Day: January 21, 2023

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UN Rights Chief Launches $452 Million Appeal to Protect, Defend Human Rights

The U.N.’s top human rights official, Volker Türk, appealed Friday for $452 million to fund the critical work of the high commissioner’s office in protecting and defending human rights throughout the world this year.

The high commissioner’s office is the guardian and defender of human rights. It is the global watchdog of abuse and violence. As such, it puts the spotlight on violators of human rights to pressure a change in bad behavior.

In his appeal to donors, human rights chief Volker Türk noted there can be no durable peace nor sustainable development without human rights. He said it was important to bring human rights to life in every part of the world to achieve stability and attain justice.

“We need to insist on action–globally, regionally, and domestically—so that we address inequalities, that we strengthen social protections, that we eliminate discrimination in whatever form, and other root causes of conflict, and that we address environmental crises and misery,” said Türk.

The high commissioner’s office has a difficult task. There are many egregious human rights crises that need to be addressed. They include Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the deadly protests in Iran, the continued internment of more than a million Muslim Uyghurs in so-called reeducation camps in China’s Xinjiang region, and the Islamist insurgency in Africa’s Sahel region.

Türk emphasized protecting human rights is essential in combatting these ills. He said human rights are at the core of the United Nations charter and guide the world body’s principles and purposes.

“We know that now more than ever, we need human rights to keep the world stable and provide us a roadmap for a better future as part of the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human rights) 75 initiative and beyond,” said Türk.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or UDHR. High Commissioner Türk said he plans to use the anniversary to bring the words of that seminal document to life.

He is urging donors to support his appeal for funding so his office can strengthen its ability to provide a better future for all.

Source: Voice of America

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Sections of Balkan River Become Floating Garbage Dump

Tons of waste dumped in poorly regulated riverside landfills or directly into the waterways that flow across three countries end up accumulating behind a trash barrier in the Drina River in eastern Bosnia during the wet weather of winter and early spring.

This week, the barrier once again became the outer edge of a massive floating waste dump crammed with plastic bottles, rusty barrels, used tires, household appliances, driftwood and other garbage picked up by the river from its tributaries.

The river fencing installed by a Bosnian hydroelectric plant, a few kilometers upstream from its dam near Visegrad, has turned the city into an unwilling regional waste site, local environmental activists complain.

Heavy rain and unseasonably warm weather over the past week have caused many rivers and streams in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro to overflow, flooding the surrounding areas and forcing scores of people from their homes. Temperatures dropped in many areas Friday as rain turned into snow.

“We had a lot of rainfall and torrential floods in recent days and a huge inflow of water from (the Drina’s tributaries in) Montenegro which is now, fortunately, subsiding,” said Dejan Furtula of the environmental group Eko Centar Visegrad.

“Unfortunately, the huge inflow of garbage has not ceased,” he added.

The Drina

The Drina River runs 346 kilometers (215 miles) from the mountains of northwestern Montenegro through Serbia and Bosnia. and some of its tributaries are known for their emerald color and breathtaking scenery. A section along the border between Bosnia and Serbia is popular with river rafters when it’s not “garbage season.”

Some 10,000 cubic meters (more than 353,000 cubic feet) of waste are estimated to have amassed behind the Drina River trash barrier in recent days, Furtula said. The same amount was pulled in recent years from that area of the river.

Removing the garbage takes up to six months, on average. It ends up at the municipal landfill in Visegrad, which Furtula said “does not even have sufficient capacity to handle (the city’s) municipal waste.”

“The fires on the (municipal) landfill site are always burning,” he said, calling the conditions there “not just a huge environmental and health hazard, but also a big embarrassment for all of us.”

Environmental woes

Decades after the devastating 1990s wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Balkans lag behind the rest of Europe both economically and with regard to environmental protection.

The countries of the region have made little progress in building effective, environmentally sound trash disposal systems despite seeking membership in the European Union and adopting some of the EU’s laws and regulations.

Unauthorized waste dumps dot hills and valleys throughout the region, while trash litters roads and plastic bags hang from the trees.

In addition to river pollution, many countries in the western Balkans have other environmental woes. One of the most pressing is the extremely high level of air pollution affecting several cities in the region.

“People need to wake up to problems like this,” Visegrad resident Rados Brekalovic said.

Source: Voice of America

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US Treasury Secretary Yellen Kicks Off Africa Tour in Senegal

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen went to Gorree Island in Senegal Saturday, and spoke of the “unspeakable cruelty” of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

“Ultimately, Goree Island reminds us that the histories of Africa and America are intimately connected,” Yellen said after touring the island. “We know that the tragedy did not stop with the generation of humans taken from here.”

Later Saturday, Yellen met with Senegalese President and head of the African Union Macky Sall, as well as finance minister Mamadou Ba.

At the opening of the talks with Ba she said she planned to discuss infrastructure projects, pandemic preparedness, democracy strengthening and anti-corruption partnerships.

“Senegal, like many other countries, has experienced rising domestic inflation amid increased prices for food, fuel, and fertilizer. At the same time, as advanced and emerging economies have slowed down in response to the most recent global shock of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the external environment for developing economies like Senegal has become more challenging. Minister Ba and I will build on our conversation from last fall to discuss how to build a more resilient global economy in the face of overlapping shocks”

Yellen also acknowledged Africa’s susceptibility to the climate crisis, noting that 17 of the world’s top 20 climate-vulnerable countries are African.

Friday, she announced U.S. plans to expand partnerships with Africa on conservation, climate adaptation and access to clean energy, and noted U.S. President Joe Biden’s intentions to provide over $1 billion to support African-led climate resilience efforts.

Yellen acknowledged America’s contribution to the construction of West Africa’s largest wind farm, located just outside Dakar.

Yellen began her 10-day trip to Africa Friday with a visit to a U.S.-funded business incubator for youth and women in Dakar, Senegal.

As the first female U.S. treasury secretary, Yellen got a warm round of applause from the businesswomen at the meeting.

In a speech following the visit, Yellen emphasized America’s intention to expand trade and investment in Africa.

“The United States is all in on Africa, and all in with Africa,” she said. “And our engagement is not transactional. It’s not for show. And it’s not for the short term.”

Yellen’s trip comes on the heels of last month’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, where Biden committed $55 billion in economic, health and security aid to the continent over the next three years.

Several members of the Biden administration, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Special Climate Envoy John Kerry, have already traveled to Africa.

Biden, first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also have plans to visit.

U.S. engagement with Africa took a backseat during the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Beijing was investing billions in African infrastructure projects and becoming Africa’s largest trading partner, while Russian-backed paramilitary forces fanned out across the continent.

Africa is home to some of the world’s largest mineral reserves, which will be critical for the Biden administration’s plans to promote clean energy.

Sarah Danzman, an international studies professor at Indiana University Bloomington, summed up the purpose of Yellen’s Africa visit.

“The U.S. wants to emphasize that U.S. investment is a better and more reliable way to deliver widely shared growth and prosperity across the continent,” she said, “precisely because it is transparent, aligned with values of democracy and human rights, and also tied to governance reforms to reduce corruption.”

That is in stark contrast to the Chinese model of investment, which has prioritized quick construction and resource extraction over good governance requirements, she added.

After Senegal, Yellen will continue her trip with stops in Zambia and South Africa.

Source: Voice of America

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AI Tools Can Create New Images, But Who Is the Real Artist?

Countless artists have taken inspiration from “The Starry Night” since Vincent Van Gogh painted the swirling scene in 1889.

Now artificial intelligence systems are doing the same, training themselves on a vast collection of digitized artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app.

The images generated by tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weird and otherworldly but also increasingly realistic and customizable — ask for a “peacock owl in the style of Van Gogh” and they can churn out something that might look similar to what you imagined.

But while Van Gogh and other long-dead master painters aren’t complaining, some living artists and photographers are starting to fight back against the AI software companies creating images derived from their works.

Two new lawsuits —- one this week from the Seattle-based photography giant Getty Images —- take aim at popular image-generating services for allegedly copying and processing millions of copyright-protected images without a license.

Getty said it has begun legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London against Stability AI — the maker of Stable Diffusion —- for infringing intellectual property rights to benefit the London-based startup’s commercial interests.

Another lawsuit filed Friday in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco describes AI image-generators as “21st-century collage tools that violate the rights of millions of artists.” The lawsuit, filed by three working artists on behalf of others like them, also names Stability AI as a defendant, along with San Francisco-based image-generator startup Midjourney, and the online gallery DeviantArt.

The lawsuit said AI-generated images “compete in the marketplace with the original images. Until now, when a purchaser seeks a new image ‘in the style’ of a given artist, they must pay to commission or license an original image from that artist.”

Companies that provide image-generating services typically charge users a fee. After a free trial of Midjourney through the chatting app Discord, for instance, users must buy a subscription that starts at $10 per month or up to $600 a year for corporate memberships. The startup OpenAI also charges for use of its DALL-E image generator, and StabilityAI offers a paid service called DreamStudio.

Stability AI said in a statement that “Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.”

In a December interview with The Associated Press, before the lawsuits were filed, Midjourney CEO David Holz described his image-making subscription service as “kind of like a search engine” pulling in a wide swath of images from across the internet. He compared copyright concerns about the technology with how such laws have adapted to human creativity.

“Can a person look at somebody else’s picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?” Holz said. “Obviously, it’s allowed for people and if it wasn’t, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the nonprofessional industry too. To the extent that AIs are learning like people, it’s sort of the same thing and if the images come out differently then it seems like it’s fine.”

The copyright disputes mark the beginning of a backlash against a new generation of impressive tools — some of them introduced just last year — that can generate new images, readable text and computer code on command.

They also raise broader concerns about the propensity of AI tools to amplify misinformation or cause other harm. For AI image generators, that includes the creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery.

Some systems produce photorealistic images that can be impossible to trace, making it difficult to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s AI. And while most have some safeguards in place to block offensive or harmful content, experts say it’s not enough and fear it’s only a matter of time until people utilize these tools to spread disinformation and further erode public trust.

“Once we lose this capability of telling what’s real and what’s fake, everything will suddenly become fake because you lose confidence of anything and everything,” said Wael Abd-Almageed, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California.

As a test, The Associated Press submitted a text prompt on Stable Diffusion featuring the keywords “Ukraine war” and “Getty Images.” The tool created photo-like images of soldiers in combat with warped faces and hands, pointing and carrying guns. Some of the images also featured the Getty watermark, but with garbled text.

AI can also get things wrong, like feet and fingers or details on ears that can sometimes give away that they’re not real, but there’s no set pattern to look out for. And those visual clues can also be edited. On Midjourney, for instance, users often post on the Discord chat asking for advice on how to fix distorted faces and hands.

With some generated images traveling on social networks and potentially going viral, they can be challenging to debunk since they can’t be traced back to a specific tool or data source, according to Chirag Shah, a professor at the Information School at the University of Washington, who uses these tools for research.

“You could make some guesses if you have enough experience working with these tools,” Shah said. “But beyond that, there is no easy or scientific way to really do this.”

But for all the backlash, there are many people who embrace the new AI tools and the creativity they unleash. Searches on Midjourney, for instance, show curious users are using the tool as a hobby to create intricate landscapes, portraits and art.

There’s plenty of room for fear, but “what can else can we do with them?” asked the artist Refik Anadol this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he displayed an exhibit of his AI-generated work.

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Anadol designed “Unsupervised,” which draws from artworks in the museum’s prestigious collection — including “The Starry Night” — and feeds them into a massive digital installation generating animations of mesmerizing colors and shapes in the museum lobby.

The installation is “constantly changing, evolving and dreaming 138,000 old artworks at MoMA’s Archive,” Anadol said. “From Van Gogh to Picasso to Kandinsky, incredible, inspiring artists who defined and pioneered different techniques exist in this artwork, in this AI dream world.”

For painters like Erin Hanson, whose impressionist landscapes are so popular and easy to find online that she has seen their influence in AI-produced visuals, she is not worried about her own prolific output, which makes $3 million a year.

She does, however, worry about the art community as a whole.

“The original artist needs to be acknowledged in some way or compensated,” Hanson said. “That’s what copyright laws are all about. And if artists aren’t acknowledged, then it’s going to make it hard for artists to make a living in the future.”

Source: Voice of America