Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

ON TUESDAY afternoon (May 24th), a new BBC radio docudrama, I made with fellow producer Deborah Hobson, will chart the life and times of a remarkable forgotten black British hero, who died 225 years ago. It is called The Amazing Life of Olaudah Equiano and is being broadcast at 4pm on BBC Radio 4.

Sadly, programmes like this made by black independent production companies like ours, The-Latest Ltd, are rare. When I asked a Radio 4 executive commissioner if she knew of any others working with her history department she said a forlorn no. Its as if, in British broadcasting, the game-changing Black Lives Matter movement, spearheaded by radical youth demanding change, had never happened.

An outstanding autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, was published in 1789, and became a bestseller in the authors own lifetime.

It ran to nine editions and attracted support from many notables. Among the aristocrats Equiano managed to charm to sponsor its publication were the Royal Duke of York.

He also got prominent figures to do national newspaper book reviews, including leading womens rights campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft.

By any standards, the life of Olaudah Equiano was incredible. An Igbo born in the kingdom of Benin, in 1745, in what is now Nigeria, Equiano was enslaved as a child. He was transported to Barbados, where he stayed for just a couple of weeks, and then to the British North American colony of Virginia. He also spent time on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

Equiano was bought as a boy by Royal Navy lieutenant Michael Henry Pascal, who forcibly renamed him Gustavus Vassa, after a reforming Swedish king in a play the officer liked. Equiano became Pascals unpaid servant.

Equiano was taught to read, write and do maths on British naval ships he was on where classes for crew were common. Later, Robert King, an American Quaker and merchant, bought Equiano and encouraged his slave to earn money by working as a trader with him.

Equiano became a gauger, a weights and measures person who inspected bulk goods aboard ships that were subject to tax. That meant he was too valuable to his master to be put to work as simply a plantation slave.

In 1766, Equiano did something that was very unusual at the time when he bought his freedom from King for what would be about 10,000 in todays money the same amount his master had paid for him. It is significant King was a Quaker because they were in the forefront of the abolition movement.

As a sailor, Equiano had a life of travel and adventure. But it was as a free man living in London in the 1780s that he found fame when he became involved in the abolitionist movement.

Most British school children are taught white MP William Wilberforce was the most significant abolition movement campaigner. But Equiano proves that is not the full story. Outside parliament, Equiano, working with people like Thomas Clarkson, who briefed Wilberforce, were arguably just as important.

Equianos book, the first of its kind written by a former slave, played a huge role by shocking British society with its vivid description of the horrors of the Atlantic Ocean Middle Passage when human cargo from Africa were transported in appalling conditions from Africa to the Americas and Caribbean. Some academics put the number of slaves at 15 million over 400 years more than a million of them dying at sea.

Equiano died in 1797, 10 years before parliament outlawed the British slave trade. It was almost 30 years afterwards that slavery itself was abolished in British territories. There are some places in the world where it still exists today.

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Remembering the amazing life of Olaudah Equiano - The Voice Online

Donna Murch. (Photo by Don J. Usner)

Donna Murch is one of the foremost historians of Black radical movements in the 20th century. Her first book, 2010s Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, retold a seemingly familiar story with new insights drawn from oral histories and untapped archives. Murch saw the story of the Panthers as a product of the Great Migration and as a fight for, among other things, access to public resources, countering both conservative and liberal framings that saw the party as either a criminal enterprise or a project solely devoted to self-defense. In the process, she demonstrated that the group was far more complicated than had been recognized.

Since that groundbreaking books publication, Murch has become known as well for her distinguished essays on racial inequities in America. With a historians eye for detail, she has tackled such subjects as the Movement for Black Lives, the opioid epidemic, and mass incarceration for The Boston Review. Her most recent book, Assata Taught Me, collects these and other writings about the development of the Movement for Black Lives as part of a longer history that dates back at least to the Black Panther Party and that has been especially inspired by the work and thought of Assata Shakur. Murch is currently an associate professor at Rutgers University, where she serves as the chapter president of her union. The Nation spoke with her earlier this year about her new book, her research on the crack epidemic, and the future of Black radical organizing against state violence.

Elias Rodriques

Elias Rodriques: What led you to write this book?

Donna Murch: Most of these essays came about in a moment of joy and surprise. I was in Los Angeles from August 2013 through August 2015 to write a book called Crack in Los Angeles: Policing the Crisis in the War on Drugs. I am, in my heart, a social historian. I like to write about the places where I am, because I want the depth of experience that makes that kind of research possible. So I took this research trip. I conducted oral histories, went to different archives, and kept facing this conundrum: Even though theres a collective recognition of how damaging the Wars on Crime and Drugs were, people had difficulty mounting organized resistance to them. There were pockets of resistance and intellectuals. There were ways that people in their everyday lives resisted being criminalized. But finding organized resistance was difficult, despite the work of amazing people like the organizers of Coalition Against Police Abuse, Michael Zinzun, and others.

Then, just as I arrived, there was this amazing arc that weve come to know as the Movement for Black Lives. It wasnt called that at the time, but that summer of 2013 [when people began using the hashtag #Blacklivesmatter on Twitter in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman] helped birth all these organizations. Out of excitement for that political movement, I wrote a series of essays, extending the timeline of the 1980s and 90s that I had been researching to think about this period: the second administration of Barack Obama and the last decade, where we have seen much of the organized resistance to these overlapping punishment campaigns.

ER: What did you find from extending that timeline?

DM: In terms of repression and resistance, it takes people and communities time to understand what is happening to them. Take the example of the modern civil rights movement: what became visible as the national civil rights movement emerged in the mid-1950s with Brown v. Board of Education. But the institutions and infrastructure for fighting that battle went back at least to the 1930s. Some would take it back to Reconstruction. Theres a similar dynamic going on with the carceral state.

I lived through this era. I was a teenager in the 1980s. And the way that we understand it now is very different. The level of criminalization and sensationalization and the definition of monstersthe language of crack babies and gang memberswere at the center of the spectacle of punishment, so much so that they occluded the enormous violence of the state. It takes time for people to figure out how to mount resistance to something that, at the time, they may not even recognize is happening. Its very similar in the opioid crisis. Initially, these crises are understood as individual experiences, but to define them as a collective experience with culpable parties takes time.

ER: You mentioned that you were a teenager at the time. What did you experience?

DM: The first time I heard of crack, I was in college in the late 80s. I went home [to Erie, Pa.] to visit my parents and went to this doughnut shop on the east side of the city. This was one of the oldest parts of the city, with a lot of housing that had not been well maintained. It also had a giant industrial dumpsite. People didnt spend much time outside there in the winter, or even in the summer, for that matter. It always felt a little bit deserted. But we went to this doughnut shop in this neighborhood around midnight, just as the doughnuts were coming out. It was really cold, something like zero degrees, and there were all these little boys standing outside. I didnt have a context for understanding why they were there. It was only later, from talking to friends, that I realized that they were likely selling drugs. And I realized that a lot of the street-level drug economy is facilitated through young people. Arguably, a lot of it is child labor. Its not a sensational story, but it stands out in my mind because of their vulnerability: their vulnerability to the cold, their vulnerability in the part of the city that they were in, and the vulnerability that comes with being a young person working at midnight.

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ER: Lets keep moving back in time. Assata Taught Me begins with the uptick in the Great Migration in the 1940s and 50s. Why start there?

DM: I wanted to think about an arc that connected the organizing and radical possibilities in the postwar social movements like the Black Panther Party with what happened in the years after their heyday and finally with the rise of the Movement for Black Lives. The essay that starts the collection is a genesis, explaining the origins of the Black Panthers. Its different from the way the Panthers were understood in the 80s and 90s. We now have Stanley Nelsons documentary about the party that was funded, partially, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This was unimaginable in the 90s. The Panthers were demonized. They were largely excluded from professional histories and history departments, and they were often talked about as criminals. But I wanted to start with a sense of radical possibilities as a factor in the 60s and 70s.

At the time, people who became Panthers had migrated to California from Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. They were migrating for the opportunity for their children to attend high school, because many of the segregated cities and towns did not even have Black high schools. But in that period from the 40s through the early 70s, massive federal subsidies were poured into public education in California. California schools were much better resourced and funded than they are today. And in researching the genesis of the Black Panthers, I found something that surprised me: The Black Panther Party started with a study group, the Afro-American Association, at Merritt College in Oakland. If you look at the people that became important laterOaklands first Black mayor, members of the Black Panther Party, Ron Karengathey can all be traced back to this study group.

ER: At a community college.

DM: We dont talk nearly enough about community colleges. The majority of people in this country attend community colleges and get associate degrees. Then, and now, we need to look past this elite bias in the United States that takes small private schools as representative. This is a privileging of the wealthiest people in the country as the normative subjects, even though they have no real relationship to what life is really like in the United States. And their numbers are tiny.

Containing the cost of expanding higher education in California was done by trying to create a pyramid with the broadest base being the community colleges, the mid-level being the state level colleges, and then the very top was the UC system. But Black students organized to use access to community colleges to figure out transfer rules to access the entire system of higher education. The study group and public schools are important parts of the stories of the 60s: poor and working-class kids accessing higher education without debt. (One of the most painful things is the way that these populations that became important to the formation of the Panthersmigrant working-class families and veterans like Geronimo Prattare precisely the populations that have been targeted by for-profit colleges.) That access to upward mobility and exposure to new ideas comes at the moment of decolonization. The young people that are entering Merritt College in the early 60s do so as a dozen countries in Africa are winning their independence. They enter with a global sense of possibility and with an infrastructure of colleges to organize around.

ER: How did this study group become so important?

DM: In the 1960s, the fight for access to higher education was an extension of Black and Latinx liberation struggles. These were fights for access to state resources, whether it was aid for dependent children or access to higher education. They were trying to force open these programs, many of which could be traced back to the New Deal. In the case of California, these organizations wanted access to schools that had expanded funding during the Cold War. In the 60s and 70s, there was no tuition cost in the California public university system. That is the single most important fact. Why does that matter so much? Because many of the people who became important in the Black Panther Party didnt come from Black middle-class families. They were a step away from rural Southern poverty, like Huey Newtons family. Just by moving to the West Coast, they got access, and access to education became the laboratory for radical ideas in the lunchroom of Merritt College. So I started the book there and then thought about how people understood the problems of that era and about why it was so difficult to transmit this history to the subsequent generations.

ER: Why was it so difficult?

DM: Repression was the first obstacle to this form of Black radical and anti-capitalist organizing. The Black Panther Party was a self-avowed Marxist organization. They were explicitly anti-imperialist. They identified with the socialist Marxist revolutions of Cuba, Vietnam, and even the Chinese Maoist Revolution. And they supported a program of armed self-defense and redistribution. The campaign that was brought to bear against them from all levels of governmentfederal law enforcement, state, county, and cityled to a breaking apart of the party. The Black Panther Party still existed until 1980 or 81, but oppression directed at the party and its individual members narrowed their reach.

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The second obstacle came from the Panthers themselves. After the radical movements of the 60s, which some people called a cultural revolution that offered blaxploitation instead of real Black Power and Black radicalism, the issue of drugs surfaced. Party members in Oakland and Los Angeles that I interviewed felt that the most important assaults on their community occurred in both the War on Drugs and the drug crises themselves. Now, this varied by city. In New York City, heroin was more dominant and powerful in those postwar years than on the West Coast. But on the West Coast, a lot of people talked about crack. The crack crisis and the War on Drugs interrupted this movement.

ER: Can you say more about this change?

DM: Many people assume that life is always a story of things getting better. But in many ways, those first stories about the Panthers are about the Second Great Migration. What comes later is a very different kind of story. Its a story of people of two generations in cities where there has been systematic public defunding and an intensification of incarceration, policing, and repression. In that sense, I would say that its best understood as part of the late 20th-century increased market governance and the withdrawing of resources from public institutions. Those kinds of resources dont exist today in the way that they did, especially in education. State defunding, the attack on teachers unions, and the acceleration in California of segregation as the demographics began to change all contributed to reducing those resources. This is a version of what were facing today: As populations of color grow, theres a limiting of resources. Although people look back to the Panthers, and it is important to have an idea of ancestry in politics, today we are facing a very different country, a different political economy, and a much more limited set of resources.

ER: As you point out in your book, the end isnt quite the end. BLM harks back to the Panthers and to Assata.

DM: The Black Lives Matter movement, and the broader Movement for Black Lives, chose Assata as the primary icon of their movement. They chose her image, but most importantly, they chose her words. They use a poem that was published in Cuba while she was in exile to open all of their meetings. It is our duty to fight for freedom. / It is our duty to win. / We must love and protect each other. / We have nothing to lose but our chains. That refrain is used in many kinds of meetings. They chose Assata for several reasons. Assata was a Black Panther Party member, but she was not from California. She was from New York, and she was a Southern migrant who came out of the Carolinas. She was also part of the New York party, which was purged from the larger national organization. The state repression against the Panthers was always terrible, but it was significantly worse in the largest cities in the United States. In New York City, theres [the incarceration of] the Panther 21. In Chicago, theres the assassination of Fred Hampton. And in Los Angeles, theres an attack on the Los Angeles chapter in 1969, which destroyed most of the aboveground party infrastructure.

Its significant that the historical memory that they tapped into was through Assata Shakur. She emerges in part because she wrote an autobiography that allowed for broad dissemination when it was first published in 1987. And her autobiography, much more so than some of the other Panther autobiographies, is largely a story about incarceration. So much of it is descriptions of what it means to be a woman who was incarcerated. That really resonates, especially for younger generations: all the effects of these domestic Wars on Crime, on Drugs, on Gangs. But she is broken out of federal prison, becomes a fugitive, and then becomes an exile in Cuba. This is a story of liberation. Assata does the impossible. It is her history as fugitive and as exile that also lends a sense of hope and possibility for people who are fighting something very, very difficult: the American police state.

ER: How did BLM frame that fight?

DM: Recounting police killings and reclaiming the histories of those people became a core organizing strategy. The decision to understand Black death became the strategy, as opposed to police reform or other technocratic solutions. One of the reasons for its success is the way that it was able to demonstrate and mobilize around a series of violent murders and deaths as the logical extension of carceral policies over the last half-century. And it was the image and the reality of Michael Brown, having been murdered in North County in St. Louis and left in the street, that set St. Louis on fire. In many ways, that provided a template for things that would happen across the country. At the core of that was exposing police murder.

ER: All the way until 2020.

DM: Near the end of the book, I observe that Weve had the largest number of protests ever in our history in 2020, with 26 million people going onto the streets and protesting in the name of Black Lives Matter. That encompassed 40 percent of the counties in the US. This is an amazing story of a different kind of genesis of a broad-based movement. And it has inserted abolition into mainstream discourse. Seeing corporate media and television talking about defunding the police and abolition were things that I never thought I would see. However, as I talk to you in the early weeks of 2022, were seeing, as we have often in history, the ways in which law enforcement and the forces of reaction use this moment to expand powers and expand funding. One of the really disheartening things about writing about law enforcement is seeing this constant oscillation between organizing against it and reform and then increased powers. So often law enforcement uses the challenges that are posed to them to expand their powers. In this momentthe second year of Joe Bidens presidency and a year after the attack on January 6were seeing a real resurgence in law-and-order rhetoric and policy.

ER: So what does Assata teach us?

DM: In terms of thinking about the title of the book, Assata Taught Me, I mean it quite literally. Before it became the language of the movement, the book Assata, Assata Shakurs autobiography, taught us. In 1987, when it came out, we were living under the second administration of Ronald Reagan. This is the era of Iran-contra and of the invasion of Grenada and anti-communist warfare. (None of us knew that 1989 was coming.) But Assata represented this other possibilitythis tradition of Black militants, of Marxismlinked to the anti-colonial struggle of Cuba, where she lives now. She literally taught me and people of my generation. And she has taught a subsequent generation, becoming the avatar and inspiration for new types of organizing against state violence, for demanding resources and funding, and for divesting from carceral projects and investing in education and health care.

ER: And she does so globally.

DM: In 2017, I visited the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. A graduate student who read my book asked me to come and give a talk to the group Occupy Alemo. Alemo is in North Rio. Its a part of a large complex of favelas of informal communities. I went to Zilda Chavess house, which is essentially a community center there. Many of the people there were part of the first generation of students who were attending university. This was, in many ways, a dynamic thats not unlike the one I talked about in California: the first real generation of large numbers of college students of African descent. I talked to them about Assata, and they grilled me. They were deeply invested in reclaiming Assata Shakur for a tradition of Pan-Africanism that was recognizable to them and that evoked the history of their mothers, sisters, and daughters.

During the conversation, there was a tension between pan-Africanism and Marxism, or even Angela Davis versus Assata Shakur. I forced myself to listen (because I had my own opinions). But it was a reminder of the importance of Assata in the diaspora. Im still thinking about it. One of the reasons I have such a great affection for the Panthers is that they bring together those two traditions of Pan-Africanism and Marxism. They are an all-Black organization, and this is a very important development in the modern Black freedom struggle. At the same time, they really believed in radical coalitions and made common cause with white radicals, mother country radicals, and Brown Berets. At the core of that was anti-imperialism. Even though its contested, I am invested in claiming Assata Shakur for both those traditions.

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The Long History of Resistance That Birthed Black Lives Matter - The Nation

It is our moral obligation to create what I would call a European Political Community. The words used by Emmanuel Macron as President of the Council of the European Union, to wrap up one year of work of the Conference on the Future of Europe (COFOE) confirms that a profound reform of the EU is becoming a moral imperative. They also suggest an idea of a more political Union which may even be constructed alongside the EU that we have now, which is intriguing but raises a number of strategic questions for which we still do not have an answer.

Francesco Grillo is Director of the Think Tank Vision.

The conference that Vision (an Italian/ British think tank) has convened with the University of Siena for the next weekend as a follow up of the COFOE, may provide some of the ideas that the Union needs to change. The conference will gather around fifty policy makers, journalists, political scientists and intellectuals, and participants from the UK, USA and China, who may give important insights from the outside. More significantly all five political foundations which act as think tanks of the five main European political parties (FEPS for the social democrats; ELF for the liberals; Martens for the Popular; GAF for the Green and New Direction for the Conservatives) will be in Siena and the conference is becoming a multi-partisan permanent platform for problem solving.

The questions to be tackled are thus complex: is Macrons idea of a new Union a good bargaining chip to convince the smaller members of the existing EU to accept the notion of treaty changes? How large will the Union of the future be to accommodate the much deeper integration that, for instance, common defense policy requires? Is there a mechanism for a more focused partnership to involve countries who left (like UK) or to more quickly admit the ones that would urgently need it (like Ukraine)? Is the abolition of unanimity enough? Is the core hub of founding member states stable enough to be the inner circle of a more integrated Union? To what extent can we continue with an integration method which has been essentially top down? Should we consider to provide Member States the possibility to divorce or for qualified majorities to ask specific Member States to leave if fundamental principles are not respected (as it may have happened in Hungary)?

For decades the method to shape the European Union has been characterized by at least three elements: a) the Union grew incrementally and out of the consensus of all Member States; b) the approach was substantially top down with limited involvement of citizens; c) different kind of unions (the monetary one, the single market, the Schengen area) were allowed to have different sub-sets of the Member States to allow flexibility and yet none of them was full. A very good example of half integration was dramatically provided by the Pandemic years: members States joining the same area of free circulation adopted different restriction policies and this may have helped the spread of the virus.

The method was certainly responsible for the most advanced integration amongst States which has ever been achieved through peaceful manners. This past success does not, however, seem enough to keep the greatest dream of a generation alive vis--vis the unprecedented shocks we are living through.

The concept paper which frames the various sections of the conference (digital, common defence policy, democracy, green and energy) also puts forward a number of ideas for reforming the Union. The starting point is to continue to have different clubs for different policies. However, the option is that it should be much clearer that once a State joins a policy focused cluster with a selected number of Union members, it pools with other member states all the power necessary to achieve the objectives linked to that policy (this, for instance, would mean that joining the single market would necessarily imply the adoption of the same tax rates for companies). The conference will, however, also considers mechanisms for departing (at a pre-established cost) the cluster and procedures to regulate the possibility that a qualified majority will ask a partner to leave. Last but not least, the idea of referenda to be held in each Member State before joining will be debated.

After all, as for the following chart, out of 56 referenda on the EU held in Member States in the last 50 years, 47 times the cause of further integration won (although it is true that there have been some few big exceptions, including the ones in France and Netherlands two founding members which rejected the EU constitution in 2005).

Giuliano Amato who was vice President of the Convention which drafted the EU constitution twenty years ago, once famously said: treaties must be written so that citizens do not understand them and do not ask for a referendum. This may be not true any longer: when history accelerates, democracy expects political and intellectual leaderships to look for new radical ideas.

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The Future of Europe: time to choose - EURACTIV

The Lettings Industry Council (TLIC), formed by industry stakeholders from across the Private Rented Sector (PRS), has issued a report that makes recommendations based on the expected changes to be introduced in the Renters Reform Bill.

The report, released today, aims to help the government understand what can work in practice and to encourage a PRS that works for all.

The report considers what changes could be made to smooth the path for the abolition of section 21 notices, improvements to the court process, as well as ways to improve property conditions and help those locked in tenancies and unable to move due to financial constraints.

Some of the reports key recommendations include:

+ Every tenancy should have a written tenancy agreement in place or at the very least a written Statement of Terms. In the absence of either of these then the Governments model tenancy agreement should be used as the default agreement.

+ A review of the accelerated procedure is needed to reduce the listing of PRS claims and prioritise these cases so they can be taken out of the system without delay.

+ Clarifying the route for dealing with abandonment cases, enabling a process without recourse to the court to further reduce unnecessary court cases where a tenant has clearly already left the property.

+ Prioritising cases with high or persistent rent arrears, dropping review hearings, and employing more judges will further reduce the workload and strain on the courts.

+ Mediation should be a recommendation in all cases, other than where there is evidence the tenant cannot afford to pay the rent. Costs can be kept to a minimum and could reduce court hearings by up to 25%.

+ Government should consider its own bond/loan solution or finance local authorities to issue their own bond guarantees. This option could be available solely for tenants on Universal Credit and/or in receipt of specified benefits to ensure that the deposit problem is specifically targeted to the right demographic.

+ By embedding use of the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) within the Renters Reform Bill discrete data points across different existing public and private databases can be joined together. Property safety records can be captured and collated within a property portal, to form one comprehensive safety record delivering a safe property at low cost. A property portal linked to a landlord redress scheme will ultimately provide a Landlord Register enabling direct communication with landlords and education on property safety, legislation and better remote enforcement.

+ A Regulator for Regulation. The sector is like a puzzle with lots of pieces that need to be joined up. A regulator would tie all of the pieces together tenants need one portal door to enter which then signposts them to where they need to go.

Theresa Wallace, chair of TLIC, commented: Each year, in an attempt to combat some of the issues experienced in the private rented sector, including sub-standard properties, rogue and nave landlords, and untrained agents, more and more legislation has been introduced, confusing even diligent landlords with the complexities in providing a rental home.

So far, these changes to legislation, which often come at a financial cost to the landlord, have just compounded the problems further and is a core reason given for why landlords are exiting the sector, leaving a shortfall of available rental properties.

As a result, in 2022 we are experiencing the biggest crisis we have seen surrounding the shortage of rental property. We need to encourage investment into the market and that includes private landlord investment.

The Renters Reform Bill provides a once in a generation opportunity to improve the lives of Renters. However, in order to achieve maximum impact and create true strategic change, we believe it is crucial to phase in these significant changes in a considered manner over a period of time, avoiding unexpected unintended consequences which only hurt those we are seeking to protect the most tenants.

This report seeks to find a balance between encouraging investment in the sector to increase available homes and ensure they are of consistent good quality through natural supply and demand competition.

You can read the full report by clicking here.

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The Lettings Industry Council releases 'Recommendations' Report ahead of Renter's Reform Bill - Property Industry Eye

The Committee on the Rights of the Child today concluded its consideration of the combined fifth to seventh periodic report of Zambia, with Committee Experts asking about children exposed to lead contamination in mines and about customary laws which allowed child marriage.

A Committee Expert said it was exciting to note that the bill on the childrens code was being finalised, something that the Committee had been awaiting for years.

Gehad Madi, Committee Expert and Coordinator of the Country Taskforce for Zambia, said the Committee was seriously concerned about the use of child labour in artisan mining and the exposure of these children to high-level lead contamination. How was the State party testing and treating children from lead poisoning? How were children being protected, and what remedies were provided for those who became disabled due to lead poisoning or their involvement in mining?

Another Expert noted that the marriage act set the age of marriage at 21 years, yet recognised the practice of customary marriage, which permitted child marriage when the child hit puberty. What was being done to address these cultural traditions and beliefs which existed in Zambian society, particularly in rural areas?

Responding to questions on child labour, the delegation said Zambia had mobilised resources from the World Bank, which were intended to address the exposure of children to high levels of lead. The Government was working closely with partners to implement interventions aimed at addressing the problems which were the result of lead contamination. Heath-related interventions included the blood screening of children, with those found to have a high level of lead provided with the appropriate treatment.

With respect to child marriage, the delegation said there were provisions in the law which indicated that customary law was acceptable in Zambia. The Zambian Law Commission was managing the process to ensure a way to eliminate the marriage of children under the age of 18. Consensus had been reached with traditional leaders that there was a need to do away with child marriage, however, this needed to be formalised. The President of Zambia was currently the champion of ending child marriage under the African Union, with this being a high priority under his leadership.

Introducing the report, Mulambo Haimbe, Minister of Justice of Zambia and head of the delegation, said Zambia had held Presidential and Parliamentary elections in August 2021, resulting in the election of the new President and his administration, now referred to as the new dawn government. Zambia had initiated the process of constitutional review, which would focus on developing the most effective approaches toward constitutional reform and an enhanced bill of rights, which would incorporate the rights of children. The child code bill 2022 had also been approved and was awaiting presentation to the full cabinet, before submission to parliament.

Mr. Haimbe said that despite the progressive development highlighted, there had been challenges, including limited infrastructure in the education and health sectors; inadequate human resources, in the health, education and the social protection sectors; and high child poverty levels.

In concluding remarks, Mr. Madi noted the good intention of the new dawn government to make a complete turnaround for the enhancement and protection of childrens rights in Zambia. The age of criminal responsibility remained a serious issue which needed to be attended to, as was the issue of children being recruited in the army under the age of 18. He expressed hope that next time they met, all issues would be resolved.

Mr. Haimbe thanked the Committee for the constructive and comprehensive dialogue. The process had been an eye opener, as there were clearly areas where lapses needed to be addressed. The new dawn government was committed to achieving the closure of many items which needed to be addressed and had the intention of making as many strides as possible for the justice of all Zambians, including children. Zambia looked forward to the next meeting with the Committee.

Mikiko Otani, Committee Chair, thanked the delegation and extended best wishes to the children of Zambia.

The delegation of Zambia consisted of representatives from the Ministry of Justice; the Ministry of Education; the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services; and the Permanent Mission of Zambia to the United Nations Office at Geneva.

The Committee will issue the concluding observations on the report of Zambia at the end of its ninetieth session on 3 June. Those, and other documents relating to the Committees work, including reports submitted by States parties, will be available on the sessions webpage. Summaries of the public meetings of the Committee can be foundhere, while webcasts of the public meetings can be foundhere.

The Committee will next meet in public on Tuesday, 24 May at 3 p.m. to consider the combined sixth and seventh periodic report of Chile (CRC/C/CHL/6-7).

The Committee has before it the combined fifth to seventh periodic report of Zambia (CRC/C/ZMB/5-7).

MULAMBO HAIMBE, Minister of Justice of Zambia and head of the delegation, said Zambia had held Presidential and Parliamentary elections in August 2021, resulting in the election of the new President and his administration. This administration was now referred to as the new dawn government, as a symbol of the renewed trust in the legal and institutional framework of Zambia.

The Zambian Government remained committed to the protection and promotion of children's rights. Zambia had initiated the process of constitutional review, which would focus on developing the most effective approaches toward constitutional reform and an enhanced bill of rights, which would incorporate the rights of children. Zambia had also launched the eighth national development plan, which incorporated the globally accepted Sustainable Development Goals and took into account obligations set out under the Convention.

Mr. Haimbe said the child code bill 2022 had also been approved and was awaiting presentation to the full cabinet, before submission to parliament. The intention was to have the bill tabled before parliament during its June 2022 sitting, with the bill potentially able to be in force and assented by September 2022. The enactment of the social workers association of Zambia act 2022 aimed to regulate and promote professional social work practice in Zambia, which was critical for the care and protection of children.

Another development was the introduction of free education for primary and secondary schooling. To support this, the Government was recruiting 30,000 teachers for early childhood, primary and secondary schools. The school grant was expanded both in terms of amount and reach, covering public, community, and grant-aided schools. The compensatory grants to schools covered school costs such as uniforms, shoes, menstrual hygiene supplies for girls and school supplies. Through the rollout of the free education policy, there had been a circa 300 per cent increase in the disbursement of school grants for primary schools, leading to increased enrolment and school retention rates. The free education policy aimed to ensure that primary and secondary education was free, without hidden costs.

The Government was further recruiting more than 11,000 health workers to ensure the adequacy of the health workforce, aimed at a sustained commitment to realising universal health coverage. The State party had placed emphasis on fiscal decentralisation to sub-district levels through a constituency development fund, thereby taking development closer to the people. This aimed to ensure access to quality health services and personnel, particularly in rural areas.

Mr. Haimbe said that despite the progressive development highlighted, there had been challenges, including limited infrastructure in the education and health sectors; limited fiscal space for implementation; inadequate human resources, in the health, education and the social protection sectors; and high child poverty levels. He pledged Zambias commitment towards compliance with its international obligations.

GEHAD MADI, Committee Expert and Coordinator of the Country Taskforce for Zambia, said the Committee was counting on the new dawn government to protect and enhance childrens rights in Zambia. Mr. Madi expressed concern that Zambia had not ratified the three Optional Protocols to the Convention and asked what steps needed to be taken to ratify these Optional Protocols? There was also concern that the defence act allowed the recruitment of children under the age of 18 in the army. Was the current Government preparing a new child policy, or at least extending the current one which had expired? Had the national development plan been adopted already? If so, did it include a strategy for early childhood development and childhood participation? What measures had been taken to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the budget for children? What measures were in place to ensure that budgetary lines for children were protected?

It was understood that the State party had shifted the responsibility for the coordination of the implementation of the Convention in 2014; was the new Government retaining this mandate, and did the Ministry have authority to coordinate the implementation of the Convention? What were the reasons for suspending the National Child Council? Did the Human Rights Commission have sufficient resources to execute its functions, and address complaints by children? What measures were being taken to disseminate the Convention and the Committees concluding observations among the general public, in particular children? What training programmes were in place for professionals working with children, including judiciary and health professionals?

Mr. Madi said the Committee was seriously concerned about the use of child labour in artisan mining and the exposure of these children to high-level lead contamination. Information had also been received that some of these mines were unlicensed. How was the State party testing and treating children from lead poisoning? How were children being protected, and what remedies were provided for those who became disabled due to lead poisoning or their involvement in mining? Was there any reason for delaying the visit of the Special Rapporteur on toxic waste?

Mr. Madi noted that poverty was the main reason for placing children in residential care; what measures were being taken to eradicate poverty? What measures were being taken to ban the placement of children under the age of three in childrens homes? What was being done to review the placement of children in institutions and foster care, and what efforts were being made to reunite children with their families? Till what age were children allowed to be incarcerated with their parents? What facilities and services were provided to these children while in detention? What were the current standards of adoption?

A Committee Expert welcomed the positive remarks made by the head of the delegation. It was exciting to note that the bill on the childrens code was being finalised, something that the Committee had been awaiting for years. It was also exciting to see progress on the marriage act. What was the timeline on the enactment of this bill? What was being done to criminalise child marriage and provide survivors of child marriage with support services? The Expert noted that discriminatory practices still existed in Zambia. What measures were being taken to recognise the supremacy of the constitution and to forbid children from being married below the legal age?

What measures were being put in place to provide access to education, healthcare and social services to children with disabilities, migrant children and asylum-seeking children? What measures were being taken to provide systematic training to all professional in order to determine the best interests of the child?

The Expert noted that children in Zambia continued to suffer from corporal punishment in the home, school and institutions, with the legal framework lacking information around corporal punishment. The Committee had consistently recommended that corporal punishment be ended by law; could the delegation elaborate on what had been done to further this? What was being done to promote positive, non-violent forms of child-rearing?

Despite the amendments to the Penal Code, there were still widespread acts of sexual violence. Were awareness raising measures being taken to combat acts of child abuse, including incest and rape? What policies were in place to set standards and create accountability for child exploitation in the travel and tourism industry? The marriage act set the age of marriage at 21 years, yet recognised the practice of customary marriage, which permitted child marriage when the child hit puberty. What was being done to address these cultural traditions and beliefs which existed in Zambian society, particularly in rural areas? Could insights be shared into the lives of lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersex children in Zambia?

A Committee Expert asked about birth registration, noting this was a problem in Zambia. Eleven per cent of children under the age of five were registered in the system, with only four percent of these children having a birth certificate. What measures were being taken to increase the civil registration of children, and to fix the disparity between urban and rural areas? When there was no identification for the person declaring the birth, what measures were taken to allow the child to be registered? Were there awareness raising campaigns in place on the importance of birth certificates? What measures were being taken to inform mothers of the process, to allow them to register their children?

Were there any plans to continue with the digitisation of data on civil status? What was being done to ensure access to citizenship? What was the financing from the State for birth registration? Was this done by donors, and was the State matching donations? Were people able to obtain birth certificates through the roaming courthouses? During the pandemic, what measures were taken to declare the birth of children? Were there plans to ratify the convention on the reduction of statelessness?

MULAMBO HAIMBE, Minister of Justice of Zambia and head of the delegation, noted the hope of the Committee for the speedy adoption of the bill on the child code, confirming this would occur. Zambia was committed to ensuring that this bill would be enacted at the next session of parliament. Regarding the Optional Protocols, Zambia had begun the process of ratifying them. Mr. Haimbe confirmed that the defence act was under review and was in the early stages of re-enactment. Regarding the expiry of the national policy on childrens rights, there were plans currently underway for its review. A multi-sectoral approach was being taken in the eighth national plan, including on the topic of decentralisation.

Zambia had taken measures to ensure that there were budgetary provisions to address issues regarding children, the delegation said. There were several budget lines, including one for adoption and one for juvenile delinquency, among others, to ensure increased care for children in the country. In 2021, a gazette notice was issued to streamline mandates for various ministries, and the Ministry of Community Development was assigned several child-related portfolios. Regarding ratifications of all national instruments relating to the rights of the child, the Ministry of Development had the primary role on this. A child safeguarding framework had been developed, which would provide procedures and practices for organizations working with children, including institutions.

The delegation noted the concern raised about the police units not been fully independent, saying that the goal was to de-link these police units. Under the office of the public protector, a desk had been created to address issues on childrens rights. The need for true independence for the Human Rights Commission was noted. This was being addressed by the new dawn government.

Zambia had been training social workers, the police and the judiciary through child justice forums since 2020. In 2021, a total of 250 social workers had been trained, which was half the number of the workforce that required training. Dissemination materials including booklets and leaflets had been obtained, and childrens issues and rights were being discussed on television. On the involvement of civil society, the delegation said the national coordination committee had been revamped, and provisions had been made for enhanced coordination.

On questions on child labour and the high levels of lead contamination, Zambia had mobilised resources from the World Bank, which were intended to address the exposure of children to high levels of lead. The Government was working closely with partners to implement interventions aimed at addressing the problems which were the result of lead contamination. Heath-related interventions included the blood screening of children, with those found to have a high level of lead provided with the appropriate treatment. Discussions were taking place on compensating children who had been impacted by raising awareness on the negative environmental issues occurring in the country.

Foster care guidelines were in place and operational, and foster care provisions were given in the act on juveniles. Some foster care cases had led to adoptions. The current law provided that children needed to remain with their mothers until the age of at least four years. However, a child could be removed from the parents if the parent had become incarcerated, and it was in the best interest of the child for them to be placed in foster care as an alternative. Placing children in facilities was the last resort; it was always the aim to place the children with relatives if possible.

There were variations in the laws relating to the definition of the child. There was a provision in the marriage act, which declared marriages void if the child was under the age of 16. The bill on the child code defined a child as any person under the age of 18, and the marriage act would be aligned with this. The Penal Code was under review and it would be aligned with this age. The delegation said it could not provide exact timelines, but assured that work was underway to address this irregularity. From a policy perspective, Zambia did not support child marriage practices, and efforts were being made to begin engagement with traditional leaders to combat this bad traditional practice. The political will existed to rid the country of this scourge.

The delegation said that in the past, migrant children had mainly been under the domain of immigration. However, a new approach existed, whereby if a child was trying to enter the country, the child was now brought to the care and protection of social workers. Appropriate measures would be taken to locate their families, and protect these children against trafficking. There were around six facilities or safety shelters in Zambia where children were taken once they were found. Most of the children came from neighbouring countries, including Tanzania and Somalia. These measures ensured that no child was left unattended to or in a discriminatory situation.

When it came to disability, Zambia had been besieged by challenges. It was planning to hold a symposium on how to best counter the challenges faced by children with disabilities, including those with albinism. The bill on the childrens code had adopted the best interest of the child principle, and there was an effort to develop procedures for child participation.

Graduates from police academies were given information on how to protect children in their day-to-day functions. There was a lack of clear provisions which explicitly prohibited corporal punishment. The bill on the childrens code now had a provision on the complete abolition of corporal punishment in all settings. The education sector trained guidance counsellors on non-violent approaches in their handling of children. These counsellors then became non-violence agents and leaders within their schools, helping to make schools a safe place for children. There were efforts to build the capacity of organizations and ensure that children were growing up in a non-violent environment.

Zambia had developed a national prevention and response plan to end violence against children. The plan, which was designed to involve all stakeholders in ending violence against children, was currently in operation and had been launched at the national and provincial levels. The Child Online Protection Strategy had also been launched to protect violence against children from occurring online. The Zambian police had a child support unit and a victim support unit, which ensured that perpetrators of gender-based violence were apprehended.

Regarding surgical procedures on intersex children, consent was needed for procedures to be carried out. There was still a difficult environment in the country regarding how lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender and intersex rights were addressed. While there was engagement, this was still a work in progress.

On birth registration, the delegation said that the statistics which had been cited on birth registration were low. The State party wished to inform the Committee that after the expiry of the birth registration strategy, a review was being undertaken to determine what worked and what did not, with these factors being brought forward to the new strategy. Zambia was targeting the goal of 50 per cent birth registration by the end of 2025. This meant health facilities needed to become part of the registration process so that registration took place when the child was born. A campaign would be run to compel everyone to register their children, with the goal of over performing on the 50 per cent target.

Initially there was only one central place for birth certificates; however, this was now being decentralised to rural areas to make birth registration easier and more accessible.

A memorandum had been signed to enhance the registration of births in health facilities. Efforts were being made to ensure interoperability between the health management information system, and the system being used for the civil registry. The digitisation process was ongoing, and rural areas were being prioritised.

During the pandemic, Zambia had developed guidelines on how health services would continue to be provided, and how patients would continue to be protected while accessing these services, to ensure the services were not drastically affected by the pandemic. The delegation was not aware of the roaming courts playing any part in enhancing the process of registration. The State party did not have any plans at this stage to ratify the convention on reducing statelessness, but recognised the need to address this. The bill on the childrens code provided a provision on birth registration at birth. The delegation confirmed that the national development plan incorporated early childhood development.

A Committee Expert asked if child participants were consulted on legislative reforms? What was being done to address child exploitation in the tourism industry? Could the delegation further clarify whether under customary marriage, marriage was allowed when puberty was entered into?

GEHAD MADI, Committee Expert and Coordinator of the Country Taskforce for Zambia, noted that many of the answers to the questions depended on the enactment of the bill on the childrens code. Regarding coordination, which was the sole Ministry or governmental department responsible for the coordination of the implementation of the Convention in Zambia?

A Committee Expert asked about the amount of the budget earmarked for birth registration? How were civil status issues addressed in the communities? In the event there was no identification card when seeking registration, how was the childs birth registered?

A Committee Expert asked if child marriage was an offense under the law? If this was the case, who was punished?

Mr. Madi asked about children with disabilities, noting there were several laws and policies on disabilities. Yet their implementation was limited, and knowledge of these acts among the public was limited. What measures were being taken by the Government to introduce such laws and policies to the public at large?

Disaggregated data on children with disabilities was scarce. What measures were being taken to address this issue? What efforts were being taken to train teachers, and provide teaching and learning materials for children with disabilities? What steps were being taken to increase the access of children with disabilities to rehabilitation centres? What measures were in place to prevent placing children with disabilities in institutions?

A Committee Expert noted that progress had been made, but Zambia still faced challenges regarding child mortality, with this rate being high for children under the age of five. These children were dying of preventable diseases, including malaria. How did Zambia ensure that the population had access to mosquito nets which were used for protection? Where were the 11,000 healthcare professionals being trained? Did schools have healthcare officials? What were the measures being taken to improve child nutrition and to broaden the scope of the vitamin A supplements which were being distributed? What was being done to fight hunger? Were there measures aimed at sustainable food support?

How were Zambias vaccination supplies and what was the rate of vaccination coverage in the country? What measures were being taken to combat the position of midwives who promoted formula? Did those below 18 years of age have access to reproductive health, including condoms? How did teens and adolescents access health care?

The Expert noted that alcohol consumption had increased among the young. What could be done to provide information to these children, and how could they be taken care of? Were there teams dedicated to helping children in this situation. What was the situation of HIV/AIDS programmes? Was there screening for children under the age of two? Concerning lead poisoning, were there measures available for free screening and treatment for children?

A Committee Expert noted that 493 low-cost satellite centres had been established, asking how many children were receiving the services of these centres? What percentage of children who needed to be in early childhood development centres were receiving it? Had any assessment been undertaken on the quality of these services? There had been an indication that budget allocation for education had decreased between 2016 and 2021, however, there had been a massive increase this year in school grants. Could the delegation explain this picture and provide some context?

Was it fair to say that there was an over-reliance on boarding schools in Zambia? What was being done to ensure that girls who got pregnant or gave birth were able to continue their education in mainstream schools? What was happening to cause dropouts before the pandemic, and how had the pandemic exacerbated this situation?

The Expert noted that many children of refugees sometimes struggled to access public services; what was the countrys policy on this, and what were the impediments? What was being done when the age of a migrant child was unknown? What was the countrys policy on detention of child migrants, and what steps were being taken in this regard? What was the current law on statelessness?

How was Zambia addressing the worst forms of child labour, particularly in agriculture and child exploitation?

It was concerning that children were not receiving free legal aid; had the budget for this been approved? Regarding the minimum age of criminal responsibility, this was still set at eight which was low. What was being done to resolve this? What was being done about non-custodial measures, both at the pretrial phase and at sentencing? The Expert asked about measures taken to protect child victims in criminal justice proceedings. Were video recordings used to protect evidence? Were child-friendly procedures consistently used throughout the process?

The delegation said Zambia had engaged children across the country to provide views to be adopted within the eighth national development plan. This had been done in collaboration with civil society. When it came to children, Zambias laws initially looked for kinship care as a top priority. Where this was not possible, the next alternative was foster care or adoption. If this was not possible, institutionalisation of the child was the last resort. Regarding a visit by the Special Rapporteur on toxic waste, there were no restrictions in Zambia to his visit. Another request should be put in during the meeting and it would be attended to.

Zambia was reviewing numerous policies and looked on this as a key time to maximise childrens participation. Children had been engaged, and child participation was specified in the child code bill. The child participation framework was being developed, which would outline how children would be involved. When developing the eighth national development plan, children around the country were consulted for their views. The delegation said that while the national tourism policy did seek to address child exploitation in the tourism sector, not a lot had been done to promote the clause in that policy. However, a lot of work had been done to address sexual exploitation. The delegation noted that the tourism sector would need to be included further, as there was a growing concern in this space regarding the growing number of child exploitation cases.

With respect to customary law, which indicated that once a child reached puberty, they could get married, there were provisions in the law which indicated that customary law was acceptable in Zambia. The Zambian Law Commission was managing the process to ensure a way to eliminate the marriage of children under the age of 18; there would be a harmonisation of the age of marriage. Consensus had been reached with traditional leaders that there was a need to do away with child marriage, however, this needed to be formalised. The national position was to try to do away with the customary practice, and the President of Zambia was currently the champion of ending child marriages under the African Union, with this being a high priority under his leadership.

The child code bill would be a milestone in the legislative procedures and provisions in the child sector. This would be a complete turnaround on how issues were being handled in the country. Zambia was aware of the opportunity to plan how the childrens code bill would be rolled out into the 2023 budget cycle and subsequent cycles. There was a timeline for ratifying the Optional Protocols; once legal opinion had been sought, the Optional Protocols would be ratified within a three-month period.

Zambia had not earmarked a substantial amount in the budget for birth registration; however, the Government was leveraging for certain strategies to be put in place. Zambia was mainstreaming birth registration into the health system and had embarked on mobile registration at satellite centres, where birth registration was taking place. Zambia was working through an awareness campaign, highlighting the importance of creating an identity for every child in the country. In the case of a teenage mother who had not yet obtained an identification, these women could be accompanied by their parents, whose identification would serve for registration.

There was no express approach in laws which criminalised child marriage. However, this was addressed in the education act, which stated that if a learner was removed from school to get married, this was a criminal act. The Penal Code also specified that if a man had relations with a child, this was a criminal act. The adult would be held criminally responsible for those offences.

A lot needed to be done for persons with disabilities. Regarding data on disability, Zambia had created a national disability management system, which was the anchor instrument to register and document persons with disabilities in the country. Currently, more than 35,000 persons with disabilities had been registered. In 2015, Zambia undertook the first national disability survey, and was able to record that over 7 per cent of the population was living with a disability. The survey also highlighted a challenge as many persons with disabilities were hidden from the general populace. To counteract this issue, a deliberate policy was introduced to allow increased funding to households with persons with disabilities, which encouraged more people to come forward and report their disabilities. This led to more children with disabilities being recorded and registered.

Zambia had tried to be responsive to the challenges faced by persons with disabilities, including in the classroom, roads and bathrooms. Children in institutions were not eligible to access certain programmes, to encourage their families to raise them within their own homes.

Improvements had been seen over the past few years in the area of under-five mortalities. Neo-natal deaths had increased, and this was receiving special attention, through skills improvement and increased medical equipment. Child health remained a major priority in Zambia. Clinics for under-five children had been established which looked at the health of children, including vaccines, de-worming, and the supplementation of vitamin A. The approach in improving the health of children in Zambia was firmly anchored in the primary healthcare approach, which considered community engagement as a key pillar.

Malaria remained one of the major public health challenges in the country. There was a well-established national malaria programme, which included mass distribution of insecticide treated nets, with a focus on children under five years of age, and pregnant women. Radio programmes highlighted the correct use of nets, and a wide range of materials were distributed to the community, to explain how they were able to protect themselves against malaria.

The Government had set a goal of having a health facility within five kilometres of every person in Zambia; however, at this stage, this goal had fallen short. Six hundred and fifty health posts had been constructed across Zambia, with the majority being in rural areas. This project had greatly improved access to health facilities. The Government continued to implement a robust infrastructure development programme. The Ministry of Health recently opened the first specialised heart hospital in the countrys capital, which helped treat cases which had previously needed to be treated abroad. A target had been set to recruit 30,000 healthcare workers, with 25,000 workers ultimately recruited, which had helped to boost healthcare facilities.

The new dawn government had made further progress in recruiting health personnel, with a process currently underway to recruit more than 11,000 healthcare workers to be absorbed into the public sector. The proliferation of private training institutions did raise questions on standards; before any institution was established, a proper assessment of their capacity needed to be made to ensure they could offer the correct training to the highest possible standards. A national standard curriculum was also in place, which was set up by the nurses and midwifery council.

Zambia had one of the highest stunting levels in the African region. Progress had been made; however, the current rate of 35 per cent was still very high. Several multisectoral measures were in place to address the levels of malnutrition. Interventions ranged from aspects of food security, emphasising the importance of good agricultural practices at a household level, to the promotion of nutritious, locally available foods. Currently, a revision was underway on the marketing of food products to young children. The delegation said that while condoms were not distributed in schools, adolescents had access to condoms in health facilities.

There had been a rise in substance abuse among adolescents and young adults. Rehabilitation facilities were accessible but were not yet able to run comprehensive programmes on addressing substance abuse. Communities had been engaged, which meant that rehabilitation programmes would start running. This programme was in its infancy and required technical expertise and financial resources. Regarding HIV in children, a robust programme on mother to child transmission was in place, with significant progress made. Transmission had been reduced from 12 per cent, to 8 per cent.

A lot needed to be put in place when it came to lifting the quality of education in Zambia. A huge number of children had been affected prior to, and after COVID. There were still high rates of school dropouts, which the State had put in interventions to address. One of these was the Zambia Education project, which was being supported by the World Bank, focusing on teacher quality, learning materials, and construction of school infrastructure. There was a downflow of funding, however, the new dawn government had seen a clear shift in the increase in budget for education, which could be seen in the dispersal of grants. The budgetary aspirations in alignment with the new dawn government was free education for all children, at both primary and secondary education.

The school dropout rates remained high, as was the high rate of pregnancy among girls. However, a high number of these girls were still returning to school.

MULAMBO HAIMBE, Minister of Justice of Zambia and head of the delegation, said the new dawn government placed a premium on education, and aimed to allocate a higher level of GDP towards education in the budget.

A Committee Expert asked what was being done to combat obstetric fistula? Were there specialised child psychologists and psychiatrists? Did pregnant women receive the three doses of malaria medication?

Anther Committee Expert requested more information about the healthcare workers being hired, asking how many of these workers had training in children specifically? Were there any specific demographics on adolescents who were falling into drug abuse? Were studies being conducted into this?

One Committee Expert noted that the registration rate for early childhood was weaker in remote areas, compared to urban areas, as were budget allocations. What was the strategy being developed to address this? What measures were being taken by the Government to respond to the needs of certain groups, including girls, who did not wish to follow a traditional academic path?

A Committee Expert asked who did consent come from in the case of intersex children? Was this from the parent, or the child? Regarding corporal punishment, what other measures had been implemented aside from legislative measures? Was there a particular reason that condoms were not provided in schools?

Another Committee Expert asked what happened to children when they were not held in penitentiary facilities with their parents? What were the statistics on the number of children in prison with their parents?

The delegation said a policy of social protection was provided for migrant children. This ensured that these children were separated from adults and put into the social welfare system, for their proper care and protection. Children in these facilities accessed education facilities the same way as any other child. Regarding the law on statelessness, Zambia was a State party to the convention on stateless persons, however, this had not yet been domesticated. There was no specific law in Zambia which dealt with statelessness, however, the refugee act provided for the registration of refugees.

The delegation confirmed that the legal aid act had been revised, and a unit relating specifically to children had been established. The commitment to legal aid within the Zambian Government was very high, with the current act creating increased funding for legal aid. The legal aid board was able to provide generic legal services to all those who required it. A project was underway which imbedded legal aid desks in prisons, with a focus on increasing access to justice.

MULAMBO HAIMBE, Minister of Justice of Zambia and head of the delegation, said that until the child code bill was enacted, the age of criminal responsibility remained at the age of eight; however, the State was focused on removing this, with the draft providing for 14 years, although the exact age was still to be determined. Zambia was focusing on awareness-raising programmes which aimed to educate children to ensure they did not find themselves in conflict with the law. Video recordings were provided for child witnesses, and children were also permitted to provide evidence through an intermediary. The State had created a case-management protocol which was being used to deal with a myriad of issues relating to children, including children in conflict with the law.

The delegation said that early pregnancy remained a huge public health problem in Zambia, accounting for 29 per cent of pregnancies recorded in the country. As a consequence of these pregnancies, there was the problem of obstetric fistula. Traditionally, obstetric fistula repair camps had been conducted over the years. However, this was not sustainable in the long term due to expense, and the delay of access to services. To combat this, the Ministry of Health had improved the capacity of several obstetricians and trained fistula surgeons in provincial centres.

Mental health services were provided to some extent. Breast feeding programmes were an important aspect of promoting good nutrition in children. On operations for intersex children, consent was required on behalf of the child who was 18 years or below. However, there had been debates to look at the age of consent for the provision of health services. Consultation had been held with religious leaders and the children themselves to look at the policy on the age of consent, with this process expected to be concluded over the next few months.

The delegation said there was indeed a disparity between the urban and the rural set up for birth registration, with efforts being made to breach the gap. Awareness raising campaigns on the importance of birth registration were taking place in the rural areas. There had been a strain on the birth registration budget, but steps were being taken to pool resources in this area.

For girls who did not wish to take an academic pathway, an alternative vocational pathway was available. Community skills centres had been established, which allowed girls who had not progressed academically to undertake an alternative pathway. Zambia had made strides in terms of corporal punishment, and there had been a revision of the training programme for school guidance and counselling teachers. These professionals were now more focused on psycho-social counselling, with every school now having a guidance and counselling section.

A Committee Expert asked how many health workers had undergone training when it came to children in general, or more specifically childrens rights?

Another Committee Expert asked about migrant children, noting that the Committees position was that children should not be deprived of their liberty and kept in camps. What was the delegations response? Regarding the age of criminal responsibility, Zambia was advised to raise the age to 14.

A Committee Expert asked about the 600,000 AIDS orphans. Had this number gone down, or was it on the rise? If a teen needed to go to hospital to obtain contraception, would they go? What would give them confidence that they could go to the health care system and access this material?

GEHAD MADI, Committee Expert and Coordinator of the Country Taskforce for Zambia, thanked the Minister and delegation for their constructive dialogue with the Committee. Mr. Madi noted the good intention of the new dawn government to make a complete turnaround for the enhancement and protection of childrens rights in Zambia. However, he noted that most of the issues which had been raised by the Committee were pending the enactment of the childrens code bill. Mr. Madi hoped Zambia would bear in mind the Committees concluding observations while reviewing laws and policies. The age of criminal responsibility remained a serious issue which needed to be attended to, as was the issue of children being recruited in the army under the age of 18. He expressed hope that the next time they met, all issues would be resolved.

MULAMBO HAIMBE, Minister of Justice of Zambia and head of the delegation, thanked the Committee for the constructive and comprehensive dialogue. The process had been an eye opener, as there were clearly areas where lapses needed to be addressed. The new dawn government was committed to achieving the closure of many items which needed to be addressed and had the intention of making as many strides as possible for the justice of all Zambians, including children. Mr. Haimbe extended an invitation to all Special Procedure mandate holders, reiterating there were no restrictions towards the acceptance of visits by these persons. Zambia looked forward to the next meeting with the Committee.

MIKIKO OTANI, Committee Chair, thanked the delegation and extended best wishes to the children of Zambia.

Link: https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meeting-summary/2022/05/zambie-les-experts-du-comite-des-droits-de-lenfant-saluent-le

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Experts of the Committee on the Rights of the Child Ask Zambia about the Exposure of Children to Lead Contamination in Mines and about Child Marriage...

This letter was written by several organizations at Penn State and in State College including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's State College Chapter, Students Against Sexist Violence, Alleghenies Abolition and Central Pennsylvania United.

We feel compelled to share vital information with you regarding a threat to campus safety. This information has become more important for you to consider in the wake of the recent Buffalo, New York, shooting where a vile white supremacist committed an act of racist terrorism by murdering 10 Black residents in a supermarket.

Writing this letter is an act of solidarity, taking up the call to address the threat of white supremacist violence in our own communities by challenging white supremacist ideas and holding people responsible for the actions to which these ideas lead.

Considering the recent Buffalo shooting tragedy, we feel it is our moral obligation to share our concerns of a white supremacist provocateur on campus whose actions we have been monitoring since he violently disrupted a Vaccinate Penn State rally in August 2021.

As you are probably aware, administrators Provost Nick Jones and Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts Clarence Lang have unjustly sought the dismissal of an innocent professor and anti-racist ally, Oliver Baker, assistant professor of English and African American studies at Penn State, for bravely protecting faculty and students from this white supremacist provocateur at this rally.

The aim of this letter is to express our concern that we believe administrators are dangerously ignoring the warning signs of a white supremacist threat on campus in order to justify their decision to seek the termination of Baker.

There are two parts to this problem that are fundamentally interconnected. First, we are worried about our safety on campus due to the threat of the provocateur; second, administrators appear to be aware of the threat of this provocateur and are actively choosing to downplay this threat because if they acknowledge this threat then they cannot reach their goal of firing Baker.

This leads us to believe that administrators are making the following unethical decisions: they are not addressing a legitimate white supremacist threat on campus, and it appears they are ignoring this threat in order to fire Baker, who the NAACP State College Chapter considers a white ally whom all professors on campus should be like for his dedication to anti-racism and justice.

We are asking for you to hold this provocateur, Avi Rachlin, accountable to stop the threat we feel he poses to campus safety and that you reinstate Baker to show that Penn State supports those who protect the campus from white supremacist violence.

Let us explain. The provocateur in question has a history of telegraphing his violent intentions and then acting them out. In August, he attended the Vaccinate Penn State rally with the intention to intimidate and threaten the physical safety of peaceful rally-goers. He had tweeted that he aimed to disrupt the rally. He followed through on this threat by assaulting and committing battery against several attendees.

After a physical altercation with counter-protester Penn State student Avi Rachlin at a vaccine mandate rally in August 2021, Baker was charged with harassment, disorderly conduct and simple assault.

On Nov. 8, 2021, Baker was found not guilty on one charge of harassment by Centre County District Judge Steven Lachman, while the other two charges were withdrawn.

In January 2022, Baker said via email Penn State has "activated the AC70 process," which is the dismissal procedure for tenure and tenure-eligible faculty members.

The provocateur has also stated publicly that he supports school shooters. The provocateur has also stated publicly that "whites must remain dominant," revealing he follows the same absurd "Great Replacement Theory" that motivated not only the white supremacist Buffalo shooter but other racist mass shooters, like Dylann Roof and Patrick Wood Crusius. The provocateur is also an avowed misogynist who has alarmingly stated publicly that he wishes to rape and kill women.

According to a petition to expel Rachlin posted in January, Rachlin allegedly said he wants to "shoot up a school," sent pornagraphic images to minors, addressed people with slurs and harmed students and faculty via social media.

At the August rally, he waved a sign with the image of white supremacist Alex Jones pointing a gun with text overlaid saying, "Shut the [F***] Up Liberal." The provocateur's message was clear to rally-goers. To any reasonable person, he appeared to be telegraphing his desire to shoot people who were advocating for a vaccine mandate. In fact, this same sign had an image of a "non-player character" humanoid with text overlaid saying, "Govern me harder daddy."

The provocateur was using this image to compare those advocating for vaccine mandates to "non-player characters" that are seen as "not human" and therefore targets of violence. Previous to this, he said online that just as he shoots "non-player characters" while playing the video game, Grand Theft Auto, he wishes to shoot people in real life who, to him, act like the "non-player characters."

This is incredibly chilling and alarming. It is the same pattern we saw with the Buffalo shooter: white supremacist ideas that were not challenged, telegraphed intentions and then violent action. For these reasons, we believe that this provocateur poses a serious threat to safety on campus.

We are extremely concerned that Penn State administrators Dean Lang, Provost Jones, Vice President Damon Sims and Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Danny Shaha have refused to hold Rachlin accountable specifically because, if they did so, it would compromise their attempts to punish Baker.

This is not only unethical but outright reckless and dangerous. Lang, Jones, Sims, and Shaha are putting the entire campus's safety at risk by aiding and abetting the behavior of a person who advocates for white supremacy and misogyny.

We believe they are doing this precisely because it supports their attempts to fire Baker. If administrators recognize Rachlin as the threat we believe he is, they must also acknowledge that Baker was in the right on Aug. 27 when he protected people from Rachlin's white supremacist violence.

We believe that administrators' choice to ignore the warning signs of Rachlin's behavior in order to fire Baker is objectively advancing the conditions that lead to these mass shootings.

We hope you look at the facts of Baker's case and see that Baker was right to protect the campus from white supremacist violence. Baker's actions do not constitute anything nearing "grave misconduct."

Jones' and Lang's only course of action to justify this career-ending form of punishment against Baker is to ignore the facts and disregard the evidence that was already used in court to reach an innocent verdict. Jones and Lang are likely moving the goal posts of what counts as "grave misconduct" to fire Dr. Baker because they know the evidence doesn't support their unfounded allegations.

Since the court has cleared Baker of wrongdoing, and those present at the rally were grateful that Baker protected them from the provocateur, the AC70 process should have been dropped months ago. Please choose to be as brave as Baker by reinstating his position and honoring his deeds on behalf of our university.

For the last nine months, multiple student, faculty, and community organizations have been calling for Baker to be reinstated because he protected the campus from white supremacist and sexist violence. We want Baker here and see him as a boon to our community as someone who takes action to stop racist and sexist violence.

In fact, the University Park Undergraduate Association, the voice of the student body at Penn State, passed "Resolution #01-17: Supporting Dr. Oliver Baker and Urging Administration to Withdraw Their AC70 Charge Against Him," that directly calls on you to stop the termination of Baker.

We're asking you to listen to these voices and reinstate Baker. Your administration can send a message and set a precedent that Penn State will support faculty who protect the campus from white supremacist violence.

If Baker is fired, the people of Penn State will see this as a decision to enable vile and dangerous right-wing extremism that is on the rise in our country and, unfortunately, at Penn State. For us, Jones and Lang have already etched in their legacy that they're on the side of white supremacy and rape culture by seeking to terminate an anti-racist professor who protected the campus from such right-wing extremist violence.

The choice to fire Baker will not be seen as a sign of openness and tolerance, but rather, it will be understood as a decision to welcome white supremacist violence at Penn State. Hate groups will be emboldened by such a decision. They will expect to receive the same solidarity from Penn State in their work of spreading hate and intolerance on campus.

The world will also know that Penn State has not learned from its past scandals where abusive violence was excused to the detriment of survivors.

We know you have an admirable track record of supporting students and faculty of color and of opposing white supremacy. Many here are hoping that your presidency at Penn State signals a new era of anti-racism and equity on campus.

This can begin by addressing the concerns we have raised in this letter. We ask you to oppose white supremacist violence on campus by ordering administrators to hold accountable the provocateur, Rachlin, to eliminate the threat that we believe he poses to the campus.

We ask that you stand with us for justice by reinstating Baker to support those who stop white supremacist violence.

This open letter has rolling signatures.Please email studentfacultyrights@gmail.com to add your organization's name to the signatories.

If you're interested in submitting a Letter to the Editor, click here.

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Letter to the Editor: An open letter to Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi in support of Oliver Baker - The Daily Collegian Online

During the mid-to-late 1950s, the titans of rock 'n' roll dominated the earth; by 1962, many of them had seemingly gone extinct.

Buddy Holly went down, young. Little Richard found Jesus. Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin and was crucified in the press. Chuck Berry spent three years in jail. Elvis, fresh out of the army, was making films often derided as beneath him. So when the Beatles broke out regionally in 1963, and nationally the following year they arrived in a barren, joyless world, right?

This is usually the line: In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, in a wasteland of schmaltzy, insipid crooners, the Fabs made the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose. As a gang of impudent, talented youths a feast for the ears and eyes with reams to give the world, they taught an unmoored and grieving America to have fun again.

Of course, that certainly applies to some Americans in those days. But if you ask Mike Pachelli, he might give you a different story. Because he was there.

"That's crazy," the guitarist, educator and YouTuber tells GRAMMY.com. And he's largely known to the world because of the Beatles; he deconstructs their songs to his almost 100,000 YouTube subscribers. But for all his reverence for the Fab Four, Pachelli describes life just before them as chock full of culture, including artists still revered as household names.

"Kids are always very industrious, and we found stuff that was cool," Pachelli adds. "It's just that when the Beatles came around it was like, 'Wow, that's a whole other kind of cool.'"

On one hand, 1962 is a very special year. It was the last in human history a span of anywhere from 6,000 to six million years, depending on who you ask that the Beatles wouldn't be a widely recognized thing. And save a species-ending celestial event, it's likely humanity will never forget them. This, in musical terms, makes 1962 something of a year zero, a liminal point between B.C. and A.D.

The Beatles performing at the Star Club in Hamburg in May 1962. Photo:K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns

Indeed, it's tempting to frame the Beatles as messianic reams of ink have made their debut performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" to reinforce that narrative. Everybody remembers "All My Loving," "She Loves You" and the rest; few remember that they were followed by a desperate-looking magician doing salt-shaker tricks. (As Rob Sheffield put it in Dreaming the Beatles: "Acrobats, jugglers, puppets this is what people did for fun before the Beatles came along?")

Through that lens, the Beatles can look like the product of divine intervention, meant to restore brilliant hues to a monochrome culture, Wizard of Oz-style. Why not ask Tune In author Mark Lewisohn about it? He's almost universally regarded as the foremost global authority on the Fab Four. And to that point, he lists some names.

"Otis Redding, James Brown, Little Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Freda Payne, Randy Newman, Ike and Tina Turner, the Supremes, Wilson Pickett, Gladys Knight, P.J. Proby, Barbara Streisand, Glen Campbell, Patti LaBelle, and Dionne Warwick" were all waiting in the wings or as established stars in 1962, he tells GRAMMY.com.

"They're all making records before the Beatles," Lewisohn continues. "So, anyone who says the Beatles fashioned the entire scene doesn't know what they're talking about." Rather, the Beatles entered an already-fecund landscape 60 years ago and reshaped it forever.

In the grand pop-cultural timeline, 1962 tends to represent innocence, youth and the "good old days." In his 1976 hit "Night Moves," Bob Seger awakens "to the sound of thunder," with a song from that year on his lips. (It was the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," which was actually from '63; apparently, Seger felt strongly enough about what 1962 meant to him to tweak history a tad.)

Plus, George Lucas didn't set his classic coming-of-age flick American Graffiti in 1962 for nothing.

"These kids are driving all night and they're hearing the '50s rock 'n' roll on the radio," Sheffield, who is also a Rolling Stone contributing editor, tells GRAMMY.com of the 1973 film. "They're listening to Wolfman Jack and it's kind of the last gasp of that old school rock 'n' roll era."

Sheffield cites the scene where a brooding John Milner (played by Paul Le Mat) tells the gangly, 12-year-old Carol Morrison (played by Mackenzie Phillips) to turn off "that surfing s***" on the dashboard radio the Beach Boys' "Surfin' Safari." "Rock 'n' roll's been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died," Milner reports, his face fallen.

American Graffiti's soundtrack is packed with hits that paint a picture of young love in Modesto, California, in 1962. Aside from '50s jukebox mainstays like Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock," you've got obscurer cuts by acts like Lee Dorsey, the Cleftones, and Joey Dee and the Starlighters all from the previous year.

If you want to understand the prevailing vibe of the year in question, American Graffiti is the first looking-glass you should peer through. For another, look no further than the Beatles' infamous audition for Decca Records on the very first day of 1962.

The Beatles had a massive, unlikely shot on January 1, 1962, when they auditioned for Decca Records. But by most accounts, they blew it: the label ended up telling them "guitar groups are on their way out." (They ultimately went with Brian Poole and the Tremeloes.)

The Decca audition, which floats around the internet today, is famously regarded as terrible John Lennon called it "terrible" himself a decade later. But if you listen today with fresh ears, it's really not despite some rough moments and pre-Ringo drummer Pete Best's shaky grasp of rhythm.

It's important to note that the Beatles weren't experimenters come 1965 with Rubber Soul, or with 1966's Revolver they were a deeply experimental band from jump. The Beatles were unique for their ability to emulate and synthesize disparate threads of 1962's musical landscape; just take a look at their Decca setlist:

Immediately notable are Lennon-McCartney originals like "Like Dreamers Do," "Hello Little Girl" and "Love of the Loved," which was unheard of rock 'n' roll groups simply didn't write their own songs back then.

On top of that, you've got a Phil Spector ("To Know Her is to Love Her"), a showtune via Peggy Lee ("'Til There Was You"), a jolt of Detroit R&B ("Money (That's What I Want)"), comedic numbers (three Coasters songs, including "Searchin'"), a jazz standard (Dinah Washington's take on "September in the Rain") on and on and on. All of that, plus country and western, music hall, and so many other forms, were swimming around their skulls.

"What they'd been doing in Hamburg and then brought back to Liverpool was 'We just have to do everything, because we're playing for 10 hours a night,'" Alan Light, a music journalist, author and SiriusXM host, tells GRAMMY.com. "Anything that they knew, or anything that they might know, was fair game for material, because they just had to keep going."

But the Beatles' omnivorousness in this regard, both in their choice of cover material and raw inspirations for songs, wasn't just to run the clock it spoke to their essences as artists and human beings. "They were so receptive to anything that was good, and it didn't matter what genre it was, as it didn't matter what genre they were," Lewisohn says.

So, how do you know that music in 1962 was, in many ways, outstanding? Because without it, there'd be no raw material for the Beatles to work with.

Aside from the Beatles' purview, other fascinating musical forces were at play. According to Kenneth Womack, a leading Beatles author, what the music industry hawked in 1962 wasn't necessarily what the public asked for hence John Milner's reaction in American Graffiti.

"What happens is you go from that pretty intense rock era to the crooners and doo-woppers coming back with a vengeance," Womack tells GRAMMY.com. "That was really not music that people wanted. It was music that was marketed to us."

Still, many tunes from 1962 and thereabouts endure including all the tremendous, often Black, talent Lewisohn mentions above, as well as a smattering of bubblegum songs that have baked themselves into 21st-century life.

That year, Shelley Fabares released her confectionary cover of "Johnny Angel," and Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again" won a GRAMMY for Best Rock 'n' Roll Recording. The Tokens "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" became a No. 1 hit; so did Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl." ("There's still a pulse around the old-world stuff," Light notes about the latter tune. "It's not gone.")

Plus, recent years had given us "Itsie Bitsie Teeny Weeny Yellow Polkadot Bikini" and "The Purple People Eater" further proof of novelty songs' enduring presence.

"It's funny that the song from 1962 we hear the most nowadays might be 'Monster Mash,' which has just turned into such a seasonal banger," Sheffield says. "If you went back to a music fan in 1962 and said, 'Sixty years in the future, the most famous song from this era is going to be 'Monster Mash,' people would laugh in your face."

"You've got a lot of the trivial pop throwaways that the people laugh about, but a lot of those were fantastic songs," he continues, citing rock 'n' roll singer Freddy Cannon's "Palisades Park" as a "fan-f***ing-tastic song": "The drummer on that song is absolutely insane. That's the year that Stax starts to make its mark nationwide."

On top of that, you've got Spector, Motown, Chicago soul, Memphis instrumental R&B (hello, Booker T. and the MGs' "Green Onions"), the still-green Beach Boys and Bob Dylan the list goes on. To say nothing ofRay Charles, whose Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music released in 1962 remains a monumental fusion of Black and white cultures.

1962 was also a major year in American culture: John Glenn became the first man to orbit the Earth, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted, and it was the only full year John F. Kennedy was president. The Space Needle and the first Wal-Mart were opened. Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday" to JFK and died three months later.

The demolished Star Club in 1987. Photo: Gnter Zint/K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns

In British media at the very least, there was a shift toward irreverence that left an opening for the flippant and cheeky Fabs. "The Beatles came up at the very same time when you could be less respectful to the sacred cows of society," Lewisohn says, noting a rising acceptance of unfettered working-classness, like in the pre-"Sanford and Son" show in the UK, "Steptoe and Son."

Sheffield stresses the impact of the draft on the world the Beatles entered: "I think they presented to American youth a vision of adult male life that wasn't military-based or violence-based," he says. And across the pond, the abolition of conscription in the UK in 1959 had fundamentally shaped the Beatles' path.

"They were clearly not boys who had been in the war," Lewisohn says. "The Beatles escaped it in the very nick of time."

As most parties agree, one of the weirdest things about the Beatles is that they happened at all which is easy to overlook due to their sheer omnipresence.

"For me, the weirdest things about the Beatles are the most obvious things about the Beatles. Just the four of them being born in this town and finding each other and making music together," Sheffield says. "It's so shocking and bizarre that that synchronicity happened and that they were as good as they were, and they were able to keep inspiring and challenging and goading and competing with each other, and that they were able to scale those heights."

"I mean, there's nothing in world culture that's anything like a precedent for this," he continues. "And they were able to do it for 10 years, which is about 30 times longer than anybody would have predicted in 1962. That in itself is so completely bizarre."

Not that anyone could be a prognosticator but if the Beatles had never been born, or broke up when they began, what would the '60s be like? Obviously, the Vietnam War and subsequent youth revolt would happen. Humanity would land on the moon.

But the music world, including all their peers, would be radically different. Without them, the Stones would probably never have written songs, or had their manager. The Beach Boys wouldn't have been spurred to make Pet Sounds or "Good Vibrations." The Byrds wouldn't use a 12-string Rickenbacker (Roger McGuinn got it from A Hard Day's Night), nor spell their name with a y. Bob Dylan may have never broken out of the folk scene.

Without the Beatles, the template of a self-contained band a democratic gang with a unified message, lobbing working-class Britishness into the world, raining down heartening music and blistering humor, and reinventing themselves seven or eight times before drawing the blueprint for band breakups would be gone.

"I feel like rock 'n' roll would've come back," Colin Fleming, who writes articles and books about the Beatles, tells GRAMMY.com. "It's almost like someone's on the injured list on the baseball team."

But everything played out how it did and what unending pleasure and edification. Still, history screams that the decade would have remained semi-recognizable without the Beatles.

The '60s would still be action-packed, just in a different way; it contained all the nascent threads and forces to be so. In 1962, you had the debuts of James Bond, Spider-Man and "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange was published. Lawrence of Arabia opened in cinemas. America's presence in Vietnam dramatically escalated.

"The more I thought about it, October of '62 is interesting," Jordan Runtagh, an executive producer and host at iHeartMedia, tells GRAMMY.com. "That's the month that 'Love Me Do' came out. On the same day, Dr. No came out. It's the same month that Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? came out, which completely revolutionized the theater."

It's easy to consider the '60s without the Beatles as unthinkable. But even as a diehard fan, the thought is actually strangely beautiful.

The Real Ambassadors At 60: What Dave Brubeck, Iola Brubeck & Louis Armstrong's Obscure Co-Creation Teaches Us About The Cold War, Racial Equality & God

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1962 Was The Final Year We Didn't Know The Beatles. What Kind Of World Did They Land In? - The GRAMMYs

Bus workers in Northern Ireland at state backed transport company Translink are voting this week on yet another below inflation pay offer. Details are sketchy, but according to a report in the Irish News, Translink workers on Metro, Ulsterbus, Goldline and Glider services have been offered a 5 percent pay increase, backdated to April 2021.

The offer is reported to be in the form of a progression payment for staff, while a probationary rate for new starts will be removed. New starts will not get the progression payment for another two years. Currently a new start bus driver can expect 414.41 weekly, 11.51 an hour, after five to eight weeks training, and then 460.45 weekly, 12.79 an hour, after six months for a 36-hour week. A five percent increase would take these rates to 12.09 and 13.43 an hour respectively.

Bus drivers, cleaners and shunters, members of the Unite and GMB unions, previously rejected the companys initial offer of three percent and were on the brink of taking seven days strike action, planned to start April 25. That strike was called off April 21, after Translink marginally improved their offer, giving the trade unions a pretext to call another ballot. The second offer, full details of which were never made public, was rejected by bus workers May 9, and another seven-day strike announced for May 17.

The last major bus strike in Northern Ireland was 19 years ago, with a series of one day stoppages against low pay. Hundreds of drivers supported pickets at bus depots across Northern Ireland and around 300 routes were cancelled. Bus workers have also repeatedly taken strike action against attacks on drivers and their vehicles. Last November, workers walked out after buses were hijacked and set on fire during loyalist riots against the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Under conditions of immense class tensions developing worldwide and fearing a large transport strike could quickly become a pole of attraction in the working class, the May 17 strike was also called off. This time workers were given just a few hours notice of the union officials decision.

Peter Macklin, GMB Regional Organiser described the cancellation as a gesture of goodwill towards Translink. The company happily reciprocated, welcoming constructive engagement with our unions. A spokesperson continued we are pleased to have found a way forward that will enable us to build back public transport for a more sustainable and better future for all.

The mutual warmth between Translink and the trade union apparatus reflects the extent of the unions corporatist integration with the company. The annual charade of protracted negotiations and mutual bluster is followed inevitably by terms that leave workers worse off. The current dispute is over last year's pay round. Such has been the deliberate foot dragging by unions that Translinks latest five percent offer and the unions initial demand for six percent are several percentage points below inflation, currently running at around nine percent and expected to soon reach as high as eleven percent.

Without bus workers taking matters into their own hands through the formation of rank and file committees, uniting bus and transport workers in defence of jobs and living standards, Translinks assault on pay and conditions will deepen and their struggles will be sabotaged by unions which police the companies dictates.

Shortly before he cancelled the last strike, Macklin hailed the fact that buses in Northern Ireland operated throughout the coronavirus crisis. Macklin claimed bus workers were proud to carry out their duty during the pandemic--despite potentially putting themselves and their families lives at risk. Yet his union is happy to put an offer to drivers that will result in an effective pay cut.

Neither Translink or the unions have released figures on the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths among bus workers in Northern Ireland. Drivers are at high-risk from the virus due to their close contact with passengers in a confined and poorly ventilated space. The London Bus Rank-and-File Committee has highlighted the death of 78 drivers to the virusa death toll for which the trade unions bear full responsibility, having colluded with the bus operators to deny workers PPE and other protections.

Bus workers are fighting to defend their livelihoods as many other sections of workers across Northern Ireland are coming into struggle. To take this forward all sections of the working class must be united in a common struggle against the ruthless dictates of the financial aristocracy. As well as their endless manipulation of sectarian divisions, the employers and the capitalist state in Northern Ireland rely on the trade unions to keep workers struggles isolated from their class brothers and sisters across Ireland, the UK, Europe and internationally.

Caterpillar workers, also Unite members, have launched a further four weeks of strikes at the companys equipment plants in Larne and Springvale in Belfast, in pursuit of a pay increase to match inflation. The 160 or so workers have rejected a 9 percent pay rise tied to compulsory overtime, amounting to a pay freeze and longer hours.

Sharon Graham, Unite General Secretary, has denounced greedy Caterpillar bosses, who have reported 1.5 billion profits, most of which was handed back to shareholders. But the unions regional officer George Brash spelled out Unites main disagreement with Caterpillar is its failure to negotiate, complaining that, Caterpillars management... are refusing to sit down with Unite to resolve this dispute despite requests from the Labour Relations Agency.

Unite have also called off a second series of strikes by council workers in housing, cleaning, catering, transport and education after two weeks of strike action against a 1.75 percent pay offerthe same being offered across Britain. The first strike saw well attended pickets outside council, housing and cleansing offices, and a protest across the road from the count at the Northern Ireland Assembly election. Follow up action was cancelled with no new offers available. Unite has merely agreed to further negotiations with the Education Authority of Northern Ireland and local authorities.

Teachers union NASUWT has ignored an 80 percent strike vote amongst Northern Ireland teachers. Instead they have authorised a limited work-to-rule against a paltry below inflation pay offer of 3.2 percent over two years.

The strike wave in Northern Ireland comes at a time of acute political crisis, with the Northern Ireland Assembly suspended and disputes over the Northern Ireland Protocol disrupting trade and enflaming relations between the British government, its Irish counterpart, the European Union and the United States. Along with the formation of rank and file action committees, new political leadership is urgently needed in the form of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Ireland to lead a struggle for the abolition of all national borders and to fight for socialism in Ireland, Britain and across Europe.

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Reject the Translink pay offer! Northern Ireland bus workers' strike cancelled to vote on below-inflation pay deal - WSWS

OAKLAND, Calif. Near the end of a sold-out show earlier this month, celebrating the release of his visionary second album, Grief, the vocalist, pianist, composer and activist Samora Pinderhughes asked the audience to sing with him. He was about to hit the coda to Process a heart-baring anthem of solitude and self-forgiveness, which he uses to close all his concerts and he wanted some familiar voices to join the wordless melody.

For every new fan whod showed up that night at the downtown headquarters of the online music store Bandcamp, a member of Pinderhughess close-knit community seemed to be there too. Standing in the back was his friend Adamu Chan, a filmmaker and organizer, who had been incarcerated early in the pandemic and is now working on a documentary about Covid-19s spread in the prison system. In the front row, an arms length from the grand piano, sat one of his mentors, the historian Robin D.G. Kelley. A few seats down were Pinderhughess parents, scholars and activists themselves.

In the past few years Pinderhughes, 30, has been breaking out well beyond the Bay Area, and with the release of Grief, hes emerged as one of the most affecting singer-songwriters today, in any genre. His trebly, confessional voice steps deliberately on its own cracks, and he treats his gut-level lyrics with care. His piano playing, rich with layered harmony and rhythmic undertow, holds together his arrangements, which mix the influences of Radiohead, chamber classical, Afro-Cuban rhythms and underground hip-hop. Not unlike Kendrick Lamar, Pinderhughes has become a virtuoso at turning the experience of living in community inside-out, revealing all its personal detail and tension, and giving voice to registers of pain that are commonly shared but not often articulated.

The Grief LP is one of three components in the Healing Project, a yearslong undertaking based around roughly 100 interviews Pinderhughes conducted with people of color who had been incarcerated or had experienced some form of structural violence, he said. The first part of the project was a visual-art exhibition that opened at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in March, and will be on view through September. Then came Grief last month. And on May 17, he unveiled an online archive of the interviews and an accompanying interactive online experience, which he hopes will help to bring listeners from all over the country and beyond into contact with the stories of his interviewees and their arguments for prison abolition.

Pinderhughes created the Healing Project in pursuit of answers to two lines of inquiry, both about mass incarceration in the United States. How is this operating, and what is the machinery thats going on systemically thats doing this to us, and how can we fight back? Thats one set of questions, he said over coffee in Harlem, where he now lives. And then the other one, on the personal tip, is: How am I a part of that? How am I implicated and how am I doing something against it? What does that make me feel like? How am I dealing?

Pinderhughes is currently on his way to a Ph.D. in creative practice and critical inquiry from Harvard, where he studies under the pianist and scholar Vijay Iyer, who called him an unstoppable creative force.

Hes just constantly making new things: new music, new writing. Imagining past the standard contours of the music business, even, Iyer said. Thats been the most exciting thing to witness that, through a lot of study and surveying the landscape, and doing a lot of community work and just being in the trenches, hes sort of imagining another way to be a musician.

A SLIGHT MAN with a flop of brown hair dumped over alert eyes, Pinderhughes is fashion-forward but understated, favoring denim gear and streetwear. When we walked the San Francisco exhibition earlier this month, he was dressed in a burnt-orange jean jacket and a faded tee from Daily Paper, a Black-owned brand based in Amsterdam. In conversation hes quick to laugh, and always on the lookout for points of common ground.

He is cool, because hes in the jazz world, but hes not cool in that way of cutting himself off from feeling, said the actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, who is one of Pinderhughess mentors and a producer of the Healing Project. (Iyer and the artist Glenn Ligon are the others.)

Pinderhughes, who is of Black and mixed-race ancestry, was raised in Berkeley, Calif., by professor parents who work in urban and environmental planning (his mother, Raquel Rivera-Pinderhughes), and at the intersection of race, behavioral science and violence prevention (his father, Howard Pinderhughes). Both are active community organizers, and their connection to incarcerated populations around the country helped Pinderhughes get the Healing Project off the ground.

Music was constantly around the house, which was littered with hand drums and other small instruments, though only the children played. Both Samora and his sister, Elena, a flutist who has become a major player in jazz, showed promise early. He began playing percussion almost as soon as he could land his hand on the drum, and his parents started taking him to La Pea Cultural Center in Berkeley, where he was immersed in Cuban and Venezuelan music from age 3. When he was 10, his parents went to Cuba on sabbatical, and instead of enrolling in school he spent his time becoming ordained in the spiritual (and musical) tradition of Santera.

As a teenager, Pinderhughes attended the Young Musicians Program (now the Young Musicians Choral Orchestra) in Berkeley, which caters to low-income students and has produced many of the current jazz generations brightest stars. The spaces where I learned growing up, and where my sister learned, they were community spaces that combined the musical with the communal, he said.

When he got to Juilliard, although he loved his piano teachers, Kendall Briggs and Kenny Barron, alienation set in fast. As an institution, it totally felt like a factory, Pinderhughes said. Were here to get as good as we can at playing the music, but we dont talk about why were doing what were doing. I dont know if I had three conversations about that.

He pushed through, graduating in 2013 and settling in to create a major work of protest, The Transformations Suite. Close to an hour of semi-orchestral jazz, laced with poetic broadsides against the establishment, the 2016 album was proof-positive of Pinderhughess vision and his rigor. It caught the attention of Common, Karriem Riggins and Robert Glasper, who invited him to tour and record with their August Greene project.

Keith LaMar, an author and activist on death row in Ohio, was also impressed by The Transformations Suite, and through friends he got in touch with Pinderhughes. The musician joined a group of artists working to raise awareness about LaMars case, and LaMar became part of the Healing Project. Hes talking about speaking truth to power, hes talking about your agency, putting it in perspective, the unequal distribution of wealth and how its basically the foundation of all the inequalities that exist in this country, LaMar said in an interview.

The Transformations Suite had been forceful as a manifesto of rightful outrage, but it wasnt really a document of intimacy. For his next project, Pinderhughes started to interview men and women impacted by the criminal justice system, hearing their stories up close.

ON GRIEF, PINDERHUGHES focuses on an emotion that we all intimately know and fear, but that comes in particularly high frequency close to prisons and incarceration. He said that Nina Simone and Curtis Mayfield had been his lodestars: To me, those are both artists that are working out ideas about how to contextualize not just their life, but their own entire communities lived situation.

Pinderhughes recorded the album which was co-produced by his longtime collaborator Jack DeBoe in pieces during the pandemic, overdubbing one instrumental section at a time to help maintain social distancing in the studio. Some tracks have only a string quartet, playing slowly dragged harmonies that sometimes pinch into fine-grain dissonance. Others have a full band, with Pinderhughes often playing the Rhodes, sputtering beats underneath and gossamer strings above.

On Holding Cell, a highlight, voices harmonize over swarming violins, cello and electric bass; the harmony shifts tensely around them as they sing: Holding cell/I cant get well while you hold me. For the title track, one of the most patiently beautiful songs co-written with the bassist Burniss Earl Travis, known as Boom Bishop two chords are all Pinderhughes and the band need to build a sonic whirlpool, conjuring the disorientation of loss.

A standout of the Healing Project exhibition at the Yerba Buena center is the one piece without any visuals: a small, darkened room with a bench surrounded by speakers. They play an hour-and-a-half-long audio piece on loop, lining up clips from Pinderhughess interviews over ambient, sometimes ominous backing tracks that he recorded. The way theyre edited, these voices present critiques and reflections from within the system, not simple narratives of personal trauma or triumph over the odds.

With the sound room, youre in the middle of the sound, and theres nothing but you and the voices, Pinderhughes said. What I wanted to create is: This is your brain. There is no us-and-them. Everything is first person, he explained, So unless youre doing the work of separating yourself from the experiences, youre in it. (In this way, he acknowledged, he had been inspired by a conversation hed seen on YouTube between the author bell hooks and the artist Arthur Jafa. In it, Jafa says that any camera can effectively function as a tool of the white gaze.)

The people whose voices Pinderhughes uses in the sound room share publishing rights to the tracks that feature them, something that Pinderhughes saw as nonoptional. Some also have bio pages on the Yerba Buena centers Healing Project website.

In one clip, Keith LaMar speaks about feeling victorious simply for having maintained his sweetness a personal quality thats obvious in his voice despite the inhumanities of living in solitary confinement for decades. He calls the prison system a digestive tract, not a space of rehabilitation.

Not long after comes the voice of Roosevelt Arrington, an educator and peer mentor who spent years in the system. He says that socially accepted language can be dehumanizing: Inmate, convict, ex-felon, theyre demeaning titles: Theyre put in place to diminish self-respect and dignity, and to demean you and to break your spirit. He adds, When a person feels like they have no self-value and no self-worth, that mind-set tends to take them back to a criminal element.

The exhibition also includes visual artworks by Pinderhughes himself; the artist Titus Kaphar, who also designed the Grief LP cover; Nnaemeka Ekwelum, whose works in the gallery are a variation on Nigerian funeral cloths; and Peter Mukuria, known as Pitt Panther, whos currently incarcerated in Virginia and serves as the minister of labor for the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party.

Since connecting for the Healing Project, Mukuria and Pinderhughes have become close, and now talk by phone multiple times a week. In the gallery hang a number of works Mukuria drew on prison bedsheets, including a portrait of George Floyd, a piece to accompany the song Process, and a strikingly intimate scene with Mukuria seated in his cell. The show also has an altar, drawing from Afro-Latino traditions and New York City street culture, with a faceless portrait at its center, inviting visitors to honor anyone theyve lost.

Pinderhughes plans to take the Healing Project around the country, ideally reaching all the 15 states where he did interviews. He hopes it can ultimately become a permanent installation somewhere, someday. I want to build a space that actually engages, and is able to offer the healing practices that Ive learned through the interviews, he said. In an everyday context, offer those things.

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Samora Pinderhughes Explored Incarceration in Song. The Result Is Grief. - The New York Times

In Algeria, Article 66 of the Family Code deprives a divorced woman of the custody of her children if she remarries with a person not related to the child by a prohibited relationship. Despite the taboos surrounding their situation, more than 12,000 divorced Algerian women have decided to break the silence.

Karimas divorce was granted in 2014. But seven years later, the threats made by her ex-husband as he left court still haunt this resident of southern Algeria, who prefers to remain anonymous.

He told me: I broke your life. And if you dare to rebuild it one day and remarry, Ill come and take your daughter back, she recalls. For fear of this scenario becoming a reality, she refuses to live with another man.Ive had offers, but I dont want to lose my daughter.

Because in Algeria, Article 66 of the Family Code deprives a divorced woman of the custody of her children if she remarries with a person not related to the child by a prohibited relationship.

In other words, under Algerian law, when a mother breaks her marriage, whether the decision is hers or her spouses, custody of the child reverts to her, unless she renounces it. On the other hand, if she remarries a person with no close family ties to the child from the previous marriage, she loses custody. The father, on the other hand, can start a new married life as many times as he wishes, without any conditions, and without his custody rights being affected.

Religious marriage or forced celibacy

All the ex-spouse has to do to take the child away is to present proof of his ex-wifes remarriage to the courts. As a result, when they want to live with another man, many women settle for a religious ceremony, without any paper trail.

Religious marriage offers no guarantee, neither to the woman nor to the child, says Warda Berrahoui. Without a marriage certificate or family record book, the child can only bear the name of his mother. How will they be perceived by society? How will they grow up?

As a lawyer in Oran, in the northwest of the country, she witnesses many cases of withdrawal of custody rights of remarried women. Often, ex-husbands do it just to get even. One even went to the United States with the children.

To escape a similar situation, many force themselves into celibacy. I put my love life on hold. In the current conditions, the question of marrying again does not even arise for me, says Radia, 43, mother of a teenage daughter.

Thousands of women demand justice

Despite the taboos surrounding their situation, Radia, Karima and more than 12,000 other divorced Algerian women have decided to break the silence. For several months, they have been meeting via a Facebook group where they exchange advice and support. And under a hashtag that can be translated as no to the forfeiture of the Algerian mothers right of custody in case of remarriage, written in Arabic and English, they ask for the repeal of Article 66 of the Family Code the one that deprives them of their hadana, an Arabic term to designate the custody of the child.

Representational image. Photo: Flickr/beavela/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Their struggle is not limited to the virtual sphere. These mres Courage joined together in an association and multiplied the strategies to put pressure on politicians: press conferences, open letters to the President of the Republic and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, petitions, etc.

We try to make ourselves heard, but it is as if theyre plugging their ears in front of us. They dont answer us. There is always something more urgent, more important. Faced with silence, I lose hope, and I even think of suicide, Karima says. The young woman soothes her sorrow by talking with the members of the group. But sometimes the others stories are even more depressing than mine.

Family and societal pressures

Karima harbours these thoughts because she feels trapped; no longer able to find fulfilment in life. She is 35 years old and her father does not allow her to move alone with her daughter. In Algeria, one only leaves the family home after marriage. Very few people move out on their own when they are single, regardless of age or gender.

Being a woman and living alone is almost impossible. But to be a divorced woman is even worse. Especially in the south, where it is still very conservative, laments the civil servant, to whom several friends turned their backs after her separation. Their husbands forbid them to see me. They think I have a bad influence on them.

Karima experiences these prejudices on a daily basis. In the family, in the street, at workPeople think that once you are divorced you accept everything, you have no honour. I have even been offered sex for money. I am regularly harassed. As if it was normal, as if it was allowed.

With few exceptions, the majority of divorced women in Algeria have no choice but to return to live with their parents, often with brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law and the ensuing promiscuity.

This is the setting in which Hanane lives. This 30-year-old Oranese woman does not work. For the past three years, she has shared a room with her son at her parents house. We have no privacy, and we always have problems with the family. Its not a life, but I cant do otherwise. I wont get married again so I dont lose my son.

A choice, or rather a non-choice, that does not please the thirty-year-olds family. They put pressure on me and want me to remarry. My father accuses me of dishonouring him, refuses to raise my son and thinks I should leave him to his father. My brother thinks no one will take him seriously because he has a divorced sister at home. My mother says that my child wont bring me anything anyway.

Faced with such a painful daily life, the young woman gets depressed. Sometimes I think about going away. I have dark thoughts. I cant see a way out. At other times, I think I should take my child to Europe by sea to live and be at peace.

A law contrary to the constitution

Nadia At Za is a lawyer at the court of Algiers and a long-time activist. Known in particular for demanding equality in inheritance, she has been fighting for years for the repeal of the Family Code.

This set of laws that many feminists call the code of infamy frames the rules that determine family relations in Algeria. From marriage to divorce, through life as a couple, women are reduced to the status of minors for life.

It is this Code that contains Article 66, which withdraws the child from the divorced mother if she remarries. Last June, At Za, who is also the director of Ciddef (Centre dinformation et de documentation sur les droits de lenfant et de la femme) in Algiers, published a book in Arabic and French entitled Plaidoyer pour labrogation de lalina 1 de larticle 66 du code de la famille (Advocacy for the repeal of paragraph 1 of Article 66 of the Family Code).

She underlines that Article 66, by its discriminatory nature and its failure to take into account the interest of the child, is contrary to the constitution. From the legal framework to the religious foundations, the lawyer lays out a whole spectrum of arguments for the abolition of the law.

In the Quran, there is no verse that pronounces the forfeiture of custody to the mother when she remarries. On the contrary, the Sura Women gives the right of custody to the woman when she remarries, she argues.

Moreover, Malikite law [the Sunni Muslim school of law followed in Algeria, and more widely in the Maghreb editors note] favours the maternal line. [] A consensus has emerged among the ulemas on the fact that the woman has priority in the custody of children under the age of discernment, she details in her plea.

For Nadia At Za, this measure is based solely on custom. At the time, when a woman lost her husband, she would remarry her brother-in-law to avoid seeing the child in another family. This is what Article 66 is based on.

According to figures from the Department of Justice, between 2016 and the first quarter of 2020, 6,138 cases were decided regarding the mothers forfeiture of custody rights after remarriage. Nearly 62% of the decisions removed custody from the mother.

But Nadia At Za prefers to see the glass as half full. She emphasiSes the significant increase in the rate of retention [of custody rights to the mother editors note], despite Article 66, which, for many, was prohibitive. However, the lawyer is under no illusion: We have fought other battles that took 10 years to succeed. We know that it will take time.

She nevertheless hopes that until Article 66 is repealed, cases can be studied on an individual basis, with a social inquiry and consideration of the childs interests.

Note: This article, which first appeared on Mediapart, has been republished via Progressive International.

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Algerian Women Join Hands to Oppose Law Banning Custody of Children to Divorced Mothers - The Wire