“Women are key drivers of economic growth and that wealth in the hands of women leads to much more equitable outcomes in terms of the quality of life of families and communities,” the study, entitled State of Women in Cities Report 2012/13, said. “Addressing the barriers to women’s participation in cities creates a situation where women’s potential is more fully realised and households, communities and governments also reap rewards.

“It is imperative that women and men should enjoy equal rights and opportunities in cities on moral/ethical, economic and political grounds. This will not only engender women’s well-being but it will increase their individual and collective prosperity as well as the prosperity of the cities in which they reside.”

Produced by the Nairobi-based UN Human Settlements Programme, known as UN-HABITAT, which is mandated to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all, the report also stressed the need to address unemployment and other disadvantages that hobble urban youth.

The report called for policies to enhance gender equality, equity and prosperity of women in cities, noting that cities of the future will comprise a majority female component, especially among people older than 60 and even more so among those older than 80 years.

While underscoring the unpaid caring and social activities that women undertake, such as childcare, caring for the sick, disabled and elderly, washing, cleaning and other community services that allow the urban economy to function and prosper, even if this labour is seldom recognised or valued, the report stressed the “crucially important” economic contributions they make through their paid work

“The ‘feminization’ of the global labour force tends to be associated with urbanisation, with the related concentration of women in export-manufacturing, the service sector and Information, Communication and Technology (ICT),” it said, adding that women, especially the urban poor, are disadvantaged in terms of equal access to employment, housing, health and education, asset ownership, experiences of urban violence, and ability to exercise their rights.

UN-HABITAT’s State of Urban Youth Report 2012/2013 stressed that while the young are “society’s most important and dynamic human resource” – with 1.3 billion between ages 12 and 24, most of them living in urban areas – nearly 45 per cent of them, some 515 million, live on less than $2 a day.

It called for better aligning educational and training systems with the current and future needs of young people, so that they cannot only discern developmental issues but may even be capable of suggesting innovative solutions to deep problems of development and growth.

“Of paramount importance is access to education and opportunities for acquiring skills,” the study added, stressing that youth inequality in urban life is closely related to unequal opportunities in later life and calling for policies that include investment in economic infrastructure, tax incentives, vocational training schemes and regulations that aim at a more equitable labour market for urban youth.

“Accelerating Progress Toward the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women” is a five-year initiative that will focus on improving food and nutrition security, increasing rural women’s incomes, enhancing leadership and participation in rural institutions, and creating a more responsive policy environment at national and international levels.

“When women are empowered and can claim their rights and access to land, leadership, opportunities and choices, economies grow, food security is enhanced and prospects are improved for current and future generations,” said Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

The programme will be carried out jointly by UN Women, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Food Programme (WFP). It will be implemented initially in Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Nepal, Niger and Rwanda.

Women make up 43 per cent of the agricultural work force worldwide, and as much as 70 per cent in some countries. Often working longer hours than men, rural women are also the caregivers who look after children, the elderly, and the sick. In addition, many are small business entrepreneurs and investors who dedicate most of their earnings to the well-being of their families and societies.

However, most rural women and girls still face more obstacles than men in gaining access to public services, social protection, decent employment opportunities, and markets and other institutions.

“Together, UN Women, FAO, IFAD and WFP will generate synergies that capitalize on each agency’s mandate to advance gender equality,” UN Women said in a news release. “When women are empowered – economically and socially – they become leaders and agents of change for economic growth, social progress and sustainable development.”

Current government coalition has been a possibility even before the votes were counted on the night of June 17. And as most analysts admit, elections were won due to fear tactics explored by old politics. Samaras, Venizelos and Kouvelis, after failing to agree in May, they got a second chance in June to form a government that should be willing to sacrifice itself to save the country.

In troika’s mind, there was only one path: to follow the Papademos’ government way. However, this was something Greek voters pledged the new government to avoid. When they heard the right-wing rhetoric built around the ‘MoU re-negotiation’ concept, they thought they did it. When Antonis Samaras promised to renegotiate the infamous Memorandum, voters saw an opportunity to combine austerity relief with the conservative, safer approach of ND. So they ditched the radical vote, doing Alexis Tsipras a favor, who, in reality, hoped to spend sometime in the opposition before getting serious with the country’s core politics.

By voting for old politics, Greeks decided to stay in familiar waters and refrain from exploring the uncertainty of the new. Besides, a 3-year austerity made people weaker, placing them closer to the indifference threshold.

Unfortunately or not, voters were spared with the technicalities. Pre-election rhetoric was based on the magic word of ‘re-negotiation’; a handful of columnists and politicians who really explained the fallacy were swamped by partisan juxtaposition. On election night, the new Prime Minister already abandoned the strong campaign word and started talking about ‘amendments’ that would be put into effect sometime during the 4-year period of governance and, most importantly, they would be received as a ‘bonus’ for playing the predetermined austerity cards right.

This is how a government can screw up political communication strategy (if any) overnight. Hardcore Samaras’ associates will probably say that communication is not that important, since what matters is real structural changes. Wrong. In times of crisis, people are disoriented. If you do not package your politics right, you are finished, especially in Greece, and particularly when you are a conservative leader running a coalition scheme supported by the socialists and the left.

From the moment the coalition is once again messing around with pensions, salaries and social benefits (namely horizontal measures) the pistol is cocked and the trigger is about to be pressed. Is people’s new disappointment enough to break a government? Probably not, but if the opposition manages to give meaningful words to social discontent, then breaking a link would be enough to unlock the administration and take it down; not noisily on the streets of Athens, but in the chambers of strategic politics.

The survival of the government depends on a really weak link held by PASOK leadership and this weak link is about to crack for a variety of reasons.

First of all, despite all the laws and measures passed in the past, most people consider the attack on household income a fresh piece of government policy. Being under the bankruptcy threat is no longer a strong argument; it was burned out during the Papandreou years.

The government’s vagueness about the new austerity measures continues the fear tactics, making things even worse. This alienates voters even further from the old political system, whose leftovers were used to form today’s government coalition. In simple terms, those who initiated fear and presented themselves as citizens’ protectors quickly failed on their promises and once more engaged fear as a tool to bail themselves out of the pressure.

When you need cash fast, is there any other alternative than cut spending from the source? Probably not, but why lie to the people? Was it the result of amateur political spinning or a failure of leadership to assess reality?

And this brings us to coalition’s inner politics. Old PASOK and Venizelos are in a down slope (sources say that a new formation is under way by key PASOK people) and Kouvelis is already experiencing an identity crisis and is in no position to play a role without the intermediary socialist link. This could crack the government in no time.

But still, a triggering event is required to make things roll that should be about the people (and not about partisan relations) and would put the coalition in a real unity test. In my view, this grassroots event is already scheduled in the political agenda for late August or early September and has nothing to do with troika’s wises.

It will be genuinely about the people and for the people.

This is the new draft bill for the relief of over-indebted households from loan obligations, tabled by SYRIZA to be discussed when the Parliament returns from the summer break.

Tsipras’ political argument is simple and involves hundreds of thousands of households that saw their budgets flattened by the crisis, due to unemployment or massive reduction of income. This policy was included in Antonis Samaras’ speeches during the pre-election period, but nothing is heard ever since.

The technical argument is that the banks are making up the losses from bad loans through their recapitalization from the Credit Stability Fund. At the same time, the banks continue to demand the repayment of the delayed installments, regardless of the fact that those loans have been classified as bad debts and are taken into account by the recapitalization.

In plain talk, those who will disagree with the bill would sound like asking Greek people to pay the banks twice for financial management failures of the past: first, via national borrowing for recapitalization, and second, from their own pockets for bad personal loans.

So, who is going to disagree with Tsipras’ proposal and on what grounds? In terms of political communication, this move is an absolute winner. It could rule the agenda and meddle beautifully with the new austerity measures the coalition government is about to announce; furthermore, it corners the coalition government politically, and challenges MPs (through a catalogue name vote) on an individual as well as collective level.

Conspiracy advocates could say that this is planned between the Premier and the main opposition. If this is not the case, New Democracy will have to react, PASOK and Democratic Left will have to take sides; MPs individually will have to do the same. This could prove to be a unique moment in Greek politics, gathering an across the board agreement, or the trigger in question, ending up being a win-win for the centre left.

It could also make Antonis Samaras the Prime Minister serving the shortest term in modern Greek history and turn Alexis Tsipras into the youngest one, ever.

Dr. Demetris Kamaras is the Editor of Alyunaniya.com

“The situation is very serious – our field staff have observed that households in parts of the country have harvested almost nothing,” said WFP Country Director Abdoulaye Diop. “Our first priority will be to make sure that vulnerable people have enough food to sustain themselves through this lean season. At the same time, we must invest in more long-term solutions to build resilience and break the cycle of hunger.”

According to a recent report jointly produced by the Government, UN agencies, and academic and non-governmental organizations, more than 1.6 million people will need food assistance in the coming months, a substantial increase from earlier this year when 202,000 people were in need of food assistance.

While the lean season in Malawi is usually between December and March, a late onset of rain and prolonged dry spells resulted in a decrease of maize production by as much as 40 per cent in some areas. The effects will be felt the most in the southern part of the country.

In addition, the recent devaluation of the national currency by 49 per cent, coupled with soaring inflation at 17.3 per cent, has produced sharp increases in the prices of basic goods and services, pushing the cost of living to unsustainable levels for many Malawians.

Retail maize prices have already increased by 50 per cent compared to the same time last year, and are expected to increase in the lean season.

WFP, along with the Government and other partners, will distribute locally produced maize, pulses and blended food. Cash transfers may also be made available to the most vulnerable to enable them to buy food in areas where market conditions allow.

The agency is urging donors to provide rapid funding support to assist more than one million people starting from August, covering the period until March 2013.

In a news release WFP said its emergency intervention will be implemented in tandem with medium- and longer-term assistance, including school meals, programmes to boost the nutrition of malnourished children and mothers, and resilience-building activities to address chronic food insecurity and disaster risk reduction.

The report describes a gloomy situation for the country. According to the report:

“Young people have been hit especially hard by the crisis. Youth unemployment ended at 45% in the third quarter of 2011 (48% in November 2011), twice as high as two years ago. Young people are also contributing especially heavily to the increase in long-term unemployment. In the third quarter of 2011, some 45% of the unemployed aged 15 to 24 were long-term unemployed, against 30% two years earlier.

Access to life-long learning is far below the EU average, for all age groups. Just 3% of the active population participated in education or training in 2010, compared with 9% at EU level. 7% of young adults between 25 and 34 participated in education or training, against 15% at EU level. At the other end of their active life, adults between 55 and 64 also show a very low participation rate: 0.5% against 4.5% for the EU.

Gross disposable household income decreased by 9.3% in 2010. Income losses have been far greater for the rich than for the poor in absolute terms. However, in relative terms (i.e. as a proportion of their income), lower-income groups suffered a significant loss of income. Households in the bottom quintile (i.e. the poorest 20% of the population) lost an estimated 9% of their income, compared with 11% for households in the top quintile.

The overall at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate for the total population stood at 27.7% in 2010, higher than the EU27 average of 23.4%. The risk-of-poverty (income-poor) rate was 20.1% in 2010, following an increase from 19.7% in 2009, whereas the EU average is 16.4%. The risk of poverty for children (23.0%) is higher than the EU average, which stood at 20.6% in 2010.

The in-work poverty rate in Greece was the second highest in the EU in 2010. Besides low earnings, in-work poverty depends on the employment status of all members of the household and on the availability and adequacy of social transfers, including in-work benefits. The household work intensity (measuring the degree to which all members of the household realise their full labour market potential) in Greece is one of the lowest in the EU, essentially due to the lower labour market participation by women. Tax credits/rebates and benefits for low-wage workers are less common in Greece than in other Member States and are often much lower.”