A satirical poster of President Jair Bolsonaro saying COVID-19 ‘is just a flu’ in Brazil, where US-linked groups have also denied the virus exists. | Cris Faga/NurPhoto/PA Images

By Diana Cariboni and Isabella Cota
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 30 2020 (IPS)

Half a dozen US Christian right groups have poured millions of dollars into Latin America and have promoted misinformation about COVID-19 and other health and rights issues, openDemocracy can reveal today.

These groups are part of a bigger number of twenty Christian right groups that have spent at least $44 million of ‘dark money’ into Latin America since 2007. Several of them are linked to President Trump’s administration.

None of these organisations disclose the identities of their donors or details of how exactly they spend their money in Latin America. Many do not mention their Latin American operations on their websites.

One group has called COVID-19 “the most monumental social engineering and ideological… effort in history”. The leader of another group also sits on an anti-China lobby group with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon – and claims that coronavirus was man-made in a Chinese lab.

These groups use the Global South as a laboratory for misinformation campaigns, with incalculable costs for lives and well-being

Alejandra Cárdenas, Center for Reproductive Rights

At least three of these US groups have attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) during the pandemic, claiming for instance that it is “using COVID-19 to spread abortion”. The Trump administration announced earlier this year that it would halt US funding to the global health body.

Two groups have also supported anti-abortion projects across Latin America that have been accused of using “deception and manipulation” against vulnerable women. Another organisation has funded a controversial app that employs “misleading” advice to discourage the use of contraception.

All of these US groups promote a strict vision of a “traditional family” against abortion and LGBT equality. Latin America already has some of the world’s highest rates of adolescent pregnancies and murders of LGBT people; many rights advocates say these groups are aggravating the situation.

Alejandra Cárdenas, from global advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights, said these findings “prove a manipulation we’ve been seeing for years by the US Christian right in Latin America and Africa, meant to break the social fabric and human rights protections that popular movements fought for”.

These groups “use the Global South as a laboratory for misinformation campaigns,” she said, with “incalculable costs for lives and well-being.”

Senator Humberto Costa from the Brazilian Workers Party added that “these findings confirm that there is an international network behind orchestrated actions to misinform and attack specific groups with hate messages.”

COVID-19 conspiracies

In February, as coronavirus infections began to swell globally, a veteran US anti-abortion activist claimed that the virus was created in a Chinese lab as a bioweapon and then released, either intentionally or accidentally. President Trump has also shared this theory.

The activist is Steven Mosher. He directs a US group called Population Research Institute (PRI), which has published an online book in English and Spanish claiming that China’s fabrication of the virus has the “clear intention… of radically modifying the known world through social engineering”.

Mosher also sits on the board of an anti-China lobby group that he co-founded with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign director. Bannon was earlier this year charged with fraud over a fundraising campaign to build a wall between the US and Mexico. He has denied these charges.

PRI has spent more money in Latin America than it has anywhere else in the world, outside the US – more than $1 million between 2008 and 2017. While it is not one of the biggest spenders in the region, it appears to be one of the most active.

Among its activities, PRI says it has trained staff of CitizenGo, a Spain-based global conservative group that has links to far-right parties across Europe. PRI trained CitizenGo “in the use of political strategy tools, communicational and scenario analysis”, and PRI’s Latin America director, Peruvian Carlos Polo Samaniego, is also on the board of CitizenGo.

Polo is accused by his son, LGBT rights activist Carlos Polo Villanueva, of having taught him to manipulate the results of an online survey about the legalisation of abortion in Peru.

His son told openDemocracy: “I was ten or twelve years old, and my father asked me if I wanted to help him with his job. He put me in front of a computer, saying ‘you vote here against abortion, then go to cookies, disable cookies, return to the webpage and vote again. Do it as many times as you can’.”

Polo’s son also claimed that Catholic and evangelical schools pushed their students to attend the “marches for life” that his father and other ultra-conservatives organised. He said: “I marched against abortion as a child because our school took roll calls. I was forced to march in 2009 and 2010.”

Polo did not deny his son’s accounts when asked about them by openDemocracy. He said: “Obviously, there are a lot of differences between the points of view of LGBTI activists and PRI’s. LGBTI activists are free to express their views. I know what my son Carlos thinks. I love him as a son and respect him as a person, despite our conflicting opinions. PRI defends and promotes the freedom of expression for all peoples”.

In April, CitizenGo launched an online petition to “defund” the World Health Organisation, alleging that it uses public money to “promote Communist China’s false COVID information” as well as to “teach masturbation to children from ages 0 to 4… and force doctors to perform sex reassignment surgery on children”.

COVID-19 misinformation

Another one of the groups analysed by openDemocracy is the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), which has disclosed spending at least $2.7 million in Latin America since 2007.

Founded in 1960 in Brazil as an anti-communist, Catholic network, its US branch has called the ongoing coronavirus crisis “the most monumental social engineering and ideological… effort in history”.

A Brazilian member of the TFP network has published articles denying the existence of COVID-19 cases in Rio de Janeiro and claiming that coronavirus mortality figures have been “inflated and manipulated” by the media and politicians to fuel “fear and hopelessness”.

“With the justification of fighting the virus, the church and the good people are persecuted,” said one of the articles published by TFP’s Instituto Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in Brazil, referring to temporary closures of churches in the country – which currently has the world’s second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths, after the US.

Cárdenas, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, said: “The public must know who is behind these campaigns, and understand their alignment with political causes. Why are they interested in weakening public health protection systems, like the WHO? What benefit can be drawn from it?”

“Misinformation is instrumental to the Latin American right-wing tactic of dismantling rights,” added Thiago Amparo, law professor at educational institute Fundação Getulio Vargas of São Paulo. “Being funded transnationally, these misinformation tactics function as disruptive tools in the region’s democracies.”

“We are not behind or aware of any campaigns and certainly deny wanting to weaken or take any actions against public health”, the American TFP group told openDemocracy. It added that the articles published by its “autonomous sister organisation” in Brazil “are not official statements” from the group.

One of the articles was authored by a Catholic priest that is not a member of TFP, it said, and the other is a commentary on government statistics.

Misleading women about reproductive health

The president of the US Catholic conservative group Human Life International has also claimed that the WHO is “using COVID-19 to spread abortion”.

This group has spent $2.3 million in Latin America since 2007. Together with another US anti-abortion group, Heartbeat International, it supports a network of ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ that have been accused of misleading and manipulating Latin American women, as openDemocracy revealed this year.

Another US group, the World Youth Alliance (WYA), has spent a more modest $640,000 in Latin America – but it has also been involved in activities condemned for “misleading” women about their health. It is promoting a controversial fertility app (the FEMM app) that dissuades women from using birth control and emergency contraception, claiming it is dangerous.

If a user asks the FEMM app specifically for information on contraception, it says it doesn’t provide this as “artificial means” of preventing pregnancy “can be detrimental to a woman’s health by suppressing hormone function. Hormones are needed in sufficient levels to promote optimal health in the body”.

“The app is clearly misleading,” said Grazzia Rey, associate professor of gynaecology at Uruguay’s University of the Republic, “as it circumvents the scientific evidence provided by the WHO and Uruguay’s ministry of health guidelines, on the efficacy and security for all contraceptive methods.”

If a user says they want to avoid pregnancy, the app tells them to abstain from sex completely or on days when they are most fertile. Anita Román, president of Chile’s Midwifery Society, said such ‘fertility awareness’ methods “have a high margin of insecurity,” while sexual abstinence “is unnatural.”

In a “training course” from WYA’s sister group FEMM, which created the app, a Catholic gynaecologist from Chile claimed that young women take birth control “not because they don’t want to have babies, but because they want to be beautiful”. (A study by the US Guttmacher Institute found that 86% of women use contraceptive pills primarily to prevent pregnancies.)

Spending not disclosed

Globally, openDemocracy found that 28 US Christian right groups have poured at least $280 million into activities around the world since 2007 – led by their spending in Europe (almost $90 million).

However, this data underestimates the US Christian right’s influence and spending internationally. Money sent via churches, or groups registered as ‘church affiliates’, for example, is not included in the total because these organisations are not required to publicly disclose their spending.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is the biggest spender in Latin America, spending at least $21 million in the region between 2007 and 2014, plus almost $10 million in Mexico and Canada. It’s led by the late American televangelist’s son Franklin Graham – an outspoken supporter of President Trump who said that God was behind the 2016 election.

Graham – who called the cancellation of his festivals in Europe due to COVID-19 “spiritual warfare” – was also in Russia last year meeting a Kremlin official who is under US sanctions, on a trip that he said was personally signed off by Trump’s vice president Michael Pence.

After 2014, the BGEA stopped disclosing its financial information as it obtained a reclassification as an “association of churches”.

Focus on the Family, the second-largest spender in Latin America ($6.2 million between 2008 and 2018), offers online shows, podcasts and counselling in Spanish with the message that homosexuality is “not normal” and trans identity is a “disorder and has to be treated”.

This group’s founder James Dobson has spoken out against Trump’s impeachment and celebrated his anti-abortion and pro-Israel positions. In early 2020, Jenna Ellis, who once worked for Dobson, was appointed Trump’s campaign legal advisor.

Cárdenas, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, accused all these groups of working “to break down the entire human rights protection system, which is their hidden and ultimate goal”. She said: “I hope this investigation is widely shared and helps us to open eyes at their full agenda.”

A poster from the No Excuses campaign, organised by Conapees, el Instituto del Niño y Adolescente del Uruguay and Unicef. Photo courtesy of Conapees

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jan 5 2015 (IPS)

Karina Núñez Rodríguez was only 12 when she was forced into prostitution. Now age 50 and a mother of six, she is an outspoken fighter against sexual exploitation of children and teenagers in Uruguay, a country reluctant to recognise this growing scourge.

Her mother’s surname, Rodríguez, “has everything to do with what I am,” she says, explaining that her grandmother was also an exploited child. Karina proudly says she broke this family burden when her youngest daughter turned 12 as a smiling girl ready to go to high school.“There were nine guys who gave me a beating. I was 11 days in an intensive-care unit and three months unable to walk. Once I could, I returned to report the same crime." -- Karina Núñez Rodríguez

It was an assurance that her own children have a bright future, even though Karina still makes a living selling her body.

In Uruguay, a countless number of children, mostly girls, have their childhoods stolen, to be sold for a pack of cigarettes, a cell phone card, food, clothes, shelter or plain cash. Some are exploited by their own relatives, others by by neighbours or organised criminal networks.

One grocer threw dance parties in her shop on the paydays of local rural workers and lured the men with 12 year-old-girls from the neighbourhood. The girls would spend the night drinking alcohol and having sexual relations with adults on the premises of a nearby chapel.

A 74-year-old owner of a hotel in a beach resort paid for the travel of a 15-year-old girl, who lives hundreds of kilometres away, to have sex. Afterwards, despite sending money to her pimps, the man avoided punishment by claiming he didn’t know she was underage.

A provincial high-ranking public official organised a party with teenagers, alcohol and cocaine in a government facility, and was caught drunk while driving away with one of the girls.

And a network of lorry drivers and the fathers of two victims forced girls into sexual encounters with drivers in three different towns.

These types of cases hit the news almost twice a week. Authorities established Dec. 7 as the national day against sexual exploitation of children. But they still have no accurate statistics on this crime, punishable by up to 12 years in prison under a 2004 law. Adult prostitution is legal and state-regulated.

There are as many as 1.8 million children exploited in prostitution or pornography worldwide, according to Ecpat. Nearly 80 per cent of trafficking is for sexual exploitation and over 20 percent of the victims are children.

From 2010 to September this year, the judiciary heard 79 cases involving 127 defendants. Only 43 were convicted, according to a report published by the judicial branch.

But police reports are increasing. In 2007, there were just 20. In 2011, the number jumped to 40, in 2013 there were 70, and last year there were more than 80.

“Each case is not just one boy or girl. It can involve four or five,” says Luis Purtscher, president of the National Committee for the Eradication of Commercial and non-Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Teenagers (Conapees). Perpetrators outnumber victims. “In a single night, a girl can have five or 10 sexual partners,” he says.

“Being a problem whose underlying causes are the power of capitalism to seize territories and the male workforce migrations, we could hypothesise that when both the economy and the mobility grow, child sex crimes also rise in places colonised by investors,” says Purtscher.

In the last five years, Conapees has trained 1,500 public servants, including teachers, social workers, police officers and prosecutors. “We have 3,000 extra ears and eyes skilled somehow to detect and report,” he adds.

Gender violence plays a role. On a list of 12 Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal, Uruguay has the highest rate of killings of women by a former or current partner, states a recently released report by the regional Gender Equality Observatory.

To graphically illustrate the depth of the problem, Conapees published an advert in the press: ‘Very young girls’, followed by a phone number. It received 100 calls the first day and 500 the first weekend.

Karina became an activist after witnessing the suffering of girls subjected to “breaking-down practices” in brothel-bars: torture, forced and collective penetrations and beatings, “aimed to create such a bond of fear between the victim and her exploiter that she can stand night after night in a corner in Europe without even thinking to go to the police.”

Her record includes 27 crime reports to authorities. “I was instrumental in nine indictments, and I’m honoured by people who trust me and give me more evidence.” She checks the facts and relies on a network of eight friends in different cities. “Thank God we have WhatsApp,” she says with a smile.

In 2007, she and other colleagues created Grupo Visión Nocturna (Night vision group) to promote an independent stance on health-related issues and demand respect for sex workers.

Shortly after reporting to a small city’s police station that three girls were about to be trafficked in 2009, a supposed client picked her up. They travelled 20 kilometres away from town. “There were nine guys who gave me a beating. I was 11 days in an intensive-care unit and three months unable to walk. Once I could, I returned to report the same crime,” she recalls. Karina has been threatened and fears she could be killed at any time.

Making public accusations is dangerous, yet the crime and the victims are not hidden. Belgian photographer Susette Kok visited many sites in an exhibition and book and portrayed 27 adults –24 women, two transgender women and a young man— who were child victims and now, invariably, are sex workers.

“I found the exploitation easily. It is all over the place,” says Kok, who was assisted by Karina’s knowledge and web of contacts.

The “little house of love”, a group of dilapidated and unroofed walls, the floor covered with used condoms, is just next door to a church in Fray Bentos, in the southwest of Uruguay. An oxidized “container of passions” – situated in a sports field and, again, next to a church at the entrance of the western city of Young— has the door open when it is vacant.

Dozens of places like it are scattered through the area: a bench in a communal football field, a huge tree by a bridge, ironically known as “ecological sex”, shacks, clubs and “waitress bars”.

In west Montevideo, bus stations, parks, canteens and even private houses are sites of child sex offences, according to the survey “An open secret”, authored by Purtscher and other seven experts who interviewed more than 50 sources.

The area is attracting major investment and a predominantly male workforce, which could worsen the situation, but it does not have mechanisms to assist the victims. Nor does the country as a whole. A governmental programme established in 2013 is underfunded and counts just two teams.

This slow official response exasperates Karina. “When a child is exploited,” she says, “we cannot wait.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The six freed Guantánamo detainees line up to hold a Uruguayan baby. In this picture, Tunisian Abdul Bin Mohammed Abis Ourgy holds up the infant while Syrian Ali Hussein Muhammed Shaaban watches. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Dec 31 2014 (IPS)

In the summery afternoon of a beachside neighbourhood not far from the Uruguayan capital, nothing could sound more unusual than the Muslim call to prayer chanted by Tunisian Abdul Bin Mohammed Ourgy, a few days after being freed from the United States military prison in Guantánamo, Cuba.

One of the first acts of Ourgy and the five others who arrived in Uruguay Dec. 7, after 12 years behind bars, was to figure out their new coordinates and find the orientation to Mecca, the Saudi city faced by the Muslim world during prayer.Political perversities have placed on their shoulders the burden of demonstrating that prisoners at Guantánamo can be freed without the risk of turning into what, according to Washington's latest version, they never were: terrorists.

It is not surprising that anybody subjected to Guantánamo’s living conditions would find a lifeline in religion, homeland traditions and family memories.

But religion has lost none of its relevance for these men since they were suddenly introduced to a strange culture – Western but not U.S. or European— with a language different from both their native Arabic and from the English they were forced to speak with their jailers in Guantánamo.

The group of four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian is still bound by the silence imposed by Washington regarding their experiences in the prison. IPS met with them for the second time Dec. 30 in the house where the Syrians are living in downtown Montevideo. A few are already speaking some Spanish and struggling to adjust to their new reality.

Contacts with relatives have been established and the men are now looking for ways to reunite with their families, with the support of the Uruguayan government.

Syrian Jihad Deyab – well known because he protested his detention for years through hunger strikes and litigated against the U.S. force-feedings— is gaining strength and hoping to join his wife and three children soon.

His lawyer, Cori Crider, told IPS that “we had appealed Judge Gladys Kessler’s decision denying us relief from various force-feeding practices, when he was released. We have now asked the Court of Appeals to vacate that judgment on the basis that the government ceased its illegal conduct by transferring him, but that request hasn’t been decided.”

Yet “Deyab is still part of the case in which we say the video-tapes of his force-feedings should be made public,” led by 16 media organisations under the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution, and “he very much supports what the media are trying to do,” she said.

After the shock of liberation, the six men are still struggling to fully understand where they are and to match as much as possible their beliefs and expectations for a new life with Uruguay’s social norms.

Difficult, but necessary, is to reconcile the diverse social and political expectations and interests surrounding the group since the government of José Mujica decided to host them as refugees on humanitarian grounds.

With just 3.3 million people, Uruguay is “almost empty,” Palestinian Mohammed Tahamatan told IPS. He finds this is a wonderful fact.

This country was made by successive migratory waves, but it didn’t receive many new immigrants for a long time. On the contrary, it has tended to lose its own population, particularly through young people chasing better opportunities abroad.

However, the economic prosperity of the last decade attracted a modest but constant influx of foreigners: Spaniards, Peruvians, Dominicans, Indians and Pakistanis. This is something new for a society which has become excessively homogenous and whose representations of the Middle East and the Muslim world are still heavy loaded with exoticism.

“Exoticism is not good… and it comes with a certain degree of fear of Islam,” Javier Miranda, human rights director for the Presidency of Uruguay, told IPS. Awareness of this “is part of our own development as a society,” he added.

Social expressions of solidarity with the 42 refugees from the Syrian civil war who arrived in Uruguay last October, and those shown to Guantánamo’s former inmates while they were visiting a street market, are genuine.

But it is yet to be seen how much of it is determined by this sense of exoticism or by the international attention this country has gained for adopting these policies. Furthermore, as the beneficiaries are a small group of people, such solidarity entails a very low economic and social cost.

Such a reception is absent for the Peruvian, Bolivian or Dominican immigrants who escape from poverty in their countries and are not flagged by any governmental campaign. Some of them have even been victims of labour exploitation and trafficking.

For the governing party, the centre-left coalition Frente Amplio, it is vital to ensure the success of the resettlement schemes of the Syrian conflict refugees and the former Guantánamo inmates.

In both cases, Mujica cited the goal of “setting an example” for neighbouring countries. A successful integration would silence critics and ease fears of perceived or real risks. Thus controlling developments and avoiding outbursts become crucial.

Since the release earlier this month of four inmates who were repatriated to Afghanistan, there are now 132 prisoners in Guantánamo, 63 of them cleared for release. Out of the remaining 69, 10 are currently or have been on trial and 59 are labelled as dangerous by authorities who, nevertheless, recognise there is inadequate evidence to prosecute them in court.

At least one of the six men transferred to Uruguay is willing to advocate for more South American countries hosting Guantánamo’s inmates, IPS learned.

The Uruguayan experiment is also subject to U.S. expectations. The most paradoxical is to avoid the outcome that persons unfairly imprisoned for many years become, once free, active enemies of the U.S.

The same government who produced their criminal files declared in 2009 there was no evidence against them and they could be released.

The same government which forced them to fly to Montevideo shackled and blindfolded sent to the Uruguayan authorities a letter ensuring that “there is no information that the above-mentioned individuals were involved in conducting or facilitating terrorist activities against the United States or its partners or allies.”

The same government campaigning for the hosting of further Guantánamo inmates by third countries has a Congress which has banned this possibility in its territory.

Some local analysts in Uruguay have questioned which of the two versions should be believed. If Washington lied in the files, it could be lying now again, they argue.

This analysis ignores a basic guarantee of the rule of law: that it is guilt, not innocence, which must be proven.

The “war against terror” led by the U.S. since 2001 is seriously discredited in Uruguay. But its narrative has coloured public opinion. People have not expressed outright rejection of the six freed men, but opinion polls carried out this year show support of just 20 per cent for their arrival.

Washington insisted on banning any image of the release. Yet the world has already seen the first pictures of these men in the street, at the beach or holding a baby, as featured in this story.

These photos counterbalance the only produced so far by the U.S. military apparatus: the exasperated faces of the inmates with shaved heads and long beards.

Dressed like any Uruguayan men, it would be so easy for them to just blend into the crowd and live their lives in privacy. But they are media celebrities and subjects of surveillance for the intelligence services of a number of countries.

Under all these circumstances, nobody should expect 100 per cent success, not the least because they are traumatised. However, political perversities have placed on their shoulders the burden of demonstrating that prisoners at Guantánamo can be freed without the risk of turning into what, according to Washington’s latest version, they never were: terrorists.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the watchful eyes of Military Police at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during in-processing to the temporary detention facility on Jan. 11, 2002. Credit: public domain

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 13 2014 (IPS)

Uruguayan President José Mujica bought time for his plan to host six prisoners of Guantánamo, handing over the decision to the winner of the incoming elections. But time is a scarce resource for the inmates of this United States military prison on Cuban soil.

The resettlement of a Palestinian, a Tunisian and four Syrian detainees in Guantánamo is a hot potato for Mujica while his party, the centre-left Broad Front, struggles to pull ahead in the final stretch to general elections set for Oct. 26.“The U.S. is letting them out because they pose no danger to the U.S. or Uruguay or any other country… They are accused of absolutely no wrongdoing and have never been charged with any crime.” -- Laura Pitter of HRW

Out of 149 inmates currently in Guantánamo, a prison established by George W. Bush (2001-2009) to function beyond the law, 79 are cleared for release at least since 2010, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has gone to court on behalf of some of the detainees.

Mujica agreed in March to settle six inmates of this group – following a request by U.S. President Barack Obama — some of them suffering from very poor physical and mental health.

Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan, a 35-year-old Palestinian, is considered at high risk. Diagnosed with major depression, he has engaged in several hunger strikes in the last few years. Born in the West Bank, he was 23 when Pakistani security services arrested him and rendered him to the U.S. According to one of his attorneys, Lauren Carasik, there is not a single piece of evidence against him.

“The travesty of Guantanamo is that some of the men were rounded up not because of reasonable suspicions, but instead because areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan were blanketed with leaflets offering a bounty for ‘suspected terrorists’, sparking a frenzy of lucrative but wrongful accusations,” said Carasik in an op-ed published by Al Jazeera last year.

The CCR claims that 86 percent of the 789 men and teenagers once jailed in Guantánamo since January 2002 were essentially sold at times when the U.S. military offered bounties of around 5,000 dollars per capture.

Syrian Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a married father of four, has also been protesting via an intermittent hunger strike since February 2013. He suffers from extreme weakness and requires a wheelchair. With no charges against him, Washington cleared him for release in 2009.

Dhiab’s case gained notoriety this year when his attorneys challenged the force-feeding method applied by Guantanamo’s jailers against him and other hunger strikers. U.S. judge Gladys Kessler ordered the disclosure of 28 classified videotapes recording the forced cell extraction and forced feeding of Dhiab.

In a statement read by his lawyers in court, Dhiab claimed that he wanted the U.S. public “to see what is going on at the prison today, so they will understand why we are hunger-striking, and why the prison should be closed.” In August, one of his attorneys said he was “just a skeleton”.

Dhiab had lived with his family in Afghanistan, where he ran a business, but had to flee to Pakistan when the war began after 9/11, according to British human rights NGO Reprieve. A few months later, the Pakistani police arrested him and rendered him to the U.S., possibly in exchange for payment.

In a letter urging the U.S. government to proceed with the transfers to Uruguay, the lawyers of the six detainees said in June that a Uruguayan delegation had interviewed the inmates at Guantánamo and extended to them invitations to resettle, “which they gratefully accepted”.

Mujica, a former guerrilla who served 14 years in inhuman conditions, is one of the many critics of Guantánamo. In recent months, he has repeated that the detainees would move to Uruguay as “free men”.

But Washington usually requests that the receiving country monitor the transferred men and ban them from travelling abroad, measures which are beyond Uruguay’s refugee legislation.

In other words, the same fears which have prevented shutting Guantánamo for good, releasing the innocents and bringing evidence-based suspects to U.S. courts have also obstructed the transfers to Uruguay.

The U.S. “needs assistance from other countries in order to close Guantanamo because, as appears to be the case in Uruguay too, irrational fear about transferring detainees to the U.S. is being used for political gain in the U.S. elections,” said Laura Pitter, Human Rights Watch’s senior national security researcher.

“There is no reason whatsoever to fear letting these men come to Uruguay,” she told IPS by email. “The U.S. is letting them out because they pose no danger to the U.S. or Uruguay or any other country… They are accused of absolutely no wrongdoing and have never been charged with any crime.”

In an August interview with this reporter, the director of the Presidency’s Human Rights office, Javier Miranda, said Uruguayan society “harbours some fear of Muslims, and this is part of our growth. Some people have shown this assimilation of Islam and terrorism, which is an utterly false assumption.

“Those men who spent 12 years in a hole in Guantánamo, almost as disappeared persons, have the same right to a shelter as the Syrian refugees,” added Miranda, who successfully supervised the Oct. 9 arrival of a first group of 43 civilians who had fled the Syria civil war and were living in hard conditions in Lebanon.

But the Mujica administration’s failure to publicise the details of this second humanitarian operation and the legal plight and health of every one of the six inmates fuelled rather than assuaged public mistrust.

While 66 percent of one survey’s respondents supported the resettlement of Syrian refugees, the number who rejected the arrival of Guantánamo detainees rose from 50 percent in April to 58 percent in September.

Last month, The New York Times reported that Vice President Joe Biden had called Mujica, “pressing him to resettle the men”. Montevideo swiftly denied any pressure, and stated only Mujica had the authority to decide when the inmates should arrive. But the move paved the way for a heated electoral debate on this issue.

The centre-right opposition National Party, which is polling in second place, took advantage of this inconsistency and accused the government of acting “under pressure of imperialism”.

According to Pitter, Uruguay would do a great service “acknowledging that they recognise the human dignity and human rights of these men, and righting a grave injustice that the U.S. has perpetrated upon them for many years.”

The U.S. will hold elections in November. If the governing Democratic Party fails to retain a majority in the Senate, Republican opposition could add further obstacles to closing Guantánamo.

In the face of this political dysfunction, the best hopes to end the humanitarian crisis will continue to rest on the good will of third countries.

In Uruguay, the Broad Front is confronting its most competitive elections since it first came to power in 2004. After repeating that he alone would decide about Guantánamo, Mujica backtracked last week and announced he would hand over the decision to the incoming elected president.

If the Broad Front wins the election, a few inmates can still dream of travelling to South America before the end of the year. But if the winner is the National Party, Washington might have to re-open the agreement with the new government, no earlier than March 2015.

And for some of the prisoners, it could be too late.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A traffic jam in Jaciara, Brazil, caused by repairs to the BR-364 road. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 2 2014 (IPS)

“We could be the last Latin American and Caribbean generation living together with hunger.”

The assertion, made by Raúl Benítez, a regional officer for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), shows one side of the coin: only 4.6 percent of the region’s population is undernourished, according to the latest figures.

By 2030, however, most of the countries in the region will face a serious risk situation due to climate change.

With almost 600 million inhabitants, Latin America and the Caribbean has a third of the world’s fresh water and more than a quarter of its medium to high potential farmland, points out a book published this year by the Inter-American Development Bank in partnership with Global Harvest Initiative, a private-sector think-tank.

It is the largest net food-exporting region, while it uses just a fraction of its agricultural potential for both consuming and exporting.

But almost a quarter of the region’s rural people still live on less than two dollars a day, and the region is prone to disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and droughts), some of them exacerbated by climate change.

Global warming poses serious challenges to the international community’s goal of eradicating poverty and hunger. Changes in rainfall patterns, soils and temperatures are already stressing agricultural systems.

Currently, more than 800 million people worldwide are at risk of hunger. Through its devastating impact on crops and livelihoods, climate change is predicted to increase that number by as much as 20 percent by 2050, according to a recent United Nations report.

Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns could lead to food price rises of between three percent and 84 percent by 2050, thereby feeding a vicious cycle of poverty and inequality.

Oxfam reports that in the more extreme scenarios, heat and water stress could reduce crop yields by 25 percent between 2030 and 2049.

Climate change is likely to impact mostly small and family farmers, who produce more than half the food in the region and have inadequate resources with which to deal with unpredictable weather.

Despite this looming threat, strategies for sustainability are far from clear. Regional drivers of growth are export-oriented commodities, and while some sectors have advanced in added value, technology and innovation, natural resources exploitation is still the key of the whole regional boom.

By 2011, raw materials and commodities accounted for 60 percent of regional exports, compared to 40 percent in 2000. At the same time, this growth of commodities exports led to a replacement of domestic manufactures by imported goods, affecting manufacturing industries in the region.

In rural areas, conflicting models of small farming and extensive monocultures based on genetically modified seeds compete for the land in a David versus Goliath fight.

In Paraguay, the fourth largest exporter of soybeans in the world, 1.6 percent of owners hold 80 percent of the agricultural land. In Guatemala, eight percent of producers own 82 percent of farmlands, while 80 percent of productive land in Colombia is in the hands of 14 percent of landowners, according to Oxfam.

Agriculture and related deforestation are major sources of greenhouse gasses (GHG) in Latin America, though other sources are growing rapidly. Brazil, for example, is joining the club of big polluters, with the burning of fossil fuels accounting for the majority of its GHG emissions in the last five years.

As the extractive industries grow, they demand more highways, railroads and ports, putting pressure on governments to avoid the so-called logistics blackout.

Energy demand is increasing too, not only from industries, but also from millions of people lifted out of poverty, and thus with larger consumption needs. The region’s energy demand for the period 2010-2017 increases at an annual rate of five percent.

The region is poised to cross a new fossil fuel frontier, when Argentina, Brazil and Mexico overcome their own political, financial and technical challenges to exploit substantial reserves of unconventional hydrocarbons, like the Argentinian Vaca Muerta geological formation or the pre-salt layer located in the Brazilian continental shelf.

It is difficult to argue that a region so rich in natural resources has no right to thrive on the demand and supply of commodities, particularly when the resulting fiscal revenues have allowed impoverished countries like Bolivia to drastically reduce extreme poverty numbers (from 38 percent in 2005 to 20 percent in 2013).

However, experts warn this path is unsustainable and climate change impacts, felt across the region, can undermine any social gain.

In Guatemala, the worst drought in 40 years is putting 1.2 million people at risk of suffering hunger in the next months. Those who suffer the worst impacts of unsustainable development models will ironically be those who contribute the least to global warming.

A recent U.N. document summarising actions for the follow-up to the programme of action adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) found that only about a “third of the world’s population could be considered as having consumption profiles that contribute to emissions.”

Fewer than one billion of them have a significant impact, while “a smaller minority is responsible for an overwhelming share of the damage,” the report added.

Still, it will be the poorest people who will bear the brunt, and Latin America, dubbed ‘the next global breadbasket’, is in desperate need of strong local and global action towards the goal of achieving sustainable development in the next decade.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant heading to the U.S. Credit: Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 29 2014 (IPS)

“Survival migration” is not a reality show, but an accurate description of human mobility fuelled by desperation and fear. How despairing are these migrant contingents? Look at the figures of Central American children travelling alone, which are growing.

The painful journeys of children and teenagers from Central America to the United States border sounded alarms this year.While Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico are like hell on Earth, the Refugee Convention is not easily applicable in these cases, and moves to broaden or amend it have failed so far.

More than 52,000 children —mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador— were detained when they crossed the border without their parents in the last eight months, says the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

While it is an unprecedented crisis, Gervais Appave, special policy adviser to the International Organisation for Migration’s director general, frames it “within a more general global trend”, which could be defined as “survival migration”.

Children travelling from the Horn of Africa to European countries, through Malta and Italy, or seeking to reach Australia by boat from Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka, are just two examples.

The European agency dealing with borders, Frontex, reported an increase in the “phenomenon of unaccompanied minors claiming asylum in the European Union (EU)” during 2009 and 2010.

According to Frontex, the proportion of children migrating alone “in the overall number of irregular migrants that reach the EU is worryingly growing.”

Appave told IPS it is impossible to identify a single cause for the spread of this child migration. But he pointed out there is a “very effective and ruthless smuggling industry”. There is “a psychological process that kicks in if you have a critical mass of people moving. Then others will try to follow because this is seeing as ‘the’ solution to go forth,” he said.

The muscle of smugglers and traffickers is apparent in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. But nobody flees without a powerful reason.

According to a report published in July by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, 85 percent of the new asylum applications received by the United States in 2012 came from these three countries, while Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize registered a combined 435 percent increase in the number of individual applications from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

While in recent weeks there have been fewer children crossing the U.S. southern border, “this phenomenon has been here since years ago,” Adriana Beltrán, WOLA’s senior associate for citizen security, told IPS.

Criminal gangs, mafias and corruption are major drivers, agree Beltrán and José Guadalupe Ruelas, director of Casa Alianza – Honduras, an NGO working to promote children’s rights.

Killings, extrajudicial executions, extortion and fear “have grown dramatically” in Honduras, Ruelas told IPS.

The country has 3.7 million children under 18, and one million do not attend school; half million suffer labour exploitation; 24 out of 100 teenage girls get pregnant; 8,000 boys and girls are homeless, and other 15,000 fled the country this year, according to official statistics.

“Five years ago, there were 43 monthly murders and arbitrary executions of children and under-23 youths,” he said. Now the monthly average is 88, according to Casa Alianza’s Observatorio de Derechos de los Niños, Niñas y Jóvenes.

Moreover, the perception of security is altered. When people in the “colonias” (poor neighbourhoods) see an ambulance, they “immediately presume a murder or a violent death, instead of a life about to be saved or an ill person to be cured,” and if they see a police or a military patrol, “they think there will be heavy fire and deaths.”

These terrified people mistrust state institutions. Only last year, 17,000 families left their homes following gangs’ threats, “and the state could do nothing to prevent it.”

“They are displaced by the war,” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández said in June.

The 1951 U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol establish that a refugee is a person who fled his or her country due to persecution on the grounds of political opinion, race, nationality or membership to a particular social group.

While Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico are like hell on Earth, the Convention is not easily applicable in these cases, and moves to broaden or amend it have failed so far. Instead, the 1984 Cartagena Declaration (see sidebar) offers a more flexible refugee definition for the region.

Through a 10-point plan of action, the UNHCR asks governments to include refugee considerations in migration policies, particularly when dealing with children, women and victims of trafficking.

According to a 2008 law, U.S. authorities must screen all cases of children under 18 who crossed the border alone to determine whether they are victims of trafficking or abuse, to provide them with legal representation and ensure due process. But the agencies in charge are overloaded and lack adequate resources.

“Some sectors want to change this law and, despite the fact that there have not been deportations, Washington has not clearly indicated yet which stance will take,” said Ruelas.

With elections set for November, it is highly unlikely the political parties will keep this issue out of the electoral fight, he added.

Beyond the urgency of this refugee crisis, underlying causes are a much more complicated issue.

It is not just violence or poverty, but “incredibly weak criminal justice institutions penetrated by organised crime,” said Beltrán.

Ruelas points out the “wrongful” militarisation of Honduras, which will further erode the state’s ability to control its territory. “Despite more soldiers patrolling the streets, criminals feel free to threaten and murder in the colonias,” he said.

According to Beltrán, the United States’ ad hoc assistance through the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) is excessively focused on the “anti-drug fight”, when the region requires more investment in prevention policies, particularly at the local level.

“Washington needs to refocus its policies toward the region, but Central American governments can’t evade their own responsibility,” she added.

Their fiscal revenues, for example, are among the lowest in Latin America, thus undermining their capacity to provide services and respect human rights.

However, the crisis of migrant children is providing a golden opportunity to reexamine all of these larger issues, Ruelas says. “We need a human security, one which regains the public space for the citizens.

“When people control the territory,” he argued, “because the police protect and support them, they gain the chance to rebuild a more peaceful community life.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at dia.cariboni@gmail.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, President of China Xi Jinping and South African President Jacob Zuma take a family photograph at the 6th BRICS Summit held at Centro de Eventos do Ceara' in Fortaleza, Brazil. Credit: GCIS

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jul 18 2014 (IPS)

While this week’s BRICS summit might have been off the radar of Western powers, the leaders of its five member countries launched a financial system to rival Bretton Woods institutions and held an unprecedented meeting with the governments of South America.

The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement signal the will of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to reconcile global governance instruments with a world where the United States no longer wields the influence that it once did.“The U.S. government clearly doesn't like this, although it will not say much publicly.” -- Mark Weisbrot

More striking for Washington could be the fact that the 6th BRICS summit, held in Brazil, set the stage to display how delighted the heads of state and government of South America – long-regarded as the United States’ “backyard”— were to meet Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.

At odds with Washington and just expelled from the Group of Eight (G8) following Russia’s intervention in the Ukrainian crisis, Putin was warmly received in the region, where he also visited Cuba and Argentina.

In Buenos Aires, Putin and the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, signed agreements on energy, judicial cooperation, communications and nuclear development.

Argentina, troubled by an impending default, is hoping Russian energy giant Gazprom will expand investments in the rich and almost unexploited shale oil and gas fields of Vaca Muerta.

Although Argentina ranks fourth among the Russia’s main trade partners in the region, Putin stressed the country is “a key strategic partner” not only in Latin America, but also within the G20 and the United Nations.

Buenos Aires and Moscow have recently reached greater understanding on a number of international issues, like the conflicts in Syria and Crimea, Argentina sovereignty claim over the Malvinas/Falkland islands and its strategy against the bond holdouts.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Washington and Buenos Aires remains cool, as it has been with Brasilia since last year’s revelations of massive surveillance carried out by the National Security Agency against Brazil.

Some leftist governments –namely Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador— frequently accuse Washington of pursuing an imperialist agenda in the region.

But it was the president of Uruguay, José Mujica –whose government has warm and close ties with the Barack Obama administration— who better explained the shifting balance experienced by Latin America in its relationships with the rest of the world.

After a dinner in Buenos Aires and a meeting in Brasilia with Putin, Mujica said the current presence of Russia and China in South America opens “new roads” and shows “that this region is important somehow, so the rest of the world perhaps begins to value us a little more.”

Furthermore, he reflected, “pitting one bloc against another… is not good for the world’s future. It is better to share [ties and relationships, in order to] keep alternatives available.”

Almost at the same time, Washington announced it was ready to transfer six Guantanamo Bay detainees to Uruguay, one of the subjects Obama and Mujica agreed on when the Uruguayan visited the U.S. president in May.

Mujica has invited companies from United States, China and now Russia to take part in an international tender to build a deepwater port on the Atlantic ocean which, Uruguay expects, could be a logistic hub for the region.

But beyond Russia, which has relevant commercial agreements with Venezuela, the real centre of gravity in the region is China, the first trade partner of Brazil, Chile and Perú, and the second one of a growing number of Latin American countries.

China’s president Xi Jiping travels on Friday to Argentina, and then to Venezuela and Cuba.

“The U.S. government clearly doesn’t like this, although it will not say much publicly,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“With a handful of rich allies, they have controlled the most important economic decision-making institutions for 70 years, including the IMF [International Monetary Fund], the World Bank, and more recently the G8 and the G20, and they wrote the rules for the WTO [World Trade Organisation],” Weisbrot told IPS.

The BRICS bank “is the first alternative where the rest of the world can have a voice.  Washington does not like competition,” he added.

However, the United States’ foreign priorities are elsewhere: Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

And with the exception of the migration crisis on its southern border and evergreen concerns about security and defence, Washington seems to have little in common with its Latin American neighbours.

“I wish they were really indifferent. But the truth is, they would like to get rid of all of the left governments in Latin America, and will take advantage of opportunities where they arise,” said Weisbrot.

Nevertheless, new actors and interests are operating in the region.

The Mercosur bloc (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the European Union are currently negotiating a trade agreement.

Colombia, Chile, México and Perú have joined forces in the Pacific Alliance, while the last three also joined negotiations to establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In this scenario, the BRICS and their new financial institutions pose further questions about the ability of Latin America to overcome its traditional role of commodities supplier and to achieve real development.

“I don’t think that the BRICS alliance is going to get in the way of that,” said Weisbrot.

According to María José Romero, policy and advocacy manager with the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), the need to “moderate extractive industries” could lead to “changes in the relationship with countries like China, which looks at this region largely as a grain basket.”

Romero, who attended civil society meetings held on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, is the author of “A private affair”, which analyses the growing influence of private interests in the development financial institutions and raises key warnings for the new BRICS banking system.

BRICS nations should be able “to promote a sustainable and inclusive development,” she told IPS, “one which takes into account the impacts and benefits for all within their societies and within the countries where they operate.”

Screenshot of Argentine President Cristina Fernández during her Monday Jun. 16 televised address to the nation. Credit: TV Pública

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jun 17 2014 (IPS)

Argentina finds itself in a strange position since the U.S. Supreme Court rejected its appeal Monday to take a case in which a small group of creditors is suing this country for full repayment: it is on the brink of default even though it is one of the countries in the world that has done the most to dig itself out of debt.

The Supreme Court decision in the case Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital leaves in place a 2012 ruling handed down by the second district court of New York, ordering Buenos Aires to pay bondholders, immediately and in full, some 1.5 billion dollars – an amount that includes interest and penalties.

But it also sets a precedent with respect to all of the unpaid debt in the hands of other speculative bondholders, totalling around 16 billion dollars.

This amount, however, “is equivalent to just three percent of Argentina’s GDP,” economist Ramiro Castiñeira, with the Econométrica consultancy, told IPS.

“It doesn’t make sense for Argentina to default over that amount, when it is one of the countries that has advanced the most in reducing its debt in the past few years,” Castiñeira argued.

Brazil, for example, owes interest payments this year equivalent to five percent of GDP, on top of principal payments amounting to more than 12 percent of GDP, he said.

The problem is that Argentina does not have 16 billion dollars in cash – the equivalent of half of its foreign reserves, which were hit hard by a series of restrictive monetary policies that fuelled capital flight.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández complained about the Supreme Court ruling Monday night, calling it “extortion” while stressing that her country would continue to make repayments to lenders who had agreed on renegotiated settlements.

After Argentina defaulted on its foreign debt in late 2001 during the worst economic crisis in the country’s history, the government made enormous efforts to work its way out of debt, which had reached 160 percent of GDP.

It repaid the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in full and restructured the debt held by 92.4 percent of bondholders, at a deep discount, in 2005 and 2010.

The debt shrank to manageable volumes. In late May, Argentina reached an agreement with the Paris Club of creditor nations for repaying overdue debts. And earlier this year, the government agreed on a package to compensate Spanish oil company Repsol for the 2012 nationalisation of its subsidiary YPF.

But the situation produced by the Supreme Court ruling could jeopadise everything achieved so far.

The sentence prohibits banks in New York from making interest and principal payments to creditors that accepted the restructuring unless the New York-based hedge fund NML Capital is paid.

On Jun. 30, Buenos Aires is to pay 532 million dollars for bonds issued under foreign legislation.

To avoid the embargo, payment jurisdicion could be modified by means of a voluntary swap. “The idea might seem tempting, but it is impracticable and would also mean falling into technical default” by changing the parameters set when bonds are issued, Argentine economist Leonardo Stanley, associated with the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES) think tank , told IPS.

Although Fernández’s statement was ambiguous, Stanley’s interpretation is that the president expressed a willingness to pay. That means “negotiations will have to start with the holdouts [creditors who refused the restructuring], which could take place within the context of what the judge handling the case [in New York] is asking for,” he said.

Stanley said: “From here on out the decision is political. Just as it reached agreements recently with Repsol and the Paris Club, the government should sit down and negotiate with Paul Singer,” whose hedge fund, Elliott Management, is the parent company of NML Capital.

The economic impact is inevitable, he added, “although the current government would not necessarily have to deal with it,” as Fernández’s term ends in December 2015. For that reason, “any proposal would have to be made in the legislative sphere,” which would help boost “transparency and credibility,” he said.

In her address to the nation Monday, Fernández said “this case has repercussions for the entire global financial system. [The ruling] validates a business model on a global scale which, if it continues to be reinforced, will produce unimaginable tragedies.”

Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious anti-poverty organisation Jubilee USA Network, said in a statement that “For heavily indebted countries supporting poor people, this is a devastating blow. These hedge funds are [now] equipped with an instrument that forces struggling economies into submission.”

“Argentina may not have used the best options or strategies,” said Stanley. But the stance taken by the U.S. Supreme Court shows that “despite the institutional crisis, the lobbying power of the financial sector is intact,” he added.

And if countries begin to doubt the benefits of issuing a bond under New York jurisdiction, the ruling “could also hurt that sector, and the United States…which has gone from being the world’s creditor to one of its biggest debtors,” he argued.

Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said “Both the U.S. Treasury and the IMF were also concerned about the broader effect of what would be considered an Argentine default, and also worried about the impact on other debt negotiations.

“Remember the U.S. Treasury [along with the IMF], although it did not join the lawsuit, basically supported Argentina’s contention that it should be able to pay the holdouts the same amount as it was paying creditors who had accepted Argentina’s debt restructuring.
“ U.S. relations with Argentina… have improved in recent months as Argentina has pursued a more orthodox and moderate set of economic policies (including efforts to reform its notoriously manipulated economic statistics, repay its Paris Club obligations, settle the claims of Repsol, etc).”

But the immediate future of those ties depends on how Buenos Aires reacts in this case, for which a solution could be possible if the Argentine goverment demonstrates greater flexibility, Hakim said.

“The Fernández government will have to resist the temptation to turn the decision into a domestic political issue,“ he said.

But that seems difficult to do. For decades the management of the country’s debt has been a central factor in economic and political crises. In her speech Monday, Fernández summed up the history of this issue.

The portion of bonds that Singer and his allies are pressing Argentina to pay is illustrative on its own. In 2008, NML Capital purchased the bonds at a nominal price of 370 million dollars. But at the time they were only worth 48 million dollars.

Thirty percent had been issued during the administration of Carlos Menem (1989-1999), when the peso was pegged to the dollar.

The rest were issued during the “megaswap” – a financial operation cooked up in 2001 to give Argentina breathing space by stretching out the government’s principal and interest payments, which backfired and increased the public debt by tens of billions of dollars.

Former president Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001) and his economy minister Domingo Cavallo were prosecuted for the megaswap and an international arrest warrant was issued for David Mulford, at the time chairman international of the Credit Suisse First Boston bank and former U.S. Treasury official.

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

The very contemporary medieval novels of Welsh author Ken Follett transport readers to a time when the rich had everything – and the poor didn’t even own themselves.

These stories, set in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, provide some consolation to today’s readers, who are now surrounded by comforts, freedoms and guarantees.

Poverty was the norm back then. As Follett himself says, “the richest of princes did not live as well as, say, a prisoner in a modern jail.”

Poverty and inequality are not the same thing, but they reinforce each other. In the poverty-stricken Middle Ages, the inequality was terrible. Between the dispossessed common people and the princes, feudal lords and powerful members of the clergy there was a social and economic vacuum that took decades to fill.

Opulence is the overarching parameter of success in 21st century society. But the problem is that all around the world, the rich are getting richer and richer while the armies of poor are pulling out of poverty very slowly, and are never far from the edge.

In India, which is home to 1.2 billion people, the number of billionaires rose tenfold in the last decade. In 2003 they owned 1.8 percent of the national wealth, compared to 26 percent in 2008, according to the international development organisation Oxfam.

Meanwhile, progress in reducing extreme poverty has been too slow: there were 429 million indigents in 1981 and 400 million in 2010, the World Bank reports.

Inequality is increasing across the globe, warn institutions as representative of the neoliberal, free market deregulation mindset as the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum.

According to the Credit Suisse bank, 10 percent of the world population holds 86 percent of the wealth, while the poorest 70 percent (over three billion people) holds just three percent.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks report, based on a survey of global elites, stresses income disparity as one of the principal emerging risks.

Are we returning to the Middle Ages?

That would appear to be impossible. The middle classes, or the ranks of the “non-poor”, continue to grow, especially in the large developing countries.

Extreme poverty has been drastically reduced around the world since the 1980s. In 1981, over half of the population of developing countries was extremely poor – a proportion that shrank to 21 percent by 2010, according to the World Bank.

But gaps in income and wealth are growing wider, including in places with well-established middle classes, like Europe or the United States.

Several analysts link the massive numbers of people pulling out of poverty and the growing public perception of inequality with the eruption of social discontent in countries as different as Turkey, Brazil or Chile.

In the 21st century inequality remains a major problem, with new facets in the context of globalised capitalism.

In this scenario, Latin America stands out as an anomaly: while it is still the most unequal region in the world, it is also the only one that has begun to close the gap in the past few years.

Inequality was the focus of a May 22-23 seminar in Santiago, which drew 23 journalists from Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay. The event was organised by the IPS international news agency with the support of Norway’s foreign ministry.

The seminar, “Other faces of inequality: inequity, corruption and the informal economy in South America”, was aimed at encouraging journalists to report on tough issues like weak tax systems and tax evasion, and the magnitude of informal or precarious labour.

Experts from the United Nations and academia, transparency activists, social researchers and leaders, and student activists offered statistics and viewpoints to inform the discussions and debate in the seminar.

That trove of information included shady aspects that could help explain the social discontent in the most solid and successful economy in Latin America: Chile.

For example, tax evasion stands at 46 percent in the richest segment of the population. And the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, two well-known tax havens, are among the main countries of origin of foreign direct investment in Chile.

In Latin America, poverty was reduced from 48.4 percent in 1990 to 27.9 percent in 2013. And extreme poverty is at its lowest level ever: 11.5 percent, according to Martín Hopenhayn, director of the Social Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

But there are signs that poverty reduction is slowing down. And little progress has been made in modifying the productive structure or the educational system, which are “structural causes of inequality,” he said.

Moreover, the region does a poor job collecting taxes, with direct tax revenue accounting for just 4.4 percent of Latin America’s gross domestic product, against eight percent that comes from indirect taxes, which disproportionately affect the poor.

This is a key aspect, said Hopenhayn, because improved fiscal capacity can correct “the unequalising dynamics of the market.”

But with all of its limitations, Latin America’s experience would appear to be inspiring.

According to Oxfam, “The case of Latin America gives us hope that the global trend of rising inequality can be reversed.”

Latin America is the region where tax revenue has grown the fastest in recent years, and that growth has translated into social spending to curb inequality.

Between 2002 and 2011, income inequality fell in 14 of the 17 countries studied, and some 50 million people climbed into the middle class – which means that for the first time in history, there are more people in the middle classes than in poverty, says the World Bank, although many still have one foot in the abyss.

After winning the inequality championship for so long, Latin America could become a trendsetter when it comes to equality. Other changes will show whether it is just a passing fad.

García Márquez in 1984. Credit: F3rn4nd0, edited by Mangostar C BY-SA 3.0

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 18 2014 (IPS)

The first time I read Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) was when I was proofreading the galleys of “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor”, which the Editorial Sudamericana was getting ready to reprint in Argentina.

I was working in the offices of the Sudamericana publishing house, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of San Telmo, where I could find myself editing a gothic novel or a literary classic or a work by the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, due to the varied menu.

I was 17 years old and I was mesmerised by that short tale, a journalistic report by García Márquez published in a number of instalments in the El Espectador newspaper in Bogotá, in 1955, which came out as a book in 1970.

The complete title was “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government and Forgotten for All Time”.

Through the first-person account of the exploits of the survivor, García Márquez denounced that the shipwreck of the sailor and his seven companions, who drowned, was due to overweight contraband on the Colombian Navy’s destroyer Caldas.

Colombia at the time was under a military dictatorship, so the report led to the closure of the newspaper and the first of García Márquez’s various periods of exile. The last one began in 1997. He never returned to live in Colombia.

From there, of course, I jumped to “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, the masterpiece that the same publishing house, the Editorial Sudamericana, published in 1967, which was going to revolutionise Spanish language literature and influence the rest of the world’s image and cultural impression of Latin America.

We Latin Americans fell in love, and were shocked, by the Colombia that García Márquez described in this novel and in his other great works of fiction.

The cruelty of Colombia’s wars, the solitude of its heroes, the pathetic flip-flops of its politicians and military leaders, the eternal rule of its dictators, the ominous foreign presence, the state of abandon of its rural villages – all of it contained the realistic feel of first-hand experience. And, while unique, it was also similar to what was happening in so many other corners of the region.

But in the voice of García Márquez it took on another dimension, dreamlike, exuberant and humorous, which transported us as readers and allowed us to reflect on our own woes even with a kind of joy.

Like other great writers, García Márquez built a universe of his own, made up of real and invented places, unlikely characters, and lineages and genealogies.

Their names, like Macondo or Aureliano Buendía, now form part of the collective memory of Latin America, just like what happened centuries earlier with El Quijote.

I devoured all of his short stories and novels, from “La Hojarasca” (Leaf Storm – 1955) to “Memoria de mis putas tristes” (Memories of My Melancholy Whores – 2004), through the formidable and very dissimilar “El otoño del patriarca” (The Autumn of the Patriarch – 1975) and “El amor en los tiempos del cólera” (Love in the Time of Cholera – 1985).

When I was proofreading the galleys of “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor”, I didn’t yet know that I was going to become a journalist.

Many years later I travelled to Colombia as a reporter, and had the chance to see the land that I had caught a glimpse of through the books of García Márquez, who in 1982 was awarded the Nobel Literature prize.

I saw for myself how the war continued, undaunted, with shifting protagonists and nerve centres, but with the same trail of blood and the same grinding dispossession and neglect.

Since 2012, the Colombian authorities and the main leftist guerrilla group have been discussing in Havana how to put an end to the last half century of war.

García Márquez, who died of cancer on Thursday Apr. 17 in Mexico, did not live to see his country at peace. Hopefully his fellow Colombians won’t have to wait another 50 years.

Diana Cariboni is Co-Editor in Chief of IPS.

Nelson Mandela in 1937. Credit: Public domain

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Dec 6 2013 (IPS)

Perhaps it’s a false contradiction. But today there are many who stress the pacifist message with which South Africa’s Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) emerged from prison in 1990, while few put an emphasis on his rebellion against apartheid, including armed rebellion, which landed him in prison.

Mandela was a political activist and a revolutionary at least since 1942. Two years later he joined the African National Congress, becoming a founding member of the Youth league, and leading the movement, which had been inconsequential for decades, to more radical positions.

Mandela was a rebel when he headed the civil disobedience campaign against the unjust laws of the white segregationist regime in 1952, and when, although he was a poor student, he qualified as a lawyer and set up the country’s first black law firm.

Because he was a rebel he was banned more than once, arrested and prosecuted in the Treason Trial, before he was finally acquitted in 1961. He was a rebel when he went underground.

But above all he stayed true to his rebelliousness after the Sharpeville massacre of 69 unarmed demonstrators during a Mar. 21, 1960 protest against the apartheid laws, the subsequent state of emergency, the arrest of 18,000 people and the banning of the ANC and other organisations.

He understood then that demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience were not enough to shake the foundations of apartheid, whose structure had become more sophisticated, to the absurd extent of creating the Bantustans or territories set aside for blacks.

It was an act of rebellion to lead the armed struggle in 1961 and help create the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). And to secretly leave the country and seek support and guerrilla training.

South Africa was a useful bridgehead for the Western powers – the same ones that today honour Mandela as a hero – in a region convulsed by anti-colonial liberation struggles and the Cold War.

In the 1970s the United States, France and Britain, trading partners of the regime, vetoed a motion to expel South Africa from the United Nations. And although the United Nations Security Council established a voluntary arms embargo against South Africa in 1963, it only became mandatory in 1977.

By the 1980s, apartheid had made South Africa an international pariah. But it wasn’t until 1985 that the authorities in the United States, Britain and the European Community adopted economic sanctions against the regime – in large part to appease the growing public outrage in their countries.

Mandela spent years in prison, starting in 1962. In 1964 he was tried for sabotage and sentenced to life. His rebelliousness sustained him for 27 years in prison, during which time he turned down three offers of parole.

The universal right to rebel against oppression has often been the object of suppression and above all of distortion and misrepresentation.

In the case of South Africa, it took the United States a long time to think it through. Not until 2008 did it remove the ANC from the State Department list’s of terrorist organisations – nine years after the end of Mandela’s term as president.

When he emerged from his years behind bars in 1990, and especially when he was sworn in as president in 1994, Mandela knew that dismantling apartheid would serve no purpose if the country fell apart in the process as a result of divisions and a thirst for vengeance.

And he then became the most active and dedicated of pacifists, taking his rebelliousness into a new terrain – the exercise of democracy and of dialogue as a solution to conflicts.

As an IPS article states, many South Africans today are still bogged down in poverty and inequality. And the ANC is widely accused of falling prey to nepotism and a lack of transparency.

It is no simple task to shake off a legacy that dates back to British colonial times. Segregation and its economic causes leave deep marks. It’s not enough just to have a black president, as illustrated by the United States, whose prisons still hold a disproportionate number of blacks.

But now South Africans can channel their rebelliousness against those scourges in a democratic state under the rule of law – for which Mandela, the rebel, must be thanked.

Diana Cariboni is IPS co-editor in chief.

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 14 2013 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean should play a central role in the construction of “sexual citizenship” – a concept that covers a series of population-related issues, rights and guarantees that this region helped build since the United Nations first emerged, says Brazilian expert Carmen Barroso.

Latin America has long been in the vanguard in the promotion of women’s rights, and still is today, Barroso, Western Hemisphere regional director for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, tells IPS in this interview.

Carmen Barroso doesn’t expect setbacks at the Montevideo conference. Credit: Courtesy of IPPF

Barroso, who was a key player in the negotiations for the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, says all innovations and creative solutions in this area come from civil society, where youth movements particularly stand out today.

For that reason she does not believe there will be any backsliding at the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, running Aug. 12-15 in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.

In this week’s meeting, the region is assessing its progress and failures and hammering out a common position to take to the U.N. General Assembly.

Q: Do you expect setbacks in this first regional conference?

A: No, I don’t. The region has made great strides since the 1990s. Governments are aware that this is a development issue. There is no one here who wants to move backwards.

Furthermore, there are at least 12 government delegations here that have incorporated civil society – which sends a message that governments want to feel they represent different voices in their countries.

Civil society is essential; it gave rise to the rights agenda. Governments don’t have time to create things in that terrain. When they act in a creative manner, it is due to the influence of civil society.

I also think there will be a global impact. This region has always been in the vanguard. It was an extremely central actor in promoting women’s rights in the process of the United Nations charter and in the creation (in 1946) of the Commission on the Status of Women. That was a long time ago."There is still this terribly daft idea that sex education encourages 'sin'." -- Carmen Barroso

Now, the region is changing; there are many middle-income countries and Brazil is part of the BRICS group (along with Russia, India, China and South Africa). That means the world looks at us differently.

Q: What issues could stand in the way of a consensus?

A: The danger I see is that references to abortion could stay the same as they are in the Cairo Programme of Action: that it’s a public health problem; that when it is permitted it must be safe; and that it is necessary to act in line with national laws.

This will be a major focus of debate. The reality in the region has changed. Uruguay decriminalised abortion, the Mexican capital did so as well, and so did Guyana and Puerto Rico. Colombia adopted more flexible rules, and Brazil expanded the circumstances in which abortion is legal. In Cuba abortion has been legal since the 1960s.

It’s important for this to be reflected in the regional position, but that won’t be easy.

Another aspect is the demand for comprehensive sex education, particularly for young people. There is still this terribly daft idea that sex education encourages “sin”, or earlier sexual initiation.

The research shows that this isn’t true, and that the start of sexual activity is even sometimes delayed, because girls and young women are empowered and feel they can say no if they aren’t really sure.

There is also talk of explicitly including the right to gender identity and respect for sexual diversity.

But sexual and reproductive rights are broader. Women also have the right to not be harassed in the street or in their workplace. Many of these aspects have been forgotten.

To sum up, we are creating what we could call “sexual citizenship” – and comprehensive sex education is essential for that.

Q: How have the civil society groups that have formed part of this process in the last two decades evolved?

A: The most important thing is to look at young people. We have numerous delegations of very active young people here who also express and organise themselves as such. When I got involved in these issues I was young, of course, but I didn’t define myself as such. What defined me was being a feminist and a woman. This is new.

Q: Now that we’re talking about young people: one problem where there have been setbacks rather than progress is teenage pregnancy.

A: It’s true. A study by ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) shows that, in half of the countries where statistics are available, the figures have remained the same, and in the other half, they have gone up.

There are some new developments, however: many adolescent girls who have a first child don’t have a second child (in adolescence), which is what used to happen.

Q: What explains this?

A: That they only have access to birth control methods and information once they enter the health system because of the pregnancy and birth.

Q: It would seem that adolescents today enjoy greater sexual freedom than 20 years ago, but don’t have the tools to handle it…

A: Not all of them. There are class-based differences. In the wealthiest quintile of the population, there are no teen pregnancies, which are concentrated in the poorest quintile.

Q: What’s the solution?

A: Governments should start out by living up to their promises. In 2008, the region’s education and health ministers pledged to ensure comprehensive sex education mechanisms in schools. What we have seen so far are a few timid steps in a handful of countries.

Excerpt:

Evo Morales at a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York . Credit: Mathieu Vaas/IPS

By Diana Cariboni and Jared Metzker
MONTEVIDEO/WASHINGTON , Jul 4 2013 (IPS)

The suspicion that Bolivian President Evo Morales’ jet was carrying Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who has become Washington´s public enemy number one, triggered an unprecedented international incident.

Four European countries – France, Italy, Spain and Portugal – denied Morales’ presidential jet permission to fly through their airspace on his way back from Moscow to La Paz.

Snowden, the former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) who released dozens of top secret documents proving that the U.S. government has been tapping global internet and phone systems on a massive scale, is in hiding in the Moscow airport.

Morales’ aircraft was rerouted and forced to land in Austria, where it was stuck on the tarmac for 14 hours. The governments implicated in the incident brandished technical explanations, and after hours of heated negotiations, the presidential jet was allowed to take off again.

While it was grounded, the plane and its passengers were apparently subjected to some kind of inspection, the scope of which is not yet clear. But afterwards, Austria’s foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, stated that there were only Bolivian citizens in the aircraft.

The incident violates international law, because aircraft carrying national leaders have diplomatic immunity. Bolivian diplomats complained at the United Nations that Morales had been “kidnapped” during the time he was grounded in Austria. And the indignation spread to other South American governments.

An extraordinary meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has been convened for Thursday in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba to discuss the issue.
Morales, who along with other presidents from the region was in Russia for an oil and gas conference, had expressed sympathy for Snowden’s plight. The whistleblower has been desperately seeking asylum in different countries since his passport was revoked and he was charged with espionage. In the last few days Snowden has applied for asylum in 21 countries. But as of yet he hasn’t received a response from any government.

Washington has not tried to conceal its efforts to block any attempt to offer asylum to the 30-year-old former employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

But U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki largely evaded questions as to whether communications between the U.S. and the European countries which denied the airspace had led to the rerouting of Morales’ presidential jet. “Ask them,” she said.

She was only willing to acknowledge that U.S. officials had been in touch with “a broad range of countries” in recent days with regard to Snowden.

It is clear that some of those contacts bore fruit. After receiving a phone call from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said that neither he nor officials in Quito had given authorisation for travel documents that the consul in London issued to Snowden.

The consul in question is in the Ecuadorean embassy in Britain, where Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, has been living since June 2012. Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012.

“While we still do not know what role the U.S. played (in rerouting the plane), it is hard to believe the U.S. did not exert pressure to ensure Snowden was not on the plane, as they apparently suspected,” Coletta Younger, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told IPS.

“It was a huge tactical blunder and a breach of diplomatic protocol (by whoever decided to deny the airspace). But it sent a strong message that whoever takes Snowden in will face serious repercussions from the U.S.,” she added.

“I think this could backfire. The Latin Americans are so outraged that it could facilitate the decision to take Snowden in,” Younger said.

Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said “It seems either the U.S. had something to do (with the decision to deny the airspace) or it was done out of a sense of solidarity with the U.S.

It is possible they made the decision alone based on a recognition of how serious this issue is to the U.S.”

Shifter said that normally such a drastic step would indicate a state of war. He described it as “An extreme overreaction…Whatever one thinks about Snowden or Morales, it seems like this was disrespectful of international law.”

He also said the incident “looks terrible in political terms.“It was out of proportion. It reflects a patronising, paternalistic mindset that stronger countries can bully weaker ones.”

But he disagreed with Younger that it would facilitate a Latin American refuge for Snowden. “What this ultimately underscores is how seriously the U.S. regards this case,” he said.

“It may be tempting to take Snowden in in order to needle the U.S., but the consequences of that will have to be taken into consideration. The U.S., for all its weaknesses, is still the U.S.,” he said.

Protesters demand that the Mexican government search for their missing relatives. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

By Diana Cariboni
MEXICO CITY, May 14 2013 (IPS)

When people are forcibly disappeared in Mexico, it does not necessarily mean that the victims are immediately killed. In this country of entrenched violence, forced disappearance is also a method used to feed the markets for sexual exploitation and slave labour.

Mexico has regressed “to the barbarism of Roman gladiators,” lawyer Juan López, a legal adviser to Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desparecidos en México (FUNDEM), a support group for families searching for their loved ones, initially in the northern state of Coahuila and now nationwide, told IPS.

In today’s Mexico, where organised crime is rampant and public security has been militarised, forced disappearances do not follow the pattern seen in past decades in this country and others in Latin America, marked by dictatorships, “dirty wars” against opponents and armed conflicts.

These days “just about anyone” is vulnerable, López said. An unknown proportion of the victims fall prey to “illegal businesses that produce lucrative profits from an unpaid slave labour force,” he said.

This includes the forced recruitment of teenagers and young adults as hired killers, workers in the production of drugs or to serve other needs of the cartels, or for organ trafficking.

“There have been confirmed reports of buses stopped by armed groups who take away all the young men,” López said.

The victims’ profile has changed, according to studies. At first the disappeared were men between the ages of 30 and 45; then the age range fell to 20-25 and again to 17-19. Now younger teenagers are also kidnapped, while the proportion of women has increased to the point where they make up half of all new disappearances, he said.

Human trafficking for labour and sexual purposes is currently flourishing in Mexico, and it is the third most lucrative illegal business in the world after drug and arms trafficking. The central Mexican state of Tlaxcala is the epicentre of networks that kidnap women in more than 20 districts, and also in border areas, and exploit them in cities in this country and the United States.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says that 80 percent of the people trafficked in Mexico are women and girls. Mexico is the second country, after Thailand, for the number of trafficked women smuggled into the United States.

The victims, who are “picked up” in streets, towns and communities, are absorbed into “a human market,” and it is possible that many of them “are still alive,” López said.

During the six-year term of former president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), 26,121 people were forcibly disappeared, according to the database published by the government of incumbent President Enrique Peña Nieto in late February.

However, the list does not include several well-known cases, their families confirmed, nor the information, however much or little, that was often gathered by the relatives themselves.

The stories are horrifying: young men forced to fight each other to death, or to dismember a woman alive, as acts of initiation and hardening of recruits. Groups of men forced to undertake training that only the fittest survive. Women tricked, enslaved and forced into submission by threats against their children.

Brenda Rangel, a 35-year-old member of FUNDEM, is looking for her brother Héctor, who was 28 years old when municipal police detained him in November 2009, along with two other men in Monclova, Coahuila.

“But they didn’t hand them over to any authorities,” Rangel told IPS. She found out what had happened to them because her brother managed to call her on his cell phone. “The police handed him over to an illegal organisation.” The next day she went to Monclova, and she has moved heaven and earth to find him. “My brother is alive,” she stated.

Rangel was one of the most eloquent speakers at the march organised by mothers of the disappeared from all over the country on Friday May 10 in the centre of the capital to demand that the government mobilise its resources to find them.

“There is no money available to look for ordinary people who have disappeared,” she declared in her powerful, broken voice.

Dressed in white, the mothers marched several blocks to the monument of the Angel of Independence, shouting slogans like “¡Hija, escucha, tu madre está en tu busca!” (Daughter, listen! Your mother is looking for you!).

Forty-three-year-old Lourdes Valdivia has heard nothing from her husband, 47-year-old José Diego Cordero, or their 22-year-old son Juan Diego, since December 2010 when they went hunting with eight friends and relatives. Municipal police detained them at a checkpoint near Joaquín Amaro, a municipality in the central state of Zacatecas.

On the pretext of checking their hunting permits, they locked them up in the police station, Valdivia said, wiping away her tears. Thanks to an underage boy who was released and an adult who was able to escape, Valdivia learned that “they took them out at night and handed them over to a group, presumably Los Zetas,” a notoriously violent criminal syndicate.

Other people are kidnapped for ransom, or because they have witnessed a crime, or they disappear because they were unwittingly caught in crossfire.

Systems engineer Juan Ricardo Rodríguez met up with his fiancée in September 2011 in a hotel in Zacatecas, where he was working, to finetune their wedding plans. As they were leaving, they saw an armed commando taking three men away. The couple tried to get away, but they were also seized.

Federal police, who spoke to the armed men, watched the entire event, Rodríguez’s mother, Virginia Barajas, who reconstructed the scene with the help of witnesses, told IPS.

There are reports of hundreds of people shut up in warehouses, safe houses belonging to crime syndicates, or isolated ranches in rural areas.

Other sources say it is likely that the disappeared persons are dead, as indicated by the mass graves that have been found. But some families have received remains that do not correspond to their loved ones.

The families of the disappeared always live in hope, said legal expert Santiago Corcuera, a member between 2004 and 2010 of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

But Corcuera described a number of different patterns of disappearances.

When the perpetrators are members of the public security forces, the victim will most likely be killed, he said. But there is “collusion, for instance, with sexual exploitation of women and girls,” or with other kinds of labour exploitation “in support of drug trafficking” and to swell the ranks of hired killers, he added.

In his view, the “law on victims” adopted by the Peña Nieto administration is “a beacon,” because it establishes reparations mechanisms. But protocols to search for disappeared victims are lacking; these should be coordinated between different Mexican states and with other countries in the region, he said.

FUNDEM’s López went even further: “The state does not carry out searches or investigations. And it opposes investigations by the families.”

According to Human Rights Watch, in many cases, official investigators have told families that the investigation’s progress depended entirely on the efforts of the families themselves.

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 17 2013 (IPS)

When the left was in opposition in Latin America, it never tired of repeating that true democracy was not limited to electing governments at the ballot box. Democracy was also needed in the distribution of rights and riches.

Now that self-described leftwing governments predominate in the region, the catch is to make that maxim their political practice. They must fulfil the formality of celebrating clean, fair and transparent elections that produce governments of the majority that do not trample on the minority, nor prevent them from exercising their role of social control.

In the last 15 years in Venezuela – ever since the late Hugo Chávez won his first presidential elections – there have been many elections and popular consultations based on the referendum, recall and plebiscite mechanisms provided in the constitution.

Diana Cariboni. Credit: Courtesy of the author

But there was also a failed coup d’état and an oil industry lockout with the same aim: to overthrow the government.

Meanwhile, the country developed an automated voting system described by the electoral authorities as “perfect,” and praised by institutions above suspicion of authoritarian conspiracy, like the Carter Center.

But the country’s democracy is far from being perfect, and further still from being predictable.

Only six months ago, Chávez gained a comfortable majority with 55 percent of the vote (more than eight million votes) against a rival, Henrique Capriles, who won a not inconsiderable 44 percent (over 6.5 million votes).

On Sunday Apr. 14, Chávez’s heir-apparent Nicolás Maduro secured a victory for the governing party, but with a margin of only 270,000 votes ahead of Capriles.

A number of relevant factors influenced the mood of voters in the last six months: the death of Chávez, after an illness surrounded by questions and secrecy, an economy facing difficulties, and a general climate of uncertainty about the prospects of the Bolivarian revolution in the absence of its leader.

And then on Sunday Apr. 14 a different and complex snapshot was taken of the citizenry, requiring a close reading by government leaders and the opposition.

The voting system was the same on both occasions. But the narrow margin of the result and a list of 3,200 alleged irregularities gave the opposition an opportunity to cast it into doubt.

The authorities claim the system is reliable and accurate. All eyes are on the boxes containing the paper receipts issued by the voting machine when voters cast their electronic votes – basically, ballot boxes full of votes.

There are allegations that some of these boxes have been found on roadsides, containing ballots for Capriles. And he is demanding a “vote by vote” recount.

Electoral fraud is a familiar problem in Latin America, where there is a whole repertory of actions to sway citizens’ votes, most of them taking place before polling occurs.

From Mexico southwards, the tradition of vote-rigging includes transporting voters, impersonation, abduction, forgery of identity documents, coercion, threats, violation of voting secrecy and vote-buying.

In some rural areas of Colombia things have reached such a point that, as polling day draws near, votes command increasingly higher bribes in goods and services on the informal local market, such as bricks, tiles and fuel, as well as cash.

In last year’s presidential elections in Mexico, alleged vote-buying, especially attributed to the victorious Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), took the form of vouchers for consumption of goods in certain shopping centres being handed out almost openly.

But none of this generates much concern abroad, nor is it a hurdle to international recognition of the governments that emerge from these elections.

Did electoral fraud of this kind occur in Venezuela? The opposition has denounced a series of irregularities. And the electoral authorities say they will investigate them when they receive the formal complaints, but that no recount will change the result declared on Monday Apr. 15. So there will be no total recount.

The opposition is accusing the government of misappropriation of state resources during the electoral campaign. The government replies that opposition parties represent large economic powers with vast resources and private media outlets at their service.

Meanwhile, although Maduro and Capriles have both called repeatedly for “peace,” violence has taken over the streets. There have been fatalities, and dozens of people have been injured.

Amid the commotion, something has been lost from view: Venezuelan society has long wanted to put an end to decades of apparent democracy, and oil profits for only a few.

In the last 15 years, the country has made strides in poverty reduction, and many marginalised people were able to learn to read and write, and gained access to education and health care. They were also empowered to speak up, and to feel that one of their own, someone close to them, represented them in the presidency.

But it cannot be forgotten that Venezuela today has serious problems, such as a high crime rate, a weak economy and excessive dependence on oil.

If they do not understand the electoral snapshot represented by Sunday’s results, Maduro and Capriles risk riding the roller coaster of setting at odds the two halves of their nation, instead of leading them to a mirror and showing them the need to coexist and understand each other.

“Venezuela has enormous possibilities. The main problem is for it to find itself,” said Uruguayan President José Mujica, interviewed on Tuesday Apr. 16 by the Telesur television chain. “Human progress is the offspring of labour, and requires stability and commitment,” he said.

“It’s important for the Venezuelan people to learn to walk together, with differences, but with points of agreement. They can’t expect to be exactly the same,” he said. “A nation is a collective message.”

* Diana Cariboni is Associate Editor in Chief of IPS.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 19 2012 (IPS)

The natural resources of currently buoyant Latin America could be significantly depleted in less than a generation. Combined with the fact that this is the region with the greatest income inequality between the rich and the poor, the outlook might appear disastrous.

But the warning, voiced by the World Bank, is not meant as cause for despair.

In a report published for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the World Bank maintains that in order to avoid a collapse, the region needs to adopt a range of environment, social, productive and urban planning policies.

Hydrologist Ede Jorge Ijjasz-Vásquez, director of the World Bank Sustainable Development Department for Latin America and the Caribbean. Credit: Patricia da Camara – Courtesy of the World Bank

“Many of the answers to the challenge of how to grow in sustainable and inclusive ways lie within the region’s own experiences,” states the report “Inclusive Green Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean”, produced by the World Bank Sustainable Development Department for the region.

There are “powerful antidotes”, many of them locally grown, to the ailments of the regional model of growth, the report stresses. Emphasis is placed on “practical solutions” that can be adopted in the short decision-making cycles of governments and companies, the director of the department, Ede Jorge Ijjasz-Vásquez, told Tierramérica.

Bus rapid transit systems, low-carbon electricity generation, sustainable agriculture and payments for environmental services are among these antidotes.

“When we talk about sustainable development, the usual reaction is, ‘Oh, yes, that will be in 10 or 20 years’” said Ijjasz-Vásquez, a Colombian national who describes himself as “one of the few hydrologists at the World Bank.”

Q: What is the difference between sustainable development and the “inclusive green growth” proposed in this report?

A: It has to do with the reaction to the words. When we talk about sustainable development, the usual reaction is, “Oh, yes, that will be in 10 or 20 years.” In Latin America we have had a decade of rather accelerated growth, and the decisions of countries and individuals in these situations have both an immediate and long-term impact.

When there is growth of four, five, six or seven percent a year, the way that infrastructure is built and water resources are managed, or the way cities grow, have an immediate impact and an impact for future generations. If you build a highway and make a mistake, you cannot build it over again. Highways last for 15 or 20 years. Electric power plants last for 30, 35 or 40.

So, the idea of inclusive green growth is to try to integrate environmental and social dimensions into today’s decisions on this rapid and necessary growth. It is a pathway to sustainable development in the medium term.

Q: Growth is measured by gross domestic product (GDP). In a region that is growing due to the enormous external demand for raw materials, to what extent can GDP growth be green and inclusive?

A: Patterns of production and consumption, especially in the developed countries, follow inefficient and polluting trajectories. There are not enough resources on the planet for this. But we have learned from the developed economies that the policies and decisions of individuals and households have an enormous impact.

Standards of living in the United States, Europe and Japan are extremely high, but electricity consumption in Japan is much, much lower in Japan than in the United States, because (Japan) decided that energy efficiency is very important.

In many states in the United States, personal water consumption is as high as 400 or 500 liters a day, whereas in Europe it is 100 to 120 liters, and you cannot say that Europeans are going thirsty.

The developing countries need to advance, there is no doubt of that, but there are different means and trajectories for advancing. They need to develop agricultural sectors that are clean, efficient and more resistant to natural disasters. This is much more productive and requires less land.

Q: One debate at Rio+20 is the need for better indicators than GDP to measure national progress.

A: We are taking a natural resources accounting programme that expands the definition of GDP to Rio+20.

We have a couple of pilot programmes in Colombia and Costa Rica. A number of countries have worked on this, with different methodologies, from Brazil to Mexico, and we are trying to set up a platform for exchange, ideally with 50 countries and 50 big private companies, to test and expand this definition.

Many studies indicate that countries lose between three and nine percent of GDP through environmental impacts.

Q: According to the report, 81 percent of the population of Latin America lives in cities…

A: Urbanisation is not bad in itself. Part of economic growth is very closely tied to the efficiency achieved with urban agglomerations, and that efficiency leads to greater growth in the agricultural sector to feed the cities. The problem is how cities are organised: if they are scattered, if they are not dense, then they are not efficient, either.

Intermediate cities, with a million or fewer inhabitants, are the ones growing the most, and there are still many problems that can be solved in them, with policies on compact land use and transportation, combined so that growth is concentrated around the most important public transportation corridors. Another important variable is the capacity to withstand natural disasters.

Q: The electrical power sector in the region generates the least carbon dioxide emissions in the world, due to the share of hydroelectricity. But the report forecasts that these emissions will double by 2030, and that Brazil’s will increase almost eight-fold. Why?

A: It has to do with plans, but also with the decisions that are being made due to the urgent need to increase electricity generation. Many hydroelectricity projects take time, and sometimes because of a lack of planning they cause social conflict.

There are countries that are increasing the share of fossil fuels in their energy mix. There is great potential for hydroelectricity, but the challenge is to develop it from the beginning looking at environmental and social variables in a much more efficient and structured way.

Q: The section on natural resources and rural services talks about agriculture and its relationship with deforestation, but makes no mention of mining and hydrocarbons.

A: That was one of the comments. We hope to improve the second version of the report. Part of what we want to do at Rio+20 is to talk with civil society, companies and governments, and ensure that this is not the last word, but rather part of a learning process.

We will try to gather a few mining experiences that are more positive. There is a wide diversity of policies. Some are very good from an environmental and social perspective, and there are companies that take them very seriously. This is one of the chapters that we hope to work on in the second edition, after Rio.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt:

It’s not true that developing countries conditioned the inclusion of the green economy in the final document at Rio+20 on clearly defined provisions for financing, the head of the Venezuelan delegation, Claudia Salerno, told TerraViva.

“That is an unfounded rumour,” she said.

Venezuela’s chief negotiator Claudia Salerno. Credit: IISD

On Thursday Jun. 14, the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries plus China walked out of a core working group on the green economy, complaining that rich countries were standing in the way of progress on “means of implementation” – transfer of money and technology – for bringing about a change in production and consumption patterns.

On Friday, the talks hit an impasse in other areas, and on Saturday Brazil presented a document in search of consensus before the heads of state reach this city for the final three days of the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, Jul. 20-22.

Developing countries “started the negotiations on the green economy and the changes needed,” and they were going “marvellously well” until the debate reached the question of means of implementation, Salerno said.

How can it be possible “that we, with the fight against poverty that we face, are more prepared for that transformation than those who are supposedly in a better position to undertake the changes?”

The proposals for the greening of the economy that the industrialised North put on the table in January would have created new trade barriers, “which we have been fighting since then and have managed to modify,” she said.

The agreement “cannot destroy 20 years of negotiations in the World Trade Organisation and everything that has been adopted in terms of the environment because you are having a crisis,” she said, referring to the European Union.

However, the debate got back on track and the chapter on the green economy “is now one of the areas where agreement has been reached on the largest proportion of text,” she said. “Why hasn’t a consensus been reached on a single paragraph on means of implementation? Because the rich countries don’t want it.”

The world’s nations have agreed to limit the prescriptive approach to the idea of the green economy and replace it with green economy policies, recognising that countries must maintain the capacity to define how to adapt it to their specific circumstances, said Alex Rafalowicz, legal adviser to the Third World Network, which is closely following the debates.

The world’s leaders must decide “if a crisis or specific circumstances can keep politicians from seeing things with a 20-year perspective,” Salerno said. “Everyone has a different crisis. Europe complains about its own and keeps bringing it up, as a justification.”

Last week’s announcement of a 30 billion dollar fund “is an agreement, and we are not going to revise it. If they (the U.S. and EU) back out of what developing countries themselves raised as the big political banner at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, things are pretty bad.” But, “we have even seen that,” she added.

The delegations from Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which coordinate their positions in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), had harsh words Saturday for the setbacks in the area of financing.

“The G77 pulled out of the talks on the green economy because it was ALBA and Bolivia that observed that the means of implementation are heading in such a mistaken, absurd direction that private charity has appeared as a source of financing,” René Orellana, Bolivia’s chief climate change negotiator, told TerraViva.

“We don’t know if they are mocking us or if they actually want to dismantle international cooperation,” he said. “Where does it say that the obligations undertaken in numerous international treaties are suspended during hard times?”

Bolivia “has hopes for the Rio+20 process,” but “we want to see a document that expresses the right to development, the rights of Mother Earth, harmony with nature, and an anti-poverty focus.”

Bolivia, Venezuela and other Latin American oil, gas and coal producing nations are facing a dilemma: how to achieve sustainable development with an economy based on “dirty” forms of production.

“We are heavily dependent on these non-renewable resources, and because we are vulnerable we cannot overcome that dependency overnight without the transfer of technology that is essential for moving from non-renewable to renewable energy sources,” Orellana said.

But, he added, “we are only responsible for 0.03 percent of all greenhouse gases…And suddenly they want countries that are not guilty of climate change to assume a huge responsibility in reducing emissions. If we do that from one day to the next, our countries will be left without any sources of income.”

*This story was originally published by IPS TerraViva.

Despite scientific evidence and continued weather disasters across the globe, climate change continues to be relegated to second tier among national and international priorities.
“We are the coldest country in the world… so global warming is good for us. The warmer it is, the bigger the harvests… They talk about stopping deforestation of the tropical jungles to fight climate change, but we don't have tropical jungles.”

The frankness of Russian lawmaker Viktor Shudegov revealed an “inconvenient” truth, the ongoing lack of awareness about global warming, in a parallel meeting to the climate change summit hosted by Mexico in the resort city of Cancún, Nov. 29 to Dec. 10.

Shudegov synthesized how difficult it is for public opinion in a country like Russia to take up the challenge of climate change, despite being the most serious global problem — according to scientists — that humanity will face this century.

This dynamic, in which urgent domestic problems take the fore — like the economic crisis afflicting nearly the entire industrialized world — means that attempts to adopt a binding global pact to reduce climate-changing gas emissions repeatedly crumble.

And the Cancún summit, officially known as the 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was no exception.

A driving force of the UN-led negotiations for years has been the effort to attract the private sector, offering more and more opportunities for business in the still nascent “green economy.”

The inclusion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems among the financeable mechanisms for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases is one example of that trend.

It means extracting carbon dioxide, one of the leading greenhouse gases, and sequestering it in “sinks,” deep in the oceans, in forests and underground. Those investing in such deals would then be able to trade emissions credits on the carbon market. But many environmentalists and scientists believe that the carbon market is getting ahead of itself.

“Carbon capture and storage technology has not been proved yet. It is not ready to be put into practice. It is a further way of moving away from renewable energies, moving away from mitigation, to some kind of technology that would not solve the problem,” Nigerian Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), told Tierramérica.

“What is coping with global warming? Reducing the carbon launched into the atmosphere. So why don't we leave the carbon where it belongs… in the ground?” said Bassey, one of the 2010 winners of the Right Livelihood Award, known widely as the Green Nobel.

Greenhouse gases are released by the combustion of petroleum, natural gas and carbon, and in deforestation, agriculture, land-use changes and industrial production.

The biggest emitters, led by China and the United States, cannot reach an agreement on goals for reducing emissions that would keep the global average temperature increase under two degrees Celsius.

If we cross that threshold, say climate scientists, global warming will reach a tipping point that would unleash catastrophic changes.

Adopting a green or low-carbon economy means dramatically modifying the way that most of humanity conceives of economic activity.

At first glance, it is easier to begin by halting deforestation of the world's forests and jungles, responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse emissions.

The REDD+ initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which attracted a lot of attention at COP 16, calls for rich countries to finance forest-saving actions in developing countries, benefitting local actors, and rural and indigenous communities in particular.

REDD+ “is attracting both rich countries and countries with forests” to some form of “carbon exchange,” because, said Bassey, “rich countries can keep polluting, and countries with forests believe they can get some money through the REDD mechanism.”

It is not true conservation, but rather a way of reducing emissions, according to the Nigerian expert. When a forest is included in the mechanism, it will prevent the local communities from utilizing it as they have for their livelihood, “because whoever is in the forest will have to assure that the carbon stock would be retained.”

The key lies in establishing a system of clear controls, says attorney Adrianna Quintero, of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a U.S.-based environmental group.

To achieve the goal of conservation, “monitoring and transparency are critical, as it is for ensuring respect for the rights of indigenous and rural peoples,” Quintero told Tierramérica.

Despite all the problems, the UN system of negotiations remains the only one possible. “The diplomatic process is a little slow,” but how else can the interests and positions of the 192 countries party to the Convention on Climate Change be taken into account, she said.

In Quintero's view, the different stances have been drawing closer towards common ground that can serve as the basis for a broader treaty. And much of that progress is the result of the way that host Mexico led the negotiations — not only in Cancún, but over the course of the year.

One pillar on this common ground is to provide funds to poor countries for confronting their new climate and weather realities, adopting new technologies and paying for the enormous losses resulting from more frequent and intense weather disasters.

But once again, there are clashing interests. At COP 15, held last year in Copenhagen, the pledge was to deliver at least 30 billion dollars a year, “and not even the 30 billion is coming,” said Bassey.

According to the FOEI leader, the rich countries have done all they can to move money set aside for aid to use instead as loans, “to make profits out of the misery of the poor countries hit by global warming.”

This does not mean not just looking for funds, it means “rich countries paying their climate debt,” said Bassey. “European countries for years have been colonizing the atmosphere with their carbon emissions,” he added.

There is an enormous gap between the climate justice Bassey is seeking and the route of “the possible” pursued in the official negotiations.

And there is little hope of addressing the central question — how to halt climate-changing emissions — until the next summit, COP 17, in Durban, South Africa.

“The biggest and most powerful nations on earth simply aren't paying attention to physics and chemistry,” said Bill McKibben, founder of global climate campaign 350.org in a statement.

Civil society is “not big enough yet to beat the fossil fuel industry and its allies, but we're gaining,” said McKibben.

“What is the point of all theses meetings during two weeks,” wondered Bassey. “We are heading nowhere. And it shows the lack of recognition of the seriousness of the warming crisis.”

“When the impacts really multiply, when the climate hits a tipping point, not even the rich countries will escape the disaster that will follow,” she warned.

By Diana Cariboni
CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 11 2010 (IPS)

“We are the coldest country in the world… so global warming is good for us. The warmer it is, the bigger the harvests… They talk about stopping deforestation of the tropical jungles to fight climate change, but we don’t have tropical jungles.”

"Paradise also needs maintenance," states a sign outside a Cancún hotel, where sand is eroding away. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

Shudegov synthesised how difficult it is for public opinion in a country like Russia to take up the challenge of climate change, despite being the most serious global problem — according to scientists — that humanity will face this century.

This dynamic, in which urgent domestic problems take the fore — like the economic crisis afflicting nearly the entire industrialised world — means that attempts to adopt a binding global pact to reduce climate-changing gas emissions repeatedly crumble.

And the Cancún summit, officially known as the 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was no exception.

A driving force of the UN-led negotiations for years has been the effort to attract the private sector, offering more and more opportunities for business in the still nascent “green economy.”

The inclusion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems among the financeable mechanisms for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases is one example of that trend.

It means extracting carbon dioxide, one of the leading greenhouse gases, and sequestering it in “sinks,” deep in the oceans, in forests and underground. Those investing in such deals would then be able to trade emissions credits on the carbon market.

But many environmentalists and scientists believe that the carbon market is getting ahead of itself.

“Carbon capture and storage technology has not been proved yet. It is not ready to be put into practice. It is a further way of moving away from renewable energies, moving away from mitigation, to some kind of technology that would not solve the problem,” Nigerian Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), told Tierramérica.

“What is coping with global warming? Reducing the carbon launched into the atmosphere. So why don’t we leave the carbon where it belongs… in the ground?” said Bassey, one of the 2010 winners of the Right Livelihood Award, known widely as the Green Nobel.

Greenhouse gases are released by the combustion of petroleum, natural gas and carbon, and in deforestation, agriculture, land-use changes and industrial production.

The biggest emitters, led by China and the United States, cannot reach an agreement on goals for reducing emissions that would keep the global average temperature increase under two degrees Celsius.

If we cross that threshold, say climate scientists, global warming will reach a tipping point that would unleash catastrophic changes.

Adopting a green or low-carbon economy means dramatically modifying the way that most of humanity conceives of economic activity.

At first glance, it is easier to begin by halting deforestation of the world’s forests and jungles, responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse emissions.

The REDD+ initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which attracted a lot of attention at COP 16, calls for rich countries to finance forest-saving actions in developing countries, benefitting local actors, and rural and indigenous communities in particular.

REDD+ “is attracting both rich countries and countries with forests” to some form of “carbon exchange,” because, said Bassey, “rich countries can keep polluting, and countries with forests believe they can get some money through the REDD mechanism.”

It is not true conservation, but rather a way of reducing emissions, according to the Nigerian expert. When a forest is included in the mechanism, it will prevent the local communities from utilising it as they have for their livelihood, “because whoever is in the forest will have to assure that the carbon stock would be retained.”

The key lies in establishing a system of clear controls, says attorney Adrianna Quintero, of the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), a U.S.-based environmental group.

To achieve the goal of conservation, “monitoring and transparency are critical, as it is for ensuring respect for the rights of indigenous and rural peoples,” Quintero told Tierramérica.

Despite all the problems, the UN system of negotiations remains the only one possible. “The diplomatic process is a little slow,” but how else can the interests and positions of the 192 countries party to the Convention on Climate Change be taken into account, she said.

In Quintero’s view, the different stances have been drawing closer towards common ground that can serve as the basis for a broader treaty. And much of that progress is the result of the way that host Mexico led the negotiations — not only in Cancún, but over the course of the year.

One pillar on this common ground is to provide funds to poor countries for confronting their new climate and weather realities, adopting new technologies and paying for the enormous losses resulting from more frequent and intense weather disasters.

But once again, there are clashing interests. At COP 15, held last year in Copenhagen, the pledge was to deliver at least 30 billion dollars a year, “and not even the 30 billion is coming,” said Bassey.

According to the FOEI leader, the rich countries have done all they can to move money set aside for aid to use instead as loans, “to make profits out of the misery of the poor countries hit by global warming.”

This does not mean not just looking for funds, it means “rich countries paying their climate debt,” said Bassey. “European countries for years have been colonising the atmosphere with their carbon emissions,” he added.

There is an enormous gap between the climate justice Bassey is seeking and the route of “the possible” pursued in the official negotiations.

And there is little hope of addressing the central question — how to halt climate-changing emissions — until the next summit, COP 17, in Durban, South Africa.

“The biggest and most powerful nations on earth simply aren’t paying attention to physics and chemistry,” said Bill McKibben, founder of global climate campaign 350.org in a statement.

Civil society is “not big enough yet to beat the fossil fuel industry and its allies, but we’re gaining,” said McKibben.

“What is the point of all theses meetings during two weeks,” wondered Bassey. “We are heading nowhere. And it shows the lack of recognition of the seriousness of the warming crisis.”

“When the impacts really multiply, when the climate hits a tipping point, not even the rich countries will escape the disaster that will follow,” he warned.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
CANCÚN, México, Dec 8 2010 (IPS)

The short-cuts that the United Nations system is offering companies to profit from strategies against global warming were the target of loud protests on the Day of Action for Climate Justice.

Via Campesina march Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

One of the protesters’ slogans, “País petrolero, el pueblo sin dinero” (In this oil-producing country, people have no money), referring to Mexico, underscored the main cause of the heating up of the planet: the burning of fossil fuels, a question that has been practically sidelined in the talks at the 16th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP16).

The day began with a march through the centre of the city by rural and anti-globalisation movements from Mexico and other countries of Latin America, meeting in the Diálogo Climático-Espacio Mexicano (Mexican Space for Climate Dialogue). Accompanied by activists from Oxfam and the Hemispheric Social Alliance, they marched down López Portillo avenue to city hall.

Profit-generating policies and programmes, like selling surplus rights to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as part of the so-called carbon market, could be expanded in Cancún.

There is a “near agreement” to include carbon capture and storage under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme, under discussion in the COP16, could include market incentives.

But the protesters changed “REDD no, REDD no, REDD no”.

In both marches, labour and indigenous organisations outnumbered and out-mobilised the environmentalists. And their demands and slogans were also broad: ranging from food sovereignty and human rights to protests against the government of conservative Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

“Let’s be tough on that gang that has gathered in Cancún to enslave humanity and ruin the planet,” shouted one Mexican demonstrator with his face partially covered by a mask bearing the logo of the Nestle food corporation.

Less radical, Oxfam activists wore T-shirts reading “Cancún can” on the front and “From small seeds in Cancún, big things can grow” on the back.

What is it that Cancún can do? “We think the conference in Cancun can deliver not just confidence and trust between governments but also between citizens,” Antonio Hill, senior climate change policy adviser at Oxfam in Latin America and the Caribbean, told TerraViva in the march.

“After the disappointment of (the late 2009 COP15 in) Copenhagen we need more than just these talks: we need results that deliver concrete benefits, especially for the communities that are the most vulnerable around the world and those that are already suffering” from climate disasters, Hill said.

The governments “delayed the process in Copenhagen, but they certainly didn’t delay climate change. This year we saw 20 million affected by floods in Pakistan, since August one to two million people in Colombia are living with water just above their waist, and just yesterday (Monday) 120 people died in landslides and the stories are the same” all over the world, he added.

“Cancún can deliver…a fund that can prioritise adaptation and where at least half of the money goes to dealing with climate change impacts that already inevitable,” Hill said.

But some organisations warn that such a fund could also be co-opted by the financial and private sectors.

“I think what is clear is that the richest countries are trying to find ways to escape obligations they have to deliver public funds,” Hill added.

What really stands out, Colombian activist Enrique Daza, secretary of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, told TerraViva, was “the generosity and alacrity to make hundreds of billions of dollars available to bail out the financial systems” compared to the “stinginess” when it comes to making funds available for combating climate change.

“They are fighting for every dollar here,” he said, referring to the negotiations over funds for adaptation to climate change.

“Little can be expected from international conferences on any issue…the paralysis of the multilateral system” is obvious, Daza said.

So how can change happen? “Not like this. Strong social pressure is needed” and “it is our responsibility, as social movements,” to mobilise people, he said.

“There’s no justice in these talks,” said a young activist with the Philippines Movement for Climate Justice who identified herself simply as Virgi.

The United States is trying to impose itself “in many issues,” such as “the imposition that the World Bank should manage climate change funds. Certainly we don’t want the World Bank to be in charge because it has in the past financed dirty energy projects that have had effects on the climate and added to emissions,” she told TerraViva.

With songs and Bolivian instruments and improvised reggae beats, the bigger demonstration led by the Via Campesina international small farmers movement marched along Tulum avenue towards the outskirts of the city, with the aim of reaching the Moon Palace, the hotel complex that is serving as the venue for the COP16 talks.

But dozens of police decked out in full riot gear blocked the road in front of metal barricades, while a helicopter buzzed overhead.

Peasant farmers and indigenous people from Latin America and the United States, Mexican human rights groups and radical leftist movements, and representatives of organisations like Friends of the Earth marched under the midday sun, chanting slogans like “Time is running out and nothing is being done here”.

The words of European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard sounded like a response at the start of the high- level segment of COP16.

“Over the last years we have managed to mobilise the whole world and get people from around the planet to acknowledge the urgency of this challenge. Seeing the pictures of palm trees and beautiful beaches, how would they judge us — the governments of the world — if we left Cancun empty-handed?”

“We owe it to them to deliver…We still have 72 hours to do it.”

*With additional reporting by Rosebell Kagumire.

** This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Cancún.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 6 2010 (IPS)

What some people view as modest but real progress in the climate change talks, now in their second week in this southeastern Mexican resort city, others see as no more than smokescreens or “false solutions.”

Via Campesina march at Cancún. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

This involves capturing large volumes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, from the atmosphere and storing it in “carbon sinks”, such as the oceans, forests or underground.

Aside from planting and conserving forests, there are several technologies for pumping atmospheric CO2 into the subsoil or under the sea bed. However, little research has been done on them so far, and there are considerable risks.

The CDM allows industrialised nations to partially offset their greenhouse gas emissions by investing in clean energy projects in developing countries.

“We regard carbon capture as a false solution,” Chilean environmentalist Eduardo Giesen, Latin American co- coordinator of the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (GAIA) and a member of Chile’s Alliance for Climate Justice, told TerraViva.

“This is no way to resolve the problem. Instead of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, the idea is to bury it, which only postpones the day of reckoning,” he said. Futhermore, the methods are associated with “a high degree of technological uncertainty.”

The agreement on this point will be presented this week to ministers of the states party to the Convention, who are arriving for high-level discussions at the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP16), due to conclude Friday Dec. 10.

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol for mandatory greenhouse gas emission reductions expires in 2012. Although that is not far off, the goals have not been met, and humanity has no clear mechanism in sight to deal with a global problem that is likely to be of cataclysmic proportions, according to the scientific community.

But the talks, at least as far as is publicly known, remain bogged down over details.

Another achievement at Cancún was a decision to broaden the mandate of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Expert Group and extend it by five years. The Group provides technical guidance and advice to LDCs on programmes of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. A total of 45 countries have already presented their plans, and 38 have begun to implement them on the ground.

According to the Secretariat, the process has left “a wealth of capacity and awareness across the countries from political levels down to community levels.”

In Giesen’s view, the groups supporting the Convention are promoting “solutions of a corporate nature.” In general, strategies for adaptation in developing countries offer solutions on an industrial scale, which benefits big companies, he said.

In contrast, “developing world movements are calling for aid to be directed to local communities, to increase the resilience of the most vulnerable populations,” he said.

That demand was expressed at a protest march held Sunday Dec. 5 by Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.

As there are few hopeful expectations for the outcome of the climate conference, Giesen said an acceptable outcome would be agreement on a global fund to combat climate change, “omitting the carbon market component.” Implementation of the fund could be left until the next COP. It would also be a good thing to keep negotiations open for reaching new deals within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol, he said.

The third achievement reported by the U.N. was the decision to strengthen education, training and public awareness on climate change through increased funding for such activities, “and to engage civil society more strongly in national decision-making and the U.N. climate change process.”

Expanding education and participation “is positive, but it should be more focused on solutions at the grassroots level,” Giesen said.

“Citizen participation has always been part of the discourse of the Convention,” but at national as well as international levels it is “rather vague, weak and non-binding,” he said, adding that it would be “fantastic” if the political will existed to expand it.

Lawmakers, for instance, do not have the status of COP participants. The Convention Secretariat does offer them special accreditation, but their situation is still unresolved because not all governments have given the green light.

Legislators can only come to the Cancún meeting if they have been accredited as part of a government delegation, or as “non-governmental organisations.” But “we are not NGOs,” complained Barry Gardiner, a British member of parliament who is also vice president of the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE).

GLOBE, whose members include lawmakers from the 16 largest world economies, held a forum Dec. 4-5 in Mexico City with an agenda designed to solve the problems of climate change at the national level, by means of legislation and checks on executive powers. Proposals from the GLOBE forum are to be presented Tuesday to Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

Meanwhile at the climate conference, the president of COP16, Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, said that the pre-agreements achieved “clearly show that countries have come to Cancun to negotiate in good faith.”

But in Gardiner’s view the sum total of progress achieved amounts to “next to nothing.”

We have been ignoring the camels, but straining gnats instead, he told TerraViva.

(*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Cancún.)

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 3 2010 (IPS)

“The hurricane season officially ended on Nov. 30,” a local shopkeeper told this journalist reassuringly as she entered his store with her hair blown in every direction by the wind on a drizzly, cloudy day.

Mayan pyramid of criticism of polluting countries in Cancunmesse. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

Extreme cold and blizzards have already killed 20 people in Europe, mainly homeless people, and have thrown airports, railways and roads into chaos. Meanwhile, heavy rains and flooding have claimed lives in Latin American countries along the Caribbean coast: Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Costa Rica. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported Thursday that 2010 is “almost certain” to be one of the three hottest years since temperature records began in 1850. And 2001-2010 was the hottest decade in history.

Nature is sending a message that could not be more timely. Scattered around hotels, convention centres and camps located dozens of kilometres from each other, the climate change negotiators and activists who have come to the biggest annual meeting on the issue seem to have lost the nerve to pursue the initial goal of the talks that began 18 years ago.

That goal was a legally binding global treaty to drastically reduce the pollution that has unleashed climate change. Since the chances of reaching that objective by Dec. 10 are close to zero, the efforts are now heading in a different direction.

The talks, presentations and parallel activities are focusing on the money needed by poor countries, technical innovations and models for action that can be replicated. In short, a massive search for lifelines in an inevitable flood.

“A lot of things are going on at different levels,” Carbon Trade Watch activist Joanna Cabello told TerraViva. “Some are looking for a lifeline, to gain more allies, while others are lobbying for ‘improvements’ in financing and mitigation and adaptation policies.”

But “we are entering a stage where citizens, movements and some governments are very aware of the powerful manipulation that is taking place, and are fed up,” she added.

However, it’s not that the fundamental goal has been forgotten in the talks, another activist said. “It’s about laying the bricks for reaching a binding accord,” which is why many of the discussions are centred on achieving things that are actually possible.

For example, a global climate fund that would operate as a “one-stop shop”, in which nations of the developing world would be represented and the financing would go where it is needed. At least half of these funds would have to go towards adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

But in Cabello’s view, “the funds that are receiving so much attention have many gaps that allow the entry of private capital, and maybe the carbon market itself, without mentioning the highly criticised role of the World Bank as a facilitator” of those resources.

“Industrialised countries and corporate lobbies, interested in strengthening and expanding the carbon markets, are doing everything they can to present these schemes as easy fixes and quick money for poor countries,” said the activist, who supports the actions of the Global Justice Ecology Project and the Indigenous Environmental Network.

“Cancun was never going to be where we would get a global deal to tackle climate change, but the talks are in far better health than they were at this stage in Copenhagen (at the COP15),” Barry Coates, executive director of Oxfam New Zealand, told TerraViva.

“We can see real progress such as setting up a fair climate fund, and while the hype of Copenhagen has been replaced by sobering realities of complex negotiations, we could very well walk away at the end of these talks with hope for a deal in Durban (South Africa, where the COP17 will be held) next year,” Coates said.

Will the world have to wait just one more year? According to a report released by Oxfam this week, time has already run out for the 21,000 people who died as a result of 725 extreme weather events in the first nine months of 2010.

That is more than twice the number — 10,000 people — killed in 850 extreme weather catastrophes for the whole of 2009.

One reflection of the growing sense of demoralisation is the number of people who have showed up for COP16. The organisers say there are 20,000 visitors, compared to 50,000 in Copenhagen last year.

But estimates are hard to come by since the official venues are spread all over the city, the conference is isolated from civil society, and the parallel Klimaforum 2010 is being held at a camp in the middle of the jungle.

Cancún has more than 35,000 hotel rooms and there are 40,000 more rooms in surrounding areas. People who depend on tourism in this city made up of block after block of hotels and shopping centres had hoped COP16 would push hotel occupancy rates up to nearly 90 percent.

“But we are at less than 80 percent; we had hoped for more,” a taxi driver complained.

On the other hand, an enormous number of locals have found work at COP16, in logistics, security and services.

“Four hundred temporary workers” are providing assistance for delegates at bus stops alone, explained a young woman who just graduated from college as a psychologist. All of the staff hired are Mexicans, which is a good thing, because of the unemployment, she added. By contrast, there are no volunteers at COP16. A sign of the times?

(*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online journal published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Cancún.)

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Sep 30 2010 (IPS)

“We’re not letting him (President Rafael Correa) leave, and he’s going to pay for what he’s done to the police.”

Demonstration in support of President Rafael Correa, who was just rescued by the army after being kidnapped by the police. Credit: Office of the President of Ecuador

Police in Ecuador rioted Thursday, demanding the repeal of a public services law passed by Congress the day before, which would end the practice of granting soldiers and police medals and bonuses with each promotion, and would extend from five to seven years the period between promotions.

Correa was attacked by police protesters when he visited the police station where the rioting broke out early in the morning. From there he was taken to the police hospital, where he was still being held at 7:30 PM local time (12:30 PM GMT).

Rojas is a Colombian journalist who traded in his microphone and pen in the early 1990s to work with the Catholic Church on an issue that few were talking about at the time: the forced displacement of tens of thousands of rural inhabitants by the armed conflict in his country.

He became director of the Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), a leading national human rights organisation that is the main non-governmental source of information on the internally displaced in Colombia.

According to CODHES, more than four million people in Colombia have been forcibly displaced. Most of those who have fled the country have crossed the border into Ecuador.

That is why Rojas is in the Ecuadorian capital, to attend a meeting of experts from several countries on forced displacement and refugees, preparatory to a regional conference on the issue.

“The meeting, of course, has been damaged,” he told IPS by telephone. “Our colleagues from Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia did not make it here, and I have been trapped here in Quito,” because the air force closed down all the international airports.

Feeling the effects of the tear gas outside the hospital where Correa is “under siege,” Rojas described what happened, in an interview with IPS at 4:00 PM local time (9:00 PM GMT).

“I’m in the middle of the demonstration…I came to see the mobilisation in support of the president,” he said.

“This hospital is in the higher-lying area of Quito, to the northwest. A lot of people have come out to support Correa, but there’s a contingent of around 200 police, who are using tear gas, firing weapons, repressing. They have beaten people,” he said.

“But more people are showing up and the question is what is going to happen, because the army, which said it supported the government, hasn’t appeared, it’s not defending the hospital. We don’t know how safe President Correa really is,” he added.

Q: You mentioned that you heard instructions given among the police. Can you tell me about that? A: When I was in the National Assembly (the legislature), I went up close to a group of police who were receiving guidelines from a colonel or general, I couldn’t tell which. This officer told the police not to talk in terms of “kidnapping the president,” because that could cause problems for them. He said they should say the president was being “protected by the police in the hospital.”

And in the same breath, the officer said: “But we’re not letting him leave. And he’s going to pay for what he’s done to the police.” That’s what I heard.

Q: You were in the legislature at the time? A: No, not inside — I was outside. The National Assembly has been taken over by the police. And the police who were receiving this order, these instructions, were throwing up barricades at the entrance and around the legislature, and burning tires.

Q: Outside the hospital, what is the attitude of the people? A: They’re peaceful. The police have been called on not to clash with the people, but the police continue to behave aggressively. The important thing is that the people are resisting this, they’re mobilising, but without inciting violence.

The violence is coming from the police themselves, not only here at the hospital, but in other parts of Quito, where the police are putting up barricades and burning tires and that kind of thing.

Q: Can you estimate how many people are there? A: In the spot where I am, there are approximately 3,000 people. But they’re along several streets leading up to the hospital. I was on another street, and it was filling up with people, so I think we’re approaching 4,000 or 5,000 people.

Right now there are army helicopters (the helicopter blades can be heard clearly). The people are even waving to them. Because they are waiting for the army to arrive here. (The noise gets louder.) There are the helicopters. The people are asking them to come and rescue the president.

Q: Are there any representatives of the CONAIE (the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) among the demonstrators? A: No. In fact, this morning, some of the leaders of the Pachakutik movement (the CONAIE’s political expression) made statements that more or less backed the police, but then they stopped doing that.

The students and indigenous people, who are against the government, have not shown up in the demonstrations, as far as I can see. I basically see people who support Correa and others who support the police, or right-wing sectors that are mobilising, to support the police and egg on the coup.

Because this isn’t just a problem of demands by the police. This, it seems, was very well planned. So well planned that the airports were taken over by a sector of the air force which, undoubtedly, has to do with the coup. Because there was no reason to suspend the flights at all of the country’s airports.

Q: What happened to the helicopters? They flew over and left? A: Two helicopters came by. They’re flying over the area, but they’re not coming. And the people are asking them to come and rescue the president. The commander of the armed forces said they back the president, but they’re not moving. Quito is without police. There has been looting in some places. There are only private guards, but there’s no army in the streets, for example. Nor has the army come here, to this place — there have just been overflights by helicopters.

* Additional reporting by Constanza Vieira in Bogotá.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, May 24 2010 (IPS)

The world’s multilateral credit institutions have often faced the criticism that they cause more problems than they prevent. As the challenges increase, such as those posed by climate change, the debate is shifting to environmental financing.

Villagers in Shamva, Zimbabwe, test a prototype of a water pump and tank for irrigating their gardens. Credit: Vusumuzi Sifile/IPS

Shamva, an area in northern Zimbabwe, was known decades ago for its tobacco, maize, cotton, beans and coffee, which grew without using irrigation. But there is less and less rain, and rivers have dried up, in part due to deforestation.

Although the last harvest left many dinner plates empty, Shamva was not on the national list of those in need of food aid “because of the general perception that Shamva is an agriculturally productive area,” local activist Isaac Chidavaenzi told Tierramérica.

In November 2008, Chidavaenzi launched the Chengaose Foundation Trust to dig wells, and obtained 50,000 dollars through GEF’s Small Grants Programme, ultimately benefitting 7,000 villagers in the Madziwa area of Shamva, in Mashonaland Central Province.

With the initial funds, many dug their wells. But due to delays in the required reports from the Chengaose Trust, the local partner, the GEF did not release the remaining 20,000 dollars, which were necessary to install pumps, tanks and pipelines to irrigate the villagers’ gardens.

“I have water, but the problem is how to take it to the garden,” said Goodreach Masuku, one of the farmers who met May 10 with the GEF/SGP officials.

More and more people want to have their water well, said Khethiwe Mhlanga, national GEF/SGP coordinator. “Ours is a pilot project that should show the way for many others to copy and follow… but there is a real struggle to keep within those numbers,” she told Tierramérica.

In the last three years, the GEF/SGP has assisted 30 communities in Zimbabwe, spending 1.2 million dollars — not much for a country of 11.4 million people submerged for years in agricultural and institutional crises.

The Small Grants Programme handles less then one percent of the money from GEF, the leading international financial organisation dedicated to the environment. The Facility was created by the World Bank in 1991, when that institution was battered by criticism for promoting environmentally destructive investments.

Today, “even the fierce critics of GEF think it is wonderful,” Zoe Young, author of the 2002 book “A New Green Order? The World Bank and the Politics of the Global Environment Facility,” told Tierramérica in a phone interview.

The money “is going to small local groups who know the locations, know what needs to be done for particular conservation efforts, and that money is working,” she said, but added that it has not been an efficient financing model when it involves billions of dollars.

Far from Zimbabwe, in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba, a biodiversity protection programme received 10 million dollars from the GEF, distributed since 1993 amongst three projects.

The focus is the Camagüey Savanna Ecosystem, which covers 19,000 square kilometres of watersheds and more than 2,500 small islands, or keys, along the north coast. The area is home to 2.3 million people.

The aim of the project is to harmonise tourism, farming, forestry and fishing, without damaging the rich local environment. In addition to the GEF, there are contributions from the Cuban government, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Canadian cooperation and the Worldwide Fund for Nature, UN official Gricel Acosta told Tierramérica.

Mangroves, marine grasslands and coral reefs, with an abundance of endemic species, are emblematic of the area. After 17 years, the initiative is in its third phase, and what has been learned can be applied in other areas, said researcher María Elena Perdomo, of the Environmental Research and Services Centre, in Villa Clara province.

Perdomo told Tierramérica that she values “the capacities to deepen knowledge about the resources and help in the search for alternatives for the sustainable use of biodiversity.”

According to Maria Athena Ballesteros, of the World Resources Institute, for countries like Mexico and those from the Caribbean that are adopting low- carbon production models, the GEF “should consider meeting the initial high costs of those low-carbon options.”

For example, “Mexico is supporting a sustainable transport initiative. They would probably benefit from some grant money to support human, institutional, and technical capacity,” Ballesteros said.

“The question is, does GEF have the capacity to back the most promising technologies in developing countries, to support policy innovations and investments towards real transformation, which is what is necessary to stop climate change?” Ballesteros said.

When money is limited, tough choices have to be made.

To date, the GEF has provided 8.7 billion dollars in grants for more than 2,400 environmental projects in 165 developing countries and emerging economies. The funds pledged for the next four years total 4.25 billion dollars, less than half what is considered necessary by the North American network of non-governmental organisations accredited by the Facility.

But from another perspective, the problem isn’t money.

Do we really need a global financial institution to fund efforts to confront problems like climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification?

“These are serious problems… Money would help, yes, and some action is needed, but my answer is no,” said Zoe Young.

When the GEF was created, “it was a proposal that environmental expertise should go into shaping every project of the World Bank and of all the international public finance entities,” she said.

“If you took these billions of dollars and all these experts and used them to establish international regulation for energy efficiency, industrial standards, multinational energy companies, safe emissions levels… so many people could benefit,” said Young.

In her view, creating a climate change fund is a futile effort. “If you have good standards for all the investments and the public money goes to setting those standards, then you don’t need all these strange inventions like carbon market and carbon offsetting” for greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

But the GEF exists and has been gaining influence since it became independent of the World Bank in 1994, though the Bank is still responsible for its administration.

Today the GEF is the economic instrument of the UN conventions on climate change, persistent organic pollutants, biodiversity and desertification, among other functions.

* Ephraim Nsingo (Harare), Matthew Cardinale (Atlanta) and Patricia Grogg (Havana) contributed reporting. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 23 2010 (IPS)

If anything was left clear by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the long-running pulp mill dispute between Argentina and Uruguay, it was the weakness of rules and regulations to prevent pollution of the Uruguay River in the 508-km stretch shared by the two countries.

In its 80-page, 282-paragraph verdict, the Court stated on Tuesday, Apr. 20 that “there is no conclusive evidence in the record to show that Uruguay has not acted with the requisite degree of due diligence” to keep the Orion (Botnia) pulp mill from polluting the border river since it began to operate in November 2007.

But in some cases, the reason for the lack of evidence may be more worrying.

Both countries agree that the total concentration of phosphorus in the river was already high before the paper pulp plant began to be built on the Uruguayan side of the river.

But the water quality regulations followed by the agency created to jointly administer the river, the Uruguay River Administrative Commission (CARU), do not include maximum limits for phosphorus and phosphates, which abound in the region due to the use of fertilisers by farmers and to the discharge of urban sewage.

And Argentina does not even have standards on the total concentration of phosphorus in water. To determine whether or not the pulp mill had exceeded acceptable limits, the Court had to use Uruguay’s standards.

After studying the evidence, the ICJ, based in the Dutch city of The Hague, concluded that the amount of phosphorus discharge into the river that may be attributed to the pulp mill was “insignificant” when compared to the total phosphorus in the river from other sources.

Argentina filed its complaint against Uruguay before the world court on May 4, 2006, accusing it of failing to “inform, notify and negotiate” when it authorised construction of the plant on the banks of the shared river, as stipulated by the joint Uruguay River Statute or treaty.

The Court agreed with that argument, but distinguished between “procedural” and “substantive” breaches, and found Uruguay guilty only of the former.

CARU, established by the river treaty in 1975, has the authority to determine rules and regulations to protect the health of the river. But the standards outlined in its Digest are not “exhaustive,” the Court noted.

For example, the Digest only sets general limits on a few industrial effluents, like “hydrocarbons,” “sedimentable solids” and “oils and greases,” and leaves it up to each country to regulate.

However, the paper pulp industry generates a broad range of other waste products that are discharged into the river. In addition, it releases gaseous emissions into the air. But neither the river treaty nor CARU set air quality standards.

Nor does CARU have standards on substances in question in this case, such as nitrogen, nitrates, adsorbable organic halides (AOX), or dioxins and furans (persistent organic pollutants that pose a threat to human health).

Assessing measurements of the concentration of these substances in the river and comparing them with Uruguay’s regulations, the Court stated that it “does not appear” that the discharges by the plant have exceeded the limits, “except for a few instances” involving nitrogen, nitrates, and AOX.

One such instance occurred on Jan. 9, 2008, after the pulp mill began operating, when the concentration of AOX at one of the points where samples were taken reached 13 mg per litre, more than double the limit of six mg per litre.

But given the lack of evidence that it was an “enduring problem” rather than an isolated event, “the Court is not in a position to conclude that Uruguay has breached the provisions” of the 1975 river treaty, the ruling said.

Another point of contention was the site chosen for the pulp mill, which was built by paper and pulp company Botnia and sold in December to UPM, another Finnish firm, near the western Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos, 35 km from the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú.

Buenos Aires and Montevideo used different modeling systems that provided differing results on the geomorphological and hydrodynamic characteristics of the river — like the rate and direction of flow of the water — which affect the dispersal and dilution of pollutants.

These characteristics of the river, such as phenomena of low flow and stagnation, vary depending on the area and make it possible to establish acceptable levels of pollutants that can be absorbed, diluted or dispersed.

But once again, CARU failed to take into account such factors or order that they be studied, and as a result, no limits were set.

The ruling thus states that “in so far as it is not established that the discharges of effluent of the Orion (Botnia) mill have exceeded the limits set by those standards, in terms of the level of concentrations, the Court finds itself unable to conclude that Uruguay has violated its obligations under the 1975 Statute.”

The magistrates added that “should such inadequacy (in regulatory capacity) be detected, particularly with respect to certain areas of the river such as at Fray Bentos, the Parties should initiate a review of the water quality standards set by CARU and ensure that such standards clearly reflect the characteristics of the river and are capable of protecting its waters and its ecosystem.”

After the initial sense of relief caused by the verdict in Montevideo, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro said Wednesday that he would suggest to Buenos Aires the adoption of a “real environmental statue.”

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Mar 1 2010 (IPS)

“I’ve been crying (tears of joy) since yesterday. It’s amazing to see how an ordinary person made it so far,” said 44-year-old María del Rosario Corbo, referring to Uruguay’s new President José “Pepe” Mujica, who was sworn in Monday at the head of this South American country’s second leftist administration.

President José Mujica and Vice President Danilo Astori leaving the legislative palace. Credit: Julieta Sokolowicz/IPS

The press worldwide has made much of Mujica’s past as a former guerrilla fighter who spent over a decade in prison in extremely inhumane conditions during Uruguay’s 1973-1985 military dictatorship and who grows cut flowers on a small farm on the outskirts of the capital with his wife, Senator Lucía Topolansky, another former Tupamaro guerrilla.

Observers also highlight his colourful, blunt-spoken nature and colloquial language. But despite the major contrast of his personality with that of his quiet-spoken, circumspect predecessor, a socialist practicing oncologist Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), the 74-year-old Mujica’s policy proposals point to continuity more than anything else.

That was once again reflected in the two speeches he gave Monday, the first in the legislature, when his wife, the president of the Senate, swore him in, and later in the huge Plaza Independencia square, when he received the presidential sash from Vázquez in a ceremony attended by 1,300 international guests as well as a crowd of thousands who lined the streets on the warm, sunny southern hemisphere summer afternoon.

But while this small country of 3.4 million people between South American giants Argentina and Brazil weathered the global economic crisis relatively unscathed, and quickly returned to healthy growth levels, the new Broad Front government has set itself big challenges.

The poverty rate shrank from a record high of 32 percent in 2004 – in the wake of neighbouring Argentina’s 2002 economic collapse and Uruguay’s own unprecedented economic crisis of 2002-2003 – to under 21 percent today, while the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has been slashed to less than two percent.

It should not be a herculean task for this country, described by Mujica as “a small company” or “a large village” with abundant natural wealth, which has always been “the most egalitarian country in the region,” to achieve a high degree of development “with justice for everyone,” said the new president.

But despite the drop in poverty, the significant rise in salaries in sectors like education and the police, and in-depth tax and health reforms, the gap between rich and poor did not actually narrow in the Broad Front’s first five years in office.

Nevertheless, Uruguay is one of the countries in Latin America with the most equal distribution of wealth, according to the World Bank.

The new government’s aim, Mujica said, is to “do away with indigence (extreme poverty), reduce poverty by 50 percent, and expand knowledge and culture to everyone, especially in the neglected and segregated interior,” a reference to rural areas. (In Uruguay, 93 percent of the population is urban.)

Shortcomings in the educational system are among the biggest hurdles standing in the way of that projected leap in development, say authorities and experts in this country with an ageing population, where half of all children are still born into poverty.

“The way to achieve it is negotiable, but not the direction itself,” said Mujica. Earlier, in the legislative palace, he warned political leaders and the country’s influential trade unions that everyone together “will have to decide what we say ‘no’ to in order to say ‘yes’ to education.”

The climate of harmony with visiting leaders from neighbouring countries was felt in the new president’s warm words and the loud applause and cheers from the public.

Presidents Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, along with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended Mujica’s swearing-in ceremonies.

But in outlining his vision, the new president, a former senator and agriculture minister, marked a difference with the path taken by some other leftist governments.

“I haven’t stopped dreaming about a society where what is ‘yours’ and what is ‘mine’ doesn’t separate us,” he said. “But it’s no small thing to have the freedom to dissent, to respect each other, and to expand knowledge and awareness.”

He insisted on the need for a constant influx of new blood in government, and said the keys to his policies will be cooperation and negotiation with the opposition and the various sectors of society.

Mujica also mentioned the economic principles that his vice president, Danilo Astori, embraced as economy minister under Vázquez: sound macroeconomics, the need to generate wealth and draw investment, and guarantees for the private sector.

“Mujica says his government will be more like Lula’s than the administrations of Evo Morales or Chávez. Basically, Mujica himself sees the differences clearly,” said Juan Andrés Moraes, assistant professor in the political science department of the University of the Republic.

“Uruguay is in a different place than the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua,” Moraes told IPS.

Mujica was explicit: because of changes brought about by globalisation, consumerism and culture, society “has infinite material demands” while financial resources are “finite.”

For that reason, it is “useless to try to even things out from the top down.”

“No one is going to give us prosperity for free, so if we don’t multiply wealth, anything we have said is just blah, blah, blah,” said the new president.

But while one part of society benefits immediately from growing prosperity, “there is another world that, because of marginalisation or cultural lag, could fall by the wayside,” he warned, vindicating the role of the state in combating that phenomenon.

While Mujica said his first priority is “education, education, education,” other pressing issues he mentioned are a reform of the state, whose red tape is seen as a curb on development, and improvements in public safety, which has worsened, at least partly due to a rise in the use of a deadly cheap form of cocaine similar to crack – although Uruguay is still one of the safest countries in the hemisphere.

Partying in the streets

With the colours of the Broad Front painted on her face, and carrying a sign with the photos of Mujica, Astori and Vázquez, María Marichal, a 48-year-old cleaning woman, summed up her enthusiasm in a few short words: “I have faith in Pepe.”

She formed part of the crowd gathered in the midday heat outside the legislative palace to cheer the new president.

The beating sun was no obstacle for architects Valeria, 31, and Álvaro, 30, to bring their two-year-old son Manuel along in his stroller. “Under Mujica, there will be continuity with the government that’s ending, and some aspects will improve, like production,” Valeria told IPS.

“He’ll keep focusing on social aspects, and not just economic development,” Álvaro added.

Matilde, Elisa and Mariana, three social science students between the ages of 18 and 19, were born in democracy and voted for the first time in 2009. Along with other friends wearing white t-shirts bearing the Uruguayan flag and the names “Pepe” and “Danilo”, they formed part of the group of Broad Front volunteers providing security during the inaugural ceremonies.

The Mujica administration will “renew the Broad Front’s commitment to Uruguayan society,” Matilde told IPS.

A moment of sadness amidst the joy came from a demonstration by families of the victims of forced disappearance.

“I’m not very hopeful” that the new government will make progress in investigating the fate of the “disappeared,” Luisa Cuesta, whose only son, Nebio Ariel Melo Cuesta, was kidnapped in 1976 at the age of 31, told IPS.

The Vázquez administration launched a campaign to find the remains of the 26 Uruguayans who were “disappeared” in this country during the de facto regime and presumably buried on the grounds of military installations, out of a total 200 Uruguayans who suffered the same fate, most of them in Argentina during that country’s 1976-1983 dictatorship.

So far the remains of just two victims have been found and identified. Last year, a referendum to repeal an amnesty law for human rights violators approved by voters in 1989 failed to win the necessary number of votes.

But although the amnesty law remains in place, nearly 20 members of the military regime are in prison facing trial. * With additional reporting by Julieta Sokolowicz

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 25 2009 (IPS)

“To use a soccer metaphor, which Brazilian politicians like so much, the Kyoto Protocol was the 10-minute warm-up before the real game begins,” said scientist Carlos Nobre in reference to global climate change treaties.

The ice is melting on Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

Nobre’s opinions appear, with those of another 22 noted experts, in the “First Regional Report on Climate Change: Latin America and the Irreversible Effects of a Warmer Planet”, published Nov. 19 by Tierramérica in Montevideo.

Nobre, head of the Land Science Centre of Brazil’s national space agency, INPE, underscored the urgent need for governments participating in the anxiously awaited meet in Copenhagen in December to reach some sort of firm agreement to cut climate-changing emissions.

The 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be the venue for the final debate on the future of the Kyoto Protocol (the only international agreement that sets targetss for reducing greenhouse gas emissions), and for creating a new global model for confronting the problem.

The results of the questionnaire that Tierramérica submitted to experts in various fields reflect widespread scepticism about the chances for success at the Copenhagen conference.

Meanwhile, some “600 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing the effects of climate change in a dramatic way, with droughts, floods, melting glaciers, rising temperatures, new agricultural pests and diseases,” states the 40-page text, available on-line in Spanish, at http://www.tierramerica.info/docs/informe-cambio-climatico-2009.pdf.

The Latin American and Caribbean region overall produces relatively low greenhouse gas emissions, but is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The most harmful impact is the increase in climate variability, according to the responses in the poll of scientists. In the 1995-2006 period, 11 of the 12 years were among the hottest on record of global temperatures since 1850.

In Mexico City, the average temperature “increased more than four degrees (Celsius) since the early 20th century,” said Fernando Tudela, Mexico’s deputy secretary of environmental planning and policy.

Abrupt weather variations – drought, heavy rains, hail and frost – take a toll on agriculture because crops are not always able to adapt, and the associated losses aggravate poverty among farmers, says the report.

According to simulations projected through 2100, Latin America and the Caribbean could suffer agricultural income losses of 12 percent in a scenario of limited climate change, or 50 percent in a more severe scenario.

Several of the questionnaire respondents said it is the farmers themselves who are reporting the effects of climate change.

The changing climate patterns “are recognised by the vast majority of Andean farmers, who are great observers of weather, because their crops and survival depend on it,” said Peruvian anthropologist Jorge Recharte, director of The Mountain Institute’s Andean Programme.

However, even when it comes to tracking the effects of the phenomenon, Latin America comes up short.

“In order to determine the impact on agriculture, we need a reliable database on climate and on agricultural production that encompasses long periods, of 80 to 100 years. In the region, very few countries have that type of records,” said Walter Baethgen, director of the Latin American and Caribbean programme at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, in New York.

The Water Centre for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC) calls for generating climate information in agricultural planning, improving irrigation and planting techniques (including the elimination of pesticides), optimising soil use, and establishing action plans based on studies of vulnerability. All of which must also take into consideration all sectors involved.

It would be difficult for countries, especially smaller, poor nations, to enact these strategies on their own.

Peruvian scientist José Marengo, who has worked for many years in Brazil, warned that the region lacks “a coordinated effort in information sharing on climate and water, and there are no organised efforts among countries to tackle climate change.”

Veterinarian and rural sociology expert Edith Fernández-Baca Pacheco, also of Peru, added that “the contingency plans at the regional level, or warning systems for extreme weather events, if they exist, are in their early stages.”

The region’s agricultural sector must also contribute to fighting climate change by cutting emissions of carbon dioxide from deforestation and of methane from livestock production, say the scientists consulted.

The Brazilian government took a step in that direction on Nov. 13 when it announced its commitment to reduce by 36.1 to 38.9 percent the greenhouse gas emissions the country is projected to produce by 2020 under current trends, with GDP growth of five to six percent a year.

A problem in Latin America’s mountainous regions is the ever-faster shrinking of glaciers. With a warmer climate, they are not being recharged during the winter months. Worldwide, glaciers are the planet’s largest reservoir of freshwater.

In 2004, Chacaltaya mountain, which rises to an altitude of 5,300 metres near the Bolivian capital, La Paz, “lost one of the highest glaciers” in South America, states the report. Although scientists had predicted the glacier would disappear in 2013, it already happened earlier this year.

Shrinking glaciers throughout the Andes puts many of the region’s cities at risk of water shortages.

Marengo, the Peruvian expert in meteorology and one of the contributors to the IPCC reports, believes that alternatives to water supplies from the glaciers – desalinisation of seawater, deep wells or connecting watersheds through giant infrastructure projects – are too costly.

Furthermore, “the Andean countries are highly dependent on hydroelectric energy,” pointed out John Nash, the World Bank’s lead economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. Many of the region’s dams need water from the glaciers to operate, especially during the dry season when rains are not refilling reservoirs.

Latin America is also feeling other effects of global warming that could be irreversible, such as the transformation of the Amazon jungle into savannah, the deterioration and loss of mangrove forests, and the dramatic reshaping of the coastline as a result of rising sea levels.

Further evidence of climate change is the expansion of disease vectors to areas beyond their normal habitat. This is the case of the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits malaria, and has spread from tropical zones at less than 1,000 metres above sea level to areas higher than 2,000 metres.

And biodiversity is also feeling the pressure. An increase of three to four degrees Celsius over the next 50 years “will be the main cause of the potential death of the Amazon rainforest,” says the report.

Even under scenarios of relatively low greenhouse gas emissions, regions like Central America and the Andes will see a turnover of species of more than 90 percent.

Mario Bidegain, of the atmospheric sciences unit at the University of the Republic of Uruguay, put an even darker spin on the persistence of uncertainties.

“It is still being debated at the scientific level that if we reach a temperature increase of more than two degrees Celsius, it could give rise to a new state of equilibrium in the climate system, which could make a large portion of the human population disappear from the planet,” he said.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

Twenty-three Latin American scientists responded to an extensive questionnaire from Tierramérica. The result is a map of the biggest challenges that climate change poses for the region, from a journalistic perspective.

The glaciers of Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano are disappearing. - Mauricio Ramos/IPS

“The real game should begin now, although there are many who would rather remain indefinitely in the warm-up phase,” added the Brazilian expert, who was among the authors of the 1990, 2001 and 2007 reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.

Nobre's opinions appear, along with those of another 22 noted experts, in the “First Regional Report on Climate Change: Latin America and the Irreversible Effects of a Warmer Planet,” published Nov. 19 by Tierramérica in Montevideo.

Nobre, head of the Land Science Center of Brazil's national space agency, INPE, underscored the urgent need for governments participating in the much-awaited meet in Copenhagen in December to reach some sort of firm agreement to cut climate-changing emissions.

The 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be the venue for the closing debate on the future of the Kyoto Protocol (the only international agreement that sets requirements for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases), and for creating a new global model for confronting the problem.

The results of the questionnaire that Tierramérica submitted to experts in various fields reflect widespread skepticism about success at the Copenhagen conference.

Meanwhile, some “600 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing the effects of climate change in a dramatic way, with droughts, floods, melting glaciers, rising temperatures, new agricultural pests and diseases,” states the 40-page text, available electronically, in Spanish, at http://www.tierramerica.info/docs/informe-cambio-climatico-2009.pdf.

The Latin American and Caribbean region overall produces relatively low greenhouse gas emissions, but is very vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The most harmful is the increase in climate variability, according to the responses in the poll of scientists. In the 1995-2006 period, 11 of the 12 years were among the hottest on record of global temperatures since 1850.

In Mexico City, the average temperature “increased more than four degrees (Celsius) since the early 20th century,” said Fernando Tudela, Mexico's deputy secretary of environmental planning and policy.

The more abrupt weather variations – drought, heavy rains, hail and frost – take a toll on the farming sector because crops are not always able to adapt. The associated losses deepen poverty among the population that relies on farming, according to the report.

According to simulations projected through 2100, Latin America and the Caribbean could suffer agricultural income losses of 12 percent in a scenario of limited climate change, or 50 percent in a more intense scenario.

Several of the questionnaire respondents said it is the farmers themselves who are reporting the effects of climate transformation.

The changing climate patterns “are recognized by the vast majority of Andean farmers, who are great observers of weather, because their crops and survival depend on it,” said Peruvian anthropologist Jorge Recharte, director of The Mountain Institute's Andean Program.

However, even when it comes to diagnosing the effects, Latin America comes up short.

“In order to determine the impact on agriculture, we need a reliable database on climate and on agricultural production, which encompass long periods, of 80 to 100 years. In the region, very few countries have that type of record,” said Walter Baethgen, director of the Latin American and Caribbean program at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, in New York.

The Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC, for its Spanish name) calls for generating climate information in agricultural planning, improving irrigation and planting techniques (including the elimination of pesticides), optimizing soil use, and establishing action plans based on studies of vulnerability, taking into consideration all sectors involved.

It would be difficult for countries, especially for smaller and poorer nations, to take up these strategies on their own.

Peruvian scientist José Marengo, who has worked for many years in Brazil, warned that the region lacks “a coordinated effort in information sharing on climate and water, and there are no organized efforts among countries to confront climate change.”

Veterinarian and rural sociology expert Edith Fernández-Baca Pacheco, also of Peru, added that “the contingency plans at the regional level, or warning systems for extreme weather events, if they exist, are in the developing stages.”

The region's agricultural sector must also contribute to fighting climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide from deforestation and of methane from livestock production.

The Brazilian government took a step in that direction on Nov. 13 when it announced its commitment to reduce by 36.1 to 38.9 percent the greenhouse gas emissions the country is projected to produce by 2020 under current trends, as well as to maintain gross domestic product (GDP) growth of five to six percent a year.

A problem in Latin America's mountainous regions is the ever-faster shrinking of glaciers, which are the planet's largest reservoir of freshwater. With warmer climate, they are not being recharged during the winter months.

In 2004, Chacaltaya mountain, which rises 5,300 meters near the Bolivian capital, La Paz, “lost one of the highest glaciers” in South America, states the report. Although scientists had predicted the glacier would disappear in 2013, it happened earlier this year.

Shrinking glaciers throughout the Andes puts many of the region's cities at risk of water shortages.

Marengo, the Peruvian expert in meteorology and one of the contributors to the IPCC reports, believes that alternatives to water supplies from the glaciers – desalinization of seawater, deep wells or connecting watersheds through giant infrastructure projects – are too costly.

Furthermore, “the Andean countries are highly dependent on hydroelectric energy,” pointed out John Nash, the World Bank's lead economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. Many of the region's dams need water from the glaciers to operate, especially during the dry season when rains are not refilling reservoirs.

Latin America also feels other effects of global warming that could be irreversible, such as the transformation of the Amazon jungle into savanna, the deterioration and loss of mangrove forests, and the dramatic reshaping of the coastline as a result of rising sea levels.

Further evidence of climate change is the expansion of disease vectors to areas beyond their normal habitat. This is the case of the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits malaria, and has spread from tropical zones at less than 1,000 meters above sea level to zones higher than 2,000 meters.

And biodiversity is also feeling the pressure. An increase of three to four degrees Celsius over the next 50 years “will be the main cause of the potential death of the Amazon forests,” says the report.

Even under scenarios of relatively low greenhouse gas emissions, regions like Central America and the Andes will see a turnover of species of more than 90 percent.

Mario Bidegain, of the atmospheric sciences unit at the University of the Republic of Uruguay, put a darker spin on the persistence of uncertainties.

“It is still being debated at the scientific level that if we reach a temperature increase of more than two degrees Celsius, it could give rise to a new state of equilibrium in the climate system, which could make a large portion of the human population disappear from the planet,” he said.

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 26 2009 (IPS)

Uruguay’s Electoral Court announced Monday that the governing Broad Front (FA) candidate José Mujica took 48 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections, which means he will face off with former conservative president Luis Alberto Lacalle of the National Party (PN) in a second round on Nov. 29.

Lacalle, who governed from 1990 to 1995, garnered 28.9 percent, while the candidate of the Colorado Party, Pedro Bordaberry, the son of former dictator Juan Bordaberry (1973-1976), won just over 16.9 percent. Independent Party candidate Pablo Mieres took 2.4 percent. Although voting is compulsory in Uruguay, just under 90 percent of voters cast ballots.

Analysts agree that the most likely outcome in November is that the next president will be Mujica, a blunt-talking former guerrilla leader who spent over 12 years in prison, mainly in solitary confinement, before and during the 1973-1985 dictatorship.

“Everything indicates that our political force will have a significant presence, and we haven’t ruled out the possibility of a parliamentary majority,” Mujica said in a press conference at the NH Columbia Hotel in the Old City, where the FA set up its campaign headquarters.

“We are extremely happy with this outcome, in which we took more votes than the two traditional parties together, indicating that we are headed towards victory,” his running-mate, former economy minister Danilo Astori, told journalists.

Senator Astori said November’s runoff will be a “referendum” on the FA’s vision for Uruguay and the achievements of the incumbent government of Tabaré Vázquez, given the lack of concrete policy proposals from the opposition forces.

In addition, according to projections based on the preliminary results of the elections, Uruguayans voted against repealing an amnesty law for members of the police and military accused of human rights violations during the 12-year military dictatorship, and against a measure that would have allowed Uruguayan citizens living abroad to vote in national elections.

The plebiscites on the amnesty law and voting abroad “were overshadowed” by the national elections, said Mujica, who added that he did not believe referendums or plebiscites should be held simultaneously with general elections.

Sunday’s elections were the third held under the electoral system ushered in by the 1996 constitutional reform, which separated municipal elections from the legislative and presidential votes and created a two-round electoral system in which the winning presidential candidate must take 50 percent plus one vote in the first round, or go to a runoff.

Researcher Juan Andrés Moraes said “the most positive component of the 1996 reform are the simultaneous primary elections in each party to select the presidential candidates,” which “strengthened the parties and their internal functioning.”

But the reform also created a few problems, such as a lengthier election campaign period, he told IPS.

It also purposely sought the election of a president with greater legitimacy than leaders elected by a simple majority,” said Moraes, an assistant professor at the Political Science Institute of the public University of the Republic.

But the problem, he said, is that while the president would win an absolute majority of the votes, he may not have a majority in parliament to govern with. And since both the legislature and the president are directly elected by voters, “there would be no way to resolve this for five years.”

Sunday’s elections were also the sixth general elections held since the end of the dictatorship.

“Uruguay’s democracy is one of the most solid in Latin America. This is the country with the largest proportion of citizens who say they are satisfied with democracy (in opinion polls) and support the political system,” said Moraes.

Since 1985, “the three main parties in the political system have had the opportunity to govern, without that posing a problem with respect to governability or political stability,” he added.

In Moraes’ view, the political parties “have undergone at least two very positive changes, if we compare them with what they were like in the decades prior to the 1973 break with democracy: they have more complex and solid organisational structures…and their programmes are also more solid and clearly identifiable to citizens.”

In the decades before the 1973 coup d’etat, “the parties (essentially the National and Colorado parties, as the FA was founded in 1971) were weak in terms of both of these aspects. Today they have progressed, and democracy has benefited from that process,” the analyst said.

“At a stretch, we could say that the political crisis that gradually led up to the 1973 coup was a crisis of the parties with respect to the two abovementioned aspects,” he said.

Women’s participation still weak

In the legislature that emerges from Sunday’s elections, women will hold at least nine seats out of a total of 99 in the Chamber of Deputies and 30 in the Senate, said political scientist Niki Johnson, coordinator of the “election monitoring from a gender perspective” project in the Political Science Institute.

So far, “we can only say for sure that there will be nine women lawmakers, while another 10 still have a chance, but that depends on exactly how many votes were won by each parliamentary list,” Johnson told IPS.

Although the makeup of the next legislature will not be announced until the end of next week, it would appear that “we could have 15 women – in other words, the same number as in the 2004 elections,” said Johnson. “That would be the maximum possible. The minimum, nine, would represent a major setback.”

“In few cases” did the parties stick to the spirit of a new quota law, which although it was approved in April, only applied to the June primaries, and will not go into effect until 2014, said the analyst.

“Uruguay earns strong points in terms of the international indicators on the quality of democracy, but political representation of women always weighs down its score,” she said.

“On that point, it ranks 16th out of 19 countries in Latin America, many of which do not have such a strong, deep-rooted democratic tradition as Uruguay,” said Johnson.

The quota law aimed at equitable gender participation in elected national and provincial bodies and in the leadership of political parties stipulates that one out of every three candidates nominated for these posts must be of a different sex than the other two.

The “election monitoring from a gender perspective” project headed by Johnson was created by an agreement between the Political Science Institute’s gender and politics unit and the local women’s group Cotidiano Mujer, with financing from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

“What is not clear is to what extent women’s efforts in defence of women’s rights is seen as a plus by the parties,” she said.

Johnson said that to judge by the fact that several women legislators with strong political backgrounds and a history of fighting for gender equality will be left out of the next Congress, “the activities of female lawmakers in defence of women’s rights are still invisible and are not valued by the parties.”

Because the slates of candidates are drawn up by party leaders, who are men, “when the eyes that are looking do not see the things that women do, it’s unlikely that they will be given the place to which they are entitled,” she said.

Furthermore, in the campaign, “no political force built a concrete platform targeting women voters, underscoring the achievements made or setting forth specific proposals, as did occur with regard to other groups, like workers, business or young people,” she said.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jul 11 2009 (IPS)

The events unleashed two weeks ago in Honduras have raised questions about the options available in a democratic system to penalise infringements of the constitution without, in turn, trampling the constitution.

Was it or was it not a coup d'etat? On Sunday, Jun. 28 hundreds of soldiers surrounded the presidential residence, stormed in, ordered President Manuel Zelaya out of bed at gunpoint and herded him onto an air force plane that flew him to Costa Rica, still in his pajamas.

The question is obviously rhetorical. Nevertheless, it has been asked dozens of times over the last two weeks in op-ed columns, blogs, articles and analyses posted on-line by local and foreign media outlets.

And more than a few have said no, it was not.

The Honduran constitution drafted in 1982 does not provide for impeachment of the president. That possibility was eliminated in a 2002 constitutional reform, along with the guarantee of immunity from prosecution.

The constitution also has a series of articles set in stone, such as the ones on "reform and inviolability of the constitution", and others referring to questions like the form of government, national territory and a total ban on presidential reelection.

The constitution has its own built-in armour to protect it. Article 375 states that the document does not lose its validity even when it has been supposedly revoked or modified by any means or procedure other than those provided for by the constitution itself. In such cases, any citizen, with or without political authority, has the duty to help maintain or restore respect for the constitution, the article adds.

That doesn't mean the constitution cannot be amended. In fact it has been modified dozens of times since 1982. To do so, all that is needed is the vote of two-thirds of all members of parliament at two consecutive regular annual sessions.

The armour consists of blocking all routes to the creation of a constituent assembly to completely rewrite the constitution and thus "refound" the state.

The current constitution was drafted in 1981 by a constituent assembly that met under military tutelage – characteristic of political life in this country for a good part of the 20th century – and amidst a broader Central American context of guerrilla warfare, dictatorships and U.S. interference.

Nevertheless, since then the country began to build institutions that it previously lacked, in the areas of electoral, judicial and human rights issues, access to public information, and transparency in state finances and procurements.

But nearly three decades of fragile democracy have brought neither prosperity nor development to this country of 7.5 million people, where eight out of 10 people live on less than a dollar a day according to United Nations statistics.

Indeed, Honduras is the third poorest country in Latin America, after Haiti and Nicaragua.

In the last few years, trade unions, social movements and associations of small farmers as well as small left-wing parties and movements have begun to take a keen interest in the experiences of countries with leftist or centre-left governments, like Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, where constituent assemblies were elected to rewrite the constitutions, which were later approved by voters.

Zelaya, a wealthy landowner who has belonged to the centre-right Liberal Party for decades, was elected on a reform agenda in 2005. Once in office, he gradually distanced himself from his party and the country's elites, and ended up pushing for the creation of a constituent assembly which by any reckoning ran counter to the constitution.

The opposition, the courts and Congress maintained that his aim was to secure the possibility of running for reelection in order to prolong his stay in office, following in the footsteps of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia.

However, Zelaya himself never said that was his objective, and any possible modification allowing for reelection would have come after the end of his term in January, so he could not have aspired to a second consecutive term.

The Supreme Electoral Court is the only institution that can call elections, in agreement with Congress, the constitution states.

When the justice system and election authorities ruled that Zelaya could not ask voters whether or not they wanted to elect a constituent assembly, he said he would hold a "non-binding survey" and that the National Institute of Statistics would be in charge of the poll.

"Do you think the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constituent Assembly that would approve a new constitution? Yes or No" the ballot read.

To do this, he invoked article 5 of the Honduran "Civil Participation Act" of 2006. Under this law, all public employees have the right to call non-binding public consultations to inquire what the population thinks about policy measures.

If the "yes" vote had won in the informal poll, which was to be held Jun. 28, a fourth ballot box (alongside the three for electing the president, lawmakers and local governments) would have been set up in the November elections for voters to elect delegates to a constituent assembly.

But the president found himself increasingly isolated in the endeavour. In the week leading up to the coup, the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes and provide security for the poll, in the first act of defiance towards their commander-in-chief. Zelaya then sacked the head of the armed forces, the Supreme Court ordered that he be reinstated, and the president refused to do so.

The legislature then reached a decision that appeared to address the crisis through democratic channels: in the early hours of Jun. 26 it created a special commission to investigate the conduct of the president, who was accused of "failing to pay due attention to questions of national interest and of failing to comply with judicial rulings to the detriment of the rule of law."

This process was based on article 42 of the constitution, which allows Hondurans to be stripped of their citizenship if they undermine the freedom to vote, falsify or forge electoral documents, or use fraudulent means to manipulate the people's will, and also forbids inciting, encouraging or supporting the reelection of a president.

The lawmakers also invoked article 205, which says the legislature has the authority to decide whether charges can be brought against the president, to approve or disapprove of the administrative conduct of the executive branch, and to name a special commission to investigate matters of national interest.

The commission asked for time to carry out its investigation. In the meantime, the Attorney General's Office and the Supreme Electoral Court warned that if the president went ahead with the Sunday, Jun. 28 poll, he would be violating the constitution on the abovementioned grounds, which would be sufficient reason for his removal.

In any case, it was necessary to wait until Sunday. Word on the street was that the 'yes' vote would win. But no one knows if that would have happened: the troops got up early and ousted Zelaya.

Shortly afterwards, with the president kicked out of the country, the judiciary hurried to report that the action had been ordered by the courts, and Congress held a session in which a supposed letter of resignation by Zelaya was read out, after which the legislators voted to remove him.

But what happened between Friday and Sunday to prompt that outcome?

Political and judicial sources who backed the coup, and who spoke to IPS correspondent in Honduras Thelma Mejía, said things shifted on Saturday, when a presidential decree was circulated announcing that the survey would be held on Sunday. The decree was dated May 26, but had been quietly published in the Official Gazette between Thursday Jun. 25 and Friday Jun. 26.

That decree "changed the rules of the game," according to the sources, because it "opened the door to the dissolution of the rest of the branches of government" by no longer calling for "the inclusion of a fourth ballot box" but for "A Public Opinion Survey to Convene a National Constituent Assembly."

They argued that on Sunday afternoon, a triumphant Zelaya planned to dissolve the rest of the branches of government and to instal a constituent assembly made up of representatives who were even alleged to have been secretly appointed.

It would seem implausible that the president had the manoeuvring room to take such a major step, with the courts, the Supreme Court, Congress and the electoral authorities lined up against him. And above all, the military had rebelled against his orders.

Perhaps a portion of the citizenry would have backed him – the same groups and individuals who have come out to protest on the streets since he was deposed and sent into exile. But it is mere speculation to say whether that support could have shifted things in his favour.

A night-time curfew, a government-imposed media blackout and a brutal crackdown on protesters have belied claims of the democratic nature of the regime appointed by the legislature on Jun. 28, led by then head of Congress Roberto Micheletti, which has earned Honduras the most complete international isolation in its history.

The de facto government alleges that this was the only way to curb what they term Zelaya's "authoritarian" tendencies.

Perhaps after all Honduras really does need a new constitution.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, May 28 2009 (IPS)

When Uruguay returned to democracy in 1985, “a political corset was put on women,” said a member of the opposition Colorado Party.

In the first parliament to emerge from the 1984 elections that put an end to the 1973-1985 dictatorship, “there was not a single woman lawmaker,” said Glenda Rondán, a city councilor for Montevideo and former member of the lower house of parliament, at a breakfast held this week for women politicians by the Foreign Press Association in Uruguay (APEU).

The democratic state “was born crippled in that respect,” because women “did a great deal to bring about the return to democracy,” she said.

Twenty-four years later, Uruguay is in 91st place on a list of 134 countries drawn up by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, ranked according to women’s participation in the legislative branch.

With four women in the Senate and 11 women members of the lower house among a combined total of 130 parliamentary seats, 11.5 percent of Uruguayan lawmakers are women, considerably lower than the 21.5 percent average for the Americas and the world average of 18.4 percent.

Few as they are, these women lawmakers have just foiled another attempt to limit women’s participation, this time by the Electoral Court, in charge of defining the regulations for the “quota law” that will govern the internal party elections to be held on Jun. 28.

The quota law aimed at equitable gender participation in elected national and provincial bodies and in the leadership of political parties, approved in late March and promulgated Apr. 3, stipulates that one out of every three candidates nominated for these posts must be of a different sex than the other two.

Candidate lists must include persons of both genders all the way down the list, the law states.

Uruguay’s parliamentary electoral system is party-list proportional representation: political parties present a list of nominees in order of preference, who are elected to parliament in proportion to the votes obtained by the parties. Each permanent candidate has one or more alternates.

According to the rules approved by a majority of the Electoral Court, the groups of three candidates could include both permanent and alternate nominees, without differentiating between them, which meant in effect that the women candidates could all have been substitutes.

The bicameral women’s caucus, a multi-party bloc which lobbied for the quota law, reacted immediately to what it called a “misogynistic and perverse” act, and in the space of a few days presented a draft interpretative law to block the Electoral Court’s regulations.

The interpretative law was pushed through parliament at top speed and came into force on May 5. The deadline for presenting the lists of candidates for the political party internal elections is May 29.

Getting the quota law approved “was an uphill battle for us, so we were very harsh in our criticism of the majority opinion of the Electoral Court, and we had no hesitation in immediately presenting an interpretative law,” socialist Senator Mónica Xavier, of the governing leftwing Broad Front, told APEU.

The law will apply to the primary elections in June, when the political parties will hold their conventions and decide their presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the October national elections. However, it will not apply to national and local parliamentary elections until 2014.

The new law makes it clear that the Electoral Court must reject any list that “does not conform to the quota requirements,” Xavier said. “We did not seek legal penalties or economic sanctions; instead we made sure that the supervisory body has to check the lists for the inclusion of both men and women.”

“After so many failed attempts to open doors to participation by more women, this law has finally cut through what we call the ‘Gordian knot’ that was frustrating women’s participation, which is the political parties themselves,” she said.

The quota law is one of the fruits of the bicameral women’s caucus, which has operated since 2000 on the basis of voluntary attendance. It meets once a month and has a secretariat and a three-woman committee. Its agenda and links with civil society and academia are growing apace.

The women’s caucus “has taken formal shape because of the political will” of its members, Xavier said. Because of its “persistence and achievements, and because no woman lawmaker is excluded,” it is regarded as a pioneering model in Latin America.

In terms of women’s representation, “we are very badly off compared to other countries and compared to other periods in our history,” added Xavier, a medical doctor who was the first Latin American to chair the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians from 2006 to 2008.

Quoting an expression coined by local historian José Pedro Barrán, Rondán said that women “in Uruguay have gone through corseted and uncorseted periods.”

Women were at the forefront of the early struggles against Spanish colonialism, said Rondán, a former literature teacher, mentioning several outstanding women.

“In the first period of our national history, which Barrán describes as ‘barbaric,’ women had complete freedom,” she said. “Foreign visitors to Uruguay were astonished to discover the freedom women enjoyed, and their position in society.”

Then came a time of “discipline,” and women were the most heavily disciplined, by the family and by the Catholic Church. “It must have been one of the few times that Catholics and Masons joined forces to discipline women,” said Rondán.

In 1932, Uruguayan women won the right to vote. But although “civil rights in this country were won very early on, the 1900s put women into a corset, which we are still wearing,” Rondán said.

Uruguay’s image as a liberal democracy, with a divorce law since 1913 and a high level of participation by girls and women in education and the labour market, was at odds with the closed doors of its political system.

And during the transition to democracy “they really trussed women up tightly into corsets,” she stressed.

However, in 1984 the Concertación Nacional Programática, a multi-party forum designed to forge a common legislative agenda, gave rise to the Network of Women Politicians, which took on formal status in 1985 and is still in existence.

Since then, the conservative Colorado Party “has undergone a huge setback” in terms of gender equality, which could be attributed to its “meagre voting results” in the 2004 elections, when it fell from power, said Rondán.

In the previous term, from 2000 to 2005, during the administration of former President Jorge Batlle of the Colorado Party, there were “four women members of the lower house, and not one woman senator, minister or deputy minister,” she said.

None of the Colorado Party woman lawmakers was reelected in 2004. Today Rondán is the only woman on her party’s 15-member National Executive Committee.

By contrast, incumbent President Tabaré Vázquez of the Broad Front brought about change from the outset of his term by appointing an unprecedented number of women to his cabinet, Xavier said.

He named female ministers in areas previously identified as the exclusive domain of men, like the ministries of defence and the interior, as well as to the ministries of health and social development. “There’s no going back now,” she said.

The socialist senator pointed to a string of 17 laws touching on gender issues that have been approved since 2007.

One of these is the law on sexual and reproductive health, which Vázquez modified, however, by vetoing the decriminalisation of abortion, going against his own party on the issue.

There are still a lot of corsets to be discarded.

In this country of 3.3 million people, women make up 60 percent of the university student body, yet they still earn, on average, 30 percent less than men.

Currently, one woman is killed by her partner every 13 days. In 2008, one woman died every nine days.

Excerpt:

Indigenous journalists interviewing indigenous people in Bolivian highlands. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS.

By Diana Cariboni
LA PAZ, Dec 1 2008 (IPS)

Indigenous journalism would seem to be in a stage similar to what environmentalism experienced a few decades ago: born of necessity and protest, it is caught in a constant state of tension between activism and professionalism.

The problem is that “we are sources and media at the same time,” said Silsa Arias, head of communications for the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC), in last week’s discussion in La Paz on how to carry out the work of production, research, writing and editing at a workshop titled “Journalistic Minga: Developing Indigenous Reporting in Latin America”.

Arias, a member of the Kankuamo community, is a leader of the indigenous movement in her country. But she also studied journalism, and is responsible for the news reports that appear on the ONIC web site and their on-line radio station Dachibedea (Our Voice).

Her concern was echoed by other participants in the Nov. 25-26 workshop sponsored by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and organised by the Inter Press Service (IPS) global news agency.

Taking part in the workshop were indigenous people from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela who have taken on the task of informing, educating or protesting, through community radio stations, alternative or local media outlets, and social movements.

Two reporters from Nicaragua were unable to attend the workshop. One was in the hospital with malaria, and the other was unable to convince the airline that he did not need a visa to travel to Bolivia.

Their cases illustrate the kind of hurdles that have cropped up at every step since IPS assigned me the task of identifying colleagues in the region dedicated to indigenous issues, providing training and assistance for each of them to write a feature story, editing the article, and publishing the stories on the agency’s world news service.

In indigenous zones in Latin America, the “digital gap” is “an abyss,” said workshop participants.

Some of them only have access to email once a week or every two weeks. That is the case, for example, of Jorge Montiel, of the Wayuu community in Venezuela, who hopes to buy his own secondhand computer within a few months, as soon as he has saved up the necessary 500 to 600 dollars.

Meanwhile, the trip by river that Milton Piranga, from Colombia, wants to make to write about an Amazon jungle indigenous community that is on the verge of disappearing costs 1,500 dollars – more expensive than a plane ticket to Europe.

Piranga also belongs to a vulnerable indigenous group, the Koreguaje, who live in the southern Colombian department (province) of Caquetá and number just 3,500 people. His father, an important Koreguaje chief, was murdered by the guerrillas when Piranga was just 10 years old.

The Spanish language brought over by the conquistadors became a source of tension. Forced to learn it in order to communicate with other native groups and with the rest of society, indigenous people sometimes use it reluctantly.

It was interesting to watch the workshop participants from other countries interviewing Aymara peasant farmers in the mountains of Laripata, 300 km from La Paz.

Doña Teodora was calmly explaining in her own language how she, with the help of her neighbours, had built a terrace in 25 days to plant turnips, when an indigenous workshop participant from Colombia became impatient and quipped “Speak to me in Spanish; we can’t understand each other this way.”

In the face of her insistence, Teodora began to insert a few Spanish words into her account.

The simultaneous translation by an IFAD expert sounded overly concise, and left all of us feeling that we were missing out on things. So the interviewers decided to tape record the woman speaking in her own language, and later ask for a complete translation by IPS correspondent in Bolivia Franz Chávez, who speaks Aymara.

In Laripata, some 50 families in three villages scrape out a living while fighting erosion on their small terraced plots of land cut into steep hills, where soil and fertilisers are swept away every time it rains.

Through a programme financed by IFAD, they receive funds and technical assistance to revive traditional agricultural practices like terrace-building, which curbs erosion, and the planting of trees. They grow potatoes, corn and a few vegetables, and raise chickens. But they still suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Nevertheless, they welcomed us with a banquet: different varieties of potatoes, boiled or baked, cassava, tortillas, baked chicken and even salad, an eccentricity only served to wine and dine the visitors from afar.

While we make our way down the trail from the terraced fields to the village, Milza Hinostroza, a 23-year-old woman from Peru who has a journalism degree and works for the “El Cafetalero” radio programme, shifted from interviewer to source, when she began to talk about the conditions faced by small coffee growers in her country.

Some of the questions raised by the participants at the workshop took the shape of challenges.

“Why do we have to reflect the viewpoints of companies denounced for polluting or plundering our land, or of governments, if they already express their viewpoints in the newspaper or on TV every day? Why do we have to respect the principles of impartiality, accuracy and use of multiple sources if the big media don’t do so when they report on us?”

The response: Because a rigorously written journalistic story can reach a wider audience than a protest article, can move more people, and can get the point across and describe problems in a more compelling fashion.

In addition, journalism is a marvelous tool for providing a broad view of reality, for learning to piece together the puzzles of day-to-day problems, for making out the hidden connections between events and developments, and for highlighting nuances and contradictions.

The men and women who met last week in La Paz got involved in journalism out of necessity, motivated by the need to protest and denounce what is happening to the indigenous people of Latin America. They were grateful to be able to take part in the meeting and the discussions, and to receive some technical assistance and tools. Time will tell whether or not they make the profession their own.

* Diana Cariboni is IPS regional editor for Latin America.

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 11 2008 (IPS)

Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez and his cabinet have 10 days to promulgate or veto a bill that would decriminalise abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was passed Tuesday by the Senate.

A year ago, in November 2007, the Senate approved the original version of the bill on sexual and reproductive health. On Nov. 5, it barely squeaked through the lower house of Congress, but with slight modifications, which meant it had to clear the Senate again, which it did with 17 of the 30 senators present.

However, socialist President Vázquez of the governing left-wing Broad Front has long announced that he would veto the bill.

“For us, the verdict was in on Wednesday Nov. 5, but today marks the start of the 10 day countdown for the executive branch to promulgate or veto the bill,” women’s rights activist Lilián Abracinskas, one of the driving forces behind the legislation, told IPS.

“Today Uruguay has drawn the world’s attention for having achieved the change in our legislation, thanks to the persistence, perseverance and mobilisation of the social movements, and especially the women’s movement,” said Abracinskas, the head of Women and Health in Uruguay (MYSU).

She was referring to the national Coordination of Social Organisations for the Defence of Reproductive Health, an umbrella made up of trade unions, social groups, women’s rights organisations, the youth sections of leftist parties, professionals, and some Protestant groups.

The bill would legalise abortion on demand in the first trimester of pregnancy, overturning a 1938 law that made abortion illegal.

Under the 1938 legislation, abortion is punishable by three to nine months in prison for the woman herself, and by six to 24 months in prison for doctors or others who help her undergo an abortion.

Vázquez, a medical doctor, has long stated that he would veto that portion of the law, based on personal ethical convictions.

“The announcement of the veto has never been based on a solid political argument,” but merely on personal reasons which, although they are “very respectable,” cannot determine state policies, said Abracinskas.

The Broad Front “has historically provided the votes for any initiative involving change,” which means the fate of the bill has now become “an internal issue for our political force,” she said.

Under the Uruguayan constitution, the executive branch has 10 days to raise objections to a draft law and send it back to Congress, which can override the objections with the votes of three-fifths of the legislators.

But the veto “is not the exclusive power of the president,” says a report drawn up by the head of the MYSU’s legal team, lawyer Óscar López Goldaracena.

The constitution states that the president’s veto must be supported by the corresponding cabinet minister(s) – in this case, Public Health Minister María Julia Muñoz, who has already made it clear that she will back the president’s decision.

But the veto can also go through “the Council of Ministers, which is made up of all of the ministers and the president, and must adopt the majority decision, with the president’s vote worth double in case of a tie,” said López Goldaracena.

If the president and the relevant minister(s) agree to veto a bill, the Council of Ministers can revoke their veto by an absolute majority, because it is the highest executive level organ, said the jurist. But if the decision to veto is proposed to the Council, “it cannot afterwards be adopted by agreement” between the president and the minister(s) concerned, he explained.

According to Abracinskas, “eight of the 13 ministers, if they take a stance that is coherent with their previous declarations and positions,” should reject the veto.

“In our view, this would be the best political and democratic message,” she added.

“We have not sat back with our arms crossed for all of these years, and we will not do so over the next 10 days,” said the activist. “Our efforts will be aimed at showing that there will be political costs” for those responsible for standing in the way of the new law, she warned.

Opinion polls show that a majority of the population is in favour of the decriminalisation of abortion. In the latest survey, published this month by the polling company Interconsult, 57 percent of respondents were in favour of the law and 42 percent were against, while 63 percent were opposed to a presidential veto.

In case of a veto, Abracinskas doubts that the legislature would be able to override it, but said the movement would press nevertheless for a vote in Congress.

If the bill is not signed into law, the main problem that it is designed to address “will be left unresolved,” she said: the fact that unsafe, illegal abortions have become the leading cause of maternal mortality in Uruguay.

The only route left would be to make the question “an issue in next year’s election campaign,” said Abracinskas.

In this South American country of 3.2 million people, an estimated 33,000 abortions are performed annually, compared to 55,000 births, according to the study “Condemnation, Tolerance and Denial: Abortion in Uruguay” by the International Research and Information Centre for Peace (CIIIP).

That gives a ratio of four abortions for every 10 pregnancies.

Abortion has thus effectively become a birth control method, and is illegal but readily available – for those who can afford it, says the study.

Legislative solutions to the problem of unsafe abortions have been discussed and debated in Uruguay for two decades.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, May 26 2008 (IPS)

The death and replacement of FARC chief “Manuel Marulanda” will bring neither a breakdown nor a change in direction in the Colombian rebel group, which has been militarily weakened and has fallen silent on the political front, according to experts on Latin America’s longest-lived guerrilla movement.

Credit: US government

“A great leader is gone,” said “Timochenko”, whose real name is Timoleón Jiménez. He said Marulanda died of a heart attack on Mar. 26, in the arms of his girlfriend and surrounded by his troops.

Marulanda (Pedro Antonio Marín) was succeeded by guerrilla commander “Alfonso Cano” (Guillermo Sáenz), Timochenko reported.

The late rebel chief, also known as “Tirofijo” or Sureshot, was born in 1928 or 1930 – according to conflicting versions – in the coffee-growing town of Génova in the central Colombian province of Quindío.

His death was preceded by two other major losses for the FARC.

On Mar. 1, “Raúl Reyes”, the group’s international spokesman, was killed in the aerial bombing of his camp, which was located in Ecuador. The cross-border incursion by the Colombian military sparked a serious diplomatic crisis in the Andean region.

And on Mar. 6, another member of the FARC secretariat, “Iván Ríos”, was killed by one of his men, who cut off his hand to collect the huge reward offered by the government.

Marulanda “is an extremely wary ‘campesino’ (peasant farmer) and a born military strategist,” was how he was once described by Gilberto Vieira, secretary general of Colombia’s Communist Party from 1946 to 1991, who knew the rebel chief very well.

Born into a poor rural family, Pedro Antonio Marín took up arms at the age of 18, after the assassination of Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, which triggered a decade of political violence known as “La Violencia”.

According to his official biographer, historian Arturo Alape, Marín and his brothers and cousins joined the armed struggle in 1949, because “rising up in arms was the only way to survive.”

In 1950, he took the name Manuel Marulanda Vélez, in honour of a trade union leader who was tortured and killed.

During an armistice that began in 1957, after the collapse of the four-year dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Marulanda was even a public employee, working as a highway inspector.

In 1964, Conservative President Guillermo León Valencia ordered, as part of the U.S. Latin American Security Operation (Plan LASO), an attack on the village of Marquetalia, where 49 families of former combatants, led by Marulanda, were living.

The military operation forced the families to scatter, and Marulanda, along with several dozen other guerrilla fighters, created the FARC in the southern region of El Caguán, in the province of Caquetá. More than four decades later, the group still maintains its original aim, agrarian reform.

In 1984, a peace agreement between the government of then president Belisario Betancur and the FARC led to the creation of a leftwing political party, the Patriotic Union. But it was destroyed, as 5,000 of its members and supporters were killed off by far-right paramilitary groups and the security forces.

Between 1999 and 2002, under Conservative President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), a 42,000 square km demilitarised zone was created in El Caguán, for peace talks between the government and the FARC.

But the only real advance made by the talks was a humanitarian exchange of hostages held by the FARC for imprisoned guerrillas.

After the talks broke off, Marulanda never again appeared before the cameras, and it was rumoured that he was in bad health.

“It is sad news…He was an important figure, which is not recognised by those who fan the flames of class hatred,” the secretary general of Colombia’s Communist Party, Jaime Caycedo, told IPS.

“He was important because of his trajectory, background and agrarian traditions against the oligarchy. It is also significant that he died of natural causes,” he added.

Iván Cepeda, head of the Movement of Victims of Crimes of the State, told IPS that “it cannot be denied that he was a historic leader.”

But he also expressed his hope that “this will represent a shift in course by the FARC, and that a priority will be put on negotiations that would lead to the release of the hostages” held in remote jungle camps by the rebel group.

MARULANDA’S SUCCESSOR

“We must not see Marulanda’s death in terms of a ‘before’ and ‘after’,” Luis Eduardo Celis, of the Bogotá think tank Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, told IPS from the town of El Retorno in the southern province of Guaviare.

The new head of the FARC secretariat, Cano, “represents a long-expected succession, because he has a more intellectual background and can serve as a bridge between Marulanda’s generation of peasant fighters and the younger, more urban, university-educated generation,” he said.

“He has the complete support of the FARC, and his leadership does not come as a surprise to anyone,” commented Celis, who was in Guaviare to attend the National Forum for Reconciliation in Colombia, along with 400 other delegates from around the country.

The FARC represents the Colombia “of the poor, marginalised coca farmer, and he (Cano) is very familiar with the movement, to which he has dedicated more than half his life. He has lived and worked alongside all of the FARC’s commanders, so I foresee a very smooth transition,” he added.

Under his leadership, “there will be no significant changes. This is a very reclusive, meticulous and conservative guerrilla group, which is engaged in a trial of political and military strength with (rightwing) President Álvaro Uribe, something that is not going to change,” Celis predicted.

Changes could come “if the political scenario is modified, for example, if a humanitarian hostage-prisoner swap is achieved,” said Celis, a former non-combatant member of the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s second-largest insurgent group.

But Uribe “has dug in his heels against an agreement,” he said. “The government’s aim is to defeat the FARC militarily, to force them into an armistice.”

Cano, 62, studied anthropology at the National University of Colombia and was a leader of the Communist Youth before joining the FARC. He led failed peace talks in Caracas, in 1991, and in Tlaxcala, Mexico in 1992.

The collapse of the talks in Mexico gave rise to a dispute within the secretariat, in which Reyes’ position of refusing to engage in further negotiations outside of Colombia reportedly won out.

Cano is the founder of the Bolivarian Movement, FARC’s clandestine political wing.

He is now apparently somewhere between the central province of Tolima and the southwest province of Valle del Cauca, an area besieged for months by 8,000 military troops.

But “we are talking about huge areas, of 40,000 or 50,000 square km,” said Celis. “This is a peasant army that moves around calmly and easily within that area. They’ve been there for 50 or 60 years, they aren’t improvising.”

Despite the recent loss of several members of the ruling secretariat, “a military defeat of the FARC does not lie just around the corner,” said Celis.

He estimates that the group currently has 10,000 combatants, having lost a similar number – “mainly the youngest, those who were recruited between 1998 and 2000” – over the last six years, to death, desertion or capture.

“The army has made important, but not strategic, advances. But if Uribe ends up in office for a third term (for which a constitutional reform would be necessary), the FARC would definitely find itself in a complicated position, because the guerrillas are not capable of returning to their previous military strength,” he said.

Continuing to wage war until a total defeat “would be a very bloody route to take. Defeat would also mean the end of a social and community network” that supports the FARC.

POLITICAL ACTIVITY AT A STANDSTILL

Another question is the group’s current lack of political initiative. “The FARC no longer presents proposals to the country,” said Celis.

The director of the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), Camilo González Posso, said Saturday at the National Forum for Reconciliation, in Guaviare, that “major rectifications are needed on the part of the FARC.”

“This policy of seeking a humanitarian hostage-prisoner exchange has even silenced the FARC itself, because the group has suspended its political discourse while pressing for an agreement,” added the former government minister.

“Get into politics, we know you are politicians, engage in politics, don’t wander around the world asking for your status (as a terrorist group) to be changed; change it by getting involved in politics,” he urged the guerrillas.

But Uribe must also rectify his position, and move “from humanitarian rhetoric to practice,” because the country “does not deserve an escalation of the conflict within its borders as a result of the failure to reach a humanitarian accord on the hostages,” said González Posso.

For his part, Celis said “there is a great deal of space for negotiating. Of course they (the guerrillas) have very big aspirations, which are out of line with their real capacity, but there is a possibility for discussing change.”

In Bogotá, meanwhile, Cepeda said “we hope that under the new FARC leader, a political approach will prevail over a military focus.”

*With additional reporting by Constanza Vieira (from El Retorno) and Helda Martínez (Bogotá).

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 4 2008 (IPS)

Colombian and international media outlets reported Thursday and Friday that the FARC guerrillas had “ruled out” the release of Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt in an article issued after a French emergency medical mission to save the gravely ill hostage got underway. The problem is that the FARC statement is actually more than two weeks old.

It was the Caracas-based Telesur network that first reported the article by the FARC. “The FARC consider the request for the release of Ingrid Betancourt unacceptable” was the headline of an on-line report posted by Telesur at 2:02 PM Thursday.

The Telesur report stated that one of the signatories of the FARC article “published Thursday by the Agencia de Noticias Nueva Colombia (Anncol), the so-called foreign minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Rodrigo Granda, described as ‘unacceptable’ the request for the release of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt as a new unilateral gesture that the Colombian government has set as a condition for freeing imprisoned guerrillas and moving towards an eventual humanitarian swap” of hostages for prisoners.

But the Stockholm-based Anncol, which is sympathetic to the FARC, had published the guerrilla group’s article in Spanish on Mar. 20, under the headline “Raúl Reyes, the path of life in spite of death”. It was signed by Granda and Jesús Santrich and was dated Mar. 19.

And what Granda and Santrich were actually describing as “unacceptable” was “that they are asking us for further gestures of peace, when after so many reliable demonstrations of our political will to find solutions to the conflict, we are maligned and slandered in response.”

With a little fact-checking, IPS found the Mar. 19 FARC article Thursday on the Anncol web site, which was down on Friday. But the cached Google version of the article can still be seen at: http://ipsnoticias.net/fotos/ANNCOL.htm.

Shortly after Telesur reported on the Mar. 19 article as if it were new, Colombia’s Caracol Radio station and El Tiempo newspaper placed the news on their web sites, error and all.

The “news” continued to spread, as it was picked up by international agencies and published in turn by the press in the region and around the world, with a few exceptions, like IPS, the French daily Le Monde and the Bogotá weekly El Espectador.

Why did so few reporters and editors take a moment to check the content of the FARC article? Perhaps because everyone was waiting for a FARC response to the desperate humanitarian mission sent out from Paris?

The French government of Nicolas Sarkozy dispatched its delegation to Colombia, including two doctors and two diplomats, on Wednesday with the difficult mission of finding Betancourt in the jungle and providing her with medical assistance, and if possible, rescuing her.

The backdrop to this situation includes a week of rumours on Betancourt’s critical state of health, with contradictory versions of her supposed heavily guarded visit to a health post in a remote jungle village and alleged witnesses who claimed that she was dying.

Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen, has been held captive by the FARC since 2002 and is reportedly suffering from hepatitis B, leishmaniasis (a tropical skin disease), malaria and severe depression.

But there is no certainty that the French humanitarian mission will be successful, due to the lack of public signs that the FARC have agreed to release the most valuable of the 37 or so hostages they are still holding with the aim of trading them for some 500 imprisoned rebels.

Another aspect ignored by the media was the fact that the FARC article was not signed by the insurgent group’s leadership, the secretariat of the “Estado Mayor Central” – an important detail when it comes to verifying whether a message from the rural guerrilla group is official or not.

But while the article thus cannot be taken as an official FARC response to the French medical mission or to President Sarkozy’s urgent calls this week for Betancourt’s release, the 2,644 word message does contain newsworthy aspects.

It is the first time that members of the insurgent group say there will be no more unilateral gestures on their part, after the release of six hostages in January and February – which the FARC described as a show of goodwill for the mediating efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba – and Colombia’s Mar. 1 bombing raid on the camp of FARC international negotiator “Raúl Reyes” in Ecuadorean territory.

That places the FARC in a difficult position: if they are indeed determined to hold on to their strongest bargaining chip, Betancourt, to the very end, they stand to lose much more as a result of her death than a chance to negotiate a hostage-prisoner swap with the government.

Given that Reyes, and shortly afterwards another member of the FARC secretariat, Iván Ríos, were killed while the rebel group was holding talks on the hostage issue with emissaries from several European and Latin American countries, it is clear that “we are right to demand increasing safeguards and guarantees when any kind of meeting is involved,” says the article by Granda and Santrich.

“We will undoubtedly become more exacting, and we will only trust our own guarantees. There will be no government-guerrilla meeting, for example, without the existence of a demilitarised zone,” they add, referring to one of the FARC’s key demands for talks: the withdrawal of the army from a large area in southwestern Colombia.

The article also includes a paragraph that takes an unusually harsh tone towards the hostages: “All of the captives are responsible for fuelling the war, from Ingrid on. And we should clarify that none of them are in worse conditions than Simón Trinidad or Sonia (FARC guerrillas who were extradited to the United States, where they are in prison), or than many of the political activists and community leaders who have been imprisoned even though they are not guerrillas.”

But this is not the first instance of sloppy or careless journalism committed in the last few months in coverage of the Colombian armed conflict.

For instance, the press in the region invented a series of relationships in the FARC, taking the alias of Reyes’ girlfriend, “Olga Marín”, as her real name, and concluding that she was the daughter of FARC chief “Manuel Marulanda”, whose real name is Pedro Antonio Marín.

According to that creative FARC family tree, “Olga Marín” was the sister of Luciano Marín, the real name of another member of the FARC secretariat, “Iván Márquez”.

And during the tense episode when the region’s foreign ministers were meeting at Organisation of American States (OAS) headquarters in Washington to attempt to repair the unprecedented rupture of relations between Bogotá and Quito over Colombia’s incursion into Ecuadorean territory, the El Tiempo newspaper published a photo of the recently murdered Reyes alongside a man who was identified by the paper as Ecuadorean Interior Minister Gustavo Larrea.

A few hours after the Colombian government distributed copies of the photo among the delegations attending the OAS meeting, the secretary general of Argentina’s Communist Party, Patricio Echegaray, publicly stated that he was the man in the photo, which was taken while he conducted an interview with Reyes that had been published in several media outlets.

All of these blunders were easily avoidable with just a tiny bit of fact checking.

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