A LONG ROAD AHEAD IN THE FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER

Almost nine years since heads of state and governments representing 186 countries gathered at the World Food Summit pledged to half hunger by 2015, progress is insufficient, writes Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In this analysis, Diouf writes that in three of the four developing regions, more people were undernourished in 2000-2002 than in 1995-1997. Only Latin America and the Caribbean achieved a modest reduction in the number of hungry people. While the main responsibility for addressing poverty and food insecurity in the developing countries remains with the countries themselves, their efforts can only be fruitful within a favourable international environment. Indeed, we have seen expressions of solidarity and strong commitment to address the problem of food insecurity and poverty. Unfortunately, there is still a notable gap between commitments and action. The urgent measures that need to be taken at the international level include: creation of a fair and equitable international trading environment and the reduction and cancellation of the debt burden of the poorest developing countries. The recent announcement by the G8 finance ministers to write off more than USD 40 billion of debts of 18 African countries is a step in the right direction. But we still need to enhance international development assistance in conformity with relevant international commitments and to reverse the negative trend of resource allocation to the agriculture sector.

LET THEM DRINK COKE

As water scarcity becomes an increasingly urgent issue around the world, a recent ruling by an Indian high court provides a troubling perspective on how water rights can play out in contests between foreign corporations and local governments, writes Vandana Shiva In this article, Shiva writes that in 2000, Coca-Cola set up a plant in Kerala, India. Within a year the groundwater started to decline, and wells were polluted. After protests, the local government denied renewal of the plant\'s license and the Kerala High Court supported its action. On April 7, 2005, however, this decision was overruled by two other judges of the same court who placed Coca-Cola\'s right to use water over the local government\'s right to regulate water use. The issue is whether public regulation will be democratic and in the hands of local communities or whether they will be controlled through a state bureaucracy which can be corrupted and influenced by the power of corporations. The local government has taken an appeal to the Supreme Court. But the real judgment in this case will come from the people. Coca-Cola has unleashed a war against the earth, and the people of areas where Coca-Cola is mining water are committed to stopping the theft of their water and the hijack of their institutions.

HUMAN RIGHTS BEST PROTECTION AGAINST INSECURITY AND TERROR

In the face of terrorism, the politics of fear call for a total surrender of liberty in favour of security, secrecy, randomness, racial profiling, involuntary renditions, and the use of torture, writes Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In this article, Arbour writes that the international human rights framework stands as a counterweight to the politics of fear. A response to insecurity based on human rights is both more balanced and rational, and presents the singular advantage of dismantling, rather than perpetrating, the root causes of insecurity. Arbour asserts that human rights do not impede the protection of national security but are, at least in democratic societies, at the heart of national identity. Indeed, in my view, a country and the ideals it stands for are as much at risk of destruction from the collapse of its human rights norms and the rule of law that protects them as they are from the explosion of bombs on its territory. The most profound insecurity does not emanate from foreign threats but from internal temptations to allow to erode the foundations upon which national identity is built. To fight insecurity within the framework of human rights is to fight with our strongest weapon: our deepest values. This is the protection of human security in the most profound sense.

ACEH: PEACE IS NECESSARY FOR RECONSTRUCTION

As the Indonesian government embarks on the formidable task of rebuilding the province of Aceh, which suffered the full brunt of the December 26 tsunami, peace is becoming indispensable, writes Hasballah Saad, chairman of the Tifa Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that promotes human rights, democracy, and civil society in Indonesia. He is also a commissioner of the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights. In this article, Saad writes that without peace, any reconstruction effort may go nowhere. Infrastructure built by the government in the morning could be burned down by unknown people in the evening. The recent initiation of the fourth round of peace talks between the rebels and the Indonesian government in Helsinki, Finland, has rekindled hopes for peace and reconciliation in the troubled province. The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has hinted at giving up its struggle for independence in favour of self-government. What GAM means by self-government, however, remains unclear. GAM, whose strength seems to have been reduced considerably by the military offensive by government troops in the past few years, has to spell out what it means by self-government. Does it mean independence, a federal system, or special autonomy? Independence is certainly out of question, while the other options open to GAM must not violate the country\'s constitution.

WHITE BAND DAY: A GLOBAL CALL TO END POVERTY

In September the heads of state will return to the UN in New York to evaluate their progress on the UN Millennium goal of ending poverty by 2015. Before that, G-8 leaders will meet in Scotland, and for the first time their agenda will focus on Africa and poverty. In December in Hong Kong trade ministers will meet in an effort to restart the talks that were begun at Cancun and which are absolutely central to development. In response to these three fundamental meetings, a global movement was created to exert pressure to bring about an end to poverty, write Eveline Herfkens, representative of the UN Secretary General for the Millennium Development Goals, and Walter Veltroni, mayor of Rome. The authors write in this article that the Global Call to Action Against Poverty is a movement comprised of more than 1000 international networks. Three dates for mobilisations in more than seventy countries have been set before the three major meetings. The symbol that will unite all of these events will be a white band, a sign of commitment, which will encircle not only wrists but also important buildings, for example, Rome\'s Trevi Fountain (a band of light in this case) and the Colosseum (an 80 metre band). Wearing the white band serves as a reminder to the powers of this earth that eradicating poverty is a duty, and that the path to the future passes through every part of the earth, not only the developed world.

EU CONSTITUTION: GOOD FOR EUROPE AND THE WORLD

A \"No\" vote on the EU Constitution would not be a mere pause in the path forward but a giant step backwards, desired only by those who always wanted a Europe that was no more than a free-trade area, writes Mario Soares, President of Portugal from 1986-1996. In this article, Soares argues that rejection would introduce a tremendous risk of disintegration and spell the end of a political, social, and environmentally-committed Europe. Worse, it would mean the rejection of the EU as a \'\'global power\'\', a counterweight in European-US relations able to resist efforts at imperial hegemony by forces that consider the UN just a stumbling block. The hawks who advise George W. Bush would certainly be pleased by a \"No\" win. The \"No\" forces, in France and elsewhere, are a contradictory mix. Many are inspired by nationalistic notions. There are leftists and communists guided by immediate and ideological criteria. Then there are the neo-conservatives, ultraconservatives, economic neo-liberals, and religious fanatics. And among the French socialists, who are divided on the constitution, the group headed by ex-prime minister Laurent Fabius is for a \"No\" vote with the idea of using the referendum as a means of protesting the centre-right government of Jacques Chirac. All are partisans of the notion that \"the worse things are, the better they are\", which historically has tended to backfire on those who live by it.

WTO AT A CROSSROADS: MORE DEVELOPMENT, OR MORE OF THE SAME?

The selection of a new Director-General of the World Trade Organisation presents a fundamental choice between a vision of a WTO that is genuinely oriented towards development and one that would keep the organisation more or less aligned with the interests of the major players in the international arena, writes Carlos Perez del Castillo, Uruguayan Ambassador to the WTO, president of the WTO General Committee in 2003, and ex-secretary of the Latin American Economic System (SELA). Many now believe that the time has come to end the developed countries\' historic control over the position of Director-General of the WTO and the GATT process before that, the author writes in this article. It is time to introduce greater balance into the multilateral system and it is imperative that this process begin with the WTO. There are three reasons for this: the first is that it is politically beneficial that the demanded greater integration of developing countries into the multilateral trade process also implies sharing responsibility for its direction. The second is that it is necessary to conclude the present negotiations with a result that does honour to their name: the Development Round. The third is that to make this happen, nothing could be better than choosing a WTO Director-General who comes from a developing country and has dedicated his or her professional life to working directly and continually in this area.

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: COMPOUNDING POVERTY WITH POISON

Environmental racism is a global phenomenon that follows closely in the wake of economic globalisation, writes Mark Sommer, director of the U.S.-based Mainstream Media Project and host of the award-winning international radio program, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\' In this article, Sommer writes that for the affluent global minority, \'\'out of sight, out of mind\'\' leaves the conscience largely untroubled.The media often cooperate by giving only fleeting coverage to distant industrial accidents. The catastrophic leak of lethal chemicals at a Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India, two decades ago left 3,000 people dead and 500,000 injured in the worst industrial accident in history. But while the victims of the World Trade Centre attack, which killed as many but injured few, attracted enough attention to transform the global agenda, Bhopal was soon forgotten. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs to low-wage sites in China, India, and elsewhere not only lowers labour costs but enables manufacturers to avoid environmental regulations that would otherwise make their products non-competitive. In its headlong lunge for industrial supremacy, China is placing the poorest of its own citizens at greatest risk by siting and operating manufacturing plants with scant regard for their lethal effects on the surrounding air, water, and soil.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: ARISE AND WALK

The World Social Forum (WSF) movement has already won a moral victory. \'\'The world is not for sale\'\' and \'\'Another world is possible\'\' are not empty slogans but calls to action that have won over public opinion around the world. In this column, based on a document addressed to the WSF International Council, Amin calls for the orchestration of major world effort comprised of: a campaign against the so-called preventive wars of the United States, and, subsequently, for the evacuation of all of its military bases; a campaign in favour of the right to access to land, the recognition of which is vital for three billion peasant farmers on three continents; a campaign to regulate industrial relocation; and a campaign to cancel all Third World foreign debt. The WSF today faces a crucial choice. It has the possibility of becoming a place for the patient construction of fronts capable of bringing about the convergence of the myriad progressive forces worldwide. To achieve this I would suggest the definition of common platforms articulated around the rejection of both neoliberalism and of the militarisation of globalisation under the control of the United States. The broad and open alliance of movements that share this perspective would make it possible to construct positive alternatives.

THE ENVIRONMENT: MORE AWARENESS BUT NO PROGRESS

The greatest environmental challenge the 21st century is water, writes Boutros Boutros-Ghali, secretary-general of the United Nations between 1992-1996. In this analysis, the author writes that the problem is not so much a lack of water on a global scale but inequities in its distribution. Brazil, Russia, Canada, the US, China, Indonesia, India, Colombia and the European Union monopolise almost two-thirds of global water resources. In the developing world, 90 percent of the water used has not been treated for impurities. In the poorest countries all of these problems accumulate and compound each other. The illnesses caused by contaminated water constitute a serious obstacle to economic development not only by causing millions of deaths but also by rendering hundreds of millions of people incapacitated In addition to the problems of pollution and waste is the fact that many countries depend for their water on sources outside of their countries. Therefore, the challenge, here as in many other areas, is to replace relations of force with relations of solidarity, cooperation, and collective administration. Education, particularly about the environment, must be made universal, for this is the only way to bring about the development of awareness and engender a sense of responsibility and commitment to safeguard the common patrimony of the earth.

JUSTICE LONG OVERDUE FOR KOREAN “COMFORT WOMEN”

Surviving Korean \"comfort women\", forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese military officers during WWII, have waited over half a century for an apology from the Japanese government, and with mounting international pressure, they just may get one, writes Elisa Gahng, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley and intern with the Women of Colour Resource Centre in Oakland, CA. In this article, Gahng writes that these women, now aged 65 to 80, were among 200,000 young women kidnapped from Korea\'s poorest regions. In three years, the average comfort woman was raped 7,500 times and some by as many as 30 military officers a day. Their quest for justice began in 1991 when a group of Korean grandmothers publicly told their tragic stories and filed a class action law suit against the Japanese government demanding reparations. Japan\'s government still refuses to assume responsibility and even denies the existence of comfort stations. But growing global pressure may turn the tide. Multiple inter- governmental agencies, such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), have urged the Japanese government to make an official apology and assume responsibility.

THE ENVIRONMENT IS CENTRAL TO FIGHTING POVERTY IN AFRICA

While the new focus on Africa\'s development is welcome, the essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty, writes Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate and Kenya\'s Assistant Minister for Environment and Member of Parliament. In this article, Maathai writes that while we continue to discuss these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter. Without better management of resources the achievement of the MDGs, especially the elimination of poverty, could easily remain a dream. Africa lags behind other regions in progress toward the MDGs. If we do not acknowledge that the environment is central to sustainable development and ending poverty, we run the risk degrading the resource base on which future development depends. To make poverty history, we have to put the environment at the centre of policy and decision-making.

JOHN PAUL II: THE GREAT RESTORER

The fundamental characteristic of the long and complex pontificate of John Paul II was a restoration of traditional conservative values and a return to internal Church discipline, writes Leonardo Boff, a liberation theologian who was punished by the Vatican doctrinal authorities in 1985 with \'\'obsequious silence\'\'. In this analysis, Boff writes that the pontificate of John Paul II was not a reformation but a counter-reformation, an attempt to halt a process of modernisation that erupted in the church in the 1960s . A major contradiction lay between his actions and teachings. To the outside, he presented himself as a champion of dialogue, of liberty, tolerance, peace, and ecumenism, but within the Church he shuttered the right of expression, banned dialogue, and created a theology with powerful fundamentalist overtones. In John Paul II it was the religious mission of the church and not its social mission that was dominant. He had a limited and simplistic understanding of the liberation theology prevalent in Latin America when he became Pope. He saw it as a Trojan horse for marxism, which he was obliged to denounce because of his experience of communism in his native Poland. He convinced himself that the danger in Latin America was marxism, when the real danger has always been savage and colonialist capitalism and its anti-populist and retrograde elites.

WILL THE NEW POPE MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE FOR AFRICA?

Will the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope make a difference for Africa? asks Neville Gabriel, coordinator of the Justice and Peace Department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops\' Conference, based in Pretoria, South Africa. In this article, Gabriel writes that the most urgent challenge facing the world today has more of a North-South than an East-West axis. The danger for Africa today is that intra-Northern competition for global economic and political dominance may mean another century dominated by East-West rivalry and conciliation, while the poorest of the world in Africa remain forgotten. While colonial political relations may have ended for Africa, colonial patterns still characterise Africa\'s economic relations with the world. The church under a new pontiff must actively work to at once transform Africa and its situation in the global community. The unmatchable popular pulling power of a pope with a pervasive social justice concern for Africa could make all the difference. However, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his time as prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith has not demonstrated such a concern. His immediate concern has been the orthodoxy of internal church teaching. If Pope Benedict XVI continues in this vein, his papacy will change nothing in Africa\'s future.

THE DILEMMA OF THE CONCLAVE: REFORM OR COUNTER REFORM ?

As the Vatican Conclave meets to select a new Pope, the overriding question is whether the cardinals will elect a man who will return to the path of Vatican II, or one who will prolong the Catholic Counterreformation. In other words, who will prevail: John XXIII, or John Paul II? asks Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian theologian and writer. Pope John XXIII convened all of the bishops in the Vatican II Council (1962-1965) in order to undertake the Catholic Reform, which with great hope and new life swept the world. Like all processes of change, this also aroused resistance and opposition, which predominated in churches that suffered persecution --like the Polish church-- and in important sectors of the notoriously conservative Vatican Curia. It is from this area of resistance that John Paul II emerged, setting in motion a Counterreformation of the Catholic Church. For this reason, the challenge today is whether the cardinals will chose a Pope who returns to the path of Vatican II with the contributions of the Third World churches that will restore the centrality of justice and the poor, or whether they will chose a Pope who prolongs the Counterreformation using media dramatisation, the strengthening of the figure of the Pope and the Curia, and a merely moralising discourse on the poor and justice.

EUROPEAN UNION IN THE BALANCE

The delicate point at which the EU currently finds itself could develop into one of the most dangerous crises in its half-century of history, writes Joaquin Roy, Jean Monnet Professor and director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami. In this article, Roy writes that the drama will unfold in May. First, on May 5, British prime minister Tony Blair stands for re-election. If the conservatives prevail, which is improbable, they will seek to halt the euro-train and force it back into the station of pure free trade, far from the federalist path. If Blair wins, he will have to convince the British to enter Europe for real. France presents a different problem if on May 29 it rejects the Constitution. A French rejection would unleash a torrent of collateral damage: a bad example for the new members, deception in Germany, slow erosion of the euro, and a death blow to foreign policy. Not even the alternative of an economic Europe would be safe, tied as it would be to political commitments. Without the prospect of a real EU, the justification of the common currency would collapse of its own weight. The richest countries, with Germany at the top, could not only consider the euro as a temporary mechanism but also oppose it on the grounds it only serves to protect the new, and poorest members. And without a constitution, a common foreign policy, not to mention an autonomous defence system independent of NATO, makes little sense.

THE WORLD MUST CHOOSE: ARMED SECURITY OR HUMAN SECURITY

Today\'s world faces an existential choice between armed security and human security, writes Sylvia Borren, Executive Director Novib/Oxfam Netherlands. In this article, the author writes that armed security means the elite of the world defending its privilege with guns, gates, and walls against the great majority of the world who live in abject poverty. Three figures give us a clear indication of where we are heading: 50 billion dollars a year are spent on aid, 350 billion dollars on agricultural subsidies in rich countries, and 900 billion dollars or more spent on arms. Borren calls for building a deeper democracy and local leadership; creating a national governance system which creates an enabling environment; and providing global justice, coherence, and stability. The Millennium Development Goals can actually be met quite easily if we approach them in a rights-based and gender-based way, eliminating agricultural subsidies and dumping, freeing indebted countries from debt, increasing development to 0.7 percent of GDP, and a number of other actions.

This column is related to World Press Freedom Day, which is 3 May: NEPAL: JOURNALISM IN A TIME OF EMERGENCY

On February 1 Nepal\'s King Gyanendra sacked the prime minister he had appointed, took power himself, and declared a state of national emergency, and Nepal\'s vibrant and free press was suddenly muzzled, writes Kunda Dixit, editor and co-publisher of the Katmandu-based weekly newspaper, Nepali Times. In this article, the author writes that constitutionally the emergency will lapse next week unless reimposed by parliament. But there is no parliament and no elected prime minister. There are strong calls from political leaders, activists, the media and the international community to have the emergency lifted and the press freed. King Gyanendra said his army needed the emergency to concentrate on defeating the Maoists. But muzzling the media has actually helped the Maoists because the censored press has lost credibility and few believe it even when the government is telling the truth. In addition, the media\'s reporting of Maoist atrocities are also not getting reported, and in the absence of facts wild rumours are rife. Prolonging the emergency will just bolster the argument of those who believe that it was not really designed to curb Maoism, but to put down pluralism. Lifting the state of emergency is in the interest of this country, its people, and its monarch.

THE ACEHNESE MUST GUIDE THEIR OWN RECONSTRUCTION

As the response to the overwhelming destruction in Aceh from the December 26 tsunami enters the reconstruction phase, the Indonesian government and foreign aid agencies must limit their roles in providing financial and technical assistance to the Acehnese, writes Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia\'s leading novelist. In this article, Toer writes that the reconstruction work, including the generation of designs and setting of priorities, must be left to the Acehnese themselves, who know their territory best and what they need and how to achieve it. The Indonesian central government must respect what they say. This does not mean, however, that the money allocated and donated by foreign countries for reconstruction should be managed by the Acehnese. Corruption in Indonesia, whether in Aceh or in other parts of the country, is rampant. It should not be surprising if funds donated by foreign countries for tsunami victims are embezzled or stolen. To prevent this from happening, foreign donations for the reconstruction of Aceh must be managed by international non-governmental organisations.

BEYOND IDEOLOGY: US “SILENT MAJORITY” SEEKS NEW POLITICS

Domestic divisiveness within the United States represents a far greater danger to the American democratic republic than any threat from foreign terrorists, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-wining internationally syndicated radio programme, \"A World of Possibilities\" and co-creator, with William Ury, of BothAnd (www.bothand.org). In this article, Sommer argues that as currently framed, the war on terror is the ultimate either/or paradigm: \"You\'re either with us or against us.\" But this frame has divided Americans both from one another and the rest of the world in ways that could prove fatal to the country\'s future if it does not soon reframe the struggle in more inclusive ways. A different kind of Middle America - both principled and pragmatic, strengthened rather than weakened by its differences -- could bring fresh energy to a paralysed body politic by creating a vibrant new process outside the dead zones that are the White House and Congress today. By combining the best of many perspectives into creative, effective syntheses, they may yet produce hybrid solutions with the vigour to withstand our all-too- human fractiousness.

POVERTY, WATER, AND GLOBALISATION

On March 22, World Water Day, the UN will launch the second International Decade for Action \"Water for Life\" (2005-2015), writes Riccardo Petrella, a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain. In this article, Petrella writes that the goal of first decade (1981-1991) was to assure access to potable water to all inhabitants of the planet by 2000. As we know, this goal was not achieved - far from it. This failure was due primarily to the fact that the leaders of the rich and powerful countries did not implement the measures that they themselves considered essential, particularly allocating 0.7 percent of GDP per year for aid to underdeveloped countries. Instead, between 1975-2000, they provided on average 0.23 percent, or less than a third of what they had promised. With the ascendance of the vision of today\'s financial globalisation, the eradication of poverty came to be considered impossible. Were it to happen, it would be achieved not through public will but by market mechanisms. Creativity, life, identity, and even individual survival are all vetted in the arenas of the global competitive markets, whose specific function is to select the \"best\" products and services, the more \"profitable\" places for investment, production, and consumption, promising the most \"competitive\" success. The fundamental question, Petrella writes, is whether the right to life of billions of human beings can be squared with the prolongation of the present human disaster by another ten years. I do not believe that the majority of Europeans, Africans, Asians, and North and South Americans think so.