Braiding community values with science is key to ecosystem restoration

A research team comprising local Tibetans and academics from the UK and China demonstrate that local community members are indispensable partners in enhancing community engagement in repairing damaged ecosystems and achieving long-term success.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

XI'AN JIAOTONG-LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

PASTORALISTS ON HORSEBACK BEING INTERVIEWED BY RESEARCHERS ABOUT GRASSLAND RESTORATION ON THE QINGHAI-TIBETAN PLATEAU IN THE NORTHWEST OF CHINA

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CREDIT: LI LI

Up on the “roof of the world”, one of the world’s largest ecosystem restoration projects is taking place. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) in western China is the world’s highest plateau and covers a land area roughly five times the size of France.

Home to thousands of rare plants and wildlife and the source of water for more than 2.5 billion people, this vital ecosystem is under threat.

The region’s grassland is degrading due to climate change and intense livestock grazing. Government initiatives to restore biodiversity and fertility to the soil are underway, but the lack of engagement from local communities is one of the main causes of failed projects.

A research team comprising local Tibetans and academics from the UK and China has lived among and studied two pastoral communities on the QTP for decades, investigating local attitudes and values to grassland restoration.

The team’s recent findings, published in the journal People and Nature, demonstrate that local community members are indispensable partners in enhancing community engagement in repairing damaged ecosystems and achieving long-term success.

Some active and influential members within local communities serve as “brokers” of information and partnerships, communicating with other members about new techniques, like grassland replanting, in ways that align with local cultural views and values.

Huxuan Dai, lead author and PhD student at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), China, and the University of Liverpool, UK, says, “Top-down restoration strategies often rely on narratives dominated by scientific knowledge, which can ignore or fail to respond to local concerns.

“Understanding a community’s value system and fundamental views of environmental change is a first step in our efforts to facilitate community engagement in ecological restoration projects.

“Policymakers and funders of restoration projects should draw lessons from this study and develop strategies to engage local communities better and improve the long-term sustainability of restoration activities and other community-involved environmental management initiatives,” says Dai.

Changing the narrative

To understand the attitudes and participation in grassland restoration practices, the researchers interviewed local pastoralists and looked at the success of community initiatives.

The study revealed eight types of pastoralists with a spectrum of attitudes toward grassland restoration within two QTP communities, Nyanze and Kouta (pseudonyms).

Of these, they found the group in the Nyanze community labelled Active Agents promoted the highest level of community engagement in grassland replanting. Most of this group are secular or religious elites in the community, such as village leaders, educated young people and Buddhist monks, with 90.9% not considering themselves to be low-income.

“The Active Agents intentionally integrated the novel grassland restoration measures with local worldviews and values. They created new inclusive narratives that make grassland restoration culturally acceptable and aligned with local values. This increased community participation in the restoration efforts,” Dai says.

Dai explains that excluding local values during discussions about new restoration techniques, may result in some pastoralists concluding: “Herders don’t do cultivating” and “By replanting, you need to plough the land, which may kill worms underground; killing is a bad behaviour in Buddhism.”

Instead, local people can offer a different interpretation of these techniques that takes into account local perspectives and values.

Dai says: “Value-inclusive narratives connect replanting with the local Buddhist value of showing compassion towards all living beings. For example, ‘replanting is creating a world for all beings since they would not survive if the grassland were degraded. It means providing a home for them if you restore it.’

“This value-based approach responds to the local people’s connections with their land and culture and promotes sustainable ecosystem management practices at high altitudes,” she says.

Beyond research

Aside from the scientific significance of the project, the research team was motivated by their own observations and experiences of the effects of grassland degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and their interactions with its people.

Dr Li Li, the corresponding author of the study, explains: “The research team is made up of locals and researchers; Mr Trachung Balzang and Mr Golog Drugkyab are Tibetans born in this area who have witnessed great changes in the grasslands. They have dedicated decades to protecting their homeland and love for this land.

“We have all lived in this area of the QTP, made friends with the local people, and care about the place and its people. We have gained insights about life and the world and been inspired by them. Hence, with the attachment to this land, the research team wishes to promote the long-term effectiveness of grassland restoration efforts,” Dr Li says.

The next steps in the research will focus on how communities can gain knowledge about grassland restoration through adaptive management and how knowledge dissemination can lead to transformative change at a regional level

A pika (a small mammal)-expelling ritual at a grassland restoration site on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the northwest of China.

CREDIT

Li Li

A pastoralist tends to her livestock in front of her tent at dusk on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the northwest of China

CREDIT

Huxuan Dai

Yaks and tents on an Autumn pasture on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the northwest of China

CREDIT

Yuqiu Li

Pastoralists planting grass seeds to restore the degraded grassland on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in northwest China

Much of the grassland on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in northwest China has become severely degraded. 

CREDIT

Huxuan Dai

Yak trampling to cover the soil after grass seeding during grassland restoration on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the northwest of China. (VIDEO)

XI'AN JIAOTONG-LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY

Yak trampling to cover the soi [VIDEO] |

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JOURNAL

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.10675 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Communities in Ecosystem Restoration: The Role of Inclusive Values and Local Elites' Narrative Innovations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jul-2024

UK

Nation in a state

By The Eye
-8th July 2024





The Eye

Articles published in The Eye are written by a team of contributors and edited by the multi-award winning former BBC news and current affairs reporter, Phil Parry.

‘I had better be clear in this story…’

For our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, politics has always played an important part during his 40 year journalistic career, so he has looked on with interest as Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party swept to victory in last week’s General Election (GE), and how he has now prioritised visiting, as the media have reported, the “four nations”, but it has begged the question of what exactly IS a ‘nation’!

It’s fascinating to watch people squirm

.

‘I’m going to visit the, er, nations…’

We have seen it with politicians, some of whom were ejected by voters at the ballot box last week, because they weren’t liked.

We are seeing it now with how the media report events because they are keen not to offend.

So when they say Sir Keir Starmer is visiting all of the UK, they say that he is going to “all four nations”. But are there really FOUR? Wales, England and Scotland are definitely nations, yet what about Northern Ireland?

This for, example, was Sky News: “The new prime minister has announced he will be visiting all four nations of the UK from tomorrow (Sunday).

“Sir Keir Starmer confirmed he will travel to Scotland first before heading to Northern Ireland, Wales and back to England.”

Readers were told that Sir Keir Starmer was touring “…every nation”

The BBC report yesterday was: “Keir Starmer is heading to Edinburgh as he starts a UK-wide tour to meet the heads of the devolved nations”.

The Sunday Times declared: “He (Sir Keir) is touring every nation”.

Symbolically it was ensured that the Welsh and Scottish flags (although not the Northern Ireland one) were prominently displayed alongside the Union flag, when Sir Keir arrived in Downing Street.

They waved the flag for Labour

At least these politicians (and their supporters) appear to be clear, even if the media are not.

Northern Ireland was carved out of the island of Ireland (which is certainly a nation) to be part of Great Britain, so as to avoid upsetting the Unionists. Indeed the British passport actually says: “UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND”!

In the old days the region (words are chosen carefully here!) used to be called a ‘province’, so it is obvious that this whole area is extremely problematic, and when The Queen died it became particularly confusing.

For example – Reuters had as its headline: ‘King Charles vows to serve his nation as Britain mourns late queen’. The Independent gave us: ‘National mourning: What happens now the Queen has died’. In the Daily Echo it was: ‘Queen Elizabeth II: National mourning guidance issued to businesses & sport’. Sky News offered: ‘a period of national mourning has begun – how the Queen’s death is being marked today’.

To The Times there was no doubt

The Times proclaimed: ‘Mourning lets a nation become a family again’ and The Sun (which is owned by the same company) screamed: ‘The Queen mourning period: What the 10 days of national mourning mean’

But The Queen (and now The King) was/is HEAD OF STATE. This state comprises a number of DIFFERENT nations, so is Sir Keir visiting FOUR or THREE, plus a region?!

Leo Amery spoke for England/the UK

Today’s UK is a RELATIVELY recent creation, and was only made in 1921, after what became the Republic of Ireland was hived off, so when Leo Amery was urged to “speak for England” in the House of Commons in 1940, strongly implying Neville Chamberlain wasn’t doing so, he was, of course, being urged to do it actually for the ‘UK’.

Apart from the death of The Queen, and accession of her son, the entire concept of nationhood, was also thrown into sharp relief for me by the death of her husband Prince Philip at the age of 99, and the astonishing amount of coverage devoted to THAT (this could sound a warning bell for reporting about Sir Keir’s visit to “all four nations”). There was heavy criticism of the volume of these reports, and a message on The BBC website read: “We’re receiving complaints about too much TV coverage of the death of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh”. In fact the deluge of protests became so great, that officials had to create a dedicated complaints page on their website.

Prince Andrew said his father was the grandfather of the ‘nation’

But confusion, apparently reigned (an appropriate word perhaps!),and in an interview by Prince Andrew (the first since his disastrous one in 2019), his father was described as “the Grandfather of THE NATION”.

Nicholas Witchell said the death of Prince Philip was “a moment of real NATIONAL sadness”. The headline for Sky News was: “Prince Philip: What does it mean to be in a period of NATIONAL mourning?”

.

This is odd!

What indeed?!

There are now only England flags supporting the ‘national’ team at the Euros (although rather oddly some fans dress up as Norman knights to celebrate their ENGLISHNESS!), when at the 1966 World Cup, there was a large number of British flags in the crowd.

‘Englishness’, a book by Ailsa Henderson and (Welshman) Richard Wyn Jones, is a scholarly record of the union’s strengths. The nine big quantitative surveys of ‘Englishness’ they conducted since 2011 demonstrate that the number of people who describe themselves as exclusively or mainly ‘English’ rather than ‘British’ is growing, and that the idea of ‘Britishness’ – once the glue that held the UK together – is weakening

.

Boris Johnson held up the concept of ‘Britishness’…

Londoners use ‘British’ to signal their cosmopolitanism; the Scots and Welsh to signal their unionism.

The 2014 Scottish referendum on independence stoked English grievances without satisfying the Scots, and the 2015 election turned a growing political division between the two (along with Wales) into a chasm, which was only made deeper when Boris Johnson was elected in 2019.

Is it fair?

Many in England apparently feel that by pocketing more money than they create, the Scots and Welsh are not playing fair (for example Scottish Government [SG] funding per person is 31 per cent above English levels, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies [IFS]), and that membership of the EU was wrong because the UK Parliament is the only rightful source of power, while English history has provided ‘our island nation’ with both a web of ties with the Anglo-sphere, and a unique global economic as well as strategic niche.

However the idea of Britain (or the UK if you prefer) as an ‘island’ is also problematic. The historian Norman Davies called his book exploring nationhood ‘The Isles’ for that very reason.

One of the difficulties with English nationalism, in its newly radicalised and politicised form, is that it may be too big to be tamed, England accounts for 84 per cent of the British population (and growing) while Greater London has more people than Scotland and Wales combined.

This is a situation which is very different from Germany or the USA where no ‘lander’ or state carries such a crushing weight among its peers.

The building of the UK was, over a millennium, the story of England’s relentless (at times extremely brutal), expansion. First riding roughshod over the Celtic lands on its borders, then peoples across the world. The 1707 Act of Union brought Scotland and England ‘together’, yet was strongly resisted north of the border. A ‘union of crowns’, when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England, in 1603, was a kind of precursor

.

James I of England and James VI of Scotland, brought the two crowns together

Empire building is usually a pretty savage affair and this was no exception with England‘s, then Britain’s, success in carving out a world empire from the 17th century onwards, giving every UK ‘nation’ a stake in the shared prosperity.

Yet the phrase ‘the nation’ was even used in descriptions of how the public complained strongly about the amount of coverage concerning Prince Philip’s death!

There is, though, an underwhelming appetite for abandoning altogether the idea that Britain is an exceptional ‘nation’ – and it is illustrated extremely well by the tributes paid to The Queen, as well as those to her husband, Prince Philip (the Daily Mail for instance, offered 144 pages!).

Even Mr Johnson, seemed mixed up (surely not the only time!). When talking about the minute’s silence to mark a year of lockdown on March 23 2021, along with those who have died in the pandemic, he said: “We should also remember the great spirit shown by our NATION over this past year”.

‘

I believe in England, er, the UK’

Perhaps authors unknowingly touched on this dilemma.

In 1908 G.K. Chesterton wrote a poem called ‘THE SECRET PEOPLE’ which included the line “we are the people of England that never have spoken yet”, and now that some of the people of England have started speaking they are not going to be silenced soon.

‘BUY MY BOOK!’

The memories of WELSHMAN Phil’s, decades-long award-winning career in journalism (when commenting on major issues such as ‘nationhood’ was always paramount), as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!

Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.

David Morris’s sister Debra has campaigned to prove his innocence from the start – and is now writing letters to her MP and MS

Tomorrow – why the sister of a man protesting at his conviction for one of the worst murders in Wales is boosting her campaign to prove his innocence in the wake of the General Election (GE) result.

The Eye
https://the-eye.wales
Articles published in The Eye are written by a team of contributors and edited by the multi-award winning former BBC news and current affairs reporter, Phil Parry.

SOCIAL HISTORY OF CHOCLATE

KitKat production to stay in York, says Nestle

By Nathan Turvey, BBC News

BBC/Nathan Turvey
Around 2,000 people work at Nestlé in York

Nestle has committed to keeping production of KitKats in York after upgrading the factory where the famous chocolate bars are made.

The Haxby Road plant was taken over by the Swiss food manufacturer in 1988 and now employs 2,000 people.

More than a billion KitKats are now produced in the city each year on the site of the original Rowntree's factory.

York had a proud history of chocolate-making, with both Rowntree's and Terry's operating large factories in the city in the 19th and 20th centuries.

BBC/Nathan Turvey
Factory manager Kevin Shrimpton said the machines were now able to operate at a much higher speed


Nestle's factory manager Kevin Shrimpton told BBC Radio York that £22m had been invested in machinery at the plant over the past three years.

Mr Shrimpton said: "We've upgraded the five rapid machines, to allow us to operate at a much higher speed than we were previously."

Some of the York workforce feared for the site's future after Nestle announced in 2022 that it was closing its confectionery factory in Newcastle.

At the time the GMB and Unite unions said 475 jobs would be lost at Fawdon, where Fruit Pastilles were made, and 98 at the York factory.

Nestle instead committed to improving Haxby Road to increase production of KitKats, which were invented in York in 1935.


'Big part of York'


When asked whether Nestlé intended to stay in York, Mr Shrimpton said: "Very much so.

"We employ nearly 2,000 people on the campus, 700 in the factory, so we're a really big part of the York infrastructure.

"York is also the home of the global product technology centre for confectionary, so all the product development we do happens here in York.

"Having the factory right next door is a huge advantage."

BBC/Nathan Turvey
Kit Kats have been produced in York since the 1930s

Mark Davies, Managing Director for Nestlé Confectionery UK and Ireland, said about the York site: "It's really vibrant, 2,000 people - there's a lot going on.

"And we just keep putting investment in because you can trust the workers, there's a great workforce in York."

The site also makes chocolate for the production of Quality Street, and uses around 12,000 tonnes of cocoa every year.

The ingredients are sourced responsibly from family farms in Ghana and the Ivory Coast that are part of a Nestle scheme to reduce child labour.

Sweet history


Rowntree's was founded in York in 1862 by a Quaker family. By 1890, the company had acquired the Haxby Road site to expand production.

Between the wars, Rowntree's launched lines such as Aero, Polo mints and Smarties after abandoning attempts to compete with Cadbury's in the milk chocolate market.

After the Nestle takeover in 1988, production of Rolos, Yorkie bars and Easter eggs was moved to York from Norwich, but there were hundreds of job losses at Haxby Road in the 2000s when Smarties manufacture was transferred to Germany.

The York factory remains one of the world's largest confectionery plants.

Rowntree's local rival, Terry's of York, had its 1920s-era Chocolate Works site on Bishopthorpe Road. It was closed by Kraft in 2005, and the buildings have been redeveloped.

Tax on billionaires—political vaccine against the far right

Real solutions to the crises fuelling the far right needs demand public investment. The super-rich must pay their share.

The super-rich go shopping: the annual Monaco Yacht Show 

(Drozdin Vladimir / shutterstock.com)

MAGDALENA SEPÚLVEDA 

9th July 2024

SOCIAL EUROPE

Europe, Latin America and the United States especially have become more polarised. This was evident in the recent European Parliament elections, where the rise of the far right unsettled the political environment in countries such as France and Germany. To counter this existential threat to social peace, governments must invest in quality public services, such as education, health and infrastructure, that make a real difference to people’s lives.

Today’s most significant dilemma for democracy is thus how to raise revenue. The answer is simple: go after the money where it is, in the hands of big multinationals and super-rich individuals who are experts at hiding it to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

The good news is that the idea of a global minimum tax on the ultra-rich is gaining momentum. This is not only the right thing to do but also the most popular, recent polls show. A survey of 22,000 citizens in the world’s largest economies by the Earth4All initiative revealed an overwhelming majority (68 per cent) of G20 respondents supportive of higher taxes on the wealthy to finance significant economic and lifestyle changes.

Another poll, commissioned by Patriotic Millionaires, an organisation of high-net-worth Americans, interviewed 800 adults whose assets—not counting their homes—were each worth over $1 million. Over 60 per cent viewed expanding inequality as a threat to democracy and 62 per cent supported an international standard for taxing the super-rich.

Brazilian proposal

Evidently, the current international system is widely perceived as outdated and unfair, encouraging high avoidance and evasion of tax by the powerful. The recent proposal by the Brazilian presidency of the G20 to negotiate a global standard of at least 2 per cent tax on the world’s super-rich, comprising approximately 3,000 individuals, has refocused attention on the issue.

In this vein, Gabriel Zucman, a colleague on the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, last month published a report mandated by the Brazilian G20 leadership. ‘A blueprint for a coordinated minimum tax on ultra-high-net-worth individuals’, released ahead of the G20 finance ministers’ summit later this month, addresses the implementation of such a tax, which is also supported by Spain, France and South Africa, among others.

Even the more select G7 summit in Italy last month supported working with Brazil to advance international co-operation on this matter. ‘We will continue to work constructively with the Brazilian G20 Presidency to advance international cooperation. We will work to increase our efforts aimed at progressive and fair taxation of individuals,’ the G7 leaders declared.

Tax convention

Already a decade ago, scandals revealed by whistleblowers, such as the Panama Papers, ‘Luxleaks’ and the Pandora Papers, opened the eyes of citizens around the world and led the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to launch a reform process, which culminated in a ‘two-pillar solution’ on corporate taxation. This stipulated that very large multinationals should pay taxes in all the places where they operated (pillar one) and that there should be a minimum, 15 per cent global corporate-tax rate (pillar two).

While this helped move the issue forward, the outcome was far from beneficial for developing countries. Disillusioned by the results and the manoeuvres of the advanced economies, majority-world countries decided to take the discussion to the United Nations.

Last November, at the request of the countries of the African Union (AU), the UN General Assembly adopted, by a large majority, a resolution to launch negotiations on a framework convention on tax co-operation. An ad hoc intergovernmental committee will draw up the terms of reference for this new body by next month.

Negotiations are progressing in Latin America. The winds in favour of regional fiscal co-ordination have led to a Regional Latin American and Caribbean Platform for Tax Cooperation (PTLAC), which Chile is chairing this year.

Mobilising resources

If this trend of growing tax co-operation continues, developing countries could have the resources they need to invest in public services and tackle global challenges such as the climate emergency (May this year was the warmest on record and the 12th consecutive month of record-high temperatures for the planet). These phenomena need to be addressed urgently with investment in public services.

Unfortunately, decades of privatisation and commercialisation have weakened the capacity of public services and exacerbated inequalities. We need to reverse this trend by increasing domestic resource mobilisation through tax co-operation, as advocated by Brazil at the G20 and the AU at the UN.

This may be the only hope for emerging economies, burdened by unsustainable debt and uncontrolled inflation, to secure the resources needed to meet societal demands. By taxing multinationals and the super-rich fairly, we can generate much-needed revenue. This will not only promote social cohesion but also provide us with the tools to overcome the threats to our democracies.

Quality public services are the bedrock of any functioning society and our primary tool for tackling global challenges and driving meaningful change. Investing in them can provide society with an effective antidote to the real threats of extremism and populism, safeguarding our future.



Magdalena Sepúlveda
Magdalena Sepúlveda is executive director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and a member of the Independent Commission on International Corporate Tax Reform. From 2008 to 2014 she was United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

WWIII

China, Belarus start joint military drills near Polish border

NORTH KOREA WAS INVITED, TOO

REUTERS

July 9, 2024 

New recruits of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) attend a send-off ceremony at a railway station in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, China March 16, 2023. (China Daily via REUTERS)

China and Belarus started joint military exercises on Monday, the Belarusian and Chinese defense ministries said, holding the drills just few miles (km) from the border of NATO-member Poland and kicking them off on the eve of the alliance’s summit.

“Events taking place in the world are alarming, the situation is uneasy, therefore we are going to practice new forms and methods of performing tactical tasks,” Major General Vadim Denisenko, chief of Belarusian special operations command, was cited by the Belarusian defense ministry as saying in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

The maneuvers, codenamed Falcon Assault, will go until July 19 and are taking place at a training ground near the city of Brest, the ministry said. Brest, in southwest Belarus, lies on the border with Poland.

Leaders of NATO’s 32 member countries meet on Tuesday in Washington for a summit where further military and financial support for Ukraine will be high on the agenda.

Belarus allowed Russia to use its territory as one of the launchpads for Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

As part of the “anti-terrorist exercises,” military personnel of both countries will work out issues of night landing, overcoming water barriers, and conducting operations in a populated area, the Belarusian defense ministry said in its statement.

The ministry also posted a series of photos on Telegram, showing over the weekend Chinese troops disembarking from a plane and offloading equipment. In Monday posts it showed the troops marching at a training ground. It was not clear how many troops were involved in the drills.

The Chinese defense ministry said in a statement on Monday that Belarus held a “a grand welcome ceremony” for the Chinese troops who arrived in Belarus on July 6, according to a statement published in English on the ministry’s website.

“The joint training aims to enhance the coordination capabilities of the participating troops, and deepen practical cooperation between the two armies,” the ministry said in the statement.

In an unrelated post on Telegram, the Belarusian defense ministry said on Monday that the size of NATO forces on the border with Belarus is rapidly growing, which leads to increased tension in the region.

“Our country is taking all possible measures to prevent escalation. However, if someone crosses our borders, the reaction will be harsh,” it said in the post.

Some 13,700 schools in Myanmar are closed due to civil war

School buildings are often targeted by indiscriminate airstrikes or shelling from artillery.

By RFA Burmese
2024.07.08

Screenshot from a July 2, 2024, RFA Burmese-language video reporting that nearly 14,000 public schools in Myanmar remain closed by the ongoing civil war.

 (RFA)

More than a quarter – or about 13,700 – of Myanmar’s 48,753 public schools have been closed due to the country’s civil war, the military junta’s Ministry of Education said.

In western Chin state, which has seen fierce fighting since the 2021 military coup d’etat, only 38 schools out of some 1,500 are still open, according to figures released by the ministry.

In neighboring Sagaing region, where the coup triggered an insurgency by members of the majority Burman community in Myanmar’s heartland, more than 4,200 schools have been closed.

Junta troops often target civilian homes and other buildings – including schools – during or after ground battles with insurgents.

“Children have suffered a lot in education,” said U Htay, a resident of Ma Taw village in Sagaing’s Mingin township. “They have lost their dream. We see that their potential to become outstanding citizens is being destroyed.”

Most schools remain open in the commercial capital of Yangon and nearby Ayeyarwady region, the ministry said.

The shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, has opened more than 4,300 schools nationwide in areas controlled by insurgent forces. NUG was formed by pro-democracy politicians and allies following the coup.

But even those schools have been targeted by the junta’s indiscriminate airstrikes, the NUG’s deputy minister for education, Sai Khine Myo Tun, told Radio Free Asia.

Intense fighting in eastern Kayah state has also put students at risk. But the Karenni state Interim Executive Council has still opened more than 400 schools there since 2021, the council said.

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

 THE STATE IS THE LAW

Pakistan tells Sindh High Court its ban on X was legitimate amid national security concerns

Aabshar Ghassi | U. Pittsburgh School of Law, US

JULY 8, 2024 

Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior told the Sindh High Court on Monday that its ban on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) was legitimate in light of national security concerns and that it did not violate Article 19 of the Pakistani Constitution.

The Ministry explained to the High Court that X’s presence in Pakistan without registering or agreeing to adhere to Pakistani law, and its noncompliance with the PTA’s requests, is disrespecting Pakistani sovereignty. It concluded that X’s actions warrant the necessity and constitutionality of banning X.

The ruling government of Pakistan imposed the ban on X on February 17 due to “national security concerns.” The ban was criticized as a curtailment of the freedom of speech and expression, especially during the country’s national elections in February. Civil and rights groups described the ban as an infringement of individuals’ rights of speech amid allegations of election fraud against the ruling government while the main opposition leader and the ex-prime minister of the country, Imran Khan, remains behind prison. The Sindh High Court issued a directive on February 21 to the PTA to restore access to X.

Article 19 of the Pakistani Constitution protects the freedom of speech and expression for Pakistanis subject to exceptions, including reasonable restrictions for the “integrity, security or defense of Pakistan or any part thereof[.]”

The Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) expressed that the ban on X “sparked concerns over the infringement of citizens’ rights to free speech and information, particularly during significant political moments … The restriction impacts the essential flow of information, especially critical in the post-election phase amid political uncertainty, highlighting a disturbing trend towards limiting digital freedoms.”

Relatedly, on July 4, Pakistan’s Punjab government proposed a ban on all social media platforms for six days, citing security concerns during thousands of religious processions starting from July 13-18. The ministry recommended the proposal on grounds of potential violence and “security concerns.”

 

New Zealand court orders University of Auckland to compensate associate professor NZ$20,000 for public harassment

Caspian Rive | Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law, NZ

JULY 8, 2024 

The Employment Court of New Zealand on Monday ordered the University of Auckland to pay damages of NZ$20,000 for breaching its contractual obligations to protect Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles’s health and safety due to public harassment over her commentary during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Over the course of 2020-2022, Wiles, a microbiologist and science communicator, experienced physical confrontations and sustained and targeted harassment for her commentary on mainstream media, including the ‘doxing’ of her home address and other personal details.

Additive to breaching its contractual obligations, Judge J C Holden found that the University of Auckland breached its statutory duties of good faith and acting as a “good employer” under the Employment Relations Act 2000. This obligation was also present in Wiles’s collective employment agreement. 

Judge J C Holden found that despite the University of Auckland’s “efforts to comply with its health and safety obligations within the confines of its existent health and safety framework”, the University “breached its health and safety obligations to [Wiles] in that it failed to provide adequate protection and support to her.” The inadequacy of measures adopted, coupled with the perceived lack of support displayed by the University was determined to have brought Wiles “considerable distress.”

Academic freedom was, however, considered only to be “tangentially engaged” and not material to the case’s outcome, given the University’s actions did not amount to the suppression of new ideas or controversial opinions from the public.

In light of the university’s ongoing efforts to improve its responses to employment harassment and change in circumstances, Judge J C Holden declined to make formal recommendations.

Squirrel_photos / Pixabay