherever we go, but everyone uses it in this sector. It is bad for us, but it is a necessary evil that we also need to extract the gold,” says Kenia. She is happy about the fact, that there will be workshops for the miners, where they learn about alternatives to mercury and about how to handle it in a safer way.

”Mercury is harmful for us, we now know more than before, we didn’t know that. Because what is going to happen to the children, sometimes to the children of the people who are pregnant when they inhale that air with mercury. We are damaging the fish, we are damaging the river, we are damaging all those things and that is a big concern for us,” Kenia says.

“For us here in Pelera the gold is very important because we live off this material. Here, most people do not dedicate so much to agriculture or livestock anymore, because there are no sectors for the area of livestock for the area of cultivation. Well, we have land, but the people have become accustomed to what is gold, and we no longer work in agriculture,” says Kenia.

This is a common consequence of gold fever, everyone dedicates themselves to looking for gold, and do not plant their own food anymore. That makes people totally dependent on money from the gold – which at some point disappears – and leaves the local population with a big problem – besides the contamination issues.

We return to Juan Carlos Almanza from the Plagbol Foundation: “The problem is that gold is not renewable; in other words, the gold runs out, as we have seen in some communities, and people either migrate to the city, or they live in very poor conditions, so this is a very complicated situation. You can see here in Guanay, that the environmental damage caused by this mining is terrible. That land, it costs a lot to recover, the companies do nothing about Social Responsibility; they extract, they finish, the gold is gone, and they leave and leave everything destroyed,” says Juan Carlos.

In Bolivia, there have been environmental regulations in place since 1997 that require gold mining that uses mercury to recover it. However, the government itself has acknowledged that 90 % of the gold mined in Bolivia does not recover mercury, it just flows directly into the rivers. And it is evident how mercury poisoning is affecting the indigenous communities, their rivers and the fish that are part of their diet.

One of the few existing studies about mercury pollution in Bolivia was published in June 2021 by International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). It examined mercury levels in women in child-baring ages in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. It found that indigenous Bolivian women have extremely high mercury levels in their bodies. More than half of the participants in the study exceeded the established United State Environment Protection Agency threshold level at which negative effects on the development of the fetus begin.

People in the villages tell that they experience more children being born with some kinds of cognitive issues. For instance, in another gold-extracting area in Bolivia – Sorata – we talk with Milton Yujra Mamani – a school director who simply says that during his 15 years in the position he experienced that there was e a higher number of children with so-called cognitive issues: “Yes, we have a problem with mercury, and it is really serious. It is accumulating here. Most of the children here are children of miners. We have more students with difficulties and handicaps. There are more cases than earlier on. We are worried that it is due to mercury,” says Milton Yujra Mamani.

And the situation with mercury in Bolivia worries the country’s own Ombudsman’s Office – Defensoría del Pueblo: “The material, technical and economic conditions do not exist in the country to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic mercury emissions produced mainly by gold mining, whose importation has grown steadily and exponentially, despite the fact that it is a highly toxic metal”, said the Ombudsman, Nadia Cruz on 3rd of May 2022.

Because of the nature of mercury, the most serious effects of its contamination will not be seen for several years. It is a silent death of these peoples of the Bolivian Amazon generated by the gold fever.

“There are tons of mercury that we import every year and there is no standard that tells you how to work with mercury and with which precautions. So, a large part of the mercury used every year is going into our rivers and the consequences are going to be terrible later,” says Juan Carlos from Plagbol.

In many countries, according to the Minamata convention, there are restrictions on buying mercury or it is prohibited. But in Bolivia, everyone can just go to the shop and buy mercury, without further ado. At the same time, mercury is in the top 10 chemicals of major public health concern according to the World Health Organization, (WHO).

He is especially worried about the women, Barranquillas like Kenia. So, in their projects and workshops they mainly work with this group. “They are a vulnerable group because they are women in the fertile stage. They can harm their children while they are pregnant or just by the fact that they are contaminated. It is a very vulnerable group and we must work hard to avoid this,” says Juan Carlos.

He is also concerned about the lack of studies and documentation about this serious situation: “There are no scientific studies here in Guanay that determine the contamination of the water. And when we have made a study in the health sector, not even the doctors are informed about the damage it is causing to the population, nor are they able to identify a person who has some type of chronic intoxication caused by mercury. We need studies. But we have seen in some towns that there are already some people affected and among the communities themselves they mention it to us. Yes, I know a person who has these symptoms, which we can relate to mercury,” Juan Carlos tells.

This is an invisible situation that might end up really serious for the local population in the future. But making the population in the gold-digging areas change their dangerous habits is not that easy: “The interest of the population in looking for alternatives to mercury is very complicated. People often don’t believe that mercury is harmful.

The problem is that nowadays you use mercury and don’t feel any symptoms. So, people say, “no, I use it all the time and nothing happens”. But mercury is bio accumulative, so it accumulates in the body and affects you over the years. That is one of the main problems we have because it is not instantaneous damage, so there is a lot of doubt among people,” explains Juan Carlos.

By the riverside Fabiola Salas (28), a woman pregnant with her 4^th child, is doing dangerous work in search of gold. It makes a strong impression to see her pregnant tummy exercising this task, knowing the serious potential risk for her fetus. She has been working with gold since she was 12 years old. Her parents were small-scale gold miners too.

“Mercury is harmful over time, all that has been explained to us. We have learned a little about this. It’s not right, this is for our own good, isn’t it? And that later it will hurt us. Because of my condition more than anything else. All that has been taught to us today. I didn’t know about those things before. This is very good to learn, how to get the gold without hurting ourselves,” says Fabiola, who has just assisted in a workshop organized by Plagbol.

“We’ve learned about how mercury can affect health, what harm it can do to us, you can get shaking, they say that it can’t hurt a brain, and all those things,” says Fabiola.

At the same time, she reckons that changing away from mercury is no easy task: “Here everybody we are still using mercury, but maybe it is difficult to change the method,” Fabiola says. She imagines a future with gold for her children too: “I think so because it is customary here, we don’t leave. My parents have been working on the same here and I have grown up here. We all live from the gold here, there is nothing else, just look for more gold, to continue to work in gold.” Fabiola ends her tale here and returns to her pan at the riverbed.

Lise Josefsen Hermann – a freelance journalist based in Latin America for more than a decade. She is a Pulitzer Grantee, works for the Danish investigative media Danwatch, and has also published in media like Al Jazeera, BBC, China Dialogue, Deutsche Welle, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, El Pais, New York Times, and Undark Magazine.

Photos: Wara Vargas, Guanay, Bolivia

_{Barranquilleras Women of Gold}

_{No Man’s Land}

Women, motherhood, and science in Colombia

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 14:40:44 +0000

Efforts to reverse trends of disengagement with studies, normalize motherhood in universities, and counteract gender disparities. Four stories, like cardinal points, to better understand the current map of Colombian women and science.

In many parts of society, there are still strong gender gaps. One of these is in science, where women around the world generally receive smaller scholarships than their male peers and tend to have shorter and lower-paid careers, according to the report “Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in Latin America and the Caribbean”, published by UN Women and UNESCO. Colombia does not escape the statistics: according to a study by the Development Bank of Latin America, CAF, about a third of the cases of dismissal from women’s studies can be attributed to pregnancy or motherhood.

We visit the campus of the National University of Colombia in La Paz, Cesar – a region with almost no University presence earlier. Most of the students are the first member of their family to enter a university, according to surveys made by the institution. There are almost 30 women with children – several of them single mothers. This University is making a great effort out of these women to stay studying.

Angie Paola Simanca Rodríguez, 21, is studying Biology. And she is a mother to Ezequiel, 11 months old. A great dilemma she reckons. “Many times, I do not manage to complete all the tasks of the University because I must not disregard my son. Then everything becomes so difficult but so necessary. Because now that I have my son I feel with more desire the need to improve myself and get ahead, become someone in life,” says Angie. “As I am now a mother, I feel the need to give my son a better tomorrow. So, I feel the need to make the sacrifice of being a mother and studying at the same time. To respond with my university and with my maternity at the same time”. “And both being a mother and studying are difficult. This University is demanding. I have never had to read so much, have had to stay up so long reading as I do now at this university. It’s really difficult. And good at the same time.”

11 month old Ezequiel is accompanying us at the interview. Sometimes coughing or creating loud noises, making it difficult for us to continue our conversations. It makes me think of how it must be for Angie, when she must study while literally doing her mother tasks at the same time. She is alone with her son. They are living with Angie’s mother. Sometimes her aunt helps her with Ezequiel as well. ”I dedicate myself to my son – more than studying. When he is asleep, I try to do a lot of work. My son has gotten sick, I’ve had bad nights with him. And all these bad nights that I have spent with my son, I have been able to fulfil the tasks of the University. My mind doesn’t allow me to be aware of my son and having to complete the university. Sometimes, many times I have no one to take care of him. Then I won’t even come to the university because if I come, I waste my time. If I leave him to my cousin, I come to the university to call her by video call to see if she has bathed him, if she gave him food, changed his diaper. So, all these things distract me too much in University. If I’m at home with my son, he doesn’t let me receive a virtual class well either. I must watch the recorded classes when my son falls asleep so I can understand what the professor says. Because at the moment they are giving the virtual class and explaining – Ezequiel put a pen in his mouth, Ezequiel is going to fall out of bed, he is going to hurt himself. So, all of this means that suddenly I cannot comply with all my university activities because if you are a mother – the first priority will always be the well-being of your son. So, this is my dilemma,” tells Angie.

Also, to way for Angie to enter the University has not been easy. First, she did the entrance exam four times at another University in Valledupar, she tried both Nursing and also Opencast Mining – she didn’t pass. Her mother suggested her to try this new campus from the National University of Colombia in the region. But Angie had little hope after the failure times four – and she didn’t really know the careers neither– like for instance Biology. “I told my mother, I don’t know, what this career is good for. Biology I don’t know what that is for. I don’t know what a biologist is. So, I grabbed my smartphone and googled. It said Biology is the science about the living beings. Oh, that’s interesting I said to my mum. I will give it a try with Biology…. So, it is not my life project or anything. But it was the opportunity that was given to me, and I took it”.

“I planned to study, prepare myself and then have my child. But sometimes we are irresponsible. And also, the lack of communication, of orientation. It makes us make bad decisions. Here is the small sample of that,” says Angie pointing with her eyes towards small Ezequiel. She is living alone with her son and her mom. Her aunt and mom sometimes help her with the baby. “Being a mother and studying at the same time is very difficult for me. The most difficult thing is suddenly to think that I am denying my son the time that he deserves. And that I am neglecting my duty to study. I feel like I don’t have enough time to fulfil the two tasks as I would like”. But becoming mother has also been an important lesson for the 21yearold: “My son has also become a goal of my life. Since I have Ezequiel, I am more organized both with the money and everything. Today I must wash her clothes, today I must… every task has a day, it has a time, and it has an hour. Because I don’t have the time to waste it anymore. Now I must be more focused on what I must do. I have practically everything with schedules because in reality I don’t have time”. Our talk ends with Ezequiel crying as if he also participates underlining that point from his mother.

According to UNESCO, globally 29.3% of researchers are women.

Yency Cardozo Vazquez is physiotherapist and part of the health team of the university. ”The region has a very complex story with paramilitarism, with the armed conflict in Colombia. There is an attempt to rebuild from the peace process and new ways of living and inhabiting the territory. We have five different indigenous peoples in the area. According to our surveys some 75% have a great amount of vulnerability! It may be low income they are not guaranteed basic services such as drinking water. We have a population of single mother families, doing on informal work in the region – that does not allow them constant income – which could transform their daily lives and their social mobility. So, these students who arrive are, for the most part, the first members of the family to enter higher education”.

The first challenge is the multiplicity of roles – mothers-students-partners – and some caregivers of older adults. Their workday is doubled or tripled. Some tasks – as is installed in the feminine, housework, childcare, generally take place in a private space – are raised in the feminine. That is a challenge for those women. Those are women with a lot of courage, to be able to transform their realities. Being some of the first of their families to go to a public university, either with those who belong to an indigenous or ethnic group, or who are Afro-Colombians. That is also a challenge to be able to transform within your Genealogy of your family, new ways of living, new challenges, to enter the university, to be able to graduate. Because it can also be a scenario that motherhood is a burden. They are very brave because the situation is difficult – but if I build and share what I learned from everyday life, then motherhood can also get a not meaning within the academy as an achievement and not something that people have to endure, but something that builds them that enriches them a lot,” says Yency.

The recent University Camp in La Paz has a beautiful view of two mountain ranges. There live five different indigenous peoples, who often have lived isolated from the rest of society and in various senses far from the academic world of the University. Claudia Patricia Vallejo, 26, is one of those women who is changing that picture. She belongs to the Arhuaco people, her home community is Jewrwa, some 5 hours’ drive from here. She recalls when she got pregnant as a 20 yearold and the challenges coming with that in her indigenous community.“As an indigenous person, when we find a partner or get pregnant, the family leaves everything for us to take over. Then – at that time – there were not really study opportunities. I mean, I continued with the dream that one day I would continue studying. I wanted to. But – this opportunity did not present itself. I could go to Bogota – but if I did not have any type of support – what were my son and I supposed to live from?”

At the time she had finished high school and wanted to study Maths. But five years passed as Claudia and her partner were occupied taking working and care of their child. During that time, they never even read a book or repeated something from their studies, Claudia tells. “I always had the dream to continue studying. I always said, the day will come when I will be able to continue”. Then one night, around 7 her phone rang. The following day, first thing in the morning, a teacher would be in the city Valledupar in charge of giving Pins to the indigenous people – so that they could then present the entrance exam to the university. Claudia had no money, but she borrowed to be able to travel to Valledupar. Next day, at 3 in the morning she left with her partner on a motorcycle. It’s a 5 hours’ drive. And they managed to get there early and get the pin.

But then, to present the university admission test was also another complication because they had been 5 years without reading a book. And again, regarding being parents. Claudia recalls how they had to leave her 3yearold daughter with the guard outside the university, while they were doing the admission exam. They had nowhere else to leave here – and were not allowed to bring her inside. But both passed – and now they’re studying Statistics together. “From then on it got very complicated. We had to be here at 7 in the morning. I had to bring my daughter, wake her up early, bathe her, dress her, we had to bring her – because she was very small, and we have no relatives here. We have nowhere to leave her. But then I managed to put it in a Kindergarten at least.There are moments when one does manage to concentrate on what you’re doing because – for instance I make her colour for a while. But then she comes – mom, look what I drew. Then oh nice yes, yes – and you disconnect. Also doing group work, sometimes I can’t participate, because I must take care of my daughter. It’s difficult. And my career, math, is very applied, I must study hard all the time,” says Claudia.

Mentioning all these challenges – remembering her life in the indigenous community five hours away, I wonder, if she’s ever thought of giving up on the studies, dropping out…“There are moments of despair. For example, when my daughter was in the kindergarten. Since she is the only one dressed in traditional clothes – and the other companions do not, she felt bad. She didn’t want to use traditional clothes. She wanted to wear the uniform. It was very difficult for me. I was already feeling that she was disconnecting from our culture. Children are getting used to what they see more. That worried me a lot – I felt – could it be that the classmates see her as different, so she would feel bad, strange, alone…? There were even days when I had to put a normal dress on her. But tomorrow you go with traditional clothes, I would tell her. We can’t take this away, it’s tradition – I tell her all this. But because she is so small – she doesn’t understand. Even me – I feel that I disconnect with my culture. This worries me. The own cultural education in this case. So, in the end, by being here, I’m making her lose this. It’s difficult. But giving up – no. After so much effort. I am also thinking about my daughter’s future, about how can I help my daughter. Otherwise, she will be the same or worse than me”, says Claudia.

For Colombia, of the total number of researchers in engineering and technology, only 26% are women.

At the recently opened campus of the National University of Colombia, there is being made an effort to include part of the population, which has not before participated in the academic world. Lina Caballero, 37, is leader of the organization Parent in Science, Colombia, which works for improving work-life balance and equal opportunities for women in science. She is also a biologist, PhD in genetics and director of wellbeing of this University Campus in La Paz, Cesar. And then she is a mother. And that is a great important part. Because the gender gap in STEM is still broad. In Colombia it is estimated that, if trends continue so far this century, it could take 150 years to achieve gender parity in, for example, engineering, according to research on women in science in Latin America. This situation worries Lina Caballero:

“We are working to make this situation visible. To create strategies, to normalize motherhood and fatherhood in the universities and in science,” tells Lina Caballero. She left her homeland Colombia a decade ago, because of lack of opportunities for her with an academic career. She studied first in Brazil then in Germany, now she reached her doctor degree. And decided to return to Colombia, to work for improving these issues.

Another challenge is the lack of data on the area, the founder of Parent in Science Colombia insists: “There is still a lack of data on the differential impact of care roles in scientific careers. Also about the unequal impact of motherhood on scientific productivity, and especially these data are required in order to generate actions and policies at the institutional level in order to support many academic women who are mothers”.

In Latin America, Parent in Science is a Movement led by researchers who work with research projects to evaluate and measure the impact of children on careers. From these data they hope to contribute to the discussion of strategies that allow the empowerment of women who are currently studying or working in STEM areas. Data is the first step towards desired change, sustains the movement: “This is important of etic reasons, to include everyone in science. We miss a lot of talents if we only see male researchers. Also, if there are no women conducting research – it is difficult that gender issues will be part of those investigations too,” explains Lina.

Lise Josefsen Hermann – a freelance journalist based in Latin America for more than a decade. She is a Pulitzer Grantee and has published in media like Al Jazeera, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Danish Development Research Network, El Pais, New York Times, and Undark Magazine. Photo: Charlie Cordero, El Cesar, Colombia

Angie Paola Simanca (21) with her son Ezequiel (11 months)

Claudia Vallejo (26) with her daughter Dwiney (6)

Lina Caballero with her daughter

Noise in the houses: Missing women and girls in Peru

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 14:58:10 +0000

The consequences of the coronavirus in Peru go far beyond health and the economy. Female disappearances in the Latin American country have reached 11,828 in 2020, the year of the pandemic. Many are victims of sexist violence. The case of Joys Stefani tells about the agony of those who lose track of a loved one. Children are careful observers of the world around them. In this case, a young girl tells fragments of a larger story that only her mother can complete. Joys Estefani Qqueccaño Huamani, a 24-year-old indigenous Quechua woman, was last seen on the evening of the 9th of October. According to Chaska, earlier that day her uncle on her father’s side, Jesús Ccana, took her and four-year-old sister Illary to his house – an account confirmed by her family on her mother’s side – which is only some 30 metres away from where they were living with Joys Estefani.

In the last known photo of Joys Estefani, her face is bruised, and head bandaged after being hit by her ex-partner and father of the two girls, Arturo Ccana Condori, 32. It was taken on the 28th of September and the assault was reported to the police. Arturo was arrested, but soon released. The attack took place a few weeks after Joys Estefani had separated from him: despite the rupture, they continued to live close to each other in the Pampa Ansa community, an open, arid valley of reddish land about three hours from the well-known city of Cuzco.

In many Latin American countries, Covid-19 has meant strict lockdowns and Peru is no exception. People have been confined to their homes for months, many forced to endure poor physical, economic, and social conditions. A situation that, according to experts, has aggravated the situation of children and women living in abusive households, who have been locked up with the perpetrators.

Disappeared women in Peru under Covid-19

The broken windows of Joys Estefani’s house still have blood on them. “We want justice, because the poorest are never listened to and women continue to be mistreated. That cannot be possible,” says uncle Nilo Qqueccaño with a broken voice and firm eyes. Yet the type of abuse endured by Joys Estefani is widespread in Peru.

In Peru 18,481 people have been reported missing from January to December 2020. 11,828 of them were women, in total 64 per cent, according to official police figures.

“After the successive changes in the restrictive measures, the Ombudsman’s Office warns that the increase in adult women, girls and adolescents reported as missing remains constant,” Peru’s constitutional human rights organisation wrote in a note published in the autumn. Of particular concern is the high number of girls and adolescents who have disappeared during lockdown, potentially fleeing their homes or falling victims to crimes such as femicide, kidnapping and human trafficking.

Of particular concern is the high number of girls and adolescents who disappeared during lockdown. “Minors who flee are a sign that we’ve failed as a society,” says Eliana Revollar Añaño, deputy for Women’s Rights at the Ombudsman’s Office.

Nor is the case of violence against Joys Estefani unique in Peru. On the contrary, figures concerning violence against women speak for themselves. From March to July, during the Covid-19 lockdown, the Ministry of Women registered 11,000 cases, with minors making up almost 30 per cent of victims.

The deputy indicates that something serious is happening in these homes if the minors are forced to flee. Indeed, domestic violence, sexual assault and very precarious economic conditions are commonplace. However, the authorities lack clarity on the reasons for the disappearances.

Joys Estefani was just 15 years old when she was betrothed to Arturo, in what locals call a “peasant marriage”, a traditional Quechua arranged marriage. Her uncles suspected for years that she was being abused by her partner. However, she lived in a very closeted setting, in which most of her time was divided between her ex-partner’s family and the Evangelical church they regularly attended.

The epidemic of violence against women in Peru

According to the Ombudsman’s Office, 132 femicides were registered in Peru in 2020 and as the number of disappearances increases month after month, it’s hard not to ask: why are so many girls and women disappearing?

“Our hypothesis is that the majority of minors could have fled their homes due to rape, physical and emotional violence or sexual abuse,” says Eliana Revollar Añaño, Deputy for Women’s Rights at the Ombudsman’s Office. “But we really don’t know why. And we don’t know how many are still missing, or how many have been found and in what conditions – alive or not. The lack of data is a serious problem”.

As well as in Lima, there are also reports of missing persons in the regions like Cuzco where in 2020 there were 1,011 cases of disappearances, ranking second nationally according to police data.

It is estimated that underreporting in these regions is even higher. Family members often avoid filing complaints, partly due to a lack of trust in the authorities. “It happens a lot that families are blamed for the disappearances. Or these cases are simply explained away as crimes committed out of jealousy and that the woman was probably also a little to blame”.

These are the words of Katherine Soto Torres, who founded the group Mujeres Desaparecidas Perú (Missing Women Peru) in 2016 following the disappearance of her friend Solsiret Rodríguez under strange circumstances and in response to the perception that the authorities generally aren’t doing enough to search for missing women. She recalls how several of the regions where many disappearances are reported house extractive industries, for example illegal mining; these areas are notorious for being hotbeds of human trafficking for sexual exploitation. The activist is particularly concerned about the situation in the Cusco region.

“The numbers are alarming. Cuzco is the second region with most cases nationwide. However, we still do not have a true nation-wide search system that records and disseminates all cases, in which alerts are immediately activated. If disappearances are not dealt with effectively, we won’t be able to prevent risky situations, much less find the victims alive,” says Soto Torres.

Blood on the walls

Visiting the abandoned home where Joys Estefani used to live is like entering a crime scene. Everything that was inside is now scattered outside. Toys, clothes, trash, broken glass. Recently turned soil can also be seen. Inside, there are red marks on the walls, one of which is shaped like a hand. As we approach the building, a noise can be heard, as if someone were inside – illustrating parallels between Joys Estefani’s case and that of Marleny Estrada Bolivar, who was reported missing for almost two months in Lima, Peru’s capital, until her body was found buried under her own room. During the visit, Arturo’s relatives come around constantly, as their house is a stone’s throw away.

“As poor, we ask for justice. The rights of a woman should not be violated,” says the uncle, Nilo Qqueccaño, with a broken voice and a steady gaze. “It is not fair that this should happen to a humble peasant woman with two children.” Outside the house you can see a lot of recently moved soil.

After their mother’s disappearance, Chaska and Illary stayed in police custody and were later handed over to their grandfather, since their father was considered a suspect in Joys Estefani’s disappearance, investigated as a murder case. “I’m afraid the Ccana family will make me disappear,” says her father René Qqueccaño, 44.

Soto Torres, for her part, asks for data from the area: “We don’t have precise figures. Why do they disappear? A national policy is lacking,” Soto Torres adds. “The authorities must give answers to families. It is as if their history has been erased. As if your mother, daughter or sister never existed. The state is taking something away from these families by not giving an answer. Missing women aren’t just numbers, they’re human beings”.

And if you go after the phenomenon of disappearances, they are often associated with serious crimes such as the murder of women, kidnapping and human trafficking. The activist also tells how families do not trust the authorities: “It happens a lot that loved ones are blamed for the disappearances. Or it is simply explained with jealousy, insinuating that the woman was probably also a little to blame.

Together with Joys Estefani’s uncles, as we move in front of the church the young woman used to attend with her ex-partner and his family, Arturo’s brother Jesús suddenly comes out, trembling with anger. From one moment to the next, questions and accusations are being levelled between the uncles and brother. “What happened to Joys Estefani? What have you done to her?” the uncles want to know. “And if she appears, what happens? How are you going to respond? Surely, she will appear in a week,” answers Jesús Ccana. “Don’t mess with our church,” is his aggressive message to our photographer as he covers the camera with his hands.

The consequences of not acting quickly

In the search for missing women, it is extremely important that the police act quickly. This can make the difference in relation to whether they are found alive or not. “For example, in the cases of 28 women who were reported missing, if the search had happened quickly their lives could probably have been saved,” says Revollar Añaño. “But they were found dead. And many of the femicides occur in their own homes”.

“My niece isn’t an animal, she has to appear,” says aunt Nalda Qqueccaño.

The representative of the Ombudsman’s Office mentions the state of Arequipa in the south of the country. “Here, there have been 47 cases of disappearances during confinement and 43 of them have been found alive because searches were taken seriously. We must follow that example in the rest of the country”.

A national registry is created, but many remain missing

“We have had some very painful cases that served as a basis for implementing our system of disappeared persons,” says Elsa Huallpacusi Hilario, advisor to the Ministry of the Interior, the highest authority responsible for searching for missing people. “All cases have received due treatment, but family members should collaborate much more. They report the disappearance of a relative, then they look for the person, find them and do not tell the authorities”.

In mid-October, Martín Vizcarra, who was Peruvian president at the time, launched a new national search system: a registry in which information on missing persons is collated and centrally stored.

In the meantime, in Pampa Ansa, in between adults’ conversations Chaska’s few powerful words are like fragments of her thoughts. “My mum isn’t coming back“. As weeks went by without concrete news concerning the young mother, the community began to worry more and more. Coca leaves were read on the 6th of November in the search for information about her disappearance, ancestral custom in this part of the Andes. According to the reading, Joys Estefani had been killed and buried somewhere. That same day the police questioned Arturo Ccana. He confessed to having murdered Joys Estefani.

The community left for what was once the young woman’s home, arriving as police and Arturo also reached the property. He pointed out the place where he had buried the mother of his two daughters. Joys Estefani Qqueccaño Huamani’s body was found 90 centimetres underground. Her family finally got answers, though perhaps of the most tragic kind, as thousands of Peruvian families are still waiting for news of their missing mothers, daughters and sisters.

Note: The magazine on law at the National University in the Highlands of Puno (Universidad Nacional del Altiplano de Puno) in Peru published an article in 2021 stating that “the most common type of disappearance is that carried out by individuals… the disappearance of women and girls, who are also often subjected to crimes such as femicide or sexual torture.” The research concluded that the time factor is crucial in the search for the disappeared girls and women: “The first 48 hours following the disappearance of a girl or woman are crucial to carry out the search and investigation procedures carried out by the corresponding authorities, since a delay in it will cause a greater risk of danger and death. For this reason, the training of public officials in a gender approach and respect for women’s rights is of great importance”. (full text in Spanish available for download in the sidebar)

Lise Josefsen Hermann is a freelance journalist based in Latin America for more than a decade. She specializes in environmental issues and climate change, human rights, indigenous peoples, migration and more. She is a Pulitzer Grantee and her work has been published with media like Al Jazeera, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Danish Development Research Network, El Pais, New York Times, and Undark Magazine.

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Sept. 5th, San Juan de Lurigancho Neighborhood, Lima.
Cinthia Estrada Bolivar (31) is 8 months pregnant and looks out her window with the sadness of the disappearance of her sister Marleny Estrada Bolivar (28) whom she has been looking for since July 13, 2020.

Nov.24th, District Pampamarca, Province of Canas, Cusco
The last photo of Joys Estefani Qqueccaño Huamani (24) before her disappearance on October 9, 2020. In the image, Joys Estefani has her face bruised and her head bandaged after being assaulted by her ex-partner and father of her two daughters Arturo Ccana Condori (32) on September 28. She sent this photo to her younger brother Percy Qqueccaño.

Nov.24th, District Pampamarca, Province of Canas, Cusco
The family of Joys Estefani Qqueccaño Huamani (24) gathered to look for her. From right to left: Leonardo Qqueccaño, René Qqueccaño, Rudisenda Qqueccaño, Christina Mamani, Nilo Qqueccaño and Nalda Qqueccaño. The father of the disappeared, Rene Qqueccaño, holds the documents of the report of disappearance issued last October 12.

Nov.24th, District Pampamarca, Province of Canas, Cusco
Illary Ccana (4) and Chaska Ccana (6), daughters of Joys Estefani Qqueccaño Huamani (24) who disappeared on the night of October 9. Their father, Arturo Ccana Condori (32) is the main suspect in Joys Estefani’s disappearance.

September 5th, San Juan de Lurigancho Neighborhood, Lima. The last photo of Marleny Estrada Bolivar (28) wearing a Peruvian folkloric costume. Marleny disappeared on July 13, 2020, she was last seen returning home after the “olla comun” activity, a community meal to stop the extreme poverty caused by the pandemic.

September 5th, San Juan de Lurigancho Neighborhood, Lima.
The last photo of Marleny Estrada Bolivar (28) wearing a Peruvian folkloric costume. Marleny disappeared on July 13, 2020, she was last seen returning home after the “olla comun” activity, a community meal to stop the extreme poverty caused by the pandemic.

September 5th, San Juan de Lurigancho Neighborhood, Lima.
Cinthia Estrada Bolivar (31) and her 3 year old daughter, standing in front of their house accompanied by their relatives. During the previous night, her sister Marleny Estrada Bolivar (28) was found buried one and a half meters deep in the room of her house.

September 5th, San Juan de Lurigancho Neighborhood, Lima.
Cinthia Estrada Bolivar (31) accompanied by Yesenia Aylas (42) receives calls from other family members about his sister’s murder. During the night of September 4, Cinthia found the dead body of her sister Marleny Estrada Bolivas (28). This murder was considered a feminicide and the main suspect is Marleny’s husband who fled, in the eyes of the authorities, with her 3- and 8-year-old children.

Check webinar program 27.april 2021, 4.00-5.30pm

All photos by Florence Goupil – photojournalist based in Peru. Her work has been exhibited at the ICP (New York) and published in National Geographic, Polka Magazine, PhMuseum, etc. In 2020, Florence Goupil became a National Geographic Explorer and was awarded with the GeVy Images Reportage Grant.

Sami-youth in Finland: “Our culture is threatened by climate change – and we are not even part of the conversation about it”

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 15:47:06 +0000

Talking about climate change on several levels and with different meanings – is something essential to Anni-Sofia Niittyvuopio (21), Head of the Youth Council of the Finnish Sami parliament:

“One of our main goals is to participate when we talk about climate change. The Sami people, the indigenous peoples are the first who will face consequences of climate change, but we are least responsible for it. And this is a worldwide problem – that indigenous are not heard in the conversation”.

“We have seen climate change coming for many decades, we have tried to keep the conversation up, but we are passed the phase where it is possible to stop the impacts. But we have to just adapt to the changes. The situation is really bad in the indigenous communities”.

The 21-year-old Sami-remains reindeer herder, the traditional livelihood for her family. That makes her see the impacts of climate change close up.

“In Norway and Finland, it has been the worst winter ever for reindeer herding. There was so much snow and rain – which froze to ice, in the middle of the winter, so the reindeers couldn’t get to eat their food from the ground. It was a quite devastating winter for everyone. Me and my family can also see the impacts of last winter”.

Even though the talk with Anni-Sofia is only possible virtually, it is still clear through the screen-distance, that talking about this makes her profoundly sad. Not only because she repeats several times, how the situation is so critical and sad for her, her voice tells the same message.

“I have always felt this kind of responsibility about my community. So, this makes me sad. The reindeer herding is the one main thing that is keeping the Sami culture alive. So, if we lose reindeer herding, we lose the whole culture. The culture is connected to the land and reindeer herding is what protects the land from other usage of the land”.

For Anni-Sofia reindeer herding is a truly important part of her identity: “I can’t even imagine if I don’t have the possibility to work with the reindeer. For reindeer herding, Sami people it is the main identity. They have done it all their life and they don’t want to do anything else”.

Another important part of the Sami-culture is their indigenous language – which also has been affected by climate change, as the young leader explains: “We are losing words about nature and winter. In the Sami language we have tens and tens of words for snow. Heavy snow, light snow, sugarish snow. So now, we are losing these words because winter has changed so much. Our whole language is really connected to the nature. The months are named after nature and animals, they describe what happens in that time of the year. But now that the year is so different – the weather is never the same. The words keep the same, but the meaning is changing – we are losing the language too.”

Global South – Global North dialogue

Anni-Sofia Niittyvuopio had the opportunity to engage in an online dialogue with Brazilian-born Eduardo Queiroz Alves, who is studying climate change, to demonstrate the need to equal the voices and participation in the conversation about climate change as a step towards collaboration and acting together.

Eduardo: “It is interesting; that the first and most affected are not being heard by decision makers. We need to promote the integration between scientists, policy makers and the local populations. Indigenous peoples like the Sami have a lot of traditional knowledge, acquired through experience during a long time. We need to hear them, to think of ways how we can work together”.
Anni-Sofia: “It is really nice that you talk about the traditional knowledge, that we hold. We have lived here, and we have the will to hold the land, so that it can be used in a good way. When I think of scientists and climate change, I always also think about green colonialism like windmills, that are put to the indigenous peoples lands. It is promoted as we need green energy to stop climate change. And the same time, us, the indigenous people holds 80 % of the world’s biodiversity. We have traditional knowledge, and we have the solution for stopping climate change. But governments don’t want to use them, because they don’t see it as profitable”.

What do you feel about green energy and scientists?

Anni-Sofia: “When we talk widely about green energy and science it is positive. We, Sami people have a lot of faith in it. But there is a problem of representation and then, when we talk about green energy, there comes this problem with land use. Who gets to control the land use? According to UN declarations, indigenous people have the right to control land use. Also, in Finland according to the law – there must be negotiation with the Sami people about land use and things that affects our land. But usually, we are just informed that this and that is coming. It is not an equal conversation. Decisions are made for us. And then they call it discussion with us, so when the land use is questioned, they say that they have discussed it with our community, so that they can write to the newspapers, that they have talked to the indigenous people”.

Eduardo: “It is important, that we work together. Sometimes we can be perceived as invaders, we are leaving devices but not informing people. We need to talk with the Sami people and together design the studies and set the goals. Before doing research, we should get together and talk about the impacts for the local communities”.
Anni-Sofia: “We need to have a conversation. If you want to do study in indigenous land, you need to understand, that the research might not fit the area. If there is some building put up, it might not go along with our livelihood. That is the problem: The intention may be good, but it could impact the community negatively”.

Eduardo: What about the spiritual connection with nature, how is that for you Sami people? And does that help with protecting nature?
Anni-Sofia: “In Finland, Christianity has advanced so much, that we have lost parts of our traditional spirituality. But we still have this connection to the land, and we know, that if we lose the land, we are going to lose ourselves. I have lived four years in the city, I went to school there. But I am never going to live there. I was so sick in the city. I am from a village with maybe 200 people – the way of living is so different. Of course, many Sami and indigenous youth feel comfortable in the city and life there. The livelihood with the reindeer herding is something that keeps some people in the area. But if you don’t have that, then you don’t feel connected. I am herding my reindeers a place named after my ancestors. The maps, I have my family’s names on it – so it is easier to feel connected. I know that people live in the city, might not have that connection, and they feel sick up here in the North. They have lost their land”.

Eduardo: “Yeah it is a balance, it is about resilience. About changing together with nature.
Anni-Sofia: “Actually maybe some 60-80 % of all Sami live in cities or in the south, outside the home area. Some people feel “too soft”, to live here is rough because of the cultural trauma. I also feel sometimes – why in the earth am I living here?”

Eduardo: “You mentioned that indigenous people have the solutions to climate change. What solutions?”
Anni-Sofia: “The main solution for climate change is understanding the nature of nature. That nature is vulnerable, and it can’t handle the usage of people as much as we thought. Maybe the main way to stop climate change in an indigenous way is protecting land – we need to protect the land from land usage. We can’t anymore give land to the mining companies, windmills or oil pipelines companies. We don’t have any land to give anymore. Solutions must be made, in different places, in the main population places. And of course, when we talk about livelihood, or food, a plant-based diet is best solution for people at the moment. People talk about having this great connecting with nature, but they don’t understand, that us people living together with land, we eat meat, we give something, and take something. We face discrimination because we eat meat from the woods. So, people need to understand, that eating reindeer can be more ethical than bringing bananas from the middle Europe to northern Finland”.

Eduardo: “I see a lot of similarities to what we do in science. For instance, to understand the nature of nature. In science we are trying to understand the earth. How the planet responds to a changing climate and how people are using nature. This climate crisis is all about humans impacting the planet. Anni-Sofia says the same thing just without scientific words. We may use different words, but we are trying to achieve the same thing. That is why there needs to be cooperation. We are talking about the same thing, how the planet is impacted. We were also talking about how science is done, about access to places and how scientists disturb the environment – and don’t give information back to the people. It is important to formulate research questions together with the local population in a way that makes it relevant for the population”.
Anni-Sofia: “I think, we are at the same page. But there is one thing we need to solve, before we could start working together. When we talk about indigenous people, we have the trauma of being studied – it is still impacting — how we participate in studying – something that needs to be talked about – in indigenous communities – and among scientists – how we can do this without feeling that we are being studied.
Eduardo: “So indigenous people should not be an object of study but a part of the study. We should perform the study together. This conversation is interesting to me. I study climate change but at the moment, I don’t go to the field, I just go to the lab. I am not in the polar regions seeing climate change”.
Eduardo: Did the climate crisis bring attention to Sami people? A positive effect of climate change?
Anni-Sofia: “I agree at some level. Climate change have brought conversation to the indigenous people. But the problem is that the conversation is not about indigenous peoples, it is once again about how the land can be use. We need to be talking about how it can be protected from consequences of climate change”.

Read PART 1: Climate change: Permafrost carbon remobilization

Anni-Sofia Niittyvuopio, Finnish Sami parliament

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Climate change: Permafrost carbon remobilization

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 15:41:28 +0000

In recent years, fires in the Amazon Forest and in Australia caused worldwide dismay, showing how interconnected the globe is when we talk about climate change. Similarly, this global phenomenon means that environmental changes in polar regions also concern the rest of the planet. This is especially true for a young Brazilian researcher who has invested his time to research climate change in high latitudes of the Earth. These days he puts on his white lab coat in Bremerhaven, Germany to study molecules that are thousands of years old. In previous years, Eduardo Queiroz Alves had conducted his research in countries such as Sri Lanka, Belgium and the UK. The 28-year-old scientist, originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is a traveller – sometimes geographically – but especially a time traveller.

“I study how the climate changed in the past, to be able to understand what is happening now – and understand better what changes we can expect in the future,” he says. When Eduardo Queiroz Alves was still working on his undergraduate course in Physics, in Brazil and in Scotland, he began working with the technique – radiocarbon dating – which he is specializing in now. “I started working with radiocarbon dating back in 2010. This was when my supervisor at the time, who had studied in the US, brought the technique of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) to Brazil and I remember being amazed with the number of potential applications for it”.

Eduardo was very interested in learning this new method, which allows the age determination of very small amounts of material. Although the so-called AMS technique was created in the 1970 and is currently widely spread around the world, currently, there is only one radiocarbon dating lab employing the technique in Brazil and just two in the whole Latin America (the second one is in Mexico). Besides radiocarbon dating which has been like a red tread in Eduardo’s research – so has a conscience for the environment – expressed, for instance, when he did an internship in Sri Lanka about sustainable use of water in agriculture. Eduardo came to Europe under a scholarship from the Brazilian government. He decided to study in the UK in order to get some international experience with better established labs in terms of equipment and experts in the field. In the future, he wants to keep doing research on climate change and maybe getting more involved with policy and informing decision makers. And there are also very interesting aspects of his climate research in Brazil that he would like to pursue.

The clock methodology
Eduardo has been specializing in the radiocarbon dating technique which already – with his only 28-years – has brought him to study several fields – from archaeology to climate research. ”It fascinates me how multidisciplinary this is, how you can apply this to different fields in science. You can often employ the technique to find out when something has happened. Radiocarbon dating works as a powerful clock to tell you when something happened.”

It basically works like this: Atoms of carbon exist in nature in three different forms carbon 12, carbon 13 and carbon 14. Carbon 14, also called radiocarbon, is the heaviest and rarest one. It is radioactive, which means that it emits radiation and becomes a different atom. The rate at which this process occurs is known so, knowing the initial amount of radiocarbon atoms in a sample, and measuring the final number, it is possible to determine how much time has passed.

During his Masters and PhD research, Eduardo has used the radiocarbon technique to study ocean dynamics on the Brazilian coast. Currently, he is employing the technique on a different timescale, looking at a more distant past and regions that are experiencing more pronounced climate change. That is actually what brought Eduardo to where he is today. Immersing himself with his powerful clock to try to reveal details about climate changes in the past (the field is called paleoclimate) – to help us understand how the climate of our planet will be in the future. “I analyse molecules extracted from marine sediment using sophisticated analytical chemistry techniques. The procedures are time consuming and expensive, so we cannot measure unlimited amounts of samples and need to be careful about sample selection and handling”.

Since 2020 Eduardo has been a Humboldt Fellow at the Alfred Wegener Institute, in Germany, in the Organic Geochemistry group, which is specialized in this kind of study. ”When I got involved in the project, the fact that we are living a special time now caught my attention. Climate is changing and it is happening so rapidly, especially in the polar regions.” ”I find it really interesting that looking at the past, we can have insights about what is happening now. It is kind of intuitive – periods of warming and cooling have happened before in Earth’s history so we can investigate those to see how the planet responded to them”.

Eduardo’s current project investigates the role that permafrost plays in Earth’s climate. Permafrost is ground that has been permanently frozen, with temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius for two or more consecutive years. You can find permafrost in high latitude regions such as Alaska and Siberia. It covers 15 million km² of global land surface and stores nearly twice the amount of C contained in present day atmosphere. This carbon is stored in the form of organic matter that has been preserved from decomposition by the low temperatures. “The problem is that when climate warms, the permafrost thaws and this organic matter is decomposed, releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases lead to further warming and, consequently, more thawing”.

There is evidence that permafrost thaw has contributed to changes in Earth’s climate in the past. Eduardo is analysing the carbon 14 content of organic matter preserved in marine sediment during the last deglaciation, which is the most recent phase of rapid climate warming, to check if it is indeed permafrost-derived carbon. This will allow to assess the contribution of permafrost thaw for a changing climate. Owing to the ongoing climate change, permafrost thawing is currently happening and directly affecting the livelihoods of communities who are being forced to leave their homes and migrate.

Worried about climate change affecting the poor most
”I am very concerned about the climate crisis. Especially – it is very difficult to engage politicians and the population. As scientists it is our duty to show that this is a problem. We need to show society that we all need to be together to tackle this problem. In countries like my own, Brazil and until very recently in the US as well – we have politicians that do not believe in climate change. So, when this happens – when people who actually have the power to make change – they don’t – that is very worrying. I am very worried as well about, that – as everything else – climate change will first affect the poor people, the poor communities that live in regions very vulnerable to climate change. They will get their health and homes affected, and some will be forced to migrate.”

Climate change – a problem of the future?
For Eduardo it is motivating – and worrying too – how most people consider the climate crisis as a problem of the future. They don’t realize that it is something happening in front of our eyes – right now. “People still think that climate change is a distant thing – an issue for the future. It is complex and far from our reality – not something affecting us now – something that we don’t have to worry for a while. And if you tell people to stop eating meat or driving cars every day – there is still resistance. People still deny the problem. It is also very common for people to think in an individual way. I will just drive my car, for if I stop it won’t make a big difference, if everyone else just continues. You think about yourself – I could stop eating meat – but what about my neighbours, they still do it, so I won’t make a big difference. But if everyone thinks like that – nobody contributes”.

“We all live on the same planet, right?”
For Eduardo it is really rewarding to spend his time on climate change research: ”I feel like I have a really important role. Of course, science is not something that happens quickly – it is very time-consuming processing data etc. and then another scientist will come and build upon my results and that is how science works. So, on one hand, I know that I am contributing to this field – but also – I am aware that my research is not going to solve the climate crisis.”

”But I do feel like I have a very important role – and it is a responsibility as well. That is how science works – we are pushing the boundaries of knowledge. So, it is also rewarding to be involved in a topic that is so timely, so important right now.”

Read PART 2: Sami-youth in Finland: “Our culture is threatened by climate change – and we are not even part of the conversation about it”

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Eduardo Queiroz Alves