The Citizens Centre  for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR)  has urged citizens to maintain social distancing in the face of the COVID-19.

CCIDESOR noted that keeping at least 1-8 metres (six feet) between one self and others particularly if the persons are coughing and sneezing uncontrollably. The organization has asked the citizens not to touch their faces and mouth with unclean hands.

Remember that People with COVID-19 generally develop signs and symptoms, including mild respiratory symptoms and fever, on an average of 5-6 days after infection (mean incubation period 5-6 days, range 1-14 days). Most people infected with COVID-19 virus have mild disease and recover.

It would be recalled that China alerted the WHO to cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan on December 31, 2020

COVID-19 is thought to have originated in a seafood market where wildlife was sold illegally.

On February 7, Chinese researchers said the virus could have spread from an infected animal to humans through illegally trafficked pangolins, prized in Asia for food and medicine.

What is a coronavirus

The coronavirus family causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), according to the WHO.

They circulate in animals and some can be transmitted between animals and humans. Several coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans.

The new coronavirus, the seventh known to affect humans, has been named COVID-19.

What are the symptoms?

Common signs of infection include fever, coughing and breathing difficulties. In severe cases, it can cause pneumonia, multiple organ failure and death.

The incubation period of COVID-19 is thought to be between one and 14 days. It is contagious before symptoms appear, which is why so many people get infected. Infected patients can be also asymptomatic, meaning they do not display any symptoms despite having the virus in their systems.

Where did it come from?

China alerted the WHO to cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan on December 31, 2019

COVID-19 is thought to have originated in a seafood market where wildlife was sold illegally.

On February 7, Chinese researchers said the virus could have spread from an infected animal to humans through illegally trafficked pangolins, prized in Asia for food and medicine.

The WHO declared that on March 11, and said it was “deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity” of the outbreak.

What to do

The WHO recommends basic hygiene such as regularly washing hands with soap and water, and covering your mouth with your elbow when sneezing or coughing.

Maintain social distancing- keeping at least 1.8 metres (six feet) between yourself and others – particularly if they are coughing and sneezing, and avoid touching your face, eyes and mouth with unwashed hands.

Avoid unnecessary, unprotected contact with animals and be sure to thoroughly wash hands after contact. 

The concerted effort of the Imo State Government towards the completion of abandoned projects has been commended by the Citizens Center for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR).

 When huge sums of money are earmarked for projects and they are not completed to the benefits of citizens, the short and long term intentions are eroded. Indeed, the Government of the day can change the narrative of governance if they exert and expedite effort in ensuring that uncompleted projects, irrespective of who the original initiator is, are completed. The State Government has started the completion especially that it has understood that government is continuum.

CCIDESOR has continued to advocate for completion of abandoned projects in the state which is for the ultimate gains of the citizens and builds political capital of the state government.

CCIDESOR has been the advocate of completion of abandoned projects for democratic gains.

At the centre of dividends of democracy is the effective and timely implementation of capital projects which help to improve the standard of living and livelihood of citizens. When the completion of capital projects implementation is delayed or abandoned, then democracy dividends have either been delayed or denied. But if the qualities of projects are poor, then the citizens have been short-changed.  When government spends public funds on capital projects that don’t get finished or is abandoned, then dividend of democracy is delayed or denied.

To ascertain what causes the delay of democracy dividends to citizens, Citizens Center for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR) during her USAID project with focus on abandoned projects scattered all over the state, CCIDESOR did mapping of abandoned project in Imo State which was taken from 2010-2014, where about 121 capital projects were mapped. Out of the 121 capital projects, 32 were completed without quality, 51 projects were ongoing/uncompleted, while 34 projects were abandoned. 4 projects were not sighted. Most of the projects are still not completed. When one adds the number to the current motley of uncompleted projects, the number rises to a worrisome note.

CCIDESOR urges the state government to ensure that projects that provide  dividends of democracy are completed before starting new ones stressing that since the intention still is for the development of the state, the completion will serve the purpose.

As the world celebrates  the International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims, Citizens Centre for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR) has insisted that the rights to human dignity should be taken seriously.

CCIDESOR noted that every citizens’ rights must be protected and preserved as is in line with the ideas and values of the organization. It noted that once every citizen is given fair protection and enjoys non-violation of their rights, the society becomes a better place.

This annual observance pays tribute to the memory of Monsignor Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who was murdered on 24 March 1980. Monsignor Romero was actively engaged in denouncing violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable individuals in El Salvador. The purpose of the Day is to: Honour the memory of victims of gross and systematic human rights violations and promote the importance of the right to truth and justice; Pay tribute to those who have devoted their lives to, and lost their lives in, the struggle to promote and protect human rights for all; Recognize, in particular, the important work and values of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, of El Salvador, who was assassinated on 24 March 1980, after denouncing violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable populations and defending the principles of protecting lives, promoting human dignity and opposition to all forms of violence.

On 21 December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.

The date was chosen because on 24 March 1980, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador was assassinated, after denouncing violations of human rights.

In a study conducted in 2006 the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that the right to the truth about gross human rights violations and serious violations of human rights law is an inalienable and autonomous right, linked to the duty and obligation of the State to protect and guarantee human rights, to conduct effective investigations and to guarantee effective remedy and reparations.

The Citizens Centre for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR) has called on increased effort to end tuberculosis.

CCIDESOR  calls on governments, affected communities, civil society organizations, health-care providers, and national/international partners to unite forces under the banner “Find. Treat. All. #EndTB” to ensure no one is left behind.  Each year, there is commemoration of World Tuberculosis (TB) Day on March 24 to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB, and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.

TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious killer. Each day, over 4000 people lose their lives to TB and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 58 million lives since the year 2000. To accelerate the TB response in countries to reach targets – Heads of State came together and made strong commitments to end TB at the first-ever UN High Level Meeting in September 2018. The theme of World TB Day 2020 – ‘It’s time’ – puts the accent on the urgency to act on the commitments made by global leaders to: scale up access to prevention and treatment; build accountability; ensure sufficient and sustainable financing including for research; promote an end to stigma and discrimination, and promote an equitable, rights-based and people-centered TB response.

The poor and vulnerable are usually characterized by severe material deprivation which manifests in their inability to: obtain an adequate income; find a stable job; own property; and maintain healthy living conditions. Further, the poor lack an adequate level of education, cannot satisfy basic health needs, in poor health, and have short life span. The poor is in persistent social conditions of poverty and transmission from one generation to the next. They often lack the capacity to escape from their situation by themselves except they are assisted.

As stated in various literatures, those often affected by poverty/vulnerability to poverty in Nigeria usually include:

• Young children
• Pregnant mothers
• The elderly
• Inhabitants of rural areas and marginal urban zones
• People who have not been integrated into the society

It must be stressed that being in any of the listed above does not make one to be poor or vulnerable to poverty. Rather, there must have been some conditions that predispose them to poverty and the inability of those of them that have fallen below the poverty line or are vulnerable to poverty to come out of poverty. They must also exhibit some welfare outcomes which make them poor in the society that they live in. Field experience also revealed that the poor and the vulnerable are usually:

• Unable to eat adequately (e.g. three square meals per day)
• Always in tattered clothes
• Unable to send children to school
• Live in poor housing units
• Beg for food
• Cannot cook good food
• Cannot afford health bills and make recourse to self-medication/patronize unorthodox health care providers
• Cannot find job to do
• Have low level of or no education
• Have lost bread winner or do not have children to take care of them
• Cannot come out to mix in the community

The existence of coordinating platform and database is expected to assist in ensuring effective targeting that minimises errors of inclusion and exclusion, reduction of duplication of efforts, reduction of double dips, good monitoring and better impact evaluation of the programme outcomes.

Social protection is the protection of those who fall temporarily or persistently under levels of livelihood deemed unacceptable or are likely to do so. It is not the promotion of a general standard of opportunity and livelihood for all citizens.  It is made up of social security (comprising social assistance and social insurance in developed economies) and Social Safety Net (SSN) in developing economies. SSN is a non-contributory transfer targeted at the poor and vulnerable. It is a safety valve to prevent people from going further below the poverty line by cushioning them against shocks or risks that can further jeopardize their livelihood status. It consists of transfers in cash and kind, income generating activities e.g. public works and protecting human capital.

The manual for the National Social Safety Net Project (NASSP) under the Social Investment Programme of the Federal Government, is a revision of what was originally designed as a users’ guide for the selection and management of beneficiaries for the Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) but now modified for use as a guide in the selection and management of beneficiaries in National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP). The NASSP  includes targeted interventions including  a based and conditional cash transfers.

 The program uses a combination of targeting methods including geographic targeting, Community-Based Targeting (CBT), and the application of a Proxy Means Test (PMT) for identifying and screening poor and vulnerable households for its interventions. The database of identified poor households, families or individual called State Social  Register of Poor and Vulnerable Households SRPVH or  Social  Register of Poor (SRP) or simply Social  Register (SR), can be used for selecting beneficiaries for NASSP  and other targeted social safety net programs in the future as part of a social protection system.

 An important feature of this manual is the articulation of a series of steps that would not only lead to gathering information on the poor and vulnerable, but also how to ensure that such information is translated into a secured data that could be of value to a different stakeholders.

 Concepts of Poverty and Vulnerability

 The concepts of poverty and vulnerability have come to stay in welfare discourse. Though, the two are interrelated, they do not necessarily mean the same. While poverty is a static concept dealing with those that are poor at that point in time (i.e. analyzed at a point in time), vulnerability is a dynamic concept looking at not only those that are poor now but those that are likely to become poor or move out of poverty at a future date. Hence, poverty is an ex post measure while vulnerability is an ex ante measure of condition of living. Figure 1 below provides further insight to the difference between poverty and vulnerability. Vulnerability can be seen as movement into and out of the poverty pool. The vulnerability of a household can therefore be viewed within the context of the risk chain with three interrelated components

 A household here is defined as group of people living together, eating from the same source and impacting on the well-being of each other either by contributing resources to or taking resources from a common pool.

Poverty is the lack of command over commodities (such as food and non-food items, key assets and social determinants) essential for human development leading to pronounced deprivation in well-being or welfare. Vulnerability on the other hand, is the risk that a household or individual will, if currently non-poor, fall below the poverty line, or if currently poor, will remain in poverty. It is also regarded as exposure to adverse shocks, rather than to poverty under a multidimensional view. When uncertainty or shocks occur some individuals are able to manage it and still maintain their welfare level, but some are not able to and so they experience welfare loss. Such individuals are vulnerable to poverty. The poor are particularly more vulnerable, because they already have difficulty in their welfare situation and so with a shock or sudden debilitating events, they fall deeper into poverty.

Dimensions of Poverty and Vulnerability

 Poverty is usually considered from money-metric and non-money-metric approaches. The money-metric approach uses money as the yardstick to determine level of poverty of a given individual or household. This approach uses either income or consumption as the basis for determining poverty. However, because of the weak income data and the possibility of non-reportage of actual income by people in developing economies, the consumption expenditure is seen as a good measure of money-metric poverty. Hence, individuals or households are rated poor or non-poor based on their expenditure on basic needs for healthy living. From the perspective of non-money metric poverty, different dimensions of living are normally used including asset, poor health, poor nutritional status, low level of education or illiteracy, lack of (access to) basic services,  social exclusion, insecurity, lack of freedom and voice and lack of empowerment. In this kind of approach, poverty is viewed from the different aspects of life which cannot be easily monetised but which affect the status of individuals or households. This approach is also referred to as multidimensional poverty.

It must be stated that poverty can be analysed on individual, household or community (geographical) basis. Community poverty deals essentially with lack of or inadequate basic social infrastructure essential for good living by a defined geographical entity which then limits the well-being of inhabitants. Hence, communities can be regarded as poor relative to each other and this can be used to select poor communities using geographical targeting. Household poverty relates to inability of households to meet basic needs of life for its members while individual poverty talks about inability of an individual to meet basic needs essential for healthy living. ex ante (preventive risk management strategies) or ex post (risk mitigating and coping strategies).

Citizens Centre for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR)  has urged citizens to always take enough water, wash their hands with clean running water in the face of the Corona Virus.

This year, World Water Day is focused on the interconnectedness of water and climate change. Water is the repercussions on the supply of drinking water, sanitation, and water used for food and energy production. Or in other words, as suggested by climate-change experts,  

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Against this backdrop, young people are increasingly recognized as the driving force for action behind the climate movement – and for injecting water into the climate agenda. Currently, more than half of the global population is under the age of 30, making it the largest youth population in history and the ones who will be most affected by the climate change induced disruption of water resources.

Having launched several initiatives linking both water and climate change, here are three key lessons from global youth to advance an inclusive and effective climate action agenda: Raise awareness and Be an advocate

Citizens Centre for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR)  has decried the high rate of discrimination and calls for change of attitude.

This year, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is focused on the midterm review  undertaken by the Human Rights Council in Geneva as part of its 43rd session. As the Decade approaches its half-way mark in 2020, a review will take stock of the progress made and decide on further necessary actions.

There are around 200 million people identifying themselves as being of African descent living in the Americas. Many millions more live in other parts of the world, outside of the African continent.

Whether as descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade or as more recent migrants, people of African descent constitute some of the poorest and most marginalized groups. They still have limited access to quality education, health services, housing and social security and their degree of political participation is often low. In addition, people of African descent can suffer from multiple forms of discrimination based on age, sex, language, religion, political opinion, social origin, property, disability, birth, or other status.

The United Nations General Assembly reiterates that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and have the potential to contribute constructively to the development and well-being of their societies. In  the General Assembly also emphasized that any doctrine of racial superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous and must be rejected, together with theories that attempt to determine the existence of separate human races.

The United Nations has been concerned with this issue since its foundation and the prohibition of racial discrimination is enshrined in all core international human rights instruments. It places obligations on States and tasks them with eradicating discrimination in the public and private spheres. The principle of equality also requires States to adopt special measures to eliminate conditions that cause or help to perpetuate racial discrimination.

As the women all over the world celebrate their day, Citizens Centre for Integrated Development and Social Rights (CCIDESOR) has asked them to seek for more positions and not relegate themselves to the background..

International Women Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. International Women’s Day (IWD) has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people.

 Today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. IWD is not country, group or organization specific. ‘An equal world is an enabled world’. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women’s achievements.