Interview with Zainab Hawa Bangura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict –  Sexual violence is being used as a “tactic of terror” to target religious and ethnic minorities and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities, according to Zainab Hawa Bangura, the United Nations official dealing with the issue.

Zainab Hawa Bangura on Sexual Violence in Conflict

Atefah “Atti” Riazi, the Chief Information Technology Officer of the United Nations, carries the following items in her handbag at all times – a screwdriver set, a Swiss Army knife and an iPhone.

All girls should aspire to be ‘geeks’: UN IT Chief

INTERVIEW: world’s most difficult task – ensuring UN sustainable development agenda, says top adviser

Sustainable Growth in Agriculture during last decade

Interviews

3PSMARS Analytics

People's Parliament

News

Videos

Press Releases

World

Government

Africa

Economy

United Nations

Development

Public Adminsitration

SDGs

Health

Business

Education

Security

Civil Service

Equal Rights

Wealth

Africa Debates

Start up

Interview with Zainab Hawa Bangura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict – Sexual violence is being used as a “tactic of terror” to target religious and ethnic minorities and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities, according to Zainab Hawa Bangura, the United Nations official dealing with the issue.<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0HECsZ_g2nw"></iframe>This is among the findings of the latest report by Ms. Bangura, who is the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. In an interview with the UN News Centre, the envoy previewed the findings of the report, which also highlights the crimes committed by non-State actors such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Boko Haram and Al-Shaabab, including abducting, raping, and selling into slavery women and girls. These groups are also using sexual violence as a method to forcefully displace large numbers of people in order to exploit resource-rich land or use it to grow narcotics.Sexual violence is being used as a tactic of terror and this is because of the rise of extremists and terrorist groups.The international community does not yet have the tools to deal with these non-State actors, Ms. Bangura says, emphasizing the need for the Security Council to work closely with all Member States to figure out how to form the most effective response to deal with the growing threat. For countries where sexual violence is perpetrated, political commitment is key in tackling the scourge. To that end, she notes that progress has been made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Colombia and Côte d’Ivoire. The following interview has been edited for content and clarity.UN News Centre: Can you tell us how you pulled together elements of this new report that you will be presenting to the Security Council on Wednesday?Zainab Hawa Bangura: The report comes through with information from peacekeeping, political missions, and United Nations country teams. It’s an elaborate process, very intense, and scrutinized because we also include information from Member States and sometimes from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The information we collect needs to be verified because it’s very difficult and very delicate to be able to specifically state that sexual violence has taken place in a certain country. So the information we collect is a combination of UN peacekeeping and political missions, Member States and the UN’s NGO colleagues.UN News Centre: And what are some of the trends you found this year? What’s new in the findings?Zainab Hawa Bangura: The first and most important and difficult trend that we have experienced is that sexual violence is being used as a tactic of terror and this is because of the rise of extremists and terrorist groups. They move across countries, and are transnational and trans-regional in nature. This is very challenging for us to address. We’ve seen it in Mali. We’ve seen it in Nigeria with Boko Haram. We’ve seen it Somalia with Al-Shabaab and now in Yemen, Syria, and of course in Iraq.UN News Centre: As you have mentioned, this recent upsurge of non-State actors involved in sexual violence – Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and ISIL – makes it difficult to hold someone accountable for the crimes. What can the United Nations do to help victims?Zainab Hawa Bangura: I think the biggest challenge we have is a lack of understanding about the strategies that these people use and I think that has made it extremely difficult to access them, to engage them, to understand what is driving them and what they do. The most important thing is to make sure we have more community engagement, make sure that communities who are involved in this crime, as well as community and religious leaders give us a better understanding of the extent of the crime, the people who have been targeted and to respond in terms of services for the victims. It’s the biggest challenge we have but that’s what we’re hoping to engage and it’s one of those things that I’m hoping to do.UN News Centre: What can Member States do on the ground to alieve the situation?Zainab Hawa Bangura: We have seen an increase in commitment from Member States, a better understanding, the acceptance that sexual violence is a crime, and a reduction in the culture of denial and silence. So what Member States need to do now is actually increase their engagement and support in terms of resources, in terms of taking the necessary action and ensuring commitment.But it’s also important for other Member States to be able to put in the resources. It’s not easy to deal with sexual violence because it requires capacity-building, providing technical assistance and support, changing laws, working with the judiciary to make sure that this crime is investigated and that the perpetrators are prosecuted. Survivors must be provided with the necessary services, including psychosocial, medical, and legal support and livelihood support.So I think the countries where these crimes are being committed have to make sure they have the political will and commitment. The donors who are supporting them need to make sure they provide the resources to support these countries so that they take the necessary action.UN News Centre: We hear the stories, ISIL in the Middle East, Boko Haram in Africa, they kidnap, rape and sell into slavery girls and women, and most of the time, if not all of the time, they do it with impunity. They discount international treaties and norms. Does the international community have the tools to deal with these non-State actors?Zainab Hawa Bangura: The last couple of years the Security Council and United Nations have engaged on this issue, it has been with States and Governments. We know them; we have been working with them for so long; we understand their strategies; we know their command structures. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. The non-State actors we are used to working with at the UN are local militia, so it is easier to fight them. For example, in the DRC we call them negative forces, and a special response was developed by the Security Council to deal with these forces.But these new non-State actors are different. They are very sophisticated; they are well-organized; they have developed structures; they are controlling [massive amounts of] land; and they are not just in one country. They communicate with each other and they are using modern technology tools to actually implement a medieval mentality against women. So we don’t have the tools and that’s why we are working very closely with the Security Council to be able to better understand who they are, where they come from and how we can respond. So to answer your question, we don’t have the tools and we need to develop better ones to engage them. It’s a lesson we are all learning together.<div><img src="" alt="After meeting with SRSG BAngura, women’s group in Paoua, CAR, join her to “stop rape in war.” (Paoua, CAR)"> After meeting with SRSG BAngura, women’s group in Paoua, CAR, join her to “stop rape in war.” (Paoua, CAR)</div>UN News Centre: There is some good news. Your report says that some countries have made strides in tackling sexual violence in conflict and have also provided support to survivors. In which area has the most progress been made?Zainab Hawa Bangura: The biggest gains have been made in the area of increasing political commitment, ownership and national leadership by countries where these crimes are being committed. The most progress has been made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Colombia, and Côte d’Ivoire. And that is because leaders in those countries have decided and agreed that sexual violence in conflict is a crime that is happening and that we must take the leadership to deal with these crimes. In such cases, progress has been really moving forward.UN News Centre: You travel to these affected countries and meet with a lot of survivors of sexual violence and you hear their heart-wrenching stories. How do you stay inspired and encouraged?Zainab Hawa Bangura: What astounds me is the resilience of the survivors and the victims I meet with. I think my visiting all of these countries provides hope by me trying to understand the crime. And I think lots of the time the women just want somebody to understand. I visited Colombia about a month ago and I sat around the table and had lunch with some survivors, after telling me all the stories, and listening to them and talking to them, literally each one of them started crying and they said you know, you are the first person who has taken time to listen to us, now we know we can fight. And they are prepared to get up and move on with their lives. So for me that is what is important.We cannot stop the crime taking place as long as there is conflict so we need to end the conflict but in the meanwhile we also need to give hope to these women. I have seen them getting on, picking up the pieces of their lives, going into business. I’ve even seen in my country, Sierra Leone, survivors hiring the people who have committed crimes against them. So these are for me the stories that really move and give me the inspiration to continue doing the job.UN News Centre: Sexual violence in conflict doesn’t just affect women. Your report warns about the dangers of underreporting sexual violence against men. Why do you think there is still such stigma attached to that?Zainab Hawa Bangura: Sexual violence generally is a stigmatized crime and the victim is left to bear the brunt of the stigma. Sometimes they are ostracized, abandoned by their own community. So for men, for women, for boys, and girls, it is a crime that is stigmatized. However, because we have worked so closely with dealing with sexual violence against women we haven’t paid a lot of attention to sexual violence against men.But it has always been there. In the Bosnian war, I met a victim who was raped and forced to rape his own son. Sexual violence against men is usually done in prison, in detention facilities, and men have been reluctant to come out and talk about it. We have found out that when you talk about men being targeted in prison, it is sexual violence but we have always looked at it as torture.The one thing I can say for sure, for men or women, victims of sexual violence in combat have become much younger. I have met a three-month-old and a six-month-old victim. But I have also met 70- and 80-year-old women survivors. So we are hoping that because it’s coming out in our report, our response will be better coordinated.<a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/newsmakers.asp?NewsID=119" target="_blank">Courtesy: United Nations News Centre</a>&nbsp;

<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/02/521982-interview-un-information-technology-chief-believes-all-girls-should-aspire-be" target="_blank">INTERVIEW: UN information technology chief believes all girls should aspire to be ‘geeks’ </a>– Atefah “Atti” Riazi, the Chief Information Technology Officer of the United Nations, ca rries the following items in her handbag at all times – a screwdriver set, a Swiss Army knife and an iPhone.“Of course, the iPhone,” she laughs, adding that along with Skype for keeping in touch with family while travelling, her favourite app is ‘Scratch’ a programme made by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to teach children how to code.“I tell my kids they can’t play a game until they write a game. That’s the one rule we have,” she says in an interview with the UN News Centre.Ms. Riazi notes that her own personal experience as a parent, coupled with her role as head of the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT), has given her a better understanding of the challenges the global community has encountered over the past 15 years in trying to inspire and engage women and girls in science.If there’s one thing that we don’t teach women and girls, it’s confidence.In an effort to promote greater participation of women and girls in science, the UN last year declared 11 February as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. In doing so, it recognized that the full and equal access to and participation in science, technology and innovation for women and girls of all ages is imperative for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.Ms. Riazi has ten-year-old twin daughters, the latest generation in what she describes as “a family of strong women,” although she is acutely aware of the sacrifices that many of them have made.“I was born in Iran, and many of the women in my family didn’t have access to education. My grandmother was an orphan who was married at nine – she was never allowed to go to school. I remember helping her to read. I was probably in first or second grade at the time.“My mother was only allowed to go to school up to the third grade – and she always says her worst memory from her childhood was when her brothers all managed to go to school and she was held back because she was a girl. She had to stay home and learn to be a housewife.”Her mother never forgot this experience, she adds, and, along with the man who became her father, Ms. Riazi’s parents were determined to change the status quo.<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rwt7jr7BueQ"></iframe>“I came from a family that really believed that girls and boys could do whatever they wished to do, whatever they loved to do. Although society still put pressure on girls – as kids the girls wouldn’t study math or engineering, the boys would, and it was simply expected that the girls would become teachers and nurses. But from the beginning I just didn’t like the voice that constantly told me that you could not be what the boys could be.”In 1979, as the Iranian revolution took place in her home country, Ms. Riazi enrolled in the electrical engineering programme at Stony Brook University in New York. She was one of just three women in her class.“When I came to this country I decided that I was going be an engineer because my brother was always told that he would be the engineer. I kept looking back at my mom and my grandmother – at what they couldn’t have, and I knew I had to change the course. So I took engineering.“And in the beginning it was difficult for me. Because if there’s one thing that we don’t teach women and girls, it’s confidence. And I went through that first year of engineering thinking ‘oh my goodness, this is so difficult I just can’t do it.’ But giving up was not an option. I was a foreign student. My country was in turmoil. I couldn’t fail.”Despite the difficulties, one day she experienced a lightning bolt moment.“I learned the beauty of mathematics once I looked at it from a social physics perspective – that’s when everything changed. Going into technology, that’s great. But doing it for the material gains? That’s the wrong path. It should be about a bigger cause. In the technology sector, we have a lot of innovation but it’s not responsible innovation. We’re moving from physics to social physics – design engineering that has a social impact.“And if you’re going to do engineering, if you’re going to do technology, what are you trying to get? Value for humanity, that’s the ultimate goal. I realised then, that for a long time, especially in the private sector, we had used technology to improve consumers and to improve products. But how could we use technology to improve human life?”It’s been this fundamental question, she says, that has guided her throughout her 30-year career in technology, with stints as Chief Information Officer at New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (she was on the team that introduced the Metro card) and The New York City Housing Association. Three years into her role at the UN, she balances a workload that focuses on innovation but also, with the rise of the dark web and cyber-crime, protection.“What keeps me awake at night is what I call the ‘revenge of technology,’” she says.Everything we do supports the core work of UN staff around the world, helping them do their jobs better and more efficiently.“The dark web consists of websites that you cannot find and you cannot access unless you’ve been invited to go to them. For a price, you can buy a kid; you can buy a person for their organs; you can buy drugs or weapons. Technology is amoral – we’ve created a species that is a lot smarter than us, and very soon, especially with artificial intelligence, it’s going to supersede our human mind.“The 20th century was an incredible century – a man on the moon, antibiotics and the World Wide Web changed the world… But there are side effects – 20 million humans have been trafficked and 80 per cent of that happens on the dark web. Huge percentages are women. Nearly 30 per cent are children.“So how do we deal with this revenge of technology? How do we protect our children? If you look at the impact of cyber-attacks and cyber wars of the future, where criminals could easily bring down an electrical grid in a country – think of that impact – hospitals, water, food, transportation, human life. And we are completely unprepared for that.“So the UN, in our mission of peace and security and human rights and development and rule of law, we need to think about what does all this mean in the cyber world? Will the peacekeepers of the future be the peacekeepers of today? Will development, as we see it in the physical world, be the same or will it be complemented by the cyber world? We have to have big philosophical discussions around those issues because in the cyber world, government, rule of law and civil society doesn’t have much meaning. How do we create a positive force within the cyber world, because the negative force has been created already, within the dark web.”Her answer? What she calls ‘the light web’ – a space where technologists can come together with the goal of global good.In her role as Chief Information Technology Officer, she says, her daily job means finding ways to implement technologies that support the critical work of the UN.“Everything we do supports the core work of UN staff around the world, helping them do their jobs better and more efficiently. In that way, ICT is critical to the UN’s substantive work. Technology plays a role in all of the Sustainable Development Goals and we’re looking forward to working with many UN entities to get them the tools they need to do their work, whether it’s predictive data analytics, new technologies in the field like digital cash or telemedicine, or just a better way to quickly search for relevant UN documents,” she says.“The UN is also the guardian of an unparalleled database of the world’s socio-economic and political history. Opening this data to the public and collaborating with partners will help us make better decisions that support the work of the United Nations in international peace and security, human rights, international law, humanitarian aid and sustainable development.”And what does she say to those who might critique that technological innovation is impossible in a bureaucratic organization like the UN?“I think there’s always a chance for tech innovation and for thinking outside the box,” Ms. Riazi says.“It’s true within governmental entities that it takes longer because you have responsibilities to your citizens or to the Member States. But for instance, the financial cuts which governments often face forces organizations to innovate through technology. And that’s exactly what we’re doing within the United Nations. There’s a lot of desire to modernize, to automate processes, to become more effective, so that when we respond to crisis we respond together. We can go from crisis reaction to crisis prevention – which requires united innovation in terms of the way we’re structured, in terms of the way we respond and the technologies that we use.”Yet as the need for innovation grows, Ms. Riazi is ever conscious that technology remains one of the most underrepresented areas for women workers, particularly in management roles. It is something that saddens her, she says, as she points to three smooth bangles on her arm:“These are my Grandmother’s bracelets. I remember as a little girl, noticing that she never took them off. And I wondered, ‘why doesn’t she take them off?’ And I realised that, for her generation, as a woman, that was all the wealth you had. You had no security – no financial security, no rights, at any moment you could be kicked out of the house. And if you were, you needed to have the little bit that you had to your name with you.“I wear these to remember my Grandmother, but also to remind me that we owe it to women. To make sure that we reach a point where women have the same rights, the same access to education and that they can dream and become who they want to be.”She cites multiple reasons for why she believes women are so underrepresented in technology.<div><img src="" alt="Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at Umoja Open Day."> Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at Umoja Open Day.</div>“For starters, I don’t think we teach mathematics as well to girls. They say that by age 11 if you don’t teach a girl to love math they’re going to start to turn away. And there are so many pressures on social media. If you look at TV and movies, innovators, technologists and scientists are still viewed as ‘geeks’ and that negative image for women is not supporting them getting to that space. And when we’re not there, our voices are not heard.”It is time for girls, she says, to take ownership of the word ‘geek’ and to wear the moniker with pride.“My girls came home one day from school and one of them had a new pair of glasses. She said, ‘Mommy, someone called me a geek.’ And I said, ‘Wow, you are so lucky they called you a geek! That is fabulous, we must go celebrate. Because geeks are the smartest people.’ It’s all about positive reinforcement, because kids do say those things, because their parents do and because the media does. What is a ‘geek?’ It’s a person who’s super smart and super brilliant. That’s what I tell my girls.”As for her advice to aspiring tech innovators, she says: “think out of the box, think in an innovative way.” But she follows that up with a challenge.“Let’s look at the Sustainable Development Goals. In 15 years we don’t want hunger and we don’t want disease. We want gender equality, universal access to education, smaller cities, an end to climate change, cleaner oceans. Look at all of those – can you focus on creating water out of thin air? Design plants that don’t need as much water so you can help with drought? Can you create algorithms that help improve disease detection? These are the questions I have for the young girl starting her engineering career. I say, answer one of those things for me.”And what should parents say if their daughters announce they want to work in technology?She grins widely and offers the following advice: “Brilliant. Great choice.”<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/02/521982-interview-un-information-technology-chief-believes-all-girls-should-aspire-be" target="_blank">Courtesy: United Nations News Centre</a>&nbsp;

INTERVIEW: world’s most difficult task – ensuring UN sustainable development agenda, says top adviser – “It’s about the toughest job any human being could be given” – that is how David Nabarro, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, describes the task the United Nations chief entrusted to him last month.<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hy2xVs56aGg"></iframe>And Dr. Nabarro knows something about tough jobs encountered during his 30 years of experience in public health, nutrition and development work at country, regional and global levels in positions in non-governmental organizations, universities, national governments and the UN system.He was Senior UN Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza from 2005 to 2014, at a time when many feared a global explosion of the disease; coordinator of the UN High-Level Task Force on Global Food Security from 2009 to 2014, dealing with the perennial problem of feeding the hungry; and most recently Senior UN Coordinator on Ebola, which killed more than 11,400 lives in West Africa.Now the London-born UN veteran is facing his widest-ranging task yet – to mobilize efforts to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that make up the 2030 Agenda.UN Special Adviser David Nabarro explains why the 17 goals that make up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are so critical. Credit: United Nations“My job is to try and help make sure that that gets put in place quickly,” Mr. Nabarro said in a recent interview with the UN News Service.Asked which area required the most progress, he said the SDGs formed a complex whole that require equal progress on all fronts.“The 17 Goals represent an indivisible tapestry of thinking and action that applies in every community, everywhere in the world,” he stressed. “They are universal. But they’re also indivisible and that means that we really do not believe that any one goal should be separated out from the others.“And as you study them, you realize that although they’re presented as individual goals, they actually represent a total and completely intertwined lattice of action that is relevant for every human being everywhere.” <a href="Read More" target="_blank">Read More</a>&nbsp;

Sustainable Growth in Agriculture during last decade – The basis of sustainable agriculture, which is an important component of the global biological system, is the maintenance of the biological equilibrium as demonstrated in a simplified input-output-system. Assuming that energy is the crucial factor in the global bio-system, then the only continuous external source stems from solar radiation. Consequently, energy output must not exceed the supply potential for direct warming and biomass production. The management of the environment (atmosphere, soil, water) which is the basis of production and metabolism of biomass is a second important factor. Products of metabolism, such as: heat, gases and minerals may be lost or recycled. These losses, however, not only change the balance encipher as they increase the demand for external resources on the input side, but may also damage the environment in the longer term. There is considerable potential for recycling of energy, nitrogen and minerals which can reduce these losses and help stabilize the biological equilibrium.Taking livestock as a separate production system, it is evident that the energy balance is negative. It has been estimated that only 0.1 to 0.6 units of energy (in terms of consumable outputs) are produced per unit of energy on the input side (Zeddies, 1980). This negative balance has to be made up by a surplus of energy retained by plant production. Therefore, livestock production may be sustainable from the biological point of view, as long as its negative balance is counteracted by surpluses in crop production based on inputs either from recycling or solar energy-mediated production.In most developed countries, however, the positive balance of crop production in terms of renewable resources has decreased during the last decade (Pimementel et al, 1973) and is not large enough to cover the losses in animal production and the overall energy balance of the agricultural sector is negative. Estimates of the agricultural energy balance in Germany revealed that 1 unit of energy input produced only 0.36 to 0.28 units of usable/consumable products (Zeddies, 1980) – the balance was made up by high inputs of fossil fuel energy. Considering that fossil energy reserves may only be available for a relatively short time, it is clear that the present agriculture production system is not biologically sustainable and, since livestock is an important contributor to the imbalance, the question must be asked can we afford to maintain livestock production at its present level. In addition to the negative energy balance, livestock have further negative effects on the environment, notably: methane and ammonia production which are known to aggravate/enhance the greenhouse effect and/or uncontrolled nitrogen and phosphorous outputs which could cause soil and water pollution.The present situation may be justified because of the rapid growth of the human population and its need to feed itself. There is, however, no doubt that major changes must be initiated within the next decade unless a total breakdown of the agricultural system, and of livestock in particular, is to be avoided.Examples and models do exist of farming systems, containing both crops and livestock, which have balanced or even a positive relationships between energy input and output (Nielson and Preston, 1981). Within these systems animal production plays an crucial role with regard to food supply and recycling of energy. A highly efficient system, which makes maximum use of renewable resources, is a mixed farming model incorporating multi-purpose agricultural crops and animals (ruminants and monogastrics), a biogas digester and a fish point. While ruminants are essential for the efficient recycling of energy from fibrous crop residues; monogastrics are used to recycle waste products which are not suited for human consumption, such as by-products, insects, etc.The rest of the paper will demonstrate the relative efficiency of poultry production on different levels of intensity with regard to energy utilisation.