At the turn of the millennium, China and Zimbabwe revived relations after the African nation had cut ties with its former coloniser, Britain. When the British left, trade doors were opened; Chinese companies snapped up lucrative tenders for national projects and became a dominant player in Zimbabwe.

Experts state that in 2011 alone, Chinese investments pumped US$460 million into the Zimbabwean economy. The Asian giant consistently ranks among Zimbabwe’s top five trade partners – the volume of trade between the two countries surpasses US$1.1 billion annually.

But how is this relationship playing out for ordinary Zimbabwean workers? This paper shall examine the nature and extent of labour rights abuses by Chinese companies operating in Zimbabwe. Its premise, though, is that the flouting of labour regulations cannot be blamed solely on investors’ conduct. Instead, such flouting is evidence of disrespect for Zimbabwe’s working class that is embedded within its own regulatory environment. In fact, there is much deeper abuse of workers in Zimbabwe by locals than there is by Chinese companies. This is because the company is complicatedly informalised. Because Chinese companies tend to , their abuses make headlines more often than local examples do.

Zimbabwe has a long-standing legacy of worker abuse. There are weaknesses embedded in its labour rights enforcement institutions that are beyond the control of international investors operating in the country.

Historic relations 

China–Zimbabwe relations were birthed during the colonial period when the former late President Robert Mugabe was given support by the Asian nation in his quest to outwit the colonial forces of Rhodesia. Mugabe turned to China after the Soviet Union turned down his request to support the military wing of his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union, in favour of his rival Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union.

On 18 April 1980, as Zimbabwe celebrated its independence from colonial rule, Mugabe met with Chinese officials to formally establish diplomatic ties. Two months later then vice-president Simon Vengesai Muzenda visited Beijing to express his thanks; Mugabe followed the next year.

But between 1980 and the year 2000, relations between the two countries did not extend to huge economic contact. The Southern African nation was still pursuing a somewhat close relationship with Britain as part of a policy of reconciliation.

Then came the government’s fall-out with white commercial farmers during the late 1990s and the inception of the Fast Track Land Reform Exercise which evicted those farmers from their properties. Relations between Zimbabwe and the West deteriorated. China stepped into the vacuum.

Ties between the two nations have deepened since then, in line with Zimbabwe's Look East Policy. China has become Zimbabwe’s all-weather friend.

Chinese investments in Zimbabwe   

China has snapped up high-value projects in Zimbabwe, including work on fixing water infrastructure and rehabilitating sewerage systems for the Harare City Council, to the tune of US$144 million. The project was financed by China’s Exim Bank.

Another project was the completion of the US$ 98 million Zimbabwe National Defence College, constructed by Anhui Foreign and Economic Construction Company, again through an interest-heavy loan from China’s Exim Bank. This was celebrated at a time when Zimbabwe’s credit rating had been downgraded to “junk” status by multilateral lending institutions. Other projects include the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Pipeline – first mooted by colonial settlers in 1912 and finally taking shape – as well as development of the Kunzvi Dam. Chinese firms are also engaged in massive power and energy projects in Zimbabwe.

It's not just large, national-scale projects that draw Chinese investors and companies. They are working across all spheres of Zimbabwe’s economy. This means Chinese companies are major employers – and with that comes the risk of potential labour rights violations and issues.

Labour rights dilemmas

There have been several instances of Chinese companies running foul of labour laws. For instance, in 2011 employees took a Chinese-run construction company, Sogecoa Zimbabwe (Pvt) Company to court amid allegations of exploitation and rights violations. Sogecoa is a sister to the diamond company, Anjin, which was among those awarded licences to mine Marange diamonds. The workers said they were being paid a measly US$4 a day for working long hours. This was far below gazetted rates of between US$1, 06 and $1, 51 per hour with a 44-hour week.

But this is by no means a problem unique to Chinese companies in Zimbabwe. Many workers were left hamstrung by history:  the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has accused government of pursuing an anti-labour stance by adopting bad economic policies which devalued the local currency; the fast tracked land reform exercise meant many workers in the agricultural sector had been rendered jobless; and, the manner in which white commercial farmers were forced out of the country meant they weren’t able to settle pension and salary obligations. Zimbabwe has a traceable history of disregarding labour rights long before Chinese companies came on board.

Labour institutions like unions and National Employment Councils, mandated to legally enforce labour rights, were already weak at the turn of the millennium as the government pursued a policy to salvage the economy at the expense of workers’ rights.

Still, complaints against Chinese employers and companies continue to dominate the headlines.

The National Union of Quarry Workers of Zimbabwe  has accused Chinese employers at Ngezi Mine in Zvishavane of ill-treating and underpaying their workers. Union leader Onias Munenga was quoted in the press as saying the Chinese miners were not abiding by the country’s labour laws. There have also been complaints from the construction sector.

In a recent and terrible example of this issue, in 2020 a Chinese national named Zhang Xuelin, who doubled as proprietor and General Manager of Reeden Mine near the city of Gweru, allegedly shot and injured workers Wendy Chikwaira and Kennedy Tachiona, according to the New Zimbabwe news website. The two had reportedly approached their boss to demand their unpaid wages. A brawl followed and the pair were shot – Tachiona apparently three times in both legs. In response, the Chinese Embassy in Harare issued a statement, expressing hope that the incident would not damage their country's relations with Zimbabwe. Others in the Chinese community denounced the shooting – a reminder that it’s important to distinguish between individual criminal acts and Chinese abuses.

Meanwhile, the shooter fled the country and was exonerated by President Emmerson Mnangagwa. This is evidence, surely, of internal weaknesses rather than widespread Chinese misconduct.

Another example of the blurred lines between Chinese behaviour and Zimbabwe’s own responsibilities can be found in the diamond mining sector. In Chiadzwa, Manicaland, thousands of villagers were displaced from their villages and relocated  to Arda Transau , a state-owned farm in Odzi, to make way for a diamond mine. The villagers were promised better lives by both the government and several Chinese mining companies. Yet, much of the blame is heaped solely on the Chinese companies while, as Newsday noted in a report on 21 March 2021, Zimbabwe’s government failed to enforce the expected basic standards.

The Zimbabwe Environmental Association (ZELA) makes an interesting observation: “As the Chinese footprint is surging especially in Zimbabwe’s extractive sector, there has been an increase in alleged cases of unfair labor practices, human rights abuse and disregard of environmental regulations by the Chinese.” 

The environmental lobby group then traces the real problem to its roots. China needs the strategic mineral resources available in Zimbabwe, while the latter needs the income from these resources, especially after its show of defiance against the West. Zimbabwean elites have found a commercial partner in China with capital to finance mining and provide a market. It is therefore the desperation of Zimbabwe’s government to generate income that underpins inherent weaknesses in the institutions that ought to project workers. Chinese companies alone cannot be blamed.

Instead, Zimbabwe must look to its own culture of disrespecting workers’ rights.

A bad track record

Zimbabwe’s record of ill- treating workers predates the arrival of Chinese capital in the country. Records of the International Labour Organisation indicate that as early as 2004 and several years thereafter, labour abuses were rife. In some instances, the government would not accept the ILO’s commissions of enquiry into its activities.

The courts do not always protect workers, either. On 17 July 2015 Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court ruled that workers could be dismissed with only two weeks’ notice. This further weakened employees’ already precarious position in the labour market.

Another internationally respected lobby group, the International Trade Union Confederation, has consistently rated Zimbabwe as one of the world’s worst countries for the working class due to rampant abuse of workers rights through government institutions and weak legislation.

A study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has shown that Zimbabwe has the second largest informal sector in the world. Only Bolivia, in South America, has a larger informal sector. Yet to date, the National Social Security Authority, which is mandated to trace, detect and address workplace deficits does not deal with the informal sector. This means it effectively ignores the widespread labour rights abuses in the sector

It appears that Chinese companies become more visible because they are the dominant or large-scale employers in a highly informalised economy where millions of abuses go unnoticed due to the haphazard nature of organised labour.

Conclusion

While Chinese companies are found wanting on the issue of abusing labour rights in Zimbabwe, the country’s record of workers rights abuses predates the arrival of the Asian nation’s companies into the Southern Africa nation. For decades, Zimbabwe has been listed by globally acclaimed labour institutions for flouting labour regulations – yet very few of these lists mention Chinese companies as the main offender.

Labour rights abuses by local employers largely go unnoticed because there’s little tracking of workers’ experiences in the informal sector.

It is also important to note that Zimbabwe’s labour legal framework does not adequately protect workers’ rights; this leaves them prone to abuse by any employer, regardless of nationality.

Chinese companies in Zimbabwe operate investments concentrated in agriculture, mining, construction, trade and tourism which coincidentally happen to employ the majority of the populace. This makes any allegation against the companies automatically big news, but it is not representative of the actual state of affairs around workers’ rights in Zimbabwe.

About the author

Alois Vinga is Zimbabwean journalist who holds a Diploma in Communication & Journalism, Bachelor of Arts Degree in Media Studies, post-graduate diploma In Education and is currently reading for a Masters in Development Practice with the Midlands State University. He holds three media reporting awards in Labour and Gender and Disability Reporting.

With the focus on Ukraine, it is easy to forget that Russian President Vladimir Putin supports his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad's continuing destruction of his country, and the maiming of women and children, including thousands of Palestinian refugees in Syria. Since March 2011, pro-government forces have killed 3,196 Palestinian refugees, including 491 under torture, and 2,663 others are still missing since disappearing into intelligence prisons, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a UK-based group of activists.

The latest pictures from Mariupol in Ukraine resemble another Syria in the making. Thousands of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in a war that only started on 24 February. Putin's culpability in Syria has created mayhem and worsened the plight of the people. Palestinian refugees in places such as Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria joined their neighbours in 2011 to demand political inclusion and the extension of human rights. Since then, Yarmouk has been bombed and the Palestinian refugees face a bleak future.

Whilst the world was witnessing the annihilation of political dissenters in Syria, Russia supplied weapons to pro-regime fighters and vetoed almost all UN resolutions intended to stop Assad in his tracks. In 2019, Russia was joined by China when it vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for a truce in the region of Idlib, the last rebel-held stronghold in north-west Syria. That was the thirteenth time that Russia had vetoed a resolution on the Syrian conflict, and the seventh that China had done so. Russian support for Syria increased dramatically when the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East began in 2011. Fearing a possible domino effect of events into Russia, Putin hastened to support Assad to thwart a national uprising in Syria.

Western sceptics have enough reasons to excuse Putin's invasion of Ukraine. In the middle of Russia's destruction of property and the killing and displacement of millions of people, they argue against Europe's double standards in its treatment of refugees. Such treatment has attracted widespread criticism, exposing disturbingly racist fault lines, particularly when compared with the way that refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have been treated. Poland's extraordinary mobilisation to help Ukrainian refugees raises some uncomfortable questions about the country's tough stance against asylum seekers and migrants from elsewhere.

Such blatant double standards have, unfortunately, driven many people to take strong positions on the Russian invasion. Many have used the Palestinian struggle for freedom as proof of the accusations of hypocrisy and double standards against European and Western nations. Israel has been killing Palestinians almost casually for decades — on average, one Palestinian child has been killed every three days by Israel for the past 20 years and more, for example — and destroying Palestinian homes in an ongoing act of ethnic cleansing. The result is that the occupation state has displaced millions and killed thousands of Palestinians since the creation of the state in 1948 in occupied Palestine.

The global — particularly Western — reaction in Ukraine could not have been more different from the inaction against Israel for its military occupation of Palestine. Having endured bombardment, death and destruction at the hands of an occupying power, Palestinians have expressed their sympathy with the people of Ukraine. If justice and international law had any real importance in global politics, then Israel would have faced the same condemnation and sanctions that have been imposed so rapidly on Russia and Russian individuals. Instead, despite the sanctions imposed upon them, Russian oligarchs are able to find refuge in Israel.

This disgraceful reality means that the plight of the Palestinians and their struggle is likely to be amplified by what is happening in Ukraine. As such, those involved in the struggle should remain focused on ending the Israeli occupation and developing international solidarity.

One anecdote serves to emphasise some of the points highlighted in this article. In 2011, when Bashar Al-Assad started to kill his people in Syria, Hamas was forced to take a principled position on the conflict. In 2012, therefore, senior members of Hamas and their families left their headquarters in Damascus in "quiet protest" because the movement could not support the regime. Hamas decided to do what it felt was best for the Palestinian struggle. We can only imagine what would have become of the movement and, indeed, the Palestinian struggle overall, if it had decided to remain in Syria and continued to get aid from Assad's regime and then Russia.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia deserves a similar judgement, irrespective of the politics of the warring parties and notwithstanding the obvious double standards. Palestinians and those who support the struggle of Palestine must insist on a just and balanced outcome. The people of occupied Palestine should support the Ukrainians in their predicament, without taking a political position in the conflict.

About the author

Thembisa is a senior research fellow at Afrasid.  He holds a Masters degree in Politics, he is a columnist with the Middle East Monitor in London and a research fellow at Al Sharq Forum in Istanbul, Turkey. He also serves on the board of Common Action Forum in Madrid, Spain and on the board of Mail and Guardian publication in South Africa. He is the former Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera Media Network for Arabic and English Channels in Southern Africa.

A hunger for insatiable conquests, a ghost from the Second World War, has reawakened. That ghost is hounding Europe – but may soon reach Asia and, perhaps, the rest of the world.

The spectre may spread fast following the events of 24 February, when Russia launched a full-scale military attack on Ukraine, bombing major cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Mariupol and moving in across its own borders as well as from Belarus, Crimea and the Black Sea.

The strikes followed months of troop build-ups, Russian demands to the United States and NATO, negotiations with the US and European leaders, and US warnings of Russia’s invasion plans. They were closely preceded by Moscow’s recognition of two separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine as independent.

Some in Asia are predicting similar conflicts. They believe that, emboldened by Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, China is ready to move on Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet. China – as Russia has done with Luhansk and Donetsk – will claim that it owns these three territories.

Taiwan, a nation of 24 million people, is watching the events unfolding in Ukraine with keen interest. China declaring sovereignty over it cannot be far-fetched: recently, China has tried to manage the Taiwan Strait in the South China Sea through invasive military activities which cannot just be described as intimidating but rather as signals to nudge Taiwan into rejoining mainland China. The presence of the People’s Liberation Army, with its bombers, fighter jets and surveillance aircraft as well as warships and aircraft, in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan’s mainland are viewed as a strong campaign that will culminate in an armed invasion.

Taiwan’s democracy is relatively young. It held its first free legislative elections in 1992, followed by its first presidential elections in 1996. Before that the Kuomintang governed under martial law from 1949 to 1987; political dissent was harshly repressed and Taiwanese who had inhabited the island long before 1945 faced discrimination. But, since the early 90s, it has peacefully transferred power between parties several times. However, since Taiwan elected Tsai Ing-wen as its president in 2016, it has reported thousands of cyberattacks from China, targeting its government agencies. In 2020, Taipei accused four Chinese groups of hacking into at least ten Taiwanese government agencies and 6000 official email accounts since 2018 in a bid to access government data and personal information.

In the first few days of Joe Biden's presidency in the US, Taiwan reported a "large incursion" by Chinese warplanes over the space of two days. This was followed by China flying a huge number of military jets into Taiwan’s air defence zone throughout 2021.

This prompted United States Admiral John Aquilino, head of the Pentagon's Indo-Pacific command, to warn that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan "is much closer to us than most think”.

China has also engaged in disinformation and has increased its control over Taiwan’s media.

Elsewhere in the region, Beijing has been alarmed by the Dalai Lama’s calls for independence in Tibet and Hong Kong’s demand for autonomy for its population of 7.5 million. The west has openly backed these calls.

Tiny Tibet’s desire for independence has especially irked China, which already occupies half the country after defeating the small Tibetan army. Tibet’s political figures are gagged and activists in exile are criticised by China. The far-larger Hong Kong, a former British colony, is culturally and economically very different from mainland China. This has led to a great deal of tension, which peaked in 2020 as a controversial “national security law” gave the Chinese Communist Party the power to arrest activists, seize assets, fire government workers, detain newspaper editors and rewrite school curriculums. This sullied relations even further.

It remains to be seen whether China’s powerful military, which includes the world’s largest navy by number of ships, will take a leaf out of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s book and invade its troublesome territories.

Stephen Tsoroti

Stephen Tsoroti is a Research Fellow at Afrasid based in Zimbabwe. He is a multi-award winning journalist and has written extensively on gender, labour and climate issues amongst others. Stephen was named journalist of the year by Zimbabwe Biodiversity Award 2000.

The end, in 1992, of a post-independence civil war in Mozambique left citizens feeling optimistic about their and the country’s future. But, almost three decades later, real progress continues to elude the vast, resource-rich southern African country as it lurches from one crisis to another.

Mozambique boasts vast but as yet unexplored mineral resources. However, poverty rates are high in many parts of the former Portuguese colony.

For nearly five years, Mozambique has been in the throes of an insurgency that has made life uncertain for both citizens and foreign investors priming themselves to reap huge windfalls from the huge gas discoveries in the northern part of the country.

The bloody insurrection in Cabo Delgado province by an Islamist-linked armed group calling itself Ansar al-Sunna (supporters of the tradition) is generally believed to be linked to the marginalisation that locals in Cabo Delgado and other remote northern provinces have always complained suffering at the hands of the ruling elites in Maputo (which is around 2,400kms from Cabo Delgado). The province has become a magnet for investors and the people there are shown images of multi-million investments in extractive industry projects and hear often how rich their province is in natural resources like oil and gas – but none of the benefits have cascaded down to them or amounted to any tangible benefits.  

Five years ago, youths in Cabo Delgado launched an uprising against the government. These are frustrated young people who want jobs and demand government services; the toxic cocktail of poverty and radicalisation lit the fires of an insurgency that continues, largely away from the international spotlight.

In 2019, the insurgents pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State, marking the first Islamist-linked conflict in southern Africa and alarming the world. The nature of their relationship with the larger terror group is uncertain. In March 2021, the fighters launched a brutal attack on the port town of Palma, close to the gas projects. It left dozens of people dead, and, within a month, the militants controlled a significant chunk of territory in four of the country’s five provinces.

A history of oppression, radicalisation

Cabo Delgado has a long history of both oppression and radicalisation. Once a favoured target of slave traders, the province’s Muslim-majority population was repeatedly forced into labour for the production of cotton and other cash crops during 500 years of Portugal’s colonial domination.

The first shots in Mozambique’s independence war were fired in this province in the mid-1960s. However, during the subsequent decade of the liberation struggle, it was the Makonde tribal group, mostly Christians from the province’s highlands, who went on to play a central role in the subsequent Marxist Frelimo government. The coastal Muslim Mwani people were largely sidelined, which partly explains their frustrations and grievances. Cabo Delgado residents call their region “Cabo Esquecido” or “forgotten Cape”.

At some point around 2007 the Mwani people slowly began to believe – through radicalisation – that having an independent state could solve their social exclusion. They did not trust government institutions and decided to solve local problems themselves. The central government responded by calling the Mwani bandits and criminals, sending in heavily armed police to restore public order. In October 2017 the extremists, who had previously targeted civilians, began attacking police posts and military barracks.

Outside intervention

Mozambique’s government then tried to quell the uprising by hiring Russian mercenaries. The guns for hire suffered heavy casualties and were forced to flee.

President Filipe Nyusi then reluctantly turned to other African countries for assistance. This had been on offer for some months, especially from other members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well as the European Union and the US. Nyusi initially insisted that Mozambique did not require outsiders’ boots on the ground: instead, he called for training, weaponry and money. But, come July 2021, Rwandan and southern African troops (from Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Tanzania) were finally deployed to Cabo Delgado to fight alongside Mozambican soldiers. At this stage the insurgency was slowly spreading into the neighbouring Niassa province and Tanzania.

Some security observers have suggested that France might be behind Rwanda’s push into Mozambique: The European nation, they argued, was trying to protect a $20 billion gas field investment by French energy giant Total. It is a view shared by author and journalist Joseph Hanlon, who has written extensively about the unfolding of events in Cabo Delgado. However, it’s worth nothing that within two weeks in July 2021, the 1,000-strong Rwandan detachment made more headway than Mozambique’s own army and foreign mercenaries had achieved in four years, wrestling back key infrastructure that had been under rebel control for two years.

What comes next?

President Nyusi will want to leave a positive legacy at the end of his second five-year term in 2024. In the second week of February 2022, he went on a diplomatic offensive around the world, looking for assistance and money for the war; award-winning Mozambican journalist Luis Nhachote is among those documenting this drive.

Meanwhile, the bystanders in this war – the EU – and global energy giants are watching and hoping that their time to reap what they’ve sowed in investment is drawing nearer.

About the author

Charles Mangwiro is a research Fellow at Africa Asia Dialogues (Afrasid) specialising on geopolitics of Mozambique.  He also serves as the  editor of Radio Mozambique in Maputo, Mozambique. 

For many countries in the Middle East, October and November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) summit in Glasgow revealed a reality at the heart of climate change: they are not chiefly responsible for the problem, but will be badly affected by it.

The evidence suggests that global warming will do the Middle East no favours. For an early example of the phenomenon’s damaging power, it is timely to look no further than Syria. Climate change caused the generational drought that preceded the ongoing civil war there. That drought drove rural farmers into urban centers like Damascus and Aleppo, priming the populace for concentrated, large-scale political unrest. 

As climate change causes rapid temperature increases, food shortages, and economic pain elsewhere, more Middle Eastern countries might tip over into bloodshed. Relatedly, climate change has helped fuel civil war and conflict across the Middle East, including in Syria, Libya and Yemen. 

In Tehran, between 4,000 and 5,000 residents lose their lives per year due to air pollution. According to a report by the World Bank published in April 2019, Tehran is ranked 12th among 26 megacities in terms of ambient PM10 levels. After Cairo, Tehran is the most polluted non-Asian megacity.

Energy sources, mainly water, have also become a reason for direct conflict between Middle Eastern countries. Nearly every country in the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran, shares water resources with a neighbour; some have little freshwater of their own. Therefore, a proxy war between Egypt and Sudan and between Turkey and Syria could become a frequent feature of Middle Eastern politics as water becomes even more scarce.

As an another example, it is at the heart of the siege of Gaza — the River Jordan is one of the biggest problem between Israel and the Palestinians. According to Amnesty International,  one of the most devastating consequences of this water conflict is the impact of Israel’s discriminatory policies on Palestinians’ access to adequate supplies of clean and safe water. As a result of continuous restrictions, many Palestinian communities in the West Bank have no choice but to purchase water brought in by trucks at extremely high prices ranging from 4 to 10 USD per cubic metre. In some of the poorest communities, water expenses can, at times, account for half of a family’s monthly income.

Over the years, water has also brought Iraq, Syria and Turkey to the brink of war over their shared rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Water, it is clear, matters as much as land.

There is some hopeful news. last November, Egypt and the UAE were selected as host countries for COP27 and COP28, respectively. The question, of course, is whether these opportunities will help mitigate against the destructive effects of climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, or offer a platform to stabilise its water wars. Of course the events themselves are a cure for the economic hegemony of climate change – they are not the end of the road, but part of the journey. Hosting the events gives the region momentum.

Already, there have been positive signs. After COP26, Qatar rapidly started to focus on its own local energy sources to fight against climate change. The world's largest exporter of liqufied natural gas (LNG) announced its decision to pull out of OPEC, ending nearly 60 years of membership of the international oil producers' cartel. The withdrawal from OPEC did not mean that Qatar was getting out of the oil business altogether; it was simply withdrawing from an organisation that governs oil markets.

According to McKinsey “Global Gas Outlook to 2050”, the world is witnessing a new global energy transformation: LNG, it argues, will not only show resilience but will also be the fastest-growing fossil fuel between 2020 and 2035. Qatar can use its LNG status to adopt technology that offers energy alternatives; given that its geographic location places it at serious risk from climate change, it has no time to lose in transforming its energy sector.

To sum up, it is clear that COPS27 and 28 will be a platform for Arab people, and especially for the youth, who have been vocal on this topic, to be heard. Regionally, it is a time for climate activists to showcase what they have been doing on the ground. Many youths don’t get media coverage internationally. It will be a good oppourtunity for local people to be seen to be responding to pressure to act not only from the west, but from within their own region. People in the Middle East share some of the west’s problems – a lack of water, a collapse of ecosystems. Now, it is time to share the solutions.

About the Author

Elif Selin Calik is a Research Fellow at Africa Asia Dialogues (Afrasid).  She holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).  She is a regular contributor to publications like TRT World, Daily Sabah, Rising Powers in Global Governance and Hurriyet Daily News. She was one of the founders of the In-Depth News Department of Anadolu News Agency.