By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Nov 25 1994 (IPS)

On the first reading of Russia’s draft 1995 budget in parliament Friday, lawmakers have shown a readiness to use their votes as a political weapon and challenge the government by stalling adoption of the fiscal blueprint.

Basic disagreements exist over the government’s income and expenditure plans for the next year which lawmakers say are unrealistic and will damage the economy.

Massive cuts in state funds to heavy industry, agriculture and regional administrations are envisaged to put tight curbs on government spending.

Yevgeny Yasin, recently-appointed economics minister, said: “It is high time to cut expenditure. This will not result in a substantial production fall though it may increase unemployment.”

According to the draft budget, state revenues will total 755 trillion roubles (one dollar is 3,220 roubles) while outlays are estimated at 826 trillion roubles, leaving a gap of 77 trillion roubles which is to be bridged through the issue of government securities, foreign investment and international credits.

Credit flows from the Russian central bank are to be severely slashed in an attempt to bring monthly inflation rates to 1.5 percent by the end of 1995, down from the current average of eight percent.

Lawmakers say the revenue estimates and inflation projections are fanciful and will probably withhold their approval, which president Boris Yeltsin can circumvent by simply dismissing parliament.

Mikhail Zadornov, head of the Duma committee on budget, taxes and finance Mikhail Zadornov has said that in its present form the draft budget will fail within two months of its approval since the optimistic forecasts have no relation to the reality.

He claims that pressure to release government funds for salaries, pensions, allocations to the cash-starved defence sector and other necessary outlays will force the government to loosen its pursestring with an inevitable default in the tight monetary controls which have been envisaged.

Yeltsin will chair a major conference to be held in the Kremlin on Saturday to be attended by top officials with representatives from parliament, Russian regions, state industries and private business.

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By IPS Correspondents
ROME, Nov 22 1994 (IPS)

Senior Algerian opposition forces Tuesday demanded that the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), be readmitted to the democratic process in strife-torn Algeria.

The opposition leaders made their plea in Rome where 12 opposition groups had been meeting for two days of talks aimed at promoting reconciliation and dialogue in Algeria.

As many as 30,000 people may have died in civil unrest in Algeria following the suspension of elections in 1992 that the FIS were poised to win.

The talks had been held under the aegis of the Roman Catholic peace group, the Community of Sant’Egidio, a group that has played a key role in peace talks in Angola, Sudan and Mozambique. The Algerian government invitations to attend the meeting.

The Algerian government boycott prompted senior FIS delegate Anouar Haddam, exiled president of the FIS parliamentary delegation, to comment: “The government’s refusal to come to the negotiating table is a testimony to its desire to prolong the vicious cycle of violence”

Haddam claimed that his group was opposed to violence and pledged its support for a multi-party system. He also called on Algerian President Liamine Zeroual to distance himself from the security forces fighting Muslim opposition and for FIS leaders under house arrest to be allowed to meet FIS members.

Former Algerian President and hero of the liberation struggle against France, Ahmed Ben Bella called on both sides to take steps to calm a situation that he described as close to civil war.

Ben Bella added, however, that the government will have to take the first step by freeing political prisoners, closing special anti-terrorist courts and, above all, recognising the FIS as a political movement.

“Both sides will have to take steps to calm the situation but the government has to act first,’ said Ben Bella. “It must free political prisoners and accept the FIS as a political force. Once that is done, then the FIS can be called on to make concessions.”

Ben Bella, leader of the moderate Movement for Democracy in Algeria, had earlier criticised Western powers for their failure to denounce what he called “major human rights abuses” by the military backed Algerian government.

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By IPS Correspondents
DAKAR, Nov 19 1994 (IPS)

The woman in the conference centre exhibition hall is 65 years old and she has travelled from afar.

“In Lesotho there is no policy for the informal sector,” she says referring to her homeland, thousands of kilometres away at the other end of the continent.

Guanyta Sekheca is a businesswoman. Her presence in the Senegalese capital this week, for a forum on women attended by non- governmental organisations (NGO’s) showed that the economic and political darkness that is the outside world’s image of Africa, is only part of the story.

In all over 450 African businesswomen attended the NGO Forum of the Fifth African Regional Conference on Women, held to prepare for the Fourth International Conference on Women and Development in Beijing in 1995.

The conference itself will be held here next week.

Wearing colourful tunics and scarves, dressed in the latest fashion and accessories, they were conspicuous in the hall. But this was no fashion show: ideas were shared and contacts established. African enterprise was promoted.

Under the theme ‘Feminine Entrepreneurship’, the women, in debates and workshops, enunciated familiar problems. Limited access to credit was cited. Problems with finding and penetrating export markets. Recipes were exchanged – but also notes on experiences. And a few contracts were signed as well.

The women traders of West Africa are legendary for their plumpness and vigour as much as the enterprise with which they seek to tread where political leaders only talk about going.

Economists recognise that they are the continent’s real free traders. Although their activity is largely informal, their impact is not negligible.

But there are problems. Space on the informal market is becoming confined. Many previously grassroots women now flaunt their affluence, muscle out the people with whom they once shared space.

“Even the so-called rich people are also in the market where grassroots women are trying to make their life,” says Sekheca. “That’s why I’m here.”

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By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Nov 18 1994 (IPS)

A multitude of projects are being planned to put the grand ideas of the U.N. International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) into effective action on the ground, say the heads of the world’s family planning organisations.

But under the hype of good intentions, there lies real concern that the broad policy of the plan will deflect scarce funds away from core activities — the provision of contraceptives and family planning counselling to ordinary women.

Delegates met in London this week for the four-day annual meeting of the Central Council of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) to discuss how best to carry forward the recommendations of the ICPD, held in Cairo in September.

The Cairo conference was deemed a great success by many, though the language was not forceful enough to satisfy some.

Britain’s Minister for Overseas Development Lynda Chalker said at a reception Thursday: “Cynics have suggested that the language of the Cairo Programme is rhetoric, and that the promises made by political leaders in national delegations are unlikely to be fully implemented. But politicians the world over have stressed that the ICPD vision is an idea whose time has come.”

In her speech, delivered by David Nabarro of the British Overseas Development Administration (ODA), she pledged the ODA to continue its partnership with community run family planning and reproductive health programmes, and provide increasing support through bilateral programmes.

Britain is giving 100 million pounds (150 million dollars) over the next two years to fund 50 health and population projects in developing countries, up from 32 million pounds in 1993.

The funding is sorely needed, according to Abdulkadir Abdullahi, chairman of the Nigerian Family Planning Association (FPA), where contraceptive prevalence has doubled in recent years but the use of modern methods still remains one of the lowest in the world, largely due to lack of access and affordability.

Impressed with the organisational abilities of women delegates in Cairo, Abdullahi is now seeking to make use of the so far largely untapped potential of women’s groups in Nigeria. He plans to get these groups together to pinpoint problems and solutions before carrying the family planning message back to women that it otherwise could not reach, he told IPS.

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By IPS Correspondents
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 17 1994 (IPS)

Haiti’s reputation as an environmental disaster zone – a barren, depressing landscape with vast areas of land left unused – was reinforced last weekend by the ravaging winds of Tropical Storm Gordon.

Trees were uprooted and houses were covered in mud as the storm hit the Caribbean nation of 6.3 million. Hundreds of people and livestock were killed. Scores were listed as missing: damage to infrastructure was costly.

But agriclutural experts, confident that the nation with the tag of poorest-in-the-hemisphere can grow enough food to help itself, are pressing ahead with an ambitious plan to create breadbaskets out of desolate terrain.

“Given the human resources Haiti has at its disposal and concrete aid from the international community… Haitian agriculture can (be restored) to its rightful place in the national economy,” says Jacques Wiame, resident representative of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

In concert with other donors and the Agriculture ministry, FAO has launched a multi-million dollar programme to revitalise agriculture in a nation whose land has been desecrated as harshly as its political freedoms have been ravaged.

Haiti’s seemingly unending sequence of coups and vicious dictatorships, counter-coups and ruptured attempts at democracy have shaped its world image as much as its poverty tag.

Under the programme, peasants will be given direct aid to promote farm prroduction and encourage viable alternatives to the destruction of the environment – which in Haiti has been rapid and unrelenting.

Action to safeguard the environment is a key component of the new programme. FAO wants to prevent – or at least minimise – disasters of the kind that occurred here last weekend. Flood waters will be prevented from overflowing into ravines – many of which have shanty-towns erected on their banks.

There will also be an intense programme of reforestation, done jointly with the Agriculture Ministry and Non governmental organisations (NGOs).

Later this month FAO will allow rural communities to collect water from streams trickling down the slopes of ravines, Wiame said. Peasants will be encouraged to raise fish and to plant fruit trees.

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By IPS Correspondents
PRAGUE, Nov 14 1994 (IPS)

The croupier is calling for last bets in one of Eastern Europe’s great economic transformation games, but the roulette wheel will likely spin for another decade or so before the real results are known.

On Monday, Czechs lined up at post office windows for what will probably be the last time, to take part in voucher privatisation, a key chapter in their country’s transformation from communism to capitalism.

“I don’t know if I’ve done well,” retiree Bohumil Sodomka said after registering his privatisation share booklet at Prague’s central post office. “I’ll only know that in five or 10 years.”

The scheme worked like this: For 1,000 crowns (about 36 dollars, or a bit less than the average weekly salary), adult Czechs bought a booklet containing coupons worth 1,000 investment points.

Booklet holders then traded their points for shares in up to ten of the hundreds of enterprises privatised in each of two waves. Share prices were set somewhat randomly at first, then rose or fell according to demand.

In the two waves — the first of which began more than three years ago — 1,848 enterprises with a total book value of some 12.3 billion dollars have been wholly or partly transferred to private hands. That averages out to about 2,000 dollars for each of the six million adults who participated. So while the process has been something of a gamble, it’s been a hard bet to lose.

“In fact it was property for free, so you really could not have gone wrong,” Sodomka said. “And I don’t know of any better way to transfer property from the state into private hands.”

Monday marked the last deadline for the selection of company shares. The results of this round will be made public by the end of this month, and shares will actually be distributed sometime this winter.

While the privatisation process has hit a few bumps along the way — most notably a corruption scandal implicating the programme’s head just two weeks ago — by most accounts it has been a fabulous success.

“This is like jumping over hundreds of years of development in Western capital markets in one and a half years,” said Richard Wood, managing director of Wood & Co., a Prague brokerage house. “Some problems are to be expected. It’s sort of like throwing a load of apples out of a truck; some will get bruised.”

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By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Nov 11 1994 (IPS)

Russia’s 1995 draft budget which was last month presented to parliament by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin is likely to be rewritten by a new team of ministers who have this week taken charge of economic management.

Russian first deputy prime minister Anatoli Chubais Friday told reporters at a press conference: “We know what we have to do. The year ahead will not be easy, but the government looks to the future with confidence.”

Chubais was promoted by President Boris Yeltsin last week and said he will handle the output of the new ministers for economics and finance, Yevgeny Yasin and Vladimir Panskov, who flanked him.

The trio will guide the second phase of Russia’s free market reforms and threaten to ultimately eclipse the role Chernomyrdin plays as head of the government.

However, Chubais’ optimism could prove to be misplaced since Chernomyrdin has displayed a strong survival instinct during his two years at the helm.

The youthful — and sometimes arrogant — reformer has also been singled out for virulent attacks by Russian opposition lawmakers who mistrust the massive privatisation programme which he has implemented.

Among the major future tasks outlined Friday were to achieve financial stability, promote private investment, improve living standards, curb prices and overcome the recession by 1996-97.

According to veteran economist Yasin: “The main concept of the 1995 budget will be macroeconomic stabilisation as a prerequisite for investment and economic growth. The focus will be on institutional changes for a favourable investment environment.”

Replying to questions about the response of multilateral finance organisations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to the recent cabinet changes, Panskov said that the most important aspect of the government revision was to ensure uniformity in economic policies.

“If there is unanimity among us, it will not change our position vis-a-vis the IMF and other institutions,” he stressed.

However, the present shape of the government is described as a coalition cabinet with representatives of all the mainstream political trends finding a place in it.

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By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Nov 10 1994 (IPS)

Britain’s charitable sector is undergoing a role change that removes it far from the vision of Victorian philanthropy that has long endured in the public consciousness.

No longer is it just a question of hand outs to the poor at home and abroad — instead the very scope of work is expanding like an elastic string, a conference in London was told Thursday.

Since 1979 Conservative governments have sought to contract out public services to voluntary organisations in its drive for a free market economy.

And the opposition party, Labour, has stated they believe the sector can do more in the delivery of services and for community regeneration, while maintaining their independence.

Stuart Etherington, director of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, is in favour of the contract culture as a new means of bringing income into the sector.

He told the annual charities conference held by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) that: “Contracts for care and services has led to them becoming more local, and therefore more responsive. Indeed many services have been provided for users for the first time, which the public sector has not been able to provide.”

The trend opens up questions about charities’ relationships with the government, about whether pitching for contracts limits their independence and innovativness both at home and abroad.

Despite his advocacy of contracts, Etherington warned that voluntary organisations at home should not be forced to subsidise the public sector just to ensure their clients receive a decent service.

The emphasis must be on providing a high quality of service which empowers and involves its users, he said.

And he rejected the situation where voluntary organisations have been left with no option but to take on contracts which are removed from their core principles as an “unwelcome redefinition of charity forced from the outside”.

To take advantage of the opportunities opened up by government contracts, and better marketing techniques, the number of registered charities has mushroomed to more than 170,000. The sector as a whole is believed to receive 17 billion pounds (28 billion dollars) a year in donations, grants, earnings and endowments.

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By IPS Correspondents
AMMAN, Nov 9 1994 (IPS)

Delegates from 22 Middle East countries gathered at the Arab Region Preparatory Conference here have been at pains to point out that Islam is a religion which teaches them openness, love and moderation in the modern world.

“I consider Islam as the only system that can save humanity from all its problems,” said Yansuruha Bint Mohammed, director of Mauritania’s Department of Family Planning.

She believes the West has misconceptions of what Islam and the Koran means to Middle East women.

“In reality Islam gives women equality with men, even though some clergymen misinterpret this and say we are not.”

Another of 320 delegates gathered here for what is a preparatory meeting to the Fourth International Women’s Conference in Beijing agreed that Islam had greatly enriched her role as a woman.

Dr Elmira Suleimanova, chair of the Azerbaijan Women’s Association, said: “It is only since we erased our communist past that I have been able to practice our religion completely. Now I see it as beautiful religion also with scientific fundamentals.

“However, I can only agree with progressive Muslims and the progressive aspects of the religion which teaches us good human values.”

She said she had no contact with fundamentalists and had recently met with highly educated and sophisticated Iranian women who claimed Iran was a paradise for women.

A 29-year-old Yemeni delegate said she wore the Niqab — a garment which covers her face and her body — in obedience to her total Islamic belief.

“I do not agree with any of the Islamic fundamentalist extremists. I am wearing the Niqab here because it does not prevent me from mixing with people from other religions, including men.”

She could not imagine any true Muslim would behave like some extremist groups whose only aim is to mar the image of Islam and make others fear it.

An Algerian delegate said she had been on the receiving end of Islamic fundamentalism in her country and said she believed the end result of their strategy would be plunge the country into a moral and political darkness.

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By IPS Correspondents
AMMAN, Nov 9 1994 (IPS)

Women and children in Lebanon and Palestine have suffered most from years of civil war and political and social instability in the region, say two academics attending this week’s Arab region preparatory meeting for the 1995 women’s conference.

They are among 320 women from 22 countries across the region who are meeting in the Jordanian capital to prepare for the Fourth International Conference on Women and Development (IWD) to be held in Beijing, China in September next year.

Dr. Fahmiyya Sharafuddin, Professor at the Lebanese University’s Institute of Social Sciences, and member of the two Lebanese committees preparing for Beijing said 16 years of war beginning in the mid 1970s had left physical and mental scars on the country and its people.

“The civil war had four main effects: immigration, forced migration or expulsion, physical and mental handicaps and poverty, where women had to become the bread-winners,” said Sharafuddin.

As for the effects of the war with Israel she said one would have to add the negative impact of the body and mind of being held in captivity by the enemy.

Sharafuddin and Leila Khaled, a Palestinian freedom-fighter and member of the General Union of Palestinian Women, together produced a report detailing the hardships which women and children in particular faced and continue to face due to the region’s political instability.

Sharafuddin said that about 600,000 Lebanese had been displaced during different phases of the war, about half of them between 1975 and 1976, suffering from unfit residential places like offices with no sanitary facilities, bombed out buildings, or those in areas subjected to constant bombardment.

“We have no statistics,” said Sharafuddin. But she added that organisations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had done studies on the psychological effects of the war on children and found many to suffer hallucinations, nightmares and symptoms of fear.

“We deduced that the same effect occurred on women, who with their children, had seen the horrors of the wars and the deaths of parents and other relatives,” she said.

In addition to all this, many women, like men became prisoners of war. In most cases, the Israelis beat, rape and tortured them.

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