By IPS Correspondents
MANILA, Jan 23 1995 (IPS)

Activists hope to chip away at the child sex trade in Asia not only through tougher laws and police action, but by changing social factors and attitudes that have abetted the boom in child sex tourism in the region.

In recent years many Western countries have passed laws to discourage sex tourism by making their nationals liable for sexual abuse of children overseas, but campaigners say this is not going to be enough.

Anti-sex tourism campaigners are training their sights on educating and warning Asian families whose children are potential victims. They are also targeting potential sex tourists from Western countries — where offenders largely come from — and the children themselves.

“The ultimate solution to the problem lies in changing human attitudes and human values,” said Ron O’Grady, international coordinator of End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT), an advocacy group formed in Bangkok in 1990.

At an international conference on pornography held in Manila last week, O’Grady pointed to the difficult fact that “changing laws does not necessarily change human behaviour”.

There are up to one million children held in sex slavery and prostitution in Asia, often for tourists inside and outside the region. They are found in Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Taiwan.

Poverty is often cited as the reason for child prostitution’s boom in Asia, but ECPAT finds this simplistic. Asked O’Grady: “Why is it that some families sell their children and others do not? Why does this happen in one poor village and not another?”

He cites the case of a woman who sold her daughter in order to buy a television set, or a village headman who brokers the sale of village children to finance his lifestyle or drug habit. “This is not poverty — this is greed,” he says.

This recognition prompted participants at an ECPAT conference in 1992 to say community values are being eroded by materialism and consumerism, which have “promoted a climate in which sexual gratification and the acquisition of wealth have become the goals of many people and the symbols of happiness”.

More often, however, children are abducted and sold to syndicates or brokers who pass them on to brothel operators for several hundred dollars each.

Police have raided brothels in the Thai coastal town of Ranong which cater to hundreds of thousands of Burmese seamen who live there illegally. ECPAT says there remains at least 40 brothels, complexes of more than 100 filthy cubicles where mostly Burmese girls are forced to have 30 customers a night.

Up to 200,000 women and children are sold into servitude in Pakistan each year, many abducted in Bangladesh and sold for sex.

In 1993 Thai legislator Narong Noyomthai said at least 150 underage girls from Burma, Laos or China were smuggled into Thailand each week, swelling the ranks of the more than 100,000 Thai child prostitutes.

Syndicates bring Filipino girls to East Malaysia, Nepalese girls to India and Indian girls to as far as the Middle East, O’Grady says in his 1994 book ‘The Rape of the Innocent’.

In some countries children are tricked by foreigners, paedophiles who stay in an Asian country for longer periods, frequent its sun-kissed beaches or live there as retirees. Young girls are tempted to leave their homes for cities in search of a better life, where they risk ending up as sex workers.

O’Grady says ECPAT is trying to educate families, especially in rural Asia, “to see that they do not have to sell their children”.

Village children, including those in northern Thailand that is the main recruiting ground for the country’s sex industry, are being taught about the dangers of working in cities. There, girls in villages like Bansan Luang are expected to enter brothels at the age of 12 and earn money for their families.

Efforts are also under way to dampen demand for the child sex trade. Air travellers in Switzerland, France and Sweden get warning notes about sex tourism in their tickets. Last year, German tour groups agreed with their hotels in Asia to bar guests from bringing to their rooms girls below 18 years of age.

A children’s book in Thailand talks about child sex slaves killed in a brothel fire in Pattaya a few years ago and has encouraged Thai children to discuss the problem.

O’Grady says religious missions ranging from Christian to Buddhist groups are helping curb the child sex trade in Asia, discussing it in sermons, classes and pamphlets. But ECPAT also found out that “many of (the paedophiles) are listed as missionaries or church workers”, O’Grady adds.

Reported cases include an Australian Catholic priest who raised funds for a vocational training project for boys and who abused them sexually, and a U.S. Mormon who ran a paedophile network from Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Activists are seeking a much more concentrated effort to reinforce people’s attitudes against child prostitution. O’Grady says the urgency is highlighted by the fact that cases of successful rehabilitation of children who are sexually abused repeatedly are “extremely rare”.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
SYDNEY, Jan 23 1995 (IPS)

The kangaroo may yet become a part of the new flag Prime Minister Paul Keating hopes to introduce with a republic by the year 2001, but traders are more interested to see the animal’s meat become one of Australia’s major exports.

The hopping mammal is one of Australia’s best-loved national symbols, its stylised silhouette gracing the tails of Qantas jets. Some now say if Keating is coming up with a new flag for the country, then it only makes sense that the kangaroo be on it.

But export traders see more to the animal than a lovable mascot. Indeed, they say Australia’s animal products exports should include the kangaroo, making it a ‘harvest’ animal that could be slaughtered and sold in the same fashion as cattle, lamb or chicken.

Commercial kangaroo harvesting has been the topic of intense public debates in Australia and overseas in recent years. Up till 1992, kangaroo was not even allowed to be sold for human consumption in the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and West Australia.

Many farmers, however, consider the kangaroo more of a freeloading pest than anything else. They were only too happy to back a report issued last year by the Bureau of Resource Sciences (BRS) that listed the kangaroo as one of the animals earmarked for the overseas market.

The BRS said the large kangaroos provide Australia with the greatest commercial potential among the selected animals because it has a large population and can be found all over the country. There are about 18 million kangaroos in Australia, a million more than the nation’s entire human population.

The animal is adaptable to the harsh and variable environment of inland Australia, and has unique-tasting high-quality meat. Traders say its skin can also be used for a variety of products.

But while kangaroo meat has now found its way to some barbecue tables in Australia and has even shown up on the menus of posh restaurants, it has not been easy to persuade most Australians to eat it and consider it a natural part of their diet.

And until they do so and boost the domestic market for the product, industry analysts say, the export potential of kangaroo meat will remain poor.

Kangaroos were an important source of food for Aborigines before the colonisation of the continent by Europeans 200 years ago. After that, kangaroo meat became a popular pet food for domestic cats and dogs.

Paul Hopwood of Sydney University’s Department of Veterinary Anatomy says Australians are squandering a “magnificent resource” by not developing a local market for kangaroo meat.

“Kangaroos have long been a minus on the ledger because they cost farmers money to destroy them,” he says. “This is ridiculous because kangaroos are in fact one of the finest game meat animals in the world.”

Nutritionists say the meat is iron-rich and low-fat. The National Heart Foundation recently gave kangaroo cuisine the thumbs up.

Kangaroo meat-eating is getting a boost from the booming tourist trade, which has created a market for indigenous Australian food. After all, Aboriginal corroborees (tribal feasts) are never complete without kangaroo dishes.

But Hopwood says: “What we are hoping to achieve is more than just putting a novelty meat on yuppie plates. We’re trying to establish a domestic market that is a quality market so that we can export kangaroos overseas as expensive venison meat.”

Tony Curtis, manager of the marketing arm of the New South Wales agriculture industry, says there has been a “great tidal wave” of inquiries from Asia about how native Australian animal species could be farmed. One query was from Guangdong, which sought permission to farm kangaroos for meat there.

Still, Curtis comments: “I’m sure that the Australian public would be horrified if they knew we were sending Australian native animals to Asia to be farmed for meat. I think it’s a very sensitive thing.”

“Australians criticise the slaughter of whales and seals by other nations,” adds Milo Dunphy, Australian Conservation Foundation’s longest-serving elected councillor. “Yet Australia conducts the largest slaughter of terrestrial wildlife. Every night, professional shooters kill about 10,000 kangaroos.”

The commercial harvesting of kangaroos is actually controlled by a licensing and quota system. They must be killed by field shooters who are not only licensed by the state conservation authority but need to have the permission from the landowner where the animals are found.

The quotas set by Canberra for the killing of the kangaroo has increased from 1.7 million on 1984 to 4.8 million in 1993. But the kill has consistently been below the maximum, reaching only 54 percent of the quota in 1992.

Dunphy says while this set-up was a compromise between Canberra’s responsibility to be the guardian of native animals and the need to protect farmers from being burdened with too many kangaroos, this is now being supplanted by what he calls “maximum sustainable use” for pet and local meat industries.

But scientist Ross Blick who used to be with the government- funded Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation(CSIRO) argues, “The main reason for supporting a commercial harvest of kangaroos is to help overcome land degradation and protect biodiversity in inland Australia.”

He adds, “The free-range kangaroo can provide the ultimate green, clean, lean product unique to Australia from an animal that is never mustered, branded, castrated or sprayed — an animal that lives a placid life without stress — with an instant end that allows others to survive.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Jan 20 1995 (IPS)

Sugar’s dramatic crash late last week has met some support this week as buyers stepped in and bought on dips. Prices are still lower on average and only a few clicks up on the lows reached last Friday.

Floor sources on the London Commodity Exchange (LCE) said that there has been a fair amount of interest on the physical markets with India picking up five cargoes and China is thought also to be buying.

Rumours that Cuba’s crop was affected by heavy rain last weekend has added some strength to markets. Brokers are treating the whispers about a possible ‘force majeure’ with caution believing that it could be Cuba trying to talk up the price. Whites have been more robust than raws.

“Interest on the physical markets has been good and traders have been buying when prices fall,” said Chris Pack, sugar analyst with London brokers Czarnikow.

At 6.00pm London time on Friday white sugar was trading at 414.50 dollars a tonne for March, 410.30 dollars a tonne for May, with a high of 414.90 and a low of 407.10 on the first position, and 410.30 and 402.50 for the second.

A week ago March closed on the London Commodity Exchange at 402 dollars a tonne. Coffee has been “trading sideways with no clear direction” yet again this week, although markets have seen quite a bit of action, said Neal Rosser, coffee analyst with London brokers ED & F Man.

Any rise in values has met heavy producer selling and prices have fell back again. Even a string of positive announcements from Brazil and Colombia about their participation in retention has failed to push values up consistently.

The ICO meeting in London reaffirmed commitment by producer countries to retention but this was all but ignored by the market, which found it strange that producers are talking retention but selling into a rallies.

But late Friday coffee started to rally as the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) released figures that showed that world coffee exports fell by seven percent in 1994.

Coffee then rallied in New York at midday and hit three-week highs and smashed through key resistance points. Mexico, Colombia and the Cote d’Ivoire showed large falls and Vietnam and Uganda saw higher exports.

Total exports in millions of 60kg bags were 69.767 in 1994. Individual countries’ exports were: Brazil 17.1, Colombia 11.75, Indonesia 5.209, Guatemala 3.263, Uganda 3.134, Mexico 2.863, Vietnam 2.501, Cote d’Ivoire 2.476 and Ecuador 2.296.

Arbitrage trading between London and New York was very active Friday, said exchange sources.

Monday coffee ended in London at 2,795 dollars a tonne for January delivery, 2,801 dollars a tonne for March. By Wednesday coffee on the London Commodity Exchange had moved to 2,825 dollars a tonne for January, 2,832 dollars a tonne for March.

This Friday evening coffee closed in London at 2,903 dollars a tonne for January, 2,965 dollars a tonne for March.

Cocoa edged up in London Friday on bullish reports that United States bean grindings were up 6.9 percent for the last quarter of 1994. New York started the rise and this pulled London values up in its wake.

Cocoa fell back heavily during the week then recovered somewhat on the new United States data. Monday it closed on the London Commodity Exchange at 977 pounds sterling a tonne for March, 977 pounds sterling a tonne for May.

Wednesday it ended at 990 pounds sterling a tonne for the first position, 991 pounds sterling a tonne for May. This Friday evening it closed on the London Commodity Exchange at 1,004 pounds sterling a tonne for March, 1,005 pounds sterling a tonne for May.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
ISTANBUL, Jan 20 1995 (IPS)

The future of the ruling coalition in Turkey hangs in the balance as the junior coalition SHP leader Murat Karayalcin bids for the continued leadership of the country’s left-wing factions at a unity conference here on Jan. 28.

The Turkish prime minister Tansu Ciller believes that a defeat for her friend and leader of the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) will herald a political crisis as his two opponents in the forthcoming polls are both against certain current coalition policies.

One of deputy prime minister Karayalcin’s opponents is Deniz Baykal, leader of CHP (Republican People’s Party) who is former member of the SHP. The other is Mumtaz Soysal, a former SHP foreign minister who is known for his strong opposition against the coalition’s privatisation schemes.

At present the favourite in the prospective polls for leadership in the Turkish Left-wing factions is Soysal. The ruling SHP-DYP coalition depends greatly for its stability on the personal friendship between Ciller and Karayalcin.

Baykal and Soysal have already stated that if they were to gain control of the proposed merged Social Democratic Party they would give conditional support for the ruling coalition.

However, prime minister Tansu Ciller and particularly the DYP right-wing are against a coalition with the left-wing if it is led either by Soysal or Baykal.

The ruling DYP’s unwillingness to continue the coalition with a united left under any other leader than Karayalcin arises from considerations that Soysal or Baykal might not prove as accommodating as Karayalcin to their interests.

The DYP right-wing also considers that if the Turkish Left were to unite under a new leader they could prove a more formidable force in the forthcoming general elections than a party led by Karayalcin.

The SHP and CHP have been forced to seek common ground as public opinion polls show falling public support for both parties. According to a recent poll total SHP and CHP votes have already fallen below 10 percent of a the national total.

The CHP members split from the SHP in late 1992 due to factional strife mainly arising from the present CHP leader Deniz Baykal’s bid for party leadership against the then SHP leader Erdal Inonu. Currently, the CHP holds 15 and the SHP 49 seats in the parliament.

Political affairs observers here are far from convinced that an SHP-CHP merger could carry the social democrats to power. They believe they would need the added support of the DSP (Democratiic Left Party) to achieve that goal. However, the DSP is not included in the unity convention.

The DSP leader and former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit strongly opposes ANY merger with the SHP and CHP.

However, unlike the SHP and CHP, the DSP’s public support, due to Ecevit’s nationalist tone with regard to a solution of the Kurdish question, is on the increase. According to recent public opinion polls Ecevit’s DSP scores some 16 percent support from the voters.

In spite of harsh public criticisms by his rivals Ecevit’s popularity both among social democrat voters and among SHP and CHP rank and file is also on the increase.

Ecevit is confident that his strident nationalism and firm politics will bring him even greater support. He insists that any merger of the left can only mean one thing — that is all other leftish parties joining his DSP ranks with him as the leader.

There have been several abortive attempts in the past to have a united ‘Social Democratic Party’ from the numerous left-wing factions. However, in the past it has always foundered on the question of whom will be the leader.

Some SHP officials are pessimistic that unless the leadership issue is solved before the convention the whole affair could result in chaos.

“Unless concessions are made among the left-wing leadership rivals a merged unity party is hardly likely to gain public confidence,” says Onur Kumbaracibasi, a former SHP public works minister now in the Ciller cabinet.

“If the prevailing uncertainty is continued it is better to think everything over before a convention is held,” he argues. “Maybe it is better for the factions to remain split rather than try to attempt an unworkable merger.

“I would not even sit in the same convention hall with them,” says an angry Soysal, regarding the other leftist leaders, whom he charges with supporting the right’s capitalist platform.

Soysal believes that an early general election in Autumn is inevitable and has called for a restructuring of the social democrats along policies regarding the Kurdish question. Mumtaz Soysal is yet to officially declare his nomination. Soysal wants at least 1,000 delegates to sign his nomination at the convention.

Deniz Baykal, the CHP leader said: “I am running for leadership. Let the delegates decide the result.”

Some 941 delegates from the SHP ranks and 857 from the CHP ranks are expected to vote in the merged convention.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PARIS, Jan 19 1995 (IPS)

Human rights organisations, repelled by the perverse impacts of French severe immigration laws are contemplating seeking justice in international courts.

Herve Derriennic, spokesman for the French non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Terre des Hommes’ (Land of Men), said they were studying very closely the legal options after seeing how French immigration laws violate several international conventions.

Terre des Hommes released this week its own study with details on how French immigration laws have breached the rights of children and of families to stay together enshrined in a number of international agreements ratified by France.

Although immigration laws have become stricter since the 1980s, the study centred on the havoc wrought by the restrictions sought and won by the current Interior Minister Charles Pasqua.

According to the organisations, France has violated such agreements like the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1990 European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Liberties, and the 1989 International Convention on the Protection of Children’s Rights.

Collaborating with the NGO were some of France’s major confederations of associations battling for the rights of children and for the welfare of families, some of which are discovering the abuses of the immigration laws and fighting this kind of battle for the first time.

“One could not say that until the last months of 1993, the family movement was confronted with the problems over immigration,” said Ruben Urrutia, former secretary general of the National Council of Secular Family Associations (CNAFAL).

“The situation is scandalous and the family movement cannot allow this kind of situation to go on,” added Urrutia, now president of the European Network for the Defence of Families’ Rights.

The study, while not exhaustive, is based on the testimonies of immigrants and confirms what human rights and migrant organisations have dreaded all along: the immigration laws, with its ruthless pursuit of illegal foreigners, are tearing families apart.

The Defence Committee has so far received complaints from more than 700 mixed-race couples and over 200 from immigrant parents whose children are considered French.

In all of these cases, the illegal immigrant is unable to put his or her legal papers in proper order and risks or has been deported. In cases where the immigrant is protected from deportation, he or she remains illegal and as a result, is not allowed to work.

Mayors have refused to marry mixed-race couples where one is an illegal immigrant on the suspicion that each marriage with illegal immigrant is one of convenience.

Attempting to follow administrative procedures has also become risky business — after making themselves known as illegal immigrants to the authorities, parents or spouses court deportation.

“Squealing on an illegal immigrant has taken on incredibly enormous proportions. Everyone squeals these days. Teachers, neighbours, grocers, post office clerks, doctors and nurses,” said Patrick Mony of the Immigrants Information and Support Group (GISTI) which helped in the writing of the study.

GISTI personnel, said Mony, has come to warn the immigrants coming to seek counsel and legal help of the stakes.

“We have been forced to tell them that although we would like to speak about their cases with the authorities, the authorities may come after them to deport them,” said Mony.

Narrated in the study is the ordeal of Diana and Gilles, who married without difficulty in April 1993. Diana is from Peru who was an undocumented immigrant at the time of the marriage but because the laws then still accorded full rights to a spouse to a French, she was given a one-year residence permit.

In August, however, the couple received an urgent call from the local prefect under the guise of reviewing Diana’s file. Diana saw her residence permit confiscated and the couple has failed to get it back.

Until the first wedding anniversary, the couple lived in perpetual fear of seeing Diana deported. Diana cannot be deported now, but the human rights organisations say, can stay illegal until the authorities decide otherwise.

Dorine is from the Ile Maurice, born in France and lived in France since 1985. Her first attempts to regularise her legal status failed until she eventually married a Frenchman.

Pregnant in 1993, she tried again but was arrested instead. Freed the first time due to her pregnancy, Dorine was arrested and deported on her second appointment with the prefect with only 30 francs in her pocket.

Her husband was not informed she had already been deported until she was already in Ile Maurice where she eventually lost their baby.

The Pasqua Laws, said Helene Rubak of the French Network for the Right to Live as a Family, have raised all sorts of perversions. “We have started hearing of an oddity like ‘temporary French citizenship’, where one is granted French citizenship and then loses it when the authorities find the tiniest loophole.”

Like many others, she has also begun hearing spiteful remarks from employees when they go to the different government offices to regularise immigrants’ papers.

“Why don’t the French people just marry the French?, the employees would spit out. If you don’t call that ethnic cleansing, what is it?”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Jan 19 1995 (IPS)

The IMF is setting tough conditions on Russia in a draft memorandum which will outline specific measures for economic reforms before a 6.4 billion dollar standby loan is released, according to Russian press reports here Thursday.

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation is here to assess Moscow’s commitment to maintaining strict control on the 1995 budget deficit against the backdrop of the military intervention in the breakaway republic of Chechnya which could setback earlier plans.

Official figures of the cost of the operation have been put at roughly one billion dollars but independent estimates are nearly four times higher.

Economists have warned that if credits totalling an estimated 15 billion dollars, or ten percent of the draft 1995 budget, are held up because of the fresh concerns it could result in a drastic economic collapse.

Russia is banking on external credits to avoid the inflationary impact of printing more money, but external borrowings have been rising steadily with economy minister Yevgeny Yasin this week forecasting that foreign debt could this year rise to 130 billion dollars, up from 85 billion dollars.

Of the total 15 billion dollars in credits which are in the pipeline, more than 12 billion dollars is expected to come from the IMF with which Russia is also discussing the terms of a six billion dollar currency stabilisation fund.

The IMF’s endorsement of Russia’s plans would boost western investors’ confidence which has been flagging because of recent reports indicating reversals in the course of reforms in an uncertain political and economic environment.

President Boris Yeltsin has deputed first deputy prime minister Anatoli Chubais to head the Russian delegation at the world economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, after earlier this week cancelling his own plans to attend the session on Jan. 27 because of the Chechen crisis.

After meeting Yeltsin on Wednesday, Chubais told the official Russian Itar-Tass news agency that he had been instructed to “announce firmly and clearly…that any changes in the economic policy of the government in general and Russia’s policy of privatisation in particular are out of the question”.

Asked about the prospects of IMF and World Bank credits, Chubais reportedly said: “Neither organisation is a political one and gives loans not on the basis of a country’s policy, but its economy.”

In recent months, however, the Russian economy has come under renewed stress with monthly inflation rates shooting up into double digits and the rouble dropping against the dollar.

The Russian currency is now hovering around the 4,000 barrier, down from 3,200 against the dollar last November.

Few details of the week-long talks are available but the IMF team is bound to keenly follow the course of the debate in the lower house of Russian parliament due on Friday when lawmakers take up the draft 1995 budget for its second reading.

The Russian government has forecast a budget deficit of 7.7 percent of GDP in a draft which outlays expenditure of more than 231 trillion roubles (61 billion dollars) and revenues worth 160 trillion roubles (40 billion dollars).

But the Russian government and lawmakers in the state Duma are locked in a battle over fixing the exact cost of the military intervention in Chechnya and legislative proposals which would sanction hefty increases in social spending.

MIkhail Zadornov, chairman of Duma’s budget committee, has warned that the cost of the Chechen operation and restoration of the shattered republic could entail rewriting the entire draft budget.

But finance minister Vladimir Panskov has indicated that the cost of the intervention can be contained within sectoral outlays. In attempts to press ahead with procedures, Panskov has also suggested that detailed discussions can be taken up during the third hearing.

However, finance ministry officials have separately indicated that they will not be in a position to give the exact amount spent in Chechnya till February, a factor which may influence not only lawmakers but also the IMF delegation.

The Duma is also working on legislative measures to hike minimum wages and pensions effective from February in a move which will alter the base of the draft budget since the government’s wage bill is calculated on current figures of 20,500 roubles (five dollars) minimum wage and 34,400 roubles (over eight dollars) for a minimum pension.

Sergei Glazyev, chairman of the Duma’s economic policy committee, has said that government spending will actually be almost 40 percent more than predicted and the industrial slump and failure to stimulate investment is likely to continue.

Further, the IMF will also note that government forecasts for raising domestic revenues through the issue of treasury bills have failed to materialise with Russian preferring to invest their savings in dollars.

In a report in the latest issue of the influential ‘Moscow News’ weekly, ALexander Dmitriev has written, “in the Duma, lawmakers think that recent events in the country have undermined peoples’ trust in the government without which it is impossible to attract savings”.

Measures to force businesses and banks to buy state securities and convert dollar holdings into roubles have been announced this week but are meeting with stiff opposition.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
STOCKHOLM, Jan 19 1995 (IPS)

Norway is poised to embark on a far- reaching overhaul of its foreign aid policy in an attempt to promote greater accountability among recipient nations and clamp down on inefficiency.

The Scandinavian country is the world’s most generous aid donor, allocating a higher percentage of national income to development projects than any other nation.

However, a long-standing unease over cases of corruption and wastage in many recipient countries, on top of poor returns from numerous Norwegian-funded projects has prompted a top-level reappraisal of national aid policy.

The Aid Commission on North-South and Aid Policies, an independent panel of Norwegian experts convened by the government in 1993, is due to present a report to Norway’s Storting (parliament) next month.

It is already clear that the eagerly-awaited document will urge a radical shake-up in the way development funds are allocating and the commission is likely to recommend cuts in grants to countries which fail to demonstrate improved accountability for the success of projects.

One key proposal is likely to be the creation of “development contracts” between Norway and recipient countries. These would last 10-15 years and provide a long term basis for improvements in institutional systems and educational development in programme nations.

The Commission’s members believes such a system would circumvent the negative effect of Norway’s annual budget process, in which funds are often hurriedly appropriated to projects which then fail to live up to expectations. Greater initial scrutiny and monitoring of projects is also likely to be suggested.

Observers in Oslo believe that the commission’s main findings will generate broad parliamentary backing amid a widespread unease among politicians over reports of failed projects and incompetent management of development programmes by recipient countries.

Last week Foreign Aid Minister Kari Nordheim-Larsen grasped the nettle by stating publicly that development support should be suspended in the absence of improved accountability in recipient countries or if projects fail to produce results.

“We cannot support commercial development without the aid going hand in hand with the right policies from recipient countries’ authorities,” Nordheim-Larsen told the newspaper Aftenposten.

“Third World countries must themselves take responsibility for their development. Eighty per cent of Tanzania’s state budget has been aid grants. Such things cannot continue.”

The closing stages of the commission’s deliberations have coincided with two reports from Norwegian research organisations heavily criticising national aid policy.

Helge Ole Bergesen, a leading development expert at the Fridtjof Nansen social science institute outside Oslo, said Norway had been “generous but naive”.

Backed by opinion polls which consistently show more than 80 per cent of Norwegians in favour of high levels of foreign aid spending, political parties have been competing to increase development grants, he said.

“The preoccupation with giving has meant there has been little public and political concern with the results,” Bergesen explained, adding that the Norwegian system of annual aid appropriations meant there was a rush every year to find projects to donate money to, some of which were unrealistic.

“This, in turn, left ample scope for manipulation by beneficiaries.

He said more money needed be channelled directly to “real recipients” through NGOs rather than via governments.

“Governments are not part of the solution but part of the problem,” he said, referring to widespread corruption in developing countries.

A broad consensus appears now to be building not just among Norwegian researchers and aid workers but also among policymakers that the key future improvements lies in empowering developing countries to take a far greater initiative in aid programmes than before.

“Development assistance should be directed so that the recipient countries themselves are in a position to solve the problems,” leader of the main opposition Conservative party, Jan Petersen, said in a media statement last week. “The intention never was for industrialised countries to pursue a worldwide social policy.”

Such comments are backed by a study in 1993 which claimed that Norwegian aid between 1984 and 1992 had been strikingly unsuccessful in solving development problems, particularly in Africa.

In some cases assistance was actually counter-productive, creating what the report considered ‘aid dependency’ and fostering lethargy among recipient governments.

“If you look at Norwegian aid over the last 30 years it seems like it has been more important to increase the aid budget every year than finding the right ways to use the money,” said Bjorn V Klovstad, spokesman for the Norwegian state development aid agency, NORAD.

He said the fault lay on both sides: Norway had failed adequately to administer and follow up all projects, while recipients had not had the capacity or incentive to use aid monies properly.

NORAD, he added, had implemented new guidelines aimed at encouraging “self-help” in donee countries though the building up of accountable administrative structures in project countries.

“We are working towards creating greater consciousness and responsibility at the receiving end,” said Klovstad. “In the past, recipient countries have either not had the money or the skills to complete projects once our experts have left. Now we are helping them to run their projects from day one.”

Although the problems are seen as worst in Africa, which receives the lion’s share of Norwegian aid, there are parallel difficulties in Asia and Latin America.

Arve Ofstad, secretary of the Commission on North-South and Aid Policies, said Norway had to clamp down on projects that failed to give results or were “obviously stupid”.

“We must find a way of putting money only into worthwhile projects… and reduce the risk of failure. Norway must be more vigilant and stop projects that we see are going nowhere. For that we need real dialogue with recipient countries and greater responsibility on both sides.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BUDAPEST, Jan 19 1995 (IPS)

The collapse of a multi-million dollar deal in which a U.S. company attempted to take over Hungary’s last state-owned hotel chain, is likely to harm future attempts to lure foreign investment to Budapest.

In its first ever venture abroad Dallas firm, American General Hospitality (AGH), spent more than a year’s effort and an estimated one million dollars pursuing the right to buy 51 per cent of the 14-property HungarHotels chain for 57.5 million dollars.

At the last minute, however, American General found itself in the vortex of a political controversy when Socialist Prime Minister Gyula Horn last week made an unexpected intervention and stopped the deal from going through in what observers believe may be a gambit to win public favour with nationalistic Hungarians.

Officially, the government of reformed communists cited “professional shortcomings” in its own privatisation agency’s handling of the deal, and for the third time in five years of trying to sell the properties, it declared the tender “unsuccessful” and closed negotiations with American General.

The decision sparked immediate protests from within the ruling Socialist-Alliance of Free Democrats coalition as well as from opposition parties.

One of the most notable people objecting to the prime minister’s decision was Socialist Finance Minister La’szlo’ Be’kesi, the respected architect of a tough new economic reform package.

Opposition also came from Commissioner of Privatisation Ferenc Bartha, appointed to his position by the Horn government only six months earlier, who was fired by Horn after being ordered to return home while attending a high-profile conference in Cleveland, aimed at promoting U.S. investment in Eastern Europe.

According to Horn, Bartha’s failing was not securing a higher price for the properties which the prime minister felt are worth ten million dollars more for the percentage share sought by the U.S. firm.

But while the politically shrewd Horn may have won domestic support for the decision, independent analysts predict Budapest is likely to lose favour with an international business community which have up to now viewed Hungary as being far and away the best investment climate in the former Soviet Bloc.

“One can already see from reactions that the investment community quite upset,” said Tibor Vidos, director of the GJW political consultancy firm.

And pointing to what he views as a new anti-investor trend, Vidos notes: “Tax breaks that had been granted some years ago for the duration of several years have recently been removed.

“This fits together with current HungarHotels issue in that a deal that’s been approved by one state body or the previous government can then be declared void by new government. How predictable are things in Hungary? That’s the message.”

To date, Hungary has attracted more investment than Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia put together, for a total of 7.5 billion dollars.

The Socialists, before their landslide victory last May, had strongly criticised the previous government’s slow pace at selling state assets and campaigned to attract more Western investment with a streamlined privatisation plan. Since the new government assumed office, however, privatisation has ground to a halt pending a new privatisation bill that is not expected to pass before next March.

The country achieved only half of its investment targets for last year, and critical economic reforms depend on foreign interest picking up to 2.5 billion dollars a year over the next three years.

HungarHotels was to be the first major sale to take place under the new government. “The way I viewed it, if we got passed (the elections), then the momentum would shift to our side,” said Gavin Susman, a U.S. real estate consultant who advised American General on the deal.

“The government would want to say, ‘Look, American General is confident in Hungary and in our government. They’re pumping almost 60 million dollars into Hungary.’ Well, of course, I was wrong.”

The prime minister’s chief complaint was that AGH’s bid was too low, despite the fact that it was already 10 million dollars higher than those of the only other two bidders, including the Intercontinental hotel group.

As it was finally offered, the chain consisted of seven hotels in Budapest, four of which are rated four-star, the rest being three- star with seven in the countryside. Before taxes, the chain generated a 10 million dollars profit last year, according to the state secretary who announced the rejection of AGH’s bid.

The prize property of the deal is the Forum, a first-class business hotel in the centre of the capital along the Danube river. While in need of modernisation, the Forum already competes with the city’s few five-star establishments.

Critics of the deal invariably point to the Duna Hotel, which Marriott bought in 1993 for 53 million dollars. Susman and others counter that the Marriott bought 100 per cent of that property, while only 51 per cent of the HungarHotels package was up for sale.

Also, while the Forum alone is worth a high price, many of the other hotels in the chain are old ventures whose need for renovation draws down the HungarHotels’ overall value.

Horn first stepped into the deal in mid-December, assigning an government body to review the State Property Agency (SPA) decision to sell to AGH.

The chief of the review committee, Sa’ndor Rubicsek, later told the press: “We’re not experts in the hotel business,” adding that despite Horn’s insistence that he do so, “I can’t prove whether the hotels could be sold at a higher price individually than as a group.”

Nonetheless, the committee turned up the fact that the SPA last did its own valuation of the chain in 1991 instead of immediately before the latest tender, a “mistake” enough to derail the deal and fire Privatisation Commissioner Bartha, Horn contended.

Whether a new valuation would demonstrate that the property is more valuable is subject to dispute.

“Hotels don’t just get better with time. They might get more ‘mature,’ but that normally means the decoration needs redoing,” said Tim Randall, author of the “Good Living Guide to Hungary,” a hotel and restaurant review book.

“The biggest problem with the catering industry in Hungary is that by not privatising the hotels, it is costing the country a fortune in lost tourism development.”

Tourism is Hungary’s largest industry after agriculture, and the HungarHotels chain represents approximately 35 per cent of Budapest tourism accommodation.

Despite his own frustrations and the current political repercussions of the failed deal, Susman believes Horn may have the last laugh yet.

“I think the vast majority of Hungarians agree with Horn,” said Susman. “In the (local) press and among the populace, this has been seen as an example of foreigners coming in on the cheap trying to buy Hungarians’ treasured assets.”

Susman suggests the whole controversy could be a calculated bid on Horn’s part to win points with voters by making a show against foreign investors now in anticipation of the much larger privatisations of the utility companies slated for later this year.

Those are certain to make a much bigger impact on all voters in the form of energy and telephone rate hikes.

“You’re talking about a survivor,” says Susman.

“You’re talking about someone who has amazing forward vision and a great appreciation for what the people are feeling. Let’s remember who Horn is,” Susman added, recalling the key role the prime minister played as foreign minister in Hungary’s last communist government, in opening the country’s borders to fleeing East German refugees, ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“And no one expected him to come back the way he did after four years in the last opposition. He’s an incredibly shrewd politician.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MANILA, Jan 19 1995 (IPS)

China’s frosty ties with the Vatican may have thawed somewhat when Chinese Catholics prayed with Pope John Paul II in the Philippines, but the road to healing the decades- old rift remains fraught with political potholes.

Much more time is needed before the estranged Catholic hierarchy in China returns to the Vatican’s fold — like the Biblical prodigal son — and gives a key push to the Roman Catholic Church’s desire to spread Christianity through Asia.

Only three percent of Asia’s more than two billion people are Christian in a region where Buddhism, Islam and the Confucian culture flourish. Half of all Asian Christians are in the Philippines, where 83 percent of the population is Catholic.

The Pope makes no secret of his desire to visit China, whose government severed ties with the Vatican in 1951 and insists that it cut diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Beijing has its own Catholic church, the Chinese Patriotic Association (CPA), which does not follow the Vatican.

Vatican officials and Filipino organisers had been praying for a breakthrough in Vatican-China ties during the Pope’s Jan. 12-16 visit to Manila.

For the first time, a 24-member group of Chinese Catholics that included five priests and four nuns were allowed to attend a mass said by the Pope, before whom they made a ‘profession of faith’. It was Beijing’s first time to send a group to the World Youth Day celebrations, on invitation of the Philippine Church.

“The fact they (youth) were allowed to come — even if on the record their trip may have been clandestine — is a sign of a warming in the chilly relations between China and the Vatican,” the organisers said in a statement.

But the high hopes were doused when the Chinese delegation, led by Fr Shi Hong Xi of Beijing’s Catholic Seminary, walked out of the World Youth Day (WYD) mass, angered by the sight of Taiwan’s flag among those brought onto the stage.

The Chinese said WYD organisers broke a promise that Taiwan’s flag would not be flown, accusing them of “deliberately creating a situation of ‘two Chinas’, seriously hurting the feelings of Chinese Catholics”. They added: “That was something absolutely unacceptable to us.”

Organisers had also been trying to work out a private meeting between the Pope and the Chinese delegates, but the Chinese group refused after the flag-waving incident.

The Pope earlier broadcast a message to Chinese Catholics from Manila and said he was “well aware of (their) difficulties”, addressing the underground church that defied Beijing’s demand to renounce religious allegiance to the pontiff.

But he also firmly told the state church: “A Catholic who wishes to remain such and to be recognised as such, cannot reject the principle of communion with the Successor of Peter.”

Before the walkout, Shi said CPA members recognise the Pope as the “highest church leader”. The CPA has three million members, but several million more worship in the underground church. The Vatican, though, has not declared the CPA a schismatic group.

Church officials concede that decades of estrangement cannot be instantly healed, but take comfort in the fact that the attendance of the Chinese delegation was still a first.

As Manila Archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin, son of a Chinese immigrant, said: “This is something very, very close to my heart because this is the first time that mainland China is participating in this affair.” The Pope called their presence a “beautiful thing”.

Rapprochement with China would strengthen the Vatican’s efforts to boost its focus on Asia in recent decades, starting with Pope Paul VI’s 1970 visit to the region. The Philippines, hailed by the Pope as a base for evangelisation in Asia, hosts a training school for priests for Chinese communities.

Pope John Paul II, whose January tour of the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Sri Lanka makes him the only pontiff to visit Asia twice, is trying to give credit to Catholic martyrs from Asia and give Asian Catholics models.

He has canonised some 250 people since he became Pope in 1978, including 100 Korean martyrs. In 1981, he beatified 17 persons martyred in Japan, including Lorenzo Ruiz who is the first Filipino saint.

In his January trip to Asia, the Pope beatified Papua New Guinea martyr Peter To Rot and is to beatify Australian nun Mary MacKillop and Sri Lankan priest Fr Joseph Vaz. Beatification is the last step to sainthood.

One-third of Papua New Guinea’s four million people are Catholics. Sri Lanka is mainly Buddhist and Catholics make up seven percent of its 16.8 million people. Catholics account for 27.3 percent of Australians, slightly ahead of Anglicans though the Anglican church remains the country’s official church.

Catholic groups are also active in various parts of Asia, even in largely Buddhist Cambodia where there are only 10,000 Christians. The groups do social work there, but most do not proselytise openly.

As Sin pointed out last week, Asia is home to the world’s major religions. But “here, after two millennia, the Christian faith has hardly a foothold,” he added.

Asian bishops meeting in Manila this week also pointed to another set of earthly challenges for the Catholic church’s efforts to spread the faith.

Asia may be the world’s fastest-growing and newest affluent region, but there are “increasing signs of practices hostile to life”, such as “unbridled capitalism” that often marginalises the poor, harms the environment and erodes traditional values, the bishops said.

The 21-member Federation of Asian Bishops Conference said excessive consumerism in Asia made people want “to have more, eat more and waste more”.

“Capitalism’s ensemble of technical and psychological instruments can reach every town and village in Asia, changing behaviours, poisoning imaginations, controlling relationships, thereby creating a new culture where death rather than life triumphs,” they said in a statement.

Excerpt: