US: DEBT RELIEF FOR IRAQ BUT NOT DESTITUTE ETHIOPIA.

The US has been quick to call for cancellation of the odious debts of Iraq largely because it will cost the US very little and free up resources for US projects. Yet at the same time the US is blocking debt cancellation for one of the poorest country in the world, Ethiopia, writes Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation (nef) and editor of Real World Economic Outlook. This is a glaring double standard, writes Pettifor in this article. Additional relief for Ethiopia is being delayed and blocked by the US with the tacit support of Germany and Japan as US and German creditors have gone to great lengths to obtain international legitimacy for the cancellation of Iraq\'s debt. The international community must honour commitments made to the millions of Jubilee 2000 supporters worldwide, in Cologne in June 1999. Led by Chancellor Schroder, world leaders promised to deepen and broaden debt relief for countries like Ethiopia. Above all the hypocrisy of their diverging approaches to Iraq and Ethiopia must be thwarted.

LIQUID GOLD RUSH: PRIVATISING GLOBAL WATER RESOURCES

The issue of water and who controls it has suddenly taken centre stage in world affairs, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and hosts of \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\', a syndicated radio programme. Nearly a billion of the world\'s six billion people lack dependable access to affordable drinking water, and this figure is expected to triple within the next 25 years. Several trends are contributing to this growing scarcity: increasing use by water- intensive industries, inefficient irrigation, desertification, global warming, and chemical and organic pollution. At the heart of the debate over the future of fresh water is whether it is a commodity like oil or gas, to be bought or sold on the open market to the highest bidder, or a human right, a resource so essential that a minimum allowance should be provided to every person as an acceptance of his or her right of survival. But there is no substitute for water. To deprive up to a third of the planet\'s population access to safe and affordable water is to sentence that portion of humanity to slow death by deprivation and disease.

A WORLD OF DISORDER

The international crisis generated by the US invasion of Iraq captures the tension in world politics between the \'\'international community\'\' as represented in the UN, and the role of power and its attendant interests, writes Kingsley Moghalu, an international lawyer and head of resource mobilisation and global partnerships at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva, Switzerland. In this analysis, the author argues that the problem with a unipolar world is that international law --a significant component in the maintenance of order in world politics-- can become a major casualty. In such a world, international law can be violated with little direct consequence to the hegemonic power. Far from consolidating order, such use of power, even in the name of freedom, human rights, and liberal democracy, will rather increase disorder. A certain degree of anarchy will always exist in an international society based on sovereign states and mobile non-state actors that pursue frequently divergent interests. We must manage that anarchy by addressing the fundamental issues that exacerbate it. The way forward is not the balance of power of bye-gone years but a balance of approach in which the world\'s hegemon has not only special circumstances but special responsibilities of global leadership.

TOWARDS A BROTHERHOOD OF ALL CREATURES

Walking down my street, where almost nothing even happens, I counted 58 dead beetles in just fifty meters. As we don\'t see ourselves in these our smaller brothers and sisters, we step on them and run them over with our cars. Were Saint Francis still alive he would weep with compassion, writes Leonardo Boff, a writer and theologian. In this article, Boff tells a myth of the Maue indians of Brazil. When the world was created there was no night. There was only day and light penetrated every space. The Maue, as much as they wanted to, couldn\'t sleep. They were always tired and their eyes hurt from too much light. One day, one of them got up his courage and went to talk to the Great Cobra, the sururiju, completely dark, which was considered the high master of the night. The Cobra agreed to make a deal: you give me poison and let me distribute it to my defenceless little relatives. This way you will watch where you\'re going and not step on the little creatures. They will be able to defend themselves. And in exchange I will give you a coconut full of night.\'\' In the end they lived peacefully together and in mutual respect. Why is it that we big creatures don\'t look out for the small creatures?

WHAT THE UN CAN DO TO FIGHT TERRORISM

UN Resolution 1373 required UN member states to pass laws banning every type of terrorist action and to ratify various international treaties: the question is whether governments will enforce them, writes Inocencio F. Arias, Spanish Ambassador to the UN Security Council and president of the UN Committee Against Terrorism. In this article for IPS, Arias argues that the Committee against Terrorism created by 1373 must have the means to verify enforcement and denounce cases of voluntary failure to the Council and the international community. Globalisation, technological progress, and the proliferation of suicide strategies has made terrorism potentially devastating. The possibility of terrorists gaining access to weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, or biological, is neither science fiction nor a movie plot. Sooner or later, science fiction will become reality. The UN must use the instruments available to it to minimise this possibility. The efficiency of the organisation\'s efforts in this area will reduce the unilateralist temptations of the powerful to impose their own solutions and will alleviate human suffering.

TRADE MUST BE BOTH FREE AND FAIR

The current process of globalisation is incomplete, unequal, and characterised by a deficit in democratic governance, writes Erkki Tuomioja, foreign minister of Finland. Tuomioja writes in this analysis that as with elections, it is not enough that trade is free: it has be fair as well. In many developing countries the formal economic sector constitutes a tiny part of the society, the majority of which is either left out of the globalisation process or experiences only its negative effects. Most of the world\'s population lacks protection of the law or social security. It is necessary to expand the space for local initiatives and solutions as a way of limiting the negative effects of globalisation. But this can be done effectively only through multilateral support and rules. We need global social and environmental policies. We have to ask how to democratise the global governance and how to redistribute global assets.

THE HORN OF AFRICA NEEDS LONG-TERM INTERNATIONAL ATTENTION

Jumping from crisis to crisis is becoming unbearable for the people in the Horn of Africa, for the humanitarian community, and for donors as well, writes Martti Ahtisaari, the president of Finland in 1994-2000. As a result of failed rains in 2002, both Ethiopia and Eritrea face serious food shortages and the humanitarian consequences of increased destitution among the most vulnerable segments of society. Between six and ten million people will require food and other forms of assistance this year. We are entering a period in the Horn of Africa in which the underlying causes of these problems must be addressed urgently and properly, the author writes in this analysis. It is generally agreed that the time has come for the World Bank to take the leading role in the long-term development efforts and for the international donor community to concentrate its efforts in the Horn of Africa. It will be much more cost effective if we manage to shift the development towards increasing independence in the production and food security.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM AT TURNING POINT: REFORM OR BECOME IRRELEVANT

At its January meeting in Mumbai, India, the World Social Forum (WSF) will reach its maximum expansion, writes Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the IPS agency, and member of the International Committee of the World Social Forum (WSF). Each of the preceding three Forums greatly exceeded all expectations raised when the decision was first taken to hold in Porto Alegre, Brazil.. The numbers tell the tale: 10,000 were expected to attend in January 2001; 50,000 came. Attendance rose to 75,000 the next year and to 100,000 in 2003. More important than the number of participants was the galaxy of organisations of every type and level that came together to assert that \'\'another world is possible\'\'. The Forum provides an occasion of enormous gratification for its participants. The days are full of intense debate where no differences separate the rich and poor, farmers and intellectuals, men and women, and a stunning range of political positions are presented and countered. All leave with their commitment to idealism strengthened and deepened. And yet none of this succeeds in producing an impact on the political world and the international institutions.

BAD HABITS

A small gesture of national dignity set off a raging scandal early this year: Brazil required of US visitors what the US required of Brazilian visitors: to obtain a visa and have their picture and fingerprints taken at the border, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and novelist and author of \'\'The Open Veins of Latin America\'\' and \'\'Memories of Fire\'\'. In this article, Galeano writes that everything was explained by September 11, which President Bush continues to use as a shield of perpetual impunity. However, though no Brazilian had anything to do with bringing down the World Trade Centre, the most serious terrorist act in Brazilian history, the coup of 1964, took place with the political, economic, military, and media participation of the United States. It is inconceivable for us to imagine the story the other way around. What would have happened, Galeano asks, if Iraq had invaded the US on the pretext that it had weapons of mass destruction. Or if the Venezuelan embassy in Washington had pushed and applauded a coup against George W. Bush? And what if the countries of the South refused to accept a single condition imposed by the IMF and World Bank unless they began imposing them on the US as well, the major debtor of the planet.

BUILDING ECONOMIES OF PERMANENCE AND POLITICS OF PEACE

The World Economic Forum has designed a world centred on capital and the men and corporations who control it, writes Vandana Shiva, author and international campaigner for women and the environment who received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1993. In this column, Shiva writes that the rise of religious fundamentalisms, the growth of terrorism and violence, and militarisation and war, are inevitable consequences of an economic system which discounts peoples\' fundamental human and democratic rights, basic needs, and ecological security. The message of people to power is peace and non-violence. Violence is the means and end of an economy based on greed, economic dictatorship and militarism. Non-violence in both means and end is the choice of the people. Corporate globalisation needed militarism, explicit or implicit. When 25,000 Indian peasants are forced to commit suicide, when Korean farmer Lee sacrificed his life in Cancun saying \'\'WTO kills farmers\'\', globalisation is exposed as war by other means. When Halliburton and Bechtel emerge as the real winners of the Iraq war, it becomes clear that war is globalisation by other means. The struggle between people and capital is now an epic struggle between life and death. And it has just begun. This is the beginning of a new chapter of human history -- not \'\'the end of history\'\'.

POWER POLITICS ONLY EXACERBATES GLOBAL INSECURITY

Since September 11, 2001 shook the world, the commitments which ushered in the new millennium have been overshadowed by the threats of terrorism, fears about the future, and questions about the viability of open societies joined by international norms and values, writes Mary Robinson, executive director of The Ethical Globalisation Initiative, former president of Ireland, and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. If we want real human security, instead of putting up walls of fear and resorting only to power politics, we should seek ways to focus on promoting in practice the values of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect, and shared responsibility which can unite rather than divide. We should also remember that 9/11 did not, in fact, change much in the lives of most people on the planet for whom human insecurity was and is a daily reality. The world\'s economic system has operated largely in isolation from human rights, both at an institutional level and in intellectual terms. The first step to addressing the apparent conflicts between the values of the market and the values of human rights is to recognise that the objectives of international human rights and international trade in fact have much in common. This column was adapted from a lecture given by the author at the Aspen Institute and approved by her in this form.

A BETTER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

In today\'s world, security and prosperity have become two sides of the same coin, writes Jose Maria Figueres, co-CEO of the World Economic Forum and former president of Costa Rica. In this article, Figueres writes that we all deserve to live and work in a secure environment. And technology has advanced to the point were if we set our minds - and hearts - to the task of effectively combating poverty, we can succeed in improving the living conditions of millions. It will of course take a determined effort by all of us to make this possible, which is why at the World Economic Forum we chose \'\'Partnering for Security and Prosperity\'\' as the theme for our Annual Meeting 2004. I would hope we could all agree on the need for action to address the underlying causes of our problems, and this is where partnerships come in. The World Social Summit taking place in India has come a long way from its first session in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2000. From constituting an opposition to the present wave of development, it has moved to proclaiming that \'\'another world is possible\'\'. We salute this transition, and welcome even more interaction with Porto Alegre.

CHALLENGES, LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES OF THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

The World Social Forum (WSF) has headed to India. Mumbai will be the epicentre of the annual global encounter of the planet\'s emerging citizenry that opposes neoliberal globalisation and the logic of domination that feeds it: imperialism, terror and war, writes Cándido Grzybowski, sociologist, director of Ibase and member of the International Committee of the World Social Forum. What exactly is the force that drives the Forum? What is its secret? What does it mean to be a part of it? The answer perhaps is simply to dream of what is possible, to act with faith in the potential of action itself, to seek with others, in the equality of our numerous differences, the possibilities of changing the relations, processes and structures that oppress and exclude. The most radical experience of participating in the WSF is to feel that one is in a space of freedom to think, to speak, to propose, to be heard -- and to be respected for this. It is a joyful, colourful and boisterous forum for thinking about the actions we will develop in the places we live, making us part of a powerful global movement of citizens. That said, we should take a closer look at the principal challenges of the WSF today. To be global, the Forum must galvanise the world, feed itself on the most vital strengths of the different civil societies, in the framework of the Charter of Principles, maintaining the goal of re-creating globalisation on radically democratic and sustainable foundations. Beyond being against neoliberal globalisation and getting involved in imagining a different possible globalisation, another world, it is essential to recognise the major deficits in the WSF process.

DEMOCRATISE GLOBALISATION BEFORE GLOBALISATION DENATURES DEMOCRACY

While globalisation has generated great hope for much of the world, it has also given rise to numerous threats, writes Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1992-1996. The author writes that we must democratise globalisation before globalisation denatures democracy. To begin with, the UN system itself needs to be more thoroughly democratised, specifically the Security Council, which remains Eurocentric and does not take into account the emergence of new major powers over the last 50 years. The push to democratise risks undermining the logic that drives it if it results in the location of global power beyond the reach of the states, and if the new sites of power do not operate according to democratic principles. Only a new conception of solidarity can prevent or at least attenuate the inevitable exclusions that global society carries within itself. But solidarity cannot be decreed. It must arise out of a collective engagement, that is, the participation of states as well as the non-state actors of contemporary international society.

NEOLIBERALISM HAS FAILED

Neoliberalism, the economic dogma that has been the rage for the last few years, has clearly failed to solve the world\'s problems, writes Mario Soares, president of Portugal from 1986-1996. Whether in the US, Europe, or Japan, or particularly in emerging economies, the sanctification of the market, particularly as practised in the 1990s, gave what it had to give and sank the world into what Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz described as \'\' the first major planetary crisis of globalisation\'\' , Soares writes in this analysis. Especially in the Third World, the free market, when untempered by any governmental regulation, leads to the creation of deep social injustices, systematically refuses to respond to the undeniable ecological needs of our day, and in the current phase of speculative capitalism has led to grave vices, as seen today in the scandals of Enron, Vivendi, etc. Bush has crowed that since the invasion of Iraq \'\'the world is much safer\'. All we need now is for him to abandon Iraq to its sad chaos and the world to an unprecedented economic crisis. Speculator-philanthropist George Soros was right to commit a large sum to the fight against Bush\'s re-election.

THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

Few seem willing to question what seems unobjectionable, namely that the US, victor of the Cold War, is now the single global superpower, writes Augusto Zamora, professor of international public law and international relations at the UAM. However, is the US in fact the only pole of power, or does its hegemony rest on an array of circumstantial facts that will disappear in the years to come? the author asks in this article. The danger of today\'s militaristic whirlpool is that to hold onto power the right-wing that rules the US will have to keep the country and the world in a continuous state of war, in the purest Orwellian sense. Europe (and the world) should understand that guaranteeing any more of Washington\'s military imperialism could generate an interminable conflict combining religious fanaticism, 19th century geopolitics, and lite fascism. As Henry Kamen said, \'\'The preservation of the Spanish Empire was due to the general passivity of all other powers.\'\' The same holds true for the hyperpower of the US. But as with Spain its hegemony will be ephemeral. Questioning the heretofore unquestionable power of the US is the price humanity will pay for a safer, multi-polar world.

STRIKING A NEW BALANCE, NATIONALLY AND GLOBALLY

The 4th World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, comes not a moment too soon: as 2004 begins, conflict and terrorism continue to grab the headlines, while issues of inequality and injustice are not given the urgency they require, writes James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank. The dialogue in Mumbai can help restore a development oriented global agenda. Tackling with all our collective might the HIV/AIDS pandemic, coming to grips with climate change and our degraded oceans and freshwater supplies, seeing to it that all children everywhere attend primary school are front-burner issues. They need to be on a par with pensions, health care, unemployment, and other domestic issues that government leaders tend to focus on. We can begin to solve the problems of imbalance only if we forge a new development path linking economic growth to social and environmental responsibility. Without enlarging the real opportunities available to all citizens, markets serve only the elites. This means providing everyone the chance for a life that is secure -- with a right to expression, to learn, to a clean environment, to development, for women, and for the disabled and disadvantaged.

WHY THE MILLENNIUM GOALS ARE WORTH FIGHTING FOR

My message to both the World Economic Form and the World Social Forum is the same: we won\'t achieve human security for all without taking global commitments to human rights and human development more seriously, writes Mary Robinson, executive director of The Ethical Globalisation Initiative, former president of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In this article, Robinson writes that we must first be more rigorous in holding governments accountable for the obligations they have made, most recently in the UN Millennium Declaration, adopted in September 2000. The Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development estimated that an additional USD 50 billion a year in global development spending would be needed to achieve the MDGs. Given the current budgets for military spending in nations around the world, that figure shouldn\'t daunt the international community. The MDGs should not be perceived as ends in themselves but as benchmarks of progress. They can be powerful tools for change because they are recognised by the UN and by the international financial institutions --the World Bank and IMF. Now we need to embed them solidly in the broader framework of human rights.

WILL LULA MAKE LAND REFORM A PRIORITY?

On November 21, Brazilian president Lula announced a programme of agrarian reform that will settle 400,000 peasant families by the end of his term in 2006, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil and member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. The government did not consider a more ambitious plan that would have settled a million families in the same period. However, Stedile argues in this article, the definition of goals and numbers it is less important than knowing whether the government will make agrarian reform a priority. We believe that the Lula administration should redefine its priorities: first, it should cease it preoccupation with making interest payments on the national debt and generating a budget surplus. Instead its priority must be to use public funds to solve social problems. If it doesn\'t the people will begin to protest and mobilise against the administration. There is a limit to patience, especially when people are hungry. Now it is Lula\'s turn. The President knows all too well that if he doesn\'t implement a broad programme of agrarian reform, his government will founder.

HUMAN RIGHTS: A HUMAN DUTY

Modern governments acknowledge that they have a responsibility to work actively to end international poverty, protect humanity from dangerous diseases, provide children with education, preserve the environment for our descendants, and ensure that everyone has access to reasonable housing and clean water, writes Mary Robinson, Executive Director of The Ethical Globalisation Initiative and former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Most recently, all 189 United Nations member states signed the UN Millennium Declaration in 2000, which formally commits them to take practical and co-operative action in these and other areas. Robinson writes that there has never been a greater need for simple and convincing arguments that explain, to governments and people alike, why action to end poverty, illiteracy, oppression and disease is right, is in the interests of everyone - richer and poorer - and requires combined and persistent effort from all parties. Political leaders, in their public capacity, and citizens in their private capacity, act to help others because they believe it is right to do so. Ethical commitment is an essential component of any strategy to make the world a safer and better place for all who live in it. Action to end poverty, illiteracy and oppression will not succeed in the absence of such values.

FOR A FREE AND DEMOCRATIC IRAQ

Certain that they had won the war in Iraq almost without fighting, the Americans now seem to be mired in a \'\'peace\'\' for which they clearly failed to devise a strategy or a plan, writes Emma Bonino, Emma Bonino, member of the Transnational Radical Party and deputy in the European Parliament. In this article Bonino writes asks, Is it really wrong to have gone in to and remain in Iraq? Today, to be \'\'pacifist\'\' is to pursue the cynical, wait-and-see policy of those who say, \'\'After all, the Americans got what they were looking for.\'\' Many have raised the spectre of the Vietnam syndrome, but today the greatest risk is not \'\'Vietnam syndrome\'\' but the \'\'get-out-of-Vietnam syndrome\'\'. We must do everything possible, whatever our past positions might have been, to make sure that the efforts now underway in Iraq are successful. If the current state of affairs is to be corrected, everyone, beginning with the European countries, must put aside the wait-and- see politics and do everything possible to make Arab countries participate in the reconstruction, whose populations, regardless of the rhetoric of the ruling class, are finally beginning to ask themselves the right questions about terrorism, particularly after the attacks in Riyadh, Casablanca, and Istanbul.