Muhammad Yunus addresses the audience at the launch of the FAO-Nobel Peace Laureates Alliance for Peace and Food Security.

By Maddie Felts and Robert Williamson-Noble
ROME, May 11 2016 (IPS)

“Where food security can be a force for stability, we have to look to food and agriculture as pathways to peace and security. This is a great challenge, but one that we can meet together as we embark on achieving the 2030 Development Agenda.” These were the words of FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva as he discussed the interplays between food security and peace in New York last March.

Food security and a healthy agricultural sector have important roles in the efforts to prevent conflict and maintain peace. With this challenge in mind, on 11 May, the FAO formally established a new partnership with five Nobel Peace Laureates known for their work to fight poverty, hunger, and violence worldwide. The FAO – Nobel Peace Laureates for Food Security and Peace Alliance links FAO in partnership with Muhammad Yunus, Oscar Arias Sánchez, Tawakkol Karman, Betty Williams and Kofi Annan.

Muhammad Yunus was the first Laureate to speak, calling hunger an issue he and his fellow Laureates consider “dear to our hearts.” Yunus asserted that the distribution of free food is not a sustainable solution to eradicating hunger. Instead, he advocated for the microcredit model he first instituted over forty years ago in Bangladesh. Yunus said that the distribution of small loans to poor individuals promotes financial independence and thus the ability to obtain food.

By combining the objective of charity organizations and the engine of a business, Yunus has created a model of social business that he believes can improve the lives of rural populations currently excluded from the mainstream economy. He hopes to inspire young people to become entrepreneurs in agriculture and looks to challenge the idea that young people must flock to cities to find jobs. The initiative to encourage what Yunus called “entrepreneurs in agriculture” enforces his belief that “we are not job seekers; we are job creators.”

Yunus concluded his address with enthusiasm that the Alliance will bring the world closer to “three zeros”: zero hunger, malnutrition, and poverty; zero unemployment; and zero net carbon emission. His message set a tone of acknowledging the challenges of the present while pushing for a more hopeful future that would be echoed by his fellow Laureates.

Following Yunus’s message, Oscar Arias began his address by focusing on balance between various forms of violence and peace. Describing a Dante-esque scene, Arias forecasted the war between humans and nature. “The earth is complaining, and it is calling for peace” he proclaimed.

In addition to preventing catastrophic damage to the environment, Arias highlighted the necessity of ending violence in order to combat food insecurity and suffering. He discussed how “armed forces are the greatest polluters of the planet.” In times without war, however, he noted that “the absence of war does not automatically mean the consolidation of peace; we cannot say people are living in peace in a post-conflict situation until we can eradicate the many forms of violence on earth.” In addition to armed conflict, Arias explained that a lack of access to medical attention and food are both forms of violence.

Arias called for a renewed effort to protect the environment, seek conflict resolution, and consolidate peace using the reach and resources of the FAO. He appealed to the international community to put into practice the fundamental values of the 2030 agenda, reiterating that there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development. Within all of us, Arias said, we harbor the potential of life, the power of reason, the strength of dialogue and the capacity to reason, correct our mistakes and make compromises. Arias urged the audience to utilize this potential to promote peace and food security.

Tawakkol Karman built upon Arias’s call to pursue the sustainable development goals, exclaiming that “we need to work hard and work with our hearts to achieve the SDGs.” She emphasized the need to promote a positive, fair globalization where all of mankind can share the benefits, warning that we now face negative effects of globalization that are disproportionately shouldered by the poor. She declared that the fight against hunger and poverty means taking the first steps towards sustainable development and towards a more equitable world. This progress is only possible, Karman argued, through shared bonds of fraternity and a moral commitment to eradicate poverty and promote peace.

Karman considered conflict to be the source of hunger, poverty, famine, and misery. She stated, “Building peace is part and parcel of eradicating hunger and achieving food security, but if we are to achieve this goal in any country, we need to keep one goal in front of us: to guarantee that everyone can have freedom, and by freedom I do not only mean freedom from want; I also mean political freedom.” Transitional justice, Karman explained, can bring peace to an area and a community overcoming a conflict and facilitating progress towards peace. Karman insisted that by 2030, “we need to have lifted the burdens of poverty and hunger,” an accomplishment only possible through the commitment, collaboration, and mobilization of all people and all governments.

Betty Williams began her address by recognizing that there remains work to be done towards eradicating hunger and fostering peace, but she was quick to assert that great work has already been done, as she acknowledged the accomplishments of her peers in the Alliance and expressed her appreciation to call them friends. Williams described her experience during the height of violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. At first, she said, she wanted to keep her door closed out of fear for her family’s safety. After she witnessed the death of three children on a Belfast street, however, her horror and anger compelled her to action. She described the peace efforts in Northern Ireland as a movement begun by “ordinary extraordinary people.”

In her role as a Nobel Peace Laureate, Williams traveled to areas such as Africa, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Argentina, and Chile. She explained how she had never truly seen or known hunger until she witnessed some of the world’s poorest communities, some of which she saw in developed nations like the United States. The devastation made her physically sick at times, but she decided to take action, for, as she declared, “Tears without action are wasted sentiment.” After hearing about the possibility of nuclear disposal on the lands of Basilicata, Williams went to the southern Italian region and defended the land alongside the people of Basilicata. She has created a foundation in Basilicata that builds, ecologically sound, inexpensive homes for refugees.

At the heart of her humanitarian work, however, will always be the protection of children, like the children in Belfast that drove her to take action over four decades ago. She concluded her remarks with a reading of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which espouses principles Williams said she will fight for “until the day I die.”

Kofi Annan gave his remarks to the conference through a video message, first stating, “A stable and peaceful environment is the foundation for lasting food security and livelihoods.” He discussed the inextricable connections between food security, peace, and sustainable development. His remarks reflected a feeling of hope for a more peaceful future without hunger, as he said, “I know we can eradicate hunger within a generation provided we can mobilize political leadership and political will.”

In the general discussion that followed the addresses, Yunus spoke of the need for a banking system and coordinating legislation that serves the poor. The current model of non-governmental organizations providing microcredit is not sustainable, Yunus said, because it is restrained by the often limited funding of NGOs. He discussed the need for self-sustaining financial systems geared towards lifting individuals and communities out of poverty.

Though the goals before the FAO – Nobel Peace Laureates for Food Security and Peace Alliance may appear lofty, Yunus was hopeful, calling himself a “compulsive optimist.” His message to young people was that “you have the power to change the entire world by yourself.”

Williams reflected Yunus’s optimism, saying we must all be optimistic as we join in the fight for sustainable development. She suggested to Yunus that they open a bank geared towards the poor in Basilicata. If this first meeting is any indicator of the ultimate success of the task force, the future certainly looks promising.

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On the evening of Tuesday, 10 May 2016, Professor Muhammad Yunus addressed an audience that included prominent government officials and dignitaries not only from Italy, but also from countries like Afghanistan, Indonesia, Liberia, reflecting the scope of Yunus’ work to alleviate global poverty. The event was hosted by the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), a Rome-based organization that advocates for development through promoting the rule of law worldwide. Professor Yunus was recently named to the International Advisory Council of IDLO.

Muhammad Yunus

His response to a banking system that he believes “does not work for the poor” became Grameen Bank, which today works in over 40 countries at varying stages of development. Yunus has found it most effective to address poverty in families through women, and as such, Grameen Bank only administers its small loans to women.

Somewhat ironically as he presented at IDLO, Yunus explained that through Grameen Bank, there is no legal relationship between borrowers and lenders. His model has found success, he said, through human relationships rather than paperwork and legal recourses. Gramene Bank, he remarked, is probably the only bank in the world without lawyers, but the model works because it is based on trust.

Similarly, Yunus said, legal systems can work against the poor. He reiterated the importance of the rule of law, calling it “the only force that allows us to lead peacefully.” Law must be bought, he argued, and as such, it will only serve those who afford it. Yunus called for a fully inclusive legal system like the fully inclusive financial system he has strived to create through Grameen Bank.

Yunus was quick to identify Grameen Bank as a social business rather than a charity organization. The difference between a social business and a charity, Yunus explained, was that while a charity relies on continual external financial support to exist, a social business takes the social mission of a charity and uses a sustainable business model to thrive. When traditional big businesses are presented with the opportunity to solve social problems, he said, they often face laws that require companies to earn maximum profit or risk a lawsuit from any one of their stockholders. Even if CEOs have a vision to promote social responsibility, the laws of many countries prevent corporations from diverting from a maximization of profit.

Yunus stressed that countries must step away from conventional business law to expand the possibilities for development. When corporations are only concerned with maximizing profit, Yunus said, “we become one-eyed monsters. We see one thing: the profit. We are becoming robots, but human beings are not robots. Humans are not one dimensional beings. Humans are multidimensional.”

Yunus maintained that financial viability and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive. It is possible, he argued, to “do the selfish business” and also “do the selfless business.” He remarked that “people say profit is the only incentive that drives the business world […] I agree that profit is an incentive, but I disagree that profit is the incentive.” He concluded his discussion on the compatibility of profitable business and a social mission by asserting, “’Making money is happiness, but making people happy is super-happiness.”

As his remarks came to a close, Yunus reiterated the importance of the rule of law for development. He contended that law must become law that protects every individual, which is only possible through good governance that is sorely lacking in many parts of the world. This must be a collaborative effort, he asserted, and it is imperative that justice reaches every community and individual, rich or poor.

Following Yunus’ remarks, IDLO Director-General Irene Khan reflected on Yunus’ comments on the legal challenges faced by the world’s poor. Khan stressed, “when the law does not work for the poor, it is rule by law; when it works for everyone, it is rule of law.” Though people may not understand what it means to have the rule of law, Khan asserted that everyone understands the word “justice” in their language and what it means to live in a just society. IDLO’s mission is to promote a culture of justice for all, so it seems fitting that their guest of honor has made it his personal mission to promote a culture of economic justice for all.

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Newspapers on sale in Istanbul. But the freedom of Turkish journalists is seriously threatened. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Maddie Felts
May 3 2016 (IPS)

This year’s World Press Freedom Day marks the 250^th anniversary of the first-ever freedom of information law, enacted in what are now Sweden and Finland. 3 May, 2016 is more than just an important anniversary, however; this is the first celebration of World Press Freedom Day since the adoption of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Securing a free press is essential for progress towards achieving these ambitious goals for people and planet by the year 2030.

To reach development targets, a free press must identify areas in which nations and the world are lacking, from access to education and healthcare to sustainable industrialization and consumption. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals seek to address the real and most pressing issues facing the people of this planet, and development efforts will only be effective if they have reliable benchmarks upon which to improve.

A key difference between the Sustainable Development Goals and their predecessor the Millennium Development Goals is a new emphasis on environmental protections that have a clear impact on human development. Environmental crimes and simple mismanagement of natural resources remain pressing issues worldwide.

Developing countries are faced with a trade-off between lower-cost industrialization using fossil fuels or sustainable economic production, and often, they choose the former. Developed nations, who achieved industrialization by consuming fossil fuels and producing pollution, criticize industrializing nations while still contributing to growing global carbon emissions themselves.

Through the efforts of a free press, all nations in any stage of development are held accountable for promoting global sustainability. Known for wielding a tight grip on its news media, China has recently expanded censorship over information regarding pollution. In a nation with sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities, the Chinese government releases incomplete or misleading information on its air quality. The World Health Organization uses two air quality guidelines, one for the developed world and a less rigid standard for developing nations. China’s pollution standards are lower than both. Meanwhile, industrial pollution has resulted in cancer becoming China’s leading cause of death, and the globally shared ozone layer is continually depleted by man-made emissions.

The media must expose the human suffering resulting from environmental abuses across the world so that individuals with the power and the means to demand change can do so. This imperative extends far beyond one nation’s environmental practices; society is at its best when journalists are unafraid and free to discover and expose the truth.

April brought the release of the Panama Papers, an unprecedented leak of information linking global political and business leaders to offshore tax havens. This development is a victory for free press worldwide and supports the tenth Sustainable Development Goal to reduce inequality within and among countries. Citizens have become aware of a great dichotomy between the richest and the average individuals within nations and worldwide. The fight to close the gap between the immensely rich and the general populace has new relevance due to fearless journalism.

In the political sphere, press freedom is necessary to expose misuse of power. Contexts in which a free news media is needed most, however, are usually times when repressive rule works its hardest to silence journalists.

2015 was a challenging year for news media, with press freedom at its weakest in 12 years. While typically high-risk regions for journalists like the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Latin America continued to limit the press, the democracy advocacy group Freedom House found that media freedom decreased in Europe in the past year, largely due to surveillance and security measures in response to terrorism.

While fear and legitimate safety concerns often understandably overshadow calls for press freedom, those of us who can demand the truth must do so for others who cannot. In the Middle East and North Africa in particular journalists can risk death for speaking out against the ideology of oppressive regimes and violent extremism.

We must pursue the sixteenth Sustainable Development Goal and “ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms” for all, appreciating the and utilizing the freedom we do have to fight for universal press freedom.

Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Maddie Felts
ROME, Apr 11 2016 (IPS)

On Sunday, 3 April, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released an unprecedented leak of documents exposing the secretive financial dealings of some of the world’s richest and most powerful. Few countries are safe from the findings; twelve current or former heads of state are implicated among 143 politicians, their relatives and associates for using offshore tax havens.

The Panama Papers have revealed the real victims in our global financial system, and they aren’t the prime minister’s buddies. Economic inequality continues to undermine progress and social cohesion. Oxfam calculated that in 2015, a mere 62 individuals held as much wealth as the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people. To combat income inequality, the World Economic Forum has identified solutions including improved education, reformed tax policies, redistribution, social welfare policies, and workforce development. These solutions are very much attainable and increasingly crucial to billions worldwide.

To bridge the dichotomy between the haves and have-nots, the global elite must settle some long-overdue debts to society. The Tax Justice Network estimates that the world’s richest hold between 21 and 32 trillion dollars of untaxed assets. The startling extent of world leaders involved in the Panama Papers leak reflects the scope of corruption in national and local governments.

These trillions of dollars stolen by politicians or shielded from taxation (or sometimes both) mean less funding for roads, schools, and public healthcare. Not only are the rich becoming richer; the poor also remain systematically oppressed.

When the state cannot or will not provide basic needs to its most vulnerable populations, crime can flourish. Criminal groups serve as the primary provider of social services and therefore become so deeply entrenched in communities that they earn the trust of the people and infiltrate local government. Underpaid government officials are more easily lured into corruption since their underfunded state cannot provide what bribery can. The World Bank estimates over $1 trillion are paid in bribes each year. We can no longer afford to ignore corruption that makes up an estimated 5% of annual GDP – roughly $2.6 trillion, almost twenty times greater than the $134.8 billion spent on official development assistance.

The audience reading this article may not consist of the 62 richest of the rich, but access to an education, the Internet, and free press is more than billions of people will ever receive. We must acknowledge and defend journalism that can expose gross injustice and inequality. We cannot take for granted the freedoms and opportunities available to us. And we must fight for what we all do not yet have but deserve, beginning with “honesty, transparency and integrity from our leaders,” which compelled Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a protester in Iceland, to call for change.

Jónsdóttir is not alone in her discontent. Protests continue in Iceland, even after the Prime Minister stepped down two days after the Papers revealed his involvement in offshore investment with claims on Iceland’s failed banks. South Africans continue to protest the dealings of their political leaders and their families – and now that the leak revealed Jacob Zuma’s nephew’s involvement in oil contracts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the protests will likely continue. Those who hold the freedom to peaceful protest must fight for transparency for the billions whose voices are not heard.

A political event characterized by discontent, the upcoming United States presidential election should be viewed from a new perspective informed by the Panama Papers. Candidates have sought to distance themselves from Washington and its institutional entanglements. Voters must begin to demand that candidates distance themselves from dubious campaign financing. The United States campaign finance system provides loopholes in which corporations and foundations can hide millions of dollars, not completely unlike the offshore tax systems that hide billions of dollars for political and business leaders worldwide.

Even in a nation as wealthy as the United States, 15% of the population lives below the poverty line. The cost of social services that are often called unfeasible seem small in the face of the trillions of dollars tucked away through tax evasion. Though no American politician has yet been implicated in the Panama Papers, at the least, the leak provides a much-needed lens to voters as they reevaluate the American economic and political system.

For those of us without a billion dollars in our pocket, we hold a priceless tool: our voices. We must speak out, through the press and through the electoral process, to ensure transparency in our governments. The Panama Papers serve as a global report card, and far too many of our political leaders and institutions are failing. Let this information inspire us all to relentlessly advocate for just and transparent political processes everywhere.

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By Maddie Felts
ROME, Mar 20 2016 (IPS)

Should a country’s development be measured in smiles instead of dollars? Increasingly, governments and organizations are measuring social progress through happiness. This is in marked contrast to the long-accepted practice of using Gross Domestic Product to measure development, built upon the premise that a country’s success can largely be quantified by its economic activity. Though only recently gaining international attention, the push to pursue “gross national happiness” as a policy goal originated over 40 years ago in the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

A country with very low GDP per capita but a high sense of general well-being, Bhutan developed the gross national happiness model to emphasize Buddhist spiritual values over a western focus on economic growth. Initially, the philosophy proved difficult to implement and quantify. Happiness is a quality ever-present in our lives yet difficult to identify as a policy goal. As a result, several decades passed before happiness came to the global stage as an ideal for development.

In 2011, the United Nations General Assembly released its first World Happiness Report, reflecting its invitation to member countries “to pursue the elaboration of additional measures that better capture the importance of the pursuit of happiness and well-being in development with a view to guiding their public policies.”

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on ‘Happiness and Well-Being,’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon argued for “a new economic paradigm that recognizes the parity between the three pillars of sustainable development. Social, economic and environmental well-being are indivisible. Together they define gross global happiness.” In the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, happiness has become a fundamental goal of development.

Just days before this year’s International Day of Happiness on March 20, the fourth World Happiness Report was released. Developed by an international committee of economists, psychologists, and public health experts, the report includes a happiness ranking of over 150 nations.

Denmark holds the top spot, followed by Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden. Rounding out the bottom of the rankings was Burundi, a country shaken by political violence in the past year. Also nearing the bottom of the list were Syria, Togo, Afghanistan, Benin, Rwanda, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania, and Madagascar.

The happiest nations have thriving economies and the capacity to provide significant social services to citizens. By contrast, countries at the bottom of the list face widespread poverty. Environmental safety, healthcare infrastructure, and political stability in the countries where people are happiest contrasts with the economic inequality, devastating impact of disease, and institutionalized violence in countries at the bottom of the happiness index.

While the report notes that gross domestic product per capita is one of the variables explaining the variation across countries, it also found five additional constituents of national happiness, namely: healthy years of life expectancy; social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble); trust (as measured by perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (as measured by donations).

In their chapter on the distribution of happiness worldwide, economists John F. Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, Haifang Huang of the University of Alberta and Shun Wang of the Korea Development Institute note that crises can elicit a wide range of responses depending on the sociopolitical landscape.

Greece experienced the largest drop in happiness of any country in the past decade, reflecting its crippling economic crisis that began in 2007. At the other end of the spectrum, Japan has developed such strong levels of trust and “social capital” that happiness increased in Fukushima, ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, as members of the community came together to rebuild and support one another.

European nations face a crisis that in its nature and scale are unlike any other in modern times, as over a million migrants and refugees entered Europe in 2015, an influx that can only increase in 2016. The migrant crisis is proving to be a significant test of the capacities of individual European countries and of the European community to cope.

The influx of migrants should be seen not as devastation to a region, but rather, as an opportunity for nations to collaborate, seek creative solutions, and show generosity towards its neighbors and towards the individuals crossing European borders. The migrants and refugees are seeking more than just entry; they risk their livelihoods, their families, and their lives in search of relief from poverty, systematic oppression, and devastating violence. Above all, these people are seeking happiness. The International Day of Happiness reflects the hope that all states will collaborate and contribute to the pursuit of global happiness.

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