Jorge Rafael Videla swears in as the head of the military junta on Mar. 24, 1976. Credit: Public Domain

Thirty-seven years after leading the coup d’etat that ushered in the most brutal dictatorship in the history of Argentina, former army commander Jorge Rafael Videla died in a common prison Friday.

Convicted in several cases for crimes against humanity, the former dictator was found in his cell without a pulse, according to the medical report from the Federal Penitentiary Service. He was 87 years old.

Videla was serving several sentences in the Complejo Penitenciario Federal Número 2 in the city of Marcos Paz in the eastern province of Buenos Aires, in a section of the prison where he was held with dozens of other human rights violators from the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

“I never killed anyone,” Videla stated. In every conviction against him he was found to be the “intellectual author” of crimes against humanity. He himself admitted as much in the book “The Dictator” by journalists María Seoane and Vicente Muleiro. “There was no lack of control. I was above everyone,” he told the writers.

Human rights groups, the families of victims and observers of the fight against impunity for the de facto regime’s crimes said Videla’s death in a common prison was a powerful symbol, but did not represent the end of a cycle and was merely one more landmark in the process.

The executive director of Amnesty International in Argentina, Mariela Belski, told IPS that Videla “will be remembered for the (dictatorship’s) most brutal and appalling excesses.”

“But the most important thing here is that justice was done, Videla was convicted, and he died in prison,” she said, stressing that Argentina “took a major stride forward in bringing these crimes to trial, and became a model for the region and for the global South.”

But Belski warned that the death of the dictator “does not bring the process to a close. This is an ongoing process, which Argentina is spearheading, but which must continue in the country and in the region.”

Videla’s death in prison “is a very important symbolic development,” Víctor Abramovich, executive secretary of the Institute of Public Policies on Human Rights of South America’s Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, told IPS.

“Ten years ago this was unthinkable. Today it is the result of a process of regional scope, a process that is moving forward at different speeds, under different laws, but is generating very interesting debates throughout Latin America,” said the representative of the bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Abramovich, a former vice president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said the fact that the former dictator died in a common jail “reaffirms the principle of equality before the law.”

“This process, which is moving ahead at varying rates, is occurring in Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay, as well as Guatemala, where (former dictator José Efraín) Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison (on May 10),” he said.

In Argentina, 422 human rights violators, mainly members of the military, have been tried since 1983. Of that total, 378 were convicted and 44 acquitted, according to the prosecution unit for the coordination and monitoring of cases involving human rights violations.

In the last two years, trials have picked up speed, thanks to measures such as the accumulation of cases committed in each torture centre. In 2012, 24 trials ended in 134 convictions and 17 acquittals.

As part of the fight against impunity, the organisation Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo has managed to identify more than 100 sons and daughters of political prisoners who had been kidnapped as children along with their parents or were born in captivity.

Some of those stolen children now hold public posts – as national legislators, city councillors or executive branch officials, like the secretary of human rights, Martín Fresneda.

In 1976, then army chief Videla led the junta made up of the commanders of the three military forces after the coup that overthrew the democratic government of Isabel Perón.

Under his leadership (1976-1981), thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured, killed and forcibly disappeared. Government records that are gradually being updated account for more than 11,000 victims of forced disappearance, while human rights organisations put the total number at 30,000.

When the regime collapsed in 1983, the former junta members were tried. In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life in prison for 66 murders, 306 kidnappings, 93 cases of torture and 26 cases of theft.

He spent five years in a military prison along with other officers, enjoying privileges that were denounced by the media and human rights groups. But in 1990 they were pardoned by then president Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

However, Videla was arrested again in 1998 in connection with the theft of children born to political prisoners – a crime he had never been convicted of and thus was never pardoned for.

But it was the declaration of the presidential pardon and the two late 1980s amnesty laws as unconstitutional that reactivated a number of human rights cases against him over the last decade. In 2010 he was handed a live sentence for crimes committed in the central province of Córdoba and in 2012 he was sentenced to 50 years for the theft of children.

He was also tried for crimes against humanity committed by the regime in the central province of Santa Fe and the northern province of Tucumán.

In the trials, Videla did not recognise the authority of the civilian courts to try him, and complained that he was a “political prisoner.”

He did so once again on Tuesday May 14, in another case related to Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing, exchanging and eliminating left-wing opponents.

On his last appearance in court he looked unwell, with difficulty walking and a trembling voice.

But he never repented in public. On the contrary, he said he gave the orders for the crimes committed by his subordinates.

In his last statements to the press, to the Spanish magazine Cambio 16 in March, he urged young officers to rise up against the government of Cristina Fernández “in defence of the institutions of the republic.”

The first launch of a Trident missile on Jan. 18, 1977 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Credit: U.S. Air Force

But Chekhov’s storytelling trope is troubling if applied to the world’s weapons technology today, which include an estimated 17,300 nukes – used primarily by nations as props to leverage international power.

According to the Ploughshares Fund’s World Nuclear Stockpile Report, an estimated 8,500 nukes belong to Russia and 7,700 to the U.S. The seven other nations with a nuclear arsenal trail far behind: they include France (300), China (240), the U.K. (225), Pakistan (90-110), India (60-110), Israel (60-80) and most recently North Korea (<10).

“It’s hard to imagine any military mission that will require the use of one nuclear weapon. The use of 10 weapons would be a catastrophe beyond human experience, and 50 is unthinkable,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation based in the U.S.

“The number you need to actually deter an enemy from attacking the U.S. with or without nuclear weapons is very, very low. To be on the safe side, you might want a couple of hundred,” he told IPS.

“The idea that we need thousands of nuclear weapons… is an outmoded, irrational, expensive legacy of the Cold War,” he said.

While the U.S.’s nuke budget is secret, Cirincione estimates that in the next decade, the U.S. will spend 640 billion dollars on nukes and its related programmes – such as missile defence systems, environmental clean-up of nuclear activity and the technological upgrade of the current nuclear arsenal.

Asked about the U.S.’s role in pushing for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation on the international scale, Cirincione said, “The U.S. is probably the most influential voice in this debate, but it can’t do it alone. Most importantly, it needs Russia to reduce the arsenals with them.”

On Feb. 5, 2011, the U.S. and Russia entered into force a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), in which both nations agreed by 2018 to limit the number of their warheads to 1,550; and the number of their combined intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 800.

“If the U.S. and Russia can agree to cut their arsenals in half, for example, as they did in the 1980s and the 1990s… it would be universally applauded, and it would be very difficult for bureaucracies and political opponents to resist that in either country,” said Cirincione.

But U.S. progress for disarmament and non-proliferation has stalled in the past few years. George Perkovich, director of the Nuclear Policy Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, attributes the U.S.’s balk partly to internal politics in Washington.

In his April 2013 monograph, Do Unto Others: Toward a Defensible Nuclear Doctrine, Perkovich writes, “A relatively small, specialized community of experts and officials shapes U.S. nuclear policy.”

Members of this community often distort nuclear threats to the U.S., as well as the best ways to respond to such threats, argues Perkovich. They do this not in the U.S.’s national security interest, but in their own career interests to prevent “their domestic rivals from attacking them as too weak to hold office”.

Nukes deter U.S.-led regime change

Perkovich also notes in his monograph that Iran, North Korea and Pakistan believe having their own nuclear arsenals deter U.S.-led regime change. They fear the fates of nuclear-free Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.

Asked how the U.S. should respond if future world governments – oppressive or not, who are acting against U.S. interests – continue pursuing nukes to prevent regime change, Perkovich told IPS that would be a difficult problem.

“The one and only thing nuclear weapons are good for is to keep people from invading your country. So, states and leaders that worry about getting invaded tend to find nukes attractive, or alliance with the U.S. attractive,” he said.

“Non-proliferation would be easier to achieve if states didn’t worry they were going to be invaded and/ or overthrown if they didn’t have nuclear weapons.

“The problem, clearly, is that some governments are so brutal and menacing to their own people and neighbours that it is hard to foreswear trying to remove them,” he added.

Perkovich recommended that the U.S. limit pressure against repressive governments to political and moral means, as well as to sanctions; and that the U.S. clarify it won’t act militarily, if the repressive regime does not attack its neighbours or seek nukes.

Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, argued that vying for nukes, in Iran and North Korea’s cases, may actually be counterproductive.

“I don’t think it improves their security, I think it isolates them even further,” he said. “It prevents them from forging the kind of international ties that can really aid their country, build their economies (and) increase their influence.

“That means that in order to stop those countries from getting or keeping nuclear weapons, you have to address their legitimate security concerns. A part of the engagement with those countries has got to be security assurances that guarantees then that you won’t attack them, or that their neighbours won’t attack them.”

Obama’s nuclear legacy

During his December 2012 speech at the National War College in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said, “Missile by missile, warhead by warhead, shell by shell, we’re putting a bygone era behind us.”

Cirincione explained that pursuing nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation has been important to Obama since his youth. Obama’s first foreign policy speech as president – in Prague in April 2009 – and his first foreign policy speech after re-election both focused on nukes.

“The president faces a multitude of pressing issues, but only two of them threaten destruction on a planetary scale: global warming and nuclear weapons,” said Cirincione.

While opposition to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation is prevalent inside Washington, it pales in comparison to opposition facing warming, immigration, or tax reform.

“This is an opportunity for the president to make a major improvement in U.S. and global security with a relatively small investment of his time,” said Cirincione, who explained that Obama’s efforts to curb nukes may conclude a historic arc, which started with President John F. Kennedy’s efforts in the 1960s and was accelerated by President Ronald Reagan’s efforts in the 1980s.

Cirincione said, “(Obama’s) got three and a half years to do it. If he starts now, he can get the job done. He can change U.S. nuclear policy to put it irreversibly on a path to fewer nuclear weapons, and eventually (eliminate) this threat from the face of the earth.”

Recently reconstructed Maracaná stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Governo do Rio de Janeiro CC BY 3.0

As Brazil prepares to host several sporting mega-events, human rights abuses and authoritarian interventions by the authorities are going on behind the scenes, favouring major urbanisation projects and stadium remodelling, a study says.

The state has forced almost 30,000 families across the country to leave their homes, according to the Comité Popular da Copa e das Olimpíadas (World Cup and Olympics People’s Committee), made up of around 50 social movements, researchers, NGOs and trade unions.

The Committee’s report, “Megaeventos e Violações dos Direitos Humanos no Rio de Janeiro” (Mega-events and Human Rights Abuses in Rio de Janeiro), says that in this city alone, which will host the 2016 Olympic Games, 3,000 families have already been displaced from their homes and another 7,800 are facing eviction.

The forced displacement of thousands of people and the privatisation of public areas constitute the dark side of Brazil’s sports projects, claims the study which was presented in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday May 15.

Brazil will host the FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup, which is to be held in 12 cities, in 2014. A dress rehearsal for this will be the ninth FIFA Confederations Cup, a tournament between the top national teams from each continent, from Jun. 15-30 this year.

“Our fears are being confirmed. The benefits and social legacy that are so widely trumpeted really hide a dark legacy: an elitist, segregated and unequal society. It is a sad thing to see,” said Orlando Alves dos Santos Jr., a sociologist and urban planner and one of the study coordinators.

In the view of dos Santos Jr., a researcher at the Observatório das Metrópoles and the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning and Research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the multi-million dollar investments carried out under the cloak of preparations for the World Cup and the Olympic Games go beyond the scope of sports facilities and are part of a grand project of urban reform.

Interventions in cities, like evictions, are having an immense impact in terms of social exclusion, the report says.

“We show that poor people are being relocated outside the areas of investment, which are concentrated in the centre, south and north of Rio de Janeiro. These are areas where real estate has vastly increased in value,” dos Santos Jr. said.

He said the rise in housing prices has been largely based on the displacement of the poor towards the outskirts of the city.

“All this has been accompanied by a complete lack of information for the evicted families, as well as coercion, the use of violence and human rights abuses. What is happening in the city is extremely serious,” he said.

Christopher Gaffney, a U.S. geographer who studies public policies on sports and security for big events, told IPS that evictions and the privatisation of public spaces represented a great failure of democracy in this country of over 195 million people.

“The policy is a big step backwards. It represents a reversal of values that eliminates the role of government as the guarantor of essential citizen services, like housing and culture. Forced evictions are a clear violation of the right to housing. Real estate speculation is rife in Rio,” he said.

Gaffney, who is also a member of the People’s Committee and a researcher with the Observatório das Metrópoles, said that there is no “coherent practical criterion” being applied in the eviction of thousands of families, and that those affected by the policy complain of a lack of dialogue, transparency and information.

“The uncertainty associated with being made homeless creates constant panic, and terror methods are being used to expel these people from their communities at any price,” he said.

“There have been cases where families have been told they must vacate their homes, without any time for them to collect their belongings; and others where their eviction has been negotiated right alongside the bulldozers that were ready to demolish the houses. This is enormous psychological pressure,” he said.

Only a few families received a decent house after their eviction, Gaffney said. The authorities provide indemnities for expropriation that are not enough to buy a new house, or they put families into housing plans that have requirements that many of them cannot meet, such as that the head of household must have a formal sector job and a bank account.

The report argues that the real Olympic legacy in Rio de Janeiro will be that of “an even more unequal city, which will exclude thousands of families and destroy entire communities…a project that will appropriate the majority of benefits for a select few economic and social agents.”

One of the main criticisms is the privatisation of public spaces worth millions of dollars. In Rio de Janeiro, sporting facilities like the legendary Maracaná stadium are being renovated, as well as infrastructure and transport facilities, and urban remodelling projects have mushroomed.

The initial budget for investment in the city for the upcoming events has risen by 95 percent, from 1.1 billion dollars to 2.1 billion.

Construction and renovation of stadiums represent nearly 25 percent of this total. Maracaná stadium, where the finals of the 2014 World Cup will be played and where the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games will be held two years later, is the focus of controversy because it has been granted in concession to a private consortium for 35 years.

The cost of the works undertaken was 600 million dollars, compared with the 370 million dollars initially envisaged. The concession of the stadium into private hands for the first time led the public prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation into the state’s investments for the sporting mega-events.

In Gaffney’s view, the sporting facilities will be transformed from cultural spaces into consumption centres.

“Stadiums are the platforms where local culture is expressed in football. It would be virtually cultural assassination to substitute faithful, traditional fans with ‘clients’ or higher class consumers,” he said.

Moreover, the private initiative will also lead to the demolition of a major aquatic park, a public school, an athletics track and a prison, in order to build two multi-storey car parks for 2,000 vehicles, a heliport, a shopping mall and a football museum.

“This shows the vulnerability of Brazilian democracy, even as Brazil is trying to build stronger institutions. The FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games are accelerating anti-democratic processes,” Gaffney said.

Dos Santos Jr. said that society has taken the multi-million dollar renovation passively, and that construction of the Maracaná complex “will bring about the destruction of multi-purpose facilities that were used to practise other sports.

“It will only be a space for show and a commercial centre. Athletes in other disciplines will not have a place to train. And the entrance tickets will be too expensive,” he said.

The People’s Committee intends to present its study to public authorities, FIFA, the International Olympic Committee and international organisations such as the United Nations through its Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.

Capannori, a rural town in the Italian province of Lucca, in Tuscany, boasts a proud history. Six years ago, it became a trendsetter and leader, not just in Italy but throughout all of Europe, as the continent’s first Zero Waste town.

Today, about 3.5 million Italian citizens carefully separate their waste into coloured bags before leaving them on their doorsteps for collection. The movement has spread further, too, to other European countries.

Giorgio del Ghingaro, the mayor of Capannori (population 46,000), defines this trend as a “cultural revolution” that began with rubbish and in time went much further. Since 2007, residents of Capannori have reduced their urban waste by 30 percent as part of a Zero Waste strategy, which calls for the elimination of all superfluous waste – anything that can be recycled – by 2020.

In Capannori, they are determined to meet this deadline. “Zero waste by 2020 is no utopia,” Del Ghingaro told IPS. “It is a concrete goal that we intend to achieve”.

Initially, the project looked quite ambitious. Its model was that of San Francisco, California, which differs from the Tuscan town in size and conformation. Nevertheless, Capannori’s midterm goal of recycling 75 percent of waste by 2015 was met long in advance; the town currently recycles 82 percent.

After Capannori tested door-to-door collection methods in one part of the town, successfully increasing waste recycling from 30 to 70 percent, “we decided to embark in the zero waste adventure”, Del Ghingaro said.

Locals leading the charge

Since then, Capannori’s waste management has become a model for all of Europe. Joan Marc Simon, executive director of Zero Waste Europe and European coordinator of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, confirms that the Zero Waste strategy came to Spain through the Italian experience.

“When it comes to waste, Italy has given the best and worst examples. But if you look at the good practices…Italy, and Capannori in particular, was definitely the model to follow,” Simon said.

Since 2008, one hundred cities in Spain, all concentrated in Catalonia and the Basque Country, have adopted the strategy. “Southern Europe is giving a lesson on how things can and should be done in a more sustainable way,” Simon stressed.

Rossano Ercolini, Capannori resident, primary school teacher and environmental activist who is the winner of the Goldman Prize for the environment, knows well how local experience can serve the rest of Europe. After all, he is the man who introduced the Zero Waste strategy to Italy – and Europe.

It all started in 1997, when construction plans for an incinerator near the town encountered firm opposition. Ercolini, who is also president of Zero Waste Europe and of Ambiente e Futuro (Environment and Future), a local environmental movement, was part of it.

“Ambiente e Futuro engaged in a strong fight against this proposal,” he explained. Key to the movement’s success was “informing the population about the risks of incineration and offering them a viable alternative. Without the citizens’ commitment, none of this would be possible.”

In introducing the alternative method of separate collection, “we held assemblies…to explain the new system and to hear people’s doubts and concerns,” Ercolini recounted. “We worked together to find solutions.”

Luigi, 67, has lived in Capannori for over 40 years. “People always find a reason to complain,” he said of the door-to-door collection system. “But honestly, I find the system quite easy.” Residents are given different rubbish bins and coloured bags, along with an informational flyer. “If you get it wrong, they just leave a note explaining why they could not collect your bag”.

Indeed, the town decided to avoid fines, so as not to penalise residents for mistakes, and to reward residents instead. Beginning in January, they introduced something called an R-feed waste system.

“Every family has been given a fixed number of gray bags… for non-recyclable waste, with a code on it. The garbage collector has a reader which stores the data so that every family will pay waste tax according to how much non-recyclable rubbish they produced throughout the year,” Del Ghingaro explained.

Targeting the source

Zero Waste does not mean just door-to-door separate collection. It also requires a series of parallel actions aimed at reducing the production of avoidable waste. “We strongly focused on water,” Del Ghingaro told IPS. “Buying water at the supermarket means also buying a lot of plastic. Therefore we made a strong campaign in order to enhance the use of public water.”

Fifteen public water springs were restored and purified, and plastic bottles have been banned from all schools and public buildings, which now use only public water.

For now, Ercolini’s task is to analyse the 18 percent of rubbish that still requires traditional waste management and find a solution. The results so far show that the main problem lies at the roots of the production chain. “Companies need to take responsibility for what they put on the market and redesign their products in order to make them sustainable,” he says.

Following a letter of concern that the Capannori Municipality wrote to the coffee giant Lavazza, the company started a pilot project to substitute standard non-recyclable coffee capsules for espresso machines with new, reusable ones. “We are also studying a way to use the coffee grounds to grow mushrooms,” Ercolini added.

Zero Waste Europe’s Simon told IPS that he is optimistic and convinced that the Zero Waste strategy could become the standard for waste management. Indeed the EU, through the Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Strategy, has already established that by 2020 all European countries must stop using incinerators to burn anything that can be recycled.

“Our movement is nothing but the vanguard of what…needs to become the norm,” Simon concluded.

Mandeep Tiwana, policy and advocacy manager of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Credit: Mandeep Tiwana

Despite the tall talk at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid and Development Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, today NGOs, trade unions, faith based groups, social movements and community based organisations working to expose rights violations and corruption remain in a state of siege in many parts of the world.

Reports by U.N. officials and respected civil society organisations show that false prosecutions and murderous attacks on activists are rife and threatening to derail international development objectives even as we debate a new framework to replace the Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015.

In fact, moves are being championed by some governments to limit civil society participation at high-level meetings of the U.N. General Assembly through a process whereby states can issue politically motivated objections to the inclusion of particular NGOs in key discussions.

Unfortunately, legal restrictions on free speech, formation of civic organisations and the right to protest peacefully appear to be on the rise despite the rhetoric of engaging civil society in global decision making forums.

In many countries civil society groups are being prevented from accessing funding from international sources, as highlighted by the U.N.’s special expert on freedom of assembly and association in his latest report.

In Russia, non-profit advocacy groups receiving international funding are being subjected to intrusive inspections to ensure compliance with a controversial law that requires NGOs to register under the highly offensive nomenclature of “foreign agents”, or face sanctions.

A draft law currently pending in Bangladesh seeks to implement a cumbersome approval process for civil society organisations receiving foreign funding, in an attempt to discourage criticism of the government.

Egypt is mulling over a new law that would allow intelligence and security agencies to exert control over independent civil society groups.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s most prolific blogger is serving an 18-year sentence for writing about the implications of the Arab Spring for his country. A respected Laotian activist is missing after he criticised state-sponsored displacement of local communities.

In Saudi Arabia, founders of the Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights have been handed 10 and 11-year sentences for “breaking allegiance to the King.” China continues to incarcerate dissident writers calling for democratic reform, including Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiobo.

The situation is alarming in fragile and conflict-affected states. As the civil war rages on in Syria, a number of peaceful civil society activists and journalists are being imprisoned and persecuted in violation of international human rights law.

The actions of Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups have become so murderous that the country is now the deadliest place in the world for trade unionists.

Women’s rights activists challenging patriarchy and religious fundamentalism in Pakistan are gunned down with frightening regularity, while activists from Sri Lanka and Bahrain voicing concerns at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva often face reprisals upon return to their home countries.

In Cameroon and Uganda activists seeking to advance gay rights are not only socially ostracised but also subjected to death threats on a regular basis to prevent them from carrying out their work.

Even in so-called mature democracies, expressing dissent remains an activity fraught with negative consequences. A section of the environmental group Forest Ethics Canada decided to give up its charitable status, including tax advantages, in order to protect itself from intrusive inspections after being blamed by the conservative government of “obstructing” the country’s economic development.

Julian Assange, founder of the activist website WikiLeaks, continues to be hounded for his exposé of U.S. diplomatic cables and, arguably, doing what most investigative journalists do.

In the United Kingdom, the practice of police spies penetrating the environmental movement has prompted a sharp rebuke from the U.N., whose expert on freedom of assembly and association, Maina Kiai, expressed “deep concern” in January about police officers infiltrating non-violent groups who were not engaged in any criminal activities.

As evidence from CIVICUS’ State of Civil Society Report 2013 shows, promises made in Busan about creating an “enabling” environment for CSOs were ignored as soon as the proverbial ink had dried.

With discussions on the post 2015 development agenda well underway, influential civil society groups are urging the U.N.’s High Level Panel to explicitly recognise the centrality of an enabling environment for civil society in any new formulation of internationally agreed development goals.

While politicians are currently preoccupied with kick-starting or maintaining economic growth, there is a real danger that civil society’s right and ability to engage decision makers in various forums will be further limited.

If global development goals are to succeed, civil society needs to be able to operate free from fear of reprisals for advancing legitimate if uncomfortable concerns. After all, civil society groups contribute substantially to development strategies and help find innovative solutions to complex developmental challenges.

More importantly, they help ensure the representation of a wide range of voices, in particular those of the vulnerable and marginalised in development debates. Perhaps this is why they are being persecuted.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

A Congolese man transports charcoal on his bicycle outside Lubumbashi in the DRC. Credit: Miriam Mannak/IPS

With casualties in the long-running conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) now surpassing every conflict since World War II, U.S. policymakers and advocates are stepping up campaigns to raise awareness and push legislation aimed at encouraging new negotiations, assisting in government reforms, and pressuring the neighbouring countries that have propped up the DRC’s government.

Some advocates say the situation today could be better than at any time in recent years for a durable peace process.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently preparing to consider a bipartisan bill, unanimously passed by a subcommittee Wednesday, aimed at supporting international efforts to forge a peace deal in the long-running crisis in Congo.

The bill is an “important step forward in raising awareness within the U.S. Congress and among all Americans of this horrific and tragic crisis in the DRC,” Representative Karen Bass, one of the bill’s lead authors, told IPS.

“To date, this legislation has the support of nearly 60 Democrats and Republicans in the House and efforts are currently underway to introduce a similar piece of legislation in the Senate. It has also received significant support from the NGO community.”

Supporters say they expect that number to increase.

Recent months have also seen a strengthening of advocacy on the part of the Congolese diaspora here in Washington, as well as from the rest of the country and Canada. Legislators say this support has been key in helping the House bill gain the legislative backing it has.

One element of the new bill would respond to a longstanding key demand, urging the creation of a special envoy from the president to the DRC and the surrounding Great Lakes region.

“This legislation calls for such an envoy, and Secretary [John] Kerry, in testimony before both the House and the Senate, has indicated his plan to make an appointment,” Bass said.

“I am pleased that this effort is making progress and urge the secretary to move swiftly to make his decision and develop a comprehensive strategy that relies on diplomacy and engagement to address the complex set of issues that stand as barriers to peace and stability in the DRC and the region.”

Conflict-free consumerism

The war in Congo has been running for almost two decades, taking the lives of nearly six million people as several peace processes have failed. Militias engaged in the war have often used rape and sexual violence as a tool of repression and intimidation.

The economics of the mineral trade have also defined this struggle, with armed groups having been able to control mines and trading routes to prop up their actions.

“DRC is potentially one of the world’s wealthiest nations, but has been unable to unlock the potential of the riches above and below the soil due to the ongoing conflict there,” Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst at the Enough Project, a Washington advocacy group that published a new report on the DRC today, told IPS.

“However, a couple of different policy windows have created the space for a peace process that today has a better chance of success than anytime in the last decade.”

Lezhnev refers to the recent emergence of international pressure on Congo’s neighbouring states – particularly Rwanda – for supporting armed groups within eastern Congo. The World Bank has now withheld 135 million dollars from Rwanda for this reason, and there has likewise been pressure on the Congo to enact greater transparency reforms.

In addition, U.N. Special Envoy to Africa Mary Robinson has been working to establish a more comprehensive and inclusive peace process that addresses the core drivers of violence in the DRC. In February, she and 11 African heads of state established a diplomatic framework to identify reforms that would enable Rwanda, Congo and Uganda to cooperate on the extraction and export of minerals.

“This is a first step, but we think this provides a good roadmap for where we think this peace process should go,” Lezhnev said.

“What needs to happen now is Mary Robinson needs to lead regional negotiations between Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo on economic, refugee and security issues so that all these interests can be put on the table and can be worked out in a transparent and legitimate way.”

Also helping to break the link between the armed groups and the minerals that have in part funded them is new U.S. legislation, enacted over the past year as part of comprehensive financial legislation known as the Dodd-Frank Act. A section of this law targets so-called “conflict minerals”, and is reported to have brought about a 65-percent drop in profits for armed groups from tin, tungsten and tantalum this year.

“The Dodd-Frank Act has resulted in armed groups and their supporters finding it significantly more difficult to profit from an illicit trade, and so there is an opportunity to take advantage of these changing incentives and create structures for legitimate cooperation,” Lezhnev says.

“This shows there is a growing global consumer movement against conflict minerals, and conflict-free products have created new momentum to say that enough is enough when it comes to buying untraceable minerals and turning a blind eye.”

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A further sign of the weakening of the armed groups is the sight of one of the chief Rwandan warlords, Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, sitting in The Hague at the International Criminal Court (ICC) after he turned himself in to law enforcement in Rwanda in March. Analysts say this turn of events has weakened his militia, known as the M23, and increased opportunities for peace.

Meanwhile, countries around the world have increasingly taken notice of the trade and investment opportunities throughout Africa, resulting in greater levels of engagement. However, groups like the Enough Project warn this policy window will not remain open indefinitely.

“We call on the Obama administration to deploy a high-level envoy and to work with Mary Robinson,” Lezhnev said.

“The administration needs to help shape this process, to incentivise the economic cooperation between the countries of the region by setting up a responsible investment initiative for working with the tech companies, metals companies and responsible investors to identify gaps and opportunities for investing in a conflict-free environment.”

Next week, World Bank President Jim Kim and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are slated to travel to Congo and the region.

Yara Mashour, editor of Lilac magazine, wants to confront and challenge stereotypes of Arab women. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

With a subtle blend of colour and shadow, 20-year-old Sumoud Farraj prepares for a photo shoot. Next month, along with three other young Arab women, she’ll appear in a designer miniskirt on the cover of Lilac, an Arabic-language women’s magazine.

Lilac‘s editor-in-chief, Yara Mashour, is in the business of breaking taboos and stereotypes with beauty and fashion. “Lilac isn’t just a regular fashion magazine; it’s a magazine with a cause,” she stresses.

The “cause” is to try to change how Arab women see themselves, how Arab men see them, and how Jewish Israelis see their fellow citizens of Palestinian descent (one in five Israelis is Arab).

In traditional societies accustomed to veiling beauty, exposing one’s beauty requires no small amount of steadfastness – sumoud in Arabic, and Farraj’s first name.

“Some people reject me because of my modelling ambitions,” says Farraj. “I can live with rejection. I am who I am, and I’ll move forward to be known – not just in Israel, but around the world.”

“Our predicament as Arab women demands a mini-revolution – to help ourselves attain freedom, mental and social, and realise ourselves, because we often need our husband’s, parents’, and society’s permission to do something daring.”

Challenging stereotypes

In 2011, Mashour decided to publish a cover picture of Huda Naqash, a Nazarene model crowned Miss Earth, in a bikini swimsuit. It was the first time ever that an Arab woman posed for an Arab magazine in such an outfit.

“Miss Huda rocks this earth!” read the caption. Thanks to the Internet, the tremor was felt throughout the Arab world, arousing a passionate virtual debate with over 70,000 mostly critical posts on the Saudi Arabia-owned Al-Arabiya website.

The suggestive photo was meant to illustrate engrained misconceptions and stereotyping of Arab society in general, Mashour points out. “There was no earthquake,” she adds. “Naqash didn’t get killed. No one threatened her. More than a model in bikini, the picture showed that Arab societies are gradually becoming more liberal in accepting changes.”

“I’m confident in my readers,” adds Mashour. “They mustn’t agree with me – you don’t like Lilac, don’t buy it – but we must debate in a democratic manner.”

Unperturbed by what she calls “this ridiculous media buzz”, she followed up last fall with the same model posing in sexy lingerie.

Powered by women

On Mashour’s desk sit copies of Lilac‘s ancestors from the 1970s, with models in poses more indolent than Naqash’s. “We went through many changes,” she says.

She evokes the Egyptian cinema’s golden era – its suggestive scenes and passionate kisses – and the ensuing conservative reaction. “Now we’re trying to revisit that period of freedom.”

“I’m ready to pose in sexy lingerie,” affirms Farraj.

Lilac is the hook at the end of “The Fishing Rod”, or As-Sinara. Founded in 1983 by Mashour’s father, Lutfi, As-Sinara was the first independent Arabic-language weekly published in Israel.

Following Lutfi Mashour’s death in 2007, the three women in his life inherited his media venture. Yara became Lilac‘s editor, her sister Varia took over the advertising agency, and their mother Vida replaced her late husband as senior editor.

Common wisdom had it that with women at the helm, the newspaper would soon write its own eulogy. Yet As-Sinara remains Israel’s most widely circulated Arabic-language weekly and only newspaper managed by women.

“Women are more open and courageous than men,” quips Varia Mashour. “The male staff are scared of changes. We try things until things work out.”

Pushing for equality

Female innovation – more than empowerment – is what drives Yara Mashour. To innovate, she says, is to break the encirclement of her own existential isolation as a woman in a mainly conservative community, as a Christian in a mainly Muslim society, as a Palestinian in a mainly Jewish state, and as an Israeli in a mainly Arab Middle East.

“We’re on our own,” she confides. “We’re politically uncertain of our place. We want Israel and the world to see us and understand us, to accept us as equal in terms of laws, society and economy.”

Her father would say, “We say we’re first Palestinians; second – Arabs; third – Israelis. But in reality, we behave first like Israelis; then like Arabs; and only then like Palestinians. We’re Israeli – the way we think; react; speak. In essence, we’re all the same, Jews, Arabs. They, the Jews, are the other part of us.”

“I’m a Palestinian,” stresses Mashour. “I’m an Arab; I’m a woman; I’m an Israeli. And I’m trying to make people who’re part of this definition accept me, because I’ve accepted them.”

It’s easier to convince Arab Israelis that women should be equal to men than to convince Jewish Israelis that Arab Israeli women and men should be equal to them, Mashour notes. “Israeli Jews are stuck; know very little about us, though we’re looking them in the face.”

“The one good thing is that Jews and Arabs who live together influence each other,” Mashour adds on a more optimistic note, showing the current cover of 19-year old Lina Makhoul, an Arab woman from the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Acre who just won Israel’s version of “The Voice”.

For Lilac‘s next issue, business-like Mashour has a more traditional cover of a model dressed in a wedding gown.

“In our society, marriage is still the most important ‘job’. We bring to light any woman who wants to achieve a career. Become economically independent, then get married and have children,” she urges, conceding that this goal has not yet been reached. “But we’ve opened an expanding fashion and modelling industry.”

“My next project is to find a Palestinian model from Palestine to participate in international pageants, and to wear a bikini – if that’s what’s required,” but Mashour knows that this task will not be easy.

On a recent Friday evening in Kazakhstan’s cultural capital, Almaty, a small audience was transfixed by the story unfolding on the stage in Avalanche, a play by Turkish playwright Tuncer Cücenoğlu.

Avalanche is a tale of a village whose inhabitants walk on eggshells because their rulers have convinced them that if they flout strict rules governing their everyday lives, they will spark an avalanche that will engulf them.

A childbirth breaks the spell: as the rulers order a woman buried alive for going into labour without authorisation, the child is born. The commotion fails to bring down a disastrous avalanche, and the leaders are revealed to have lied and manipulated to keep the people in check.

The political parallels with Kazakhstan are unmistakable. A country led by an authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has retained power for over two decades through methods that his critics say include sham elections, restrictions on political freedoms, and the silencing of dissent.

Airing this tale about the subjugation of personal and political freedoms to the whims of powerful rulers is provocative, and the Aksaray theatre troupe performing the play has left no doubt that it is sending a political message.

This is a play about how “fear does not let people fight for their rights,” Gulnar Amanzhanova, the troupe’s director, told the audience before the performance. “Maybe it’s necessary to get rid of that fear and fight for justice.”

Last spring the theatre performed Avalanche to raise money for the victims of social unrest in the town of Zhanaozen in December 2011, when 15 people died after police opened fire on protestors in violence that shook Kazakhstan to the core.

Last summer the troupe performed Avalanche again to draw attention to the plight of its founder, 61-year-old Bolat Atabayev, then jailed on suspicion of helping to orchestrate the Zhanaozen violence.

Atabayev is now free, absolved of charges soon after Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience – but others, including opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov and dozens of inhabitants of Zhanaozen, are serving prison sentences on what their supporters maintain are politically motivated charges.

Aksaray – which is mainly a musical theatre troupe – did not initially have a political message in mind when it staged Avalanche, which it performs in Kazakh, long before the Zhanaozen turmoil. After the violence, the play assumed a new significance, the performers say.

“Why did the show change after Zhanaozen? We started to perform it differently. The show took on an edge,” actor Asan Kirkabakov told EurasiaNet.org after a recent performance. “I feel that this is my civic position. I have to perform this; I have to get this across to my audience.”

By a quirk of fate, Avalanche was first staged using a state grant allocated to Aksaray. At that time, Amanzhanova said, the troupe’s main source of funding came from the financial patronage of Kazakh oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov, a political foe of Nazarbayev’s who lives outside Kazakhstan.

That funding has now dried up. Ablyazov is currently on the run from British justice, his whereabouts unknown since he fled the UK last year after a British court ordered him jailed for concealing his assets in a fraud case.

Ablyazov has also become tied up with the real-life drama played out in Kazakhstan over the Zhanaozen turmoil: Astana has accused him of bankrolling the unrest in a bid to overthrow the state, a charge he denies.

Using the arts to send political messages is nothing new, but in Kazakhstan the theatre has more usually been utilised as a platform for promoting messages favourable to Astana than as a forum for airing messages critical of the Nazarbayev administration.

Productions at state-funded theatres, which receive generous arts subsidies, are often lavish affairs that – whether by accident or by design – feed subtly into Astana’s nation-building efforts, such as the popular showpiece opera about national hero Abylay Khan, the 18th-century warrior revered as the founder of Kazakh statehood.

Shows like this use feel-good historical stories to boost patriotic sentiments, but the theatre has also been overtly used to foster loyalty to the modern-day politician who towers over Kazakhstan’s political stage: Two years ago a play called Deep Roots that lionised Nazarbayev in a mythologised version of his life was staged in Astana.

After the recent performance of Avalanche, the Aksaray actors held a question and answer session with the fascinated audience. They explained how they feel driven to perform a play.

“Our job is to have an impact on [public] consciousness,” Almas Azhabayev explained.

In the aftermath of the Zhanaozen rioting, authorities have cracked down on dissent, resulting in the closure of Kazakhstan’s most vocal opposition party, Alga! and the shuttering of independent media outlets.

Are the actors not afraid of suffering retribution from the authorities, one member of the audience asked – a pertinent question given that many who voiced solidarity with the protestors in Zhanaozen later faced unpleasant consequences.

“We have nothing to fear,” Kirkabakov replied. “We’ve done nothing illegal. We’ve done nothing against our authorities.”

*Editor’s note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specialises in Central Asia.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The people of Cunduacán and Huimanguillo, which have a combined population of 300,000, will present a class action lawsuit against Pemex in June.

Oil rigs and pumps. Credit: Bigstock

“There have been several harmful effects; we have carried out tests on soils, sediments and water and we are about to receive the results,” Marisa Jacott, the head of Fronteras Comunes (Common Borders), an environmental NGO, told IPS.

Fronteras Comunes and the Asociación Ecológica Santo Tomás (Santo Tomás Ecological Association) are providing legal advice to the local population, mainly small farmers and fisherfolk, who have incurred great losses due to oil spills and gas explosions.

Mexico’s 2011 Class Action Law allows individuals and the federal consumer protection agency to sue state and private companies. However, the law does not provide for reparations.

The oil industry has been active in Tabasco since the early 1950s, and expanded there from the 1970s onwards with the construction of petrochemical plants, pipeline networks and storage facilities, sparking an economic boom.

But the boom did not result in benefits for the local communities. Instead, the oil industry displaced traditional activities like banana farming and cattle ranching.

The oil industry is active in 13 of Tabasco’s 17 municipalities, producing 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) – of a national total of 2.5 million bpd – according to the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP).

“There is environmental pollution and crop destruction, and there are soils that have lost their fertility. This means that harvests are not as abundant as they were before,” Lorena Sánchez, head of the Tabasco Human Rights Committee (CODEHUTAB), an NGO that has received complaints from local people about these problems, told IPS.

“It has affected people’s diets and caused respiratory health problems as well as blood and skin diseases,” she said.

Since 2011, CODEHUTAB has brought four lawsuits to the federal environmental protection agency, PROFEPA, that have resulted in fines for Pemex, but not in reparations for victims in local communities.

The most recent case, this year, was related to seven gas flares burning in the municipality of Paraíso, where CODEHUTAB took blood samples from 50 children between the ages of seven and 15. Ten percent of the samples had chromosome alterations, linked by the epidemiologists to oil industry activity.

PROFEPA estimates there are an average of 20 crude spills a year in Tabasco. Between 2008 and 2012, the environment ministry recorded 102 sites contaminated by environmental emergencies in the country caused by Pemex, including three in Tabasco.

In addition to Tabasco, the eastern and southeastern states of Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Hidalgo and Puebla and the highways connecting them to Mexico City are regarded as vulnerable to oil industry activity.

The oil industry in this region produces pollution with heavy metals, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitric oxide, volatile aromatic compounds like benzene, hydrogen sulphide, salts, ammonia, cadmium and acids, all of which are harmful to the environment and human health, the NGOs complain.

Manuel Pinkus-Rendón and Alicia Contreras, academic researchers at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, concluded in a study published last year that “the social and environmental fabric of Tabasco reflects a regional development potential considerably below that which existed over 60 years ago, as a result of environmental degradation.”

For their study “Impacto socioambiental de la industria petrolera en Tabasco: el caso de Chontalpa” (Social and environmental impact of the oil industry in Tabasco: The case of Chontalpa), the authors interviewed 200 residents of four towns in the municipality of Cárdenas, 65 percent of whom expressed negative views about oil industry activity, especially because of the pollution and destruction it causes.

“It is a case that has not been addressed. We want the judges to have the fewest possible reasons to reject it,” said Jacott, of Fronteras Comunes.

In April, the local residents presented a complaint to the National Commission on Human Rights. In 2004 they had filed a legal complaint against Pemex in the attorney general’s office, but it went nowhere.

The environmental organisations and local residents have spent two years building their case. The next step will be legal action over damage suffered in the adjacent state of Veracruz, another major oil-producing region.

“We want them to take the required preventive measures. All Pemex does is supposedly carry out remediation of the damage, but it does not invest in maintaining the pipelines and guarding the area,” CODEHUTAB’s Sánchez complained.

The organisations are asking for an assessment of the state of ecosystems in Tabasco, and the dissemination of Pemex’s policies and guidelines for preventing leaks, addressing environmental contingencies and cleaning up polluted sites.

They are also calling for the gradual replacement of fossil fuels with alternative energy sources, as well as regular measurements of the main atmospheric pollutants in affected areas.

US Army Corps of Engineers tours flooded areas in Burlington, North Dakota in 2011. Credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Patrick Moes

Seven in 10 U.S. citizens believe climate change is real and happening now. Yet most have never even contacted a government official about the issue, let alone volunteered with an environmental organisation or taken other action.

These findings are part of an exploration of Climate Change in the American Mind issued  by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.

“They think it’s about polar bears or developing countries, not the United States… not my community, not my friends and family,” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project, told IPS.

Researchers divided the U.S. population into “six Americas” that share similar beliefs about climate change. Seventy percent belong to three major “Americas” that believe, to a more or less strong degree, that climate change is happening, is harmful and is caused by humans.

After falling between 2008 and 2010, public awareness on the topic here has been rising again, probably because of the number and severity of extreme weather events in the last two years. The trend was confirmed by an opinion poll released in April by the Gallup Institute.

The latest dire warning came just this week, when the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, announced that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had passed the critical threshold of 400 parts per million.

To put this number in perspective, the last time the Earth had a similar concentration of CO2 was three million years ago during the Pliocene era, when sea levels were up to 80 feet higher.

“The main way people know about this issue is through media reporting,” Leiserowitz explained. “And when the media don’t report it, it’s literally out of sight and out of mind.”

Bringing climate change down to earth

Television weather forecasters seem ideally suited to become climate change educators: they speak to thousands or even millions of people every day, often three to four times a day, and they are already trusted by their audiences.

The Yale Project is providing them with tools and training to discuss climate change, connecting them with the climate science community and organising debates with meteorologists who hold varying opinions of climate change to foster dialogue.

The idea of making information more accessible also inspired Climate Commons, an online interactive map of the United States, launched on Apr. 22 by the organisation Internews, as part of its Earth Journalism Network (EJN).

Data on climate change indicators – such as temperature, weather events and emissions – and related news stories are visualised on the map, tracking the impact of global warming and the presence, or absence, of media coverage.

“We are hoping that journalists and other communicators, as well as the general public, can all use this visualisation and can understand better what’s going on,” James Fahn, global director of EJN, told IPS.

“Eventually we do definitely want this map to become a source for bottom-up news and information and then observations and news from the public,” he said.

Because while a “good understanding of the problem … is necessary, it’s not sufficient,” he said, adding that more spaces are needed for citizen participation in actual policy making.

Shaping environmental democracy

“Ultimately, how we protect our environment is a fundamental question of how we … exercise our democracy,” Michael Marx, director of the Beyond Oil Campaign at Sierra Club, the largest grassroots environmental organisation in the U.S., told IPS.

David Eisenhauer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) agreed, telling IPS that “providing an opportunity for citizen input is foundational to our democracy”.

In March, the USFWS released its “Climate Adaptation Strategy” outlining nationwide strategies for the next five to 10 years to protect species and resources in a changing climate. Written in response to a 2010 call by the U.S. Congress and produced in collaboration with federal, state and tribal agencies, the strategy benefited during its draft stage from nearly 55,000 comments from individuals and organisations.

The range of actions that can be taken by ordinary citizens to address climate change is broad, and can be as simple as keeping the thermostat in one’s home on a lower setting, as one commenter suggested.

“The combination of personal behaviour choices and civic engagement and activism is a potent tool that has global scale consequences,” said Marx.

According to Leiserowitz, changing individual lifestyles in the United States could cut emissions by 10 percent. “The other 90 percent really has to come from a systemic change,” he said.

That means that public demands for change in the U.S need to be more systematic and urgent, said Leiserowitz.

On Feb. 17, the Sierra Club participated in a Forward on Climate Rally that drew an estimated 40,000 people in Washington D.C.

“We do not see the diversity and occasional conflict within the climate movement as a bad thing,” Marx said. “We accept that a democratic approach – as divisive and chaotic as it can appear – is also the most resilient and strongest [one].”

Fears of “big government”

Climate change is not only an environmental issue, Leiserowitz pointed out. It cuts across multiple aspects of society, including the economy, national security, and cultural and religious beliefs.

Some opponents of actions like mandatory emissions cuts fear they could be a pretext to usher in more intrusive government, as has been seen in other hot-button debates over issues like gun control and health care.

“They’re so afraid of the policy response that they suddenly become very sceptical of the problem itself,” said Leiserowitz.

“This is about something much deeper. It’s about identity, about values, it’s about emotions, and if you don’t know that that’s what you’re dealing with, you will eternally be frustrated when you provide them with more and more facts and they don’t respond the way you think they are going to.”