By the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations.

New York City, 8 October 2019. The blockade continues to be the fundamental obstacle to the implementation of both the Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This is only demonstrated if we mention the value of the damages caused to production and service sectors in Cuba between April 2018 and March 2019: 79 million dollars, which represents an increase of 28% in relation to the same previous stage.

Can you imagine what it would mean for Cuba to transform the cost of the blockade into the country’s ability to pay? This would allow, in the medium term, to have an official, substantive and sustained source of financing that would give greater dynamism to the investment programs linked to the strategic sectors of the National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030.

In financial terms, it would allow the country’s financial exposure abroad to be favorably reversed, both qualitatively and quantitatively, consolidating the confidence of foreign investors and creditors and substantially increasing the capacity to access financial and capital markets.

But the current Cuban scenario is quite the opposite.

Strategic and prestigious national industries such as Biopharmaceuticals are affected every year with millionaire economic losses in research, development, production and commercialization of their products, as a consequence of the blockade. U.S. measures against Cuba not only limit academic and scientific exchange, but also deprive the U.S. people of receiving the benefits of biotechnology and pharmaceutical products developed in Cuba, which are novel and promising for human health.

Examples abound: the importer-exporter FARMACUBA reported the existence of difficulties in obtaining raw materials for the manufacture of medicines as a result of the blockade against Cuba. Between the 1st of April 2018 and the 31st of March 2019, in the company producing medicines “8th of March” there were interruptions in the productive process, due to the impossibility of acquiring the raw material with the required periodicity. Approximately 2,000 oral suspension units and 61,184 capsules were discontinued.

Meanwhile, a manufacturer of medicines from an Asian country reported not being able to ship the injectable Phenytoin 250mg/5ml to Cuba, because the banks of that country rejected the processing of any documentation related to the island, for fear of being sanctioned by the U.S. This situation led to seek another supplier in Latin America under less favorable conditions.

On the other hand, the Colombian supplier PROENFAR was contracted for the purchase of large volume parenteral serums, but having a U.S. shareholder, the operation could not be completed, affecting the production of 1 million 995 thousand 300 bags of serum.

This is an unofficial translation, original text in Spanish: http://misiones.minrex.gob.cu/es/articulo/industria-biofarmaceutica-cubana-sufre-los-embates-del-bloqueo

In the picture Brando Benifei , Member of the European Parliament from Italy.

Brussels, October 3: The European Bangladesh Forum (EBF), a Bangladeshi diaspora organization based in Europe at an international conference on “Bangladesh and South Asia: Security Challenges and Threats from Violent Extremism and Role of Government and Civil Society” in Brussels underscored the need to forge more concerted efforts and work together with the governments to stop violent extremism across the globe. Speakers in the conference said, none is free from extremist threats in this globalized world and said, dialogue is the one of the main solutions to counter it.  

European Bangladesh Forum EBF organized this conference in the European Press Club in Brussels with EBF President Ansar Ahmed Ullah in the chair. In the conference speakers stressed, in the age of globalization now the threats and challenges of violent extremism including all religion and racial conflicts cannot remain limited only in the South Asia or in any region, rather its destructive impacts equally threat the people of the USA and Europe at the same level.

Hence we have to work together to stop the violence and extremism with long term integrated plan, they added.

EBF Vice President Bikash Chowdhury Barua presented welcome address in the conference. In the opening session of the conference noted development activist and human rights activist from Bangladesh Asif Munier present key-note paper on “Rise of Violent Extremism and Instability in South Asia including Bangladesh: Key Threats, Challenges and Way Forward”. Associate Member of the South Asia Institute from the University of Heidelberg, Germany Dr Wolfgang-Peter Zingel presented talk on the Political Economy of Violence in the South Asia and Visiting Fellow of Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels Dr Tommaso Virgili presented talk on Islamism, Religious Intolerance and Outgroup Hostility between Bangladesh and Europe. Asian Head of Germany international broadcaster Deutsche Welle Debarati Guha addressed the occasion as guest of honour.

The technical session was chaired by EBF Advisor Dr Ahmed Ziauddin, while renowned British Political Analyst and Journalist and Recipient of ‘Friend of Bangladesh Award’ Chris Blackburn talked on Lifting the Veil: Radicalism in Bangladesh. Member of the European Parliament from Italy Brando Benifei and the Member of Parliament from the Netherlands Niels van den Berge addressed the session. Among others, First Secretary of Bangladesh Embassy in Brussels Fakhruddin Ahmed, Belgium Coordinator of Global Solidarity for Peace M M Murshed, noted community leader Dr Farouque Mirza, Dutch Representative from Ahmadia Group Kawsar Ahmed, President of Secular Forum Switzerland Khalilur Rahman Chowdhury, Writer Priojit Debsarkar, community leader from Belgium Bazlur Rashid Bulu, community leaders from Germany Rokeya Sultana Rothe and Kamal Bhuya took part in the discussion.    

Speakers urged mutual understanding, respect, integration to the mainstream society and sense of belongingness with respect and dignity especially for the young communities in the global communities including the European and Asian society to prevent the involvement of the youth members with the extremist groups. 

Member of the European Parliament Benifei said, as the second and third generation of the immigrant families in Europe and especially in Italy cannot integrate themselves in the mainstream society and at the same time because of the attractive offer of the extremist groups, the young communities have become prey to the violent activities. Under these circumstances initiatives have to be adopted to stand beside the young people to increase their sense of respectful belongingness, he added. 

Speakers also warned that not any particular religion should be tagged with the violent extremism increasing the fire of racial and class conflicts among different religious groups. Rather they urged the strategy of setting all groups in the table of dialogue to prevent the tendency of extremism in the concerned region.     

Dutch MP Niels van den Berge in his speech said, it will not bring any solution, if the vulnerable and threatening groups are kept and left behind in seclusion. Unlike they should be brought to the table of mediation and dialogue to bring them back to the mainstream society. There is no alternative of dialogue to ensure the peace in the society, mentioned the young Dutch MP.     

A total 65 representatives from civil society, social and human rights organization, media outlets, researchers, development activists, European politicians, professionals from Bangladesh, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom took part in the conference. 

Ms Margarita Šniutytė-Daugėlienė joined Eurojust as National Member for Lithuania on 20 August. Ms Šniutytė-Daugėlienė replaced Ms Laima Čekelienė, who returned to Lithuania after serving as Eurojust National Member for 11 years.

After receiving a Master’s Degree in Law from Lithuanian Law University in Vilnius in 1999, Ms Šniutytė-Daugėlienė began her legal career as a public prosecutor in the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of Klaipeda, Lithuania, where she worked for 13 years, dealing with international legal cooperation and analysis of prosecution policy, as well as conducting and supervising criminal investigations. From 2011 to 2017, Ms Šniutytė-Daugėlienė served as EJN contact point.

In 2012, Ms Šniutytė-Daugėlienė was promoted to Chief Public Prosecutor of the 2^nd Criminal Prosecution Division at the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of Klaipeda, which specialises in fighting fraud, money laundering, smuggling, other crimes against the economy, business order and the financial system. She worked there for four years supervising these investigations. During that time, Ms Šniutytė-Daugelienė attended several coordination meetings at Eurojust.

In 2016, Ms Šniutytė-Daugėlienė was appointed as Deputy Prosecutor General. During that time, she supervised international cooperation activities, training and protection of the public interest, including the activities of territorial prosecutor’s offices, of the Prosecution Service. She filled that position until her arrival at Eurojust.

Commenting on her appointment, Ms Šniutytė-Daugelienė said: ‘I learned about particularities of the work of Eurojust ten years ago during a Eurojust marketing seminar in Lithuania. I am so happy to finally be able to serve both my country and my colleagues at Eurojust as National Member.

My twenty-year prosecutors’ experience as well in international cooperation matters should provide me with an excellent basis for carrying out my duties here in the Eurojust family. I fully understand the role and added value of Eurojust in fighting serious organised cross-border crime and I will do my best to contribute to helping Eurojust to play a leading role in the areas of security and justice. I look forward to the opportunities and challenges ahead.’

Photography by Eurojust.

By Dr. Andrew Sheng.

This month, Malaysia celebrates its 62nd anniversary of Independence, led by 94-year old but digitally savvy Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Singapore also celebrated its 54th National Day this month, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speaking in Malay, Mandarin and English about how to prepare Singapore for climate change. At the 74th anniversary of Independence, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced an ambitious plan to move the capital from Jakarta to Borneo.

Traveling around ASEAN this month made me realize that while the rest of the world is more preoccupied with the turbulent present, Southeast Asia is already thinking and preparing for the future.

The reason for this is pretty straight forward. At 600 million people with more than US$2.5 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP), ASEAN economies remain one of the youngest and fastest growing region in the world. ASEAN’s success since the 1960s has been built on trade, peace and stability, and dedication to economic growth rather than politics. Its future success hinges on its political neutrality, despite attempts by the Great Powers asking the region to choose sides.

In Hanoi for a Young Scholars Initiative meeting of young academics, I was struck by how Vietnam was already planning for a digital economy by 2030 and 2045.

Having touched 7.1 percent GDP growth in 2018, and with just under 100 million population, Vietnam has been a major beneficiary of China shedding its low-cost industries and the diversification of the Asian global supply chain.

In 2010, Vietnam achieved the World Bank’s middle-income status and at the current trajectory, could be larger than Singapore’s economy by 2029, according to a DBS study.

In order to maintain its growth momentum and to provide jobs for its growing youth, Vietnam envisaged four possible digital futures, as buyer or seller of digital products and services.

In the first Heritage scenario, using traditional engines of growth with low digital transformation, the additional growth could be minimal.

In the second scenario of Digital Exporter, using overseas companies hiring Vietnamese workers for exports, the projection shows some improvement, but only marginal benefits.

The third scenario of Digital Consumer leverages off Vietnam’s own large consumer market, but the amount of current jobs at risk would be one-third higher than the two earlier scenarios.

The fourth scenario of a Digitally Transformed Economy, across all industries and government services, predicted an increase of 1.1 percent additional annual GDP growth, but 38.1 percent of current jobs would be at risk of transformation or disruption.

In essence, Vietnam realizes that its own industries can be cannibalized by relying only on the foreign sector and should therefore have a total domestic transformation that engages digitally with the rest of the world. That scenario lays out a road map that would give priority to infrastructure, network security, increasing digital skills and capabilities, modernizing government, an industry 4.0 and national innovation plan, and significant tax and regulatory reform.

Arriving in Jakarta last week for a conference on digital finance, I was struck how traffic from the airport has significantly improved, while everyone was also very focused on how digital transformation, social justice and climate change would be critical to Indonesia’s future.

The move out of Jakarta, one of the most congested urban conglomerations in the world, would cost $33 billion over 10 years to build the new capital in Kalimantan. But another $40 billion would be spent on transforming Jakarta, as two-fifths of the city is below sea level and parts are sinking due to rising seas and soil settlement.

Indonesia is moving fast into the digital space, because its internet user growth rate is three times faster than the global average, and its internet user community is only 56 percent or 150 million out of its total population of 268 million. President Jokowi understands fully that “data is the new type of wealth for our nation, it is now more valuable than oil”.

But since Indonesia is one of the biggest markets for Google, Facebook, Youtube and WhatsApp, the key to future growth will be the access to data. Will Indonesian companies, government and start-ups have access to data so that they can compete equally with multinationals that are willing to pay for such data? If we as individuals cede our private data to these platform companies, which then sell them as “private income”, when will data become a public good for growth?

One reason why I am optimistic about ASEAN as digital economies is that they are actually more innovative than the present indicators suggest. If you look at the Global Innovation Index 2019, you would find that Switzerland is number 1, the United States (3) and Singapore (8), while Hong Kong, China and Japan are 13, 14 and 15th respectively. On the other hand, Malaysia ( 35 ), Vietnam ( 42 ), Thailand ( 43 ) and Philippines ( 54 ) are behind Latvia ( 34 ) and nearer India ( 52 ).

These scores are essentially weighted in ways like the famous IQ tests, which were essentially Euro-centric in bias. In the digital space, innovation and ability to capture markets are very much in the SPEED x SCALE x SCOPE framework. China was able to compete rapidly with the US, because of the scale of its internal market (800 million internet users), high speed broadband infrastructure available, and scope of hybrid services across multiple sectors (Alibaba and WeChat).

Clearly, within ASEAN, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines have scale, with populations over 100 million each. ASEAN’s real strength is the youth of the population, already digitally savvy and moving into middle and higher income ranges. Hong Kong and Singapore score highly, but that is due to the higher weighting given to institutions, infrastructure and market sophistication, as you would expect from world-class cities. But Singapore came only 34th in terms of creative output, and Hong Kong came 33rd in terms of knowledge and technology outputs.

It is precisely because the ASEAN countries have youth, diversity of culture and access to world-class knowledge, as well as strategic geographical location, that they will become the cutting edge digital future. And since they are, as prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic rightfully claims, ‘champions of multilateralism’ so much needed in a ‘theatre of brewing expectations’, that of  ‘still worryingly bilateral’ Asia.  

No economy today can afford to be complacent. Least of all in terms of flawed indices. To think that Hong Kong, considered by the Heritage Foundation to be number one in economic freedom, can descend into protests because of an intergenerational dispute over the rule of law and inequality, means that we need a root-and-branch review of how to compete in a complex digital world.

***

About the author:

Dr. Andrew Sheng is distinguished fellow of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong and a member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance.

An earlier version of this text appeared in Jakarta Post under the title: A digital August in ASEAN.