By Miren Gutierrez
SAN SEBASTIÁN, Spain, Sep 22 2010 (IPS)

One of the causes of Spain’s deep economic crisis is the country’s limited ability to export goods with high added value. But the pioneering renewable energy sector has the potential to fill that gap.

Solar panels Credit: Public domain

Unisolar already exports to Chile, and is beginning trade negotiations with Colombia and Guatemala. It sells manufacturing technology and the associated specialised equipment, components and systems.

Another Spanish company, with a presence in Chile since 1987, is Abengoa, with its solar and wind energy projects. The firm made front-page news when U.S. President Barack Obama approved a federal loan guarantee of 1.45 billion dollars to build a thermosolar energy plant in the southwestern state of Arizona — a project entrusted to the Spanish company.

“Last year, Spain’s photovoltaic industry exported 75 percent of its production, mostly to Germany. Latin America continues to have marginal weight due to the lack of incentive policies for the systems connected to the network,” said Tomás Díaz, public relations director of the Association of the Photovoltaic Industry, a group of 474 companies.

“Some countries, like Peru, or those lagging further behind, like Mexico, are beginning to implement such policies, but they are still not enough to create a photovoltaic market,” Díaz explained to Tierramérica.

Renewable energy sources represented 62 percent of new electrical generation capacity in the European Union in 2009, an improvement on the 57 percent reached the year before, according to a Jul. 5 report from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body.

The solar sector is on the rise. According to the Association of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, dedicated to direct conversion of light energy into electricity, this sector aims to supply 12 percent of Europe’s electricity by 2020.

And Spain is one of the world leaders in photovoltaic energy, with installed capacity estimated at 3,200 megawatts, coming in second to Germany’s 3,850 megawatts.

The Abu Dhabi-based consortium Masdar chose Abengoa Solar, along with France’s Total, to build and operate the Middle East’s largest solar energy plant. Meanwhile, Masdar and the company SENER set up a joint enterprise, Terresol Energy, to build and operate concentrated solar energy plants around the world, a technology that uses lenses or mirrors to focus light onto a small photovoltaic surface.

A study presented Dec. 1, 2009, by the consulting firm Deloitte states that the economic impact of the renewable energy sector on Spain’s gross domestic product reached nearly 12 billion dollars in 2008, or about 0.67 percent of GDP.

Renewable energy sources in Latin America amount to 29 percent of the total of primary energy supply, which the Global Energy Network Institute said in a 2009 report “seems quite impressive in comparison to the 5.7 percent share of renewables in the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).”

However, the report continues, “the situation is not as good as it seems.” Based on data from the International Energy Agency, Latin America’s renewable energy sector is almost completely dominated by hydroelectric and biofuel sources.

“Included in those numbers are big hydroelectric dams, traditional uses of biomass (such as burning firewood), which truly reflect the region’s poverty and not positive data on sustainable energy,” said Díaz.

The conclusion of the Global Energy Network Institute is, apart from hydroelectric and biofuel sources, “there is enough potential to expand greatly the other renewables in Latin America.”

What do the Spanish companies have to offer?

“Spain has had extraordinary development (in renewable energy sources), which has placed it among the world’s leaders. All of the knowledge and resources, if not utilised in the domestic market due to regulatory problems or restrictions, the stronger companies are going to implement abroad,” an energy analyst told Tierramérica.

According to Díaz, photovoltaic energy “is appropriate for applications isolated from the network and for projects of rural electrification, for large centralised power plants, and for deployment in cities following a model of distributed generation… No other source offers such an array of options.”

In his opinion, the Spanish companies “can make us of the gigantic renewable energy sources of (South America’s) Southern Cone: the planet’s maximum irradiation in the Andes for solar energy, exceptional winds in Patagonia, and the opportunity for rural development based on energy crops.”

(*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:

Spain is one of the world's leading producers of photovoltaic energy, with installed potential of 3,200 megawatts.

Field of photovoltaic solar panels. - Public domain

“The unresolved issue of Spanish industry, and an instrument for overcoming the crisis, is the export of goods, services and capital,” reads a statement from Grupo Unisolar, an enterprise dedicated, as its name suggests, to solar energy. The Madrid-based firm says it is focusing on Latin America, where there is a demand for “knowledge, financing and experience in legislation and regulation.”

Unisolar already exports to Chile, and is beginning trade negotiations with Colombia and Guatemala. It sells manufacturing technology and the associated specialized equipment, components and systems.

Another Spanish company, with a presence in Chile since 1987, is Abengoa, with its solar and wind energy projects. The firm hit the front pages of newspapers when U.S. President Barack Obama approved a federal loan guarantee of 1.45 billion dollars to build a thermosolar energy plant in the southwestern state of Arizona — a project entrusted to the company.

“Last year, Spain's photovoltaic industry exported 75 percent of its production, mostly to Germany. But Latin America continues to have marginal weight because of the lack of policies of support for the systems connected to the network,” said Tomás Díaz, public relations director of the Association of the Photovoltaic Industry, a group of 474 companies.

“Some countries, like Peru, or lagging further behind, like Mexico, are beginning to implement such policies, but they are still not enough to create a photovoltaic market,” Díaz explained to Tierramérica.

Renewable energy sources represented 62 percent of new electrical production capacity in the European Union in 2009, an improvement on 57 percent in 2008, according to a Jul. 5 report from the European Commission, the EU's executive body.

The solar sector is on the rise. According to the Association of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, dedicated to direct conversion of light energy into electricity, this sector aims to supply 12 percent of Europe's electricity by 2020.

And Spain is one of the world leaders in photovoltaic energy, with installed capacity estimated at 3,200 megawatts, coming in second to Germany's 3,850 megawatts.

The Abu Dhabi-based consortium Masdar chose Abengoa Solar, along with France's Total, to build and operate the Middle East's largest solar energy plant. Meanwhile, Masdar and the company SENER set up a joint enterprise, Terresol Energy, to build and operate concentrated solar energy plants around the world, a technology that uses lenses or mirrors to focus light onto a small photovoltaic surface.

A study presented Dec. 1, 2009, by the consulting firm Deloitte states that the economic impact of the renewable energy sector on Spain's gross domestic product (GDP) reached nearly 12 billion dollars in 2008, or about 0.67 percent of GDP. Renewable energy sources in Latin America amount to 29 percent of the total of primary energy supply, which the Global Energy Network Institute said in a 2009 report “seems quite impressive in comparison to the 5.7 percent share of renewables in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).”

However, the report continues, “the situation is not as good as it seems.” Based on data from the International Energy Agency, Latin America's renewable energy sector is almost completely dominated by hydroelectric and biofuel sources.

“Included in those numbers are big hydroelectric dams, traditional uses of biomass (such as burning firewood), which truly reflect the region's poverty and not positive data on sustainable energy,” said Díaz.

The conclusion of the Global Energy Network Institute is that, besides hydroelectric and biofuels, “there is enough potential to expand greatly the other renewables in Latin America.”

What do the Spanish companies have to offer?

“Spain has had extraordinary development (in renewable energy sources), which has placed it among the world's leaders. All of the knowledge and resources, if not utilized in the domestic market due to regulatory problems or restrictions, the stronger companies are going to utilize abroad,” an energy analyst told Tierramérica.

According to Díaz, photovoltaic energy “is appropriate for applications isolated from the network and in projects of rural electrification, for large plants of centralized production, and for its deployment in cities following a model of distributed generation… No other source offers such an array of options.”

In his opinion, the Spanish companies “can make us of the gigantic renewable energy sources of (South America's) Southern Cone: the planet's maximum irradiation in the Andes for solar energy, exceptional winds in Patagonia, and the opportunity for rural development with energy crops.”

By Miren Gutierrez
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain, May 12 2010 (IPS)

Francisco Etxeberria’s work causes blisters and earns him animosity as well as admiration. He and his team of forensic experts, anthropologists, archaeologists and others have unearthed 200 mass graves, exhuming the remains of 4,800 people in Spain since 2000.

Francisco Etxeberria: The case against Garzón is "a setback" in the freedoms won in Spain. Credit: Íñigo Royo/IPS

“As long as the families want us to, we will search for them,” said Etxeberria at a conference held during the 8th San Sebastián Human Rights Film Festival, where “Los caminos de la memoria” (The Paths of Memory) — a documentary that explores the historical amnesia regarding the fate of those who lost the 1936-1939 Spanish civil war — was screened.

“The three rights of victims are truth, justice and reparations, and these have not been forthcoming” in the case of the roughly 200,000 victims of murder and forced disappearance during the war and the 1939-1975 dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, Etxeberria said.

“I don’t think we’ll find them all, it’s impossible,” he added.

With the passage of the “law on historical memory” in 2000 and a lawsuit filed by a son who had lost his father, Etxeberria began to excavate in Priaranza del Bierzo in the northern province of León. The bodies of 13 civilians shot by firing squad at the start of the war were unearthed. It was the first scientific excavation of mass graves carried out in Spain, nearly 70 years after the war began.

With virtually no political or financial support, the team of experts led by the professor of forensic medicine from the University of the Basque Country in northern Spain has included dozens of volunteers from around the world.

According to Etxeberria, the law was an attempt to “move from truth to reparations, but no one wants to get involved in the justice aspect.” No one, that is, except for Judge Garzón who, based on this investigation, launched an unprecedented legal inquiry in 2008 into the fate of the victims of Franco-era crimes — a probe that has now landed him in the dock.

The so-called “superjudge” has been accused by right-wing groups of overreaching his judicial powers by ordering the investigation of the mass graves, which they say violated the amnesty law passed by the Spanish parliament in 1977, two years after Franco’s death.

Etxeberria spoke with IPS about the challenges faced in the excavation process.

Q: How does the process work? A: We always act at the request of families, or, in exceptional cases, at the request of city governments. In every case, we notify the judicial authorities of the relatives’ wish to investigate. But in general, the authorities dismiss the claims on the argument that the statute of limitations has expired.

Nevertheless, we follow universal criminal forensic standards in our investigations, producing formal criminal reports based on standard procedure.

Q: What kind of hurdles have you run into? A: The worst thing was the attitude of some municipal governments towards the families. Especially at the start, they were ignored because of doubts and fears that have gradually dissipated. In some cases, that was due to ideological stances opposed to vindicating the memory of Republicans (supporters of the left-wing Popular Front government).

Q: Two hundred mass graves have been uncovered. Aren’t these amazing results, given the scarce political or economic support you have received? A: So far there has been no interest at all on the part of the justice system, and very little interest among other institutions. What has been done is the result of the personal dedication by experts who have participated out of a sense of ethical commitment.

Only in the last three years has there been government support to help cover the costs of the exhumations and lab work.

Q: What kind of people are on the team? A: Historians who have already investigated the repression and suffering under the Franco dictatorship. And social anthropologists who have been gathering oral histories that shed light on what happened.

Archaeologists, forensic anthropologists, forensic doctors and psychologists take part in the exhumation, and the investigation is completed with laboratory work that ends with the identification of the remains and the determination of the cause of death.

Q: What do you think about Garzón being put in the dock for trying to fill the legal vacuum left by the law on historical memory? A: It looks like we’re sliding backwards. In Spain there is no risk of a return to dictatorship, but this is a sad development that brings to mind pre-constitutional times.

Actually, the victims’ families had sought judicial support and safeguards to provide legal guarantees for the investigation that was launched.

Q: You have stated that you didn’t know that in the areas where no fighting took place, “so many people had been killed.” Could you give us some details? A: In one grave, we found 11 women among the 17 people buried there. They were nurses in a psychiatric hospital who were killed by the pro-Franco forces.

There are graves everywhere, and it is surprising how many there are in rural areas inhabited by peasants and seasonal workers who never even found out that there was a war, because they were killed in the first days after Franco’s military uprising (against the elected Popular Front government in July 1936).

Historians have put together lists of up to 130,000 people killed in areas not near the front lines. These crimes involved forced disappearance, to which no statute of limitations applies.

Q: In 1998, the bishop’s office of Barcelona asked you to exhume the body of a bishop that they wanted to beatify. Have there been other requests like this? A: Before the first grave containing the bodies of Republicans was exhumed in 2000, the bishop’s office in Barcelona asked us to investigate the remains of Bishop Manuel Irurita, who was murdered and buried in a mass grave in Montcada and later moved to the cathedral.

We have also been asked to investigate right-wing people killed by the Republicans. But there are few such cases left to investigate, since the Franco regime did so itself after the war ended. Furthermore, there is no comparison between the victims on the two sides, in either quantitative or qualitative terms.

Q: Is it true that you might soon be working on exhuming the remains of Republicans buried in the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), the memorial built by the Franco regime? A: At the end of the war, the pro-Franco forces discovered that the victims in their ranks numbered fewer than the war propaganda had claimed. So they brought the remains of victims from the Republican side to the Valle de los Caídos.

The families didn’t know it at the time, and that’s why they have now requested the recovery of those remains that were buried at a strongly symbolic pro-Franco site.

There are two possibilities: to remove the remains or to transform the spot into something that truly reflects the ideas held by both sides and the real history of events.

Excerpt:

By Oriana Boselli and Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Dec 26 2009 (IPS)

What happens to language and the way women are addressed when they start to occupy positions of responsibility? Well, it depends on the language.

In Spanish, a related language, this is different. So, is this a grammatical issue or a social one?

“The problem is not only Italian machoism, but the lack of awareness and directives as to how to address women correctly,” says Angelica Mucchi-Faina, psychology professor at the Perugia University.

“A language is the mirror of its society. Until a few decades, all positions of power or public responsibility were occupied exclusively by men. So those roles were defined ‘in masculine’,” says Mucchi-Faina.

Modern English lacks grammatical gender, whereas Indo-European languages, including Italian and Spanish, can distinguish between masculine and feminine.

“The linguistic discrimination against women is realised through multiple conduits,” says José Luis Aliaga Jiménez, professor in Linguistics of the Universidad de Zaragoza. “The configuration and functioning of grammatical gender in languages like Spanish and Italian is not the most important, but it is the one with deepest symbolic reach.”

When it comes to titles of importance, in Italian, you find yourself reading about “il ministro Mara Carfagna” – even if Carfagna, the minister of equality, is a woman. In contrast, in Spanish there is no option but ‘ministra’, ending in the feminine ‘a’.

Says Mucchi-Faina, “Most countries issued recommendations to avoid sexism when addressing women. Also in Italy, in 1986, the Presidency issued similar recommendations. But instead of being taken seriously and implemented, they were an object of jokes, and eventually forgotten.”

“Contrary to what has happened in other countries, in Italy there is no general rule and everyone can pick and choose whether to use neologisms like ‘ministra’ or the traditional ‘ministro’ for women,” says Mucchi-Faina.

Politician Luisa Capelli, from L’Italia dei valori party (The Italy of Values), thinks that “leaving behind the supposed universal neutrality of the masculine form is an essential passage so that the feminine experience gets respect.”

“It is not true that these feminine forms (for positions of power) do not exist in Italian: there are plenty of examples from feminists, linguists and semiologists who have made a number of proposals,” says Capelli. “You can say ‘avvocata’ (lawyer) and ‘ministra’, but nobody does. Although many of us use those words, we are ignored. To change the symbolic order is hard work that requires a consensus based on the profound convictions of people.”

Sexism in language was identified as a global problem during the first world conference on the status of women, celebrated in Mexico in 1975. Many proposals and directives followed. In 1989, UNESCO issued the booklet Guidelines on Non-Sexist Language, aiming at helping “authors and editors avoid writing in a manner that reinforces questionable attitudes and assumptions about people and sex roles.”

Since the ’80s, Spain and Italy have gone in different directions.

The 2002 ‘Non-Sexist Administrative Manual’, published by The Association of Women’s Historical Studies of the University of Malaga, Spain, summarises the common sentiment: “Languages evolve to respond to the necessities of the communities that use them. In a society like ours, where there is a demand for equality, language, as a social product, not only has to reflect equality, but it also has to promote it.”

However, while having popularised the feminine for titles of importance, Spanish has not eliminated discrimination in the language …

What’s the big deal? The word doesn’t exist. Yet.

“In most personal nouns,” says Aliaga Jiménez, there is a correlation between grammatical gender and the referential meaning of ‘sex’. It is a culturally significant correlation… All nouns referred to a person end up with a gender variation, sooner or later. And it is in that context that the words ‘miembra’, ‘testiga’ (witness) emerge, since, following the common rule in Spanish, the final ‘a’ is interpreted as belonging to the feminine.”

‘Testigo’ and ‘miembro’ are so far exceptions to the common rule and have no official feminine variation.

“The people who don’t know the history of language are the ones who get outraged by neologisms while accepting other words that caused scandal in the past,” says Aliaga Jiménez. “The idea that language only changes for the worse has no linguistic basis.”

According to Irene Giacobbe of the association, Power Gender, the difference with Spain is that “there has been a clear position and a positive reaction from (José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero’s government.”

“But we are late in everything,” she says. “Italy modified family laws in the ’70s. The fascist law that considered rape a moral violation, and not a crime against a person, was changed only in 1996. This is a country in which the historic phobia against women has been masked with a great deal of care for the mother, and a lot is needed to dismantle it.”

What is needed, then?

“The problem is the scarcity of women in positions of power,” she adds. “This is the country with one of the lowest numbers of women managing companies and in Parliament… Girls and boys think they are equal while they remain in the school. They discover the difference when they enter the world of labour; girls find out that even when they graduated with the best scores in less time than their male colleagues, the system doesn’t reward them … All this has been studied and analysed. It remains to be part of the public debate.”

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Dec 3 2009 (IPS)

“It is clear that there are huge discrepancies within Sub-Saharan Africa, but overall the region is doing extremely well in terms of political empowerment,” says Saadia Zahidi, head of the Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in a telephone interview from Geneva.

But what are the pending matters in the region?

The Global Gender Gap (GGG) index ranks 134 countries according to gender equality, and it is designed to measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities in individual countries rather than the overall levels of the available resources in those countries. It looks at four factors: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; political empowerment; and health and survival of women.

Zahidi discusses concrete cases based on the data dug out for the GGG report, and comments on the emergence of South Africa as a country with one of the lowest gender gaps in the world and other trends in the Sub-Saharan region.

IPS: The surprise this year is South Africa, leapfrogging from 22nd last year to 6th position now. What changed? SAADIA ZAHIDI: The data reveal that South Africa made significant improvements in female labour force participation in addition to gains for women in parliament and in ministerial positions in the new government.

For example, India (114 in the 2009 GGG index) is a fast growing country that performs poorly in the GGG index (due to poor performance in political and economic participation), with huge problems like female infanticide and selected abortions. This kind of discrimination happens in highly unequal societies, where you have a large section of the population that is poor, then an emerging middle class, and very rich elite.

Another case is Brazil (82), which certainly performs poorly in political empowerment (whereas does very well in terms of education and health access for women).

However, the GGG index doesn’t look at violence against women and other similar gender issues. It looks at women as resources; at how well a certain country invests on those resources (in terms of education and health) and at how those resources are put into productive use. And we measure gaps, not levels.

But if you look at additional information at the bottom of the report, basic rights and social institutional variables are considered, including maternal health, female genital mutilation, polygamy, and the existence of legislation punishing acts of violence against women in a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 is the best score. South Africa ranks 0.42 in legislation punishing violence against women and 0.50 in polygamy, so there are many things that have to improve. However, even the best countries in the world, like Iceland (1) or Sweden (4) still haven’t closed the gender gaps.

IPS: Lesotho, has advanced six positions, from 16th to 10th. Among the top 10 countries there are six European, two African, two from the Asia-Pacific region. Does this say something about Africa in general? SZ: I think that there are huge discrepancies in the rankings across Sub-Saharan Africa. I cannot make a statement about the region as a whole. For example, Chad (133) and Ethiopia (122) are at the very bottom of the global ranking.

But we can say that the region has a clear strength in terms of economic and political participation for women. Overall, Sub-Saharan Africa fares better than the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, and it is almost on par with Eastern and Western Europe. In terms of political empowerment, even if all the rankings are low, the Sub-Saharan region does better than the Middle East and North Africa (the worst), Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America.

However, there is a long way to go in terms of education and health. The region has the lowest overall ranking in the world; and in terms of health it has the second lowest ranking after Asia.

IPS: In the mist of a global economic crisis, the report suggests there is a direct link between low gender gaps and high economic performance. SZ: It depends on how you look at gender. You can look at it as a question of equality and human rights. And it is clear that you should have equal rights for everyone. But a second reason is efficiency. Women are half of human resources. How well a country uses its human resources will affect its performance. And we see a correlation between the GGG index and the Global Competitiveness Index (of the WEF).

Broadly speaking, there are three groups of countries. The first tier includes countries where the basics, health and education, are not given to women. And you cannot have economic and political advancement without them. The second tier includes countries whose population, in general, have access to health and education that have made the investment, but haven’t got the rewards yet because they haven’t invested enough on removing the barriers to economic and political participation. The third tier includes countries that have done the necessary investments in access to health and education, and also in changing the entry levels to the politic and economic spheres. But this is not enough because some barriers still persist and women get stuck at some point. These include countries like Sweden (4), Denmark (7) and the U.S. (31). The last barriers have not been removed.

IPS: But what about South Africa? SZ: There are exceptions, and South Africa is one of them. South Africa is doing quite well relatively speaking. In fact, in terms of education, the score is 99 percent of the education men get, which is extremely high, for example.

Those countries that are narrowing their gaps in education and health, or are close to doing it, are starting to do well in other variables regardless of income or resources. The index does not look at overall levels of development, but at how equitable the resources are distributed. And South Africa, although poorer than Sweden, ranks quite high.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Nov 26 2009 (IPS)

Born in a squatter camp in Orlando East and raised by a single mother; working in a factory while completing secondary school by correspondence; arrested and banned by the apartheid government: South Africa’s ambassador to Italy is an example of the long road her country has travelled.

'This is our time. We can avoid repeating mistakes and learn from other's experiences' Credit: Victor Sokolowicz/ IPS

IPS: South Africa is in the sixth best position in the latest Global Gender Gap index by the World Economic Forum. “The latest data reveal that South Africa made significant improvements in female labour force participation in addition to gains for women in parliament and in ministerial positions in the new government. South Africa holds the top spot of the region in political empowerment.” Do you feel vindicated? THENJIWE MTINTSO: There is a sense of vindication, yes. Also of awareness, in the sense that, when I was a journalist in the 1970s, (the issue of the discrimination against women) was sometimes considered out of place (within the struggle against apartheid), to the point that some women were wondering ‘are we talking foolish?’ The view among the people undertaking the social struggle against the apartheid regime was that, since women are part of the nation, there was no need to make a difference.

I consider this success story a direct effect of the struggle for equality for women (of that period). It is thanks to the women who were part of the struggle for national liberation and gender equality, women who formed the movement, who achieved a unity across races, that we are where we are.

In that in a particular political environment, in which women felt the pressure from different fronts, that it was possible that white and black women were united. White women were the wives and black women were the domestic help. Men in reality had two wives.

So women were driven closer in the environment previous to the first elections (in 1994). They got together and decided they weren’t going to let men speak on their behalf.

IPS: You have highlighted that fact that South Africa is in a better position than Italy (ranked 72 in the GGG index). TM: There is a historical difference. We have undergone a huge crisis. The struggles that we went through created a different dynamic that made this possible.

IPS: However we are talking about a country that has the world’s highest number of rapes per capita (1.19538 per 1,000 people), according to Seventh U.N. Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998-2000. More than 25 percent of South African men questioned admitted to raping someone, according to a recent study conducted by the Medical Research Council (MRC). What are the main areas in which discrimination is still pervasive? TM: This problem is very serious. With the improvements, there have been backlashes. What happened is that the faster we were going (in terms of gender equality), the more challenges men were facing. And some of them were not ready to be led by women, they were not ready to have their women earning more, they were not ready to transfer leadership roles to women.

Unfortunately, the violence was a response. We have young men beating young women. The economic strains are making things worse. Men are supposed to provide for their families (while the crisis is affecting their capacity to do so). Men’s frustrations combine against women.

But although the statistics are correct, there is now more reporting (in violence against women). So the increase in reporting is showing too in the statistics.

IPS: Another African country, Lesotho, has advanced six positions, from 16th to 10th, getting in the elite list of the ten countries with the narrowest gender gaps in the world. Among the ten best positioned countries there are six Europeans, two Africans, two from the Asia-Pacific region. In fact, Liberia has the continent’s first female head of state, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (women serve in senior positions in several other countries as speakers of parliament, prime ministers and vice-presidents). And the legislature of Rwanda has the highest proportion of women in the world, with 56 percent of members of parliament being women… Do these developments say something about Africa in general? TM: This is our time. South Africa, and Africa in general, can avoid repeating the mistakes other countries have done because we can learn from other’s experiences. We were only liberated in the 1990s, so we are walking together towards democracy and equality.

Tanzania is implementing a system of female quotas; South Africa has quotas in its ruling party. Others are implementing mechanisms to attain equality. And all this has had an impact on the quantities. And without quantity, quality is not possible.

IPS: You mentioned the economic crisis. The GGG report suggests there is a direct link between low gender gaps and high economic performance. One African example is Chad,ranked 133 in the GGG index, ahead of only Yemen and in a very poor position in the Global Competitiveness Report. At the other end of the spectrum, South Africa fares quite well, in sixth position in the gender gap table and 45th on the global ranking of competitiveness by the WEF. TM: There is a lesson to be learned. The economic and political environment is critical for the advancement of gender equality.

You have higher gender equality when development allows gender advances, although you have exceptions like Rwanda (with a narrow gender gap and low levels of development).

But it works the other way around too. When you free the potential of women, which is locked out by constraints and discrimination, you grow faster.

You grow differently too. Women can provide innovative ways to stimulate entrepreneurship. Women who are involved in small businesses have different experiences that can be valuable for development. Involving more women is likely to have a positive impact on economic and social advancement. 

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli
ROME, Nov 26 2009 (IPS)

“You don’t need to go far, it is all around us,” said Robert Dijksterhuis, head of the gender division in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to a room mostly full of women. “Up to one in three women around the world has been abused in some way – most often by someone she knows,” he added, quoting UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) numbers.

Robert Dijksterhuis, Jac SM Kee, Monia Azzalini,Paula Fray, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Laila Al-Shaik. Credit: Miren Gutierrez/IPS

The audience, a group of committed women – and men -, had gathered in Rome to discuss this widespread emergency and the role media have in relation to it in a conference organised by the IPS news agency and supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the city of Rome.

The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reports in the paper “Violence against women worldwide” that up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime – the majority from husbands, partners or someone they know. Among women aged 15–44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

And violence against women is pervasive.

In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by someone she knows; in Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day. In São Paulo, Brazil, a woman is assaulted every 15 seconds. Rape of women is widespread in armed conflicts such as those of Colombia and Darfur, Sudan.

However, according to UNFPA, civil society, media and politicians have begun only recently to join their efforts to change the perception of the phenomenon of violence against women, trying to knock down the wall of indifference and misconstruction that has always surrounded it.

And this is where the media comes in.

According to the Italian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Vincenzo Scotti, “communication can be one of the most powerful tools” in the fight against this type of violence.

In “Changing cultural and social norms that support violence”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirms that media – which have been successful in addressing a wide range of health issues – could play a bigger role in fighting violence.

Meanwhile papers like “The influence of media violence on youth”, published by the American Physiological Society, show how female victimisation in storylines reduces the perceptions of violence in the reality.

This problem is exacerbated by the under-representation of women in media and misrepresentation of their role. Media Monitoring Africa – a watchdog organisation that promotes fair journalism – denounces the scarcity of women working in the media and the marginalised way in which they are portrayed, often limited to victims or someone’s relative.

“The influence of women in journalism is one of the most central problem areas in feminist media research,” acknowledges a report entitled “The Gender of Journalism”, authored by Monika Djerf-Pierre.

Djerf-Pierre’s study shows that even in a female-friendly nation such as Sweden, “journalism as a field has remained male-dominated.” (Sweden ranks number four in the Global Gender Gap [GGG] published by the World Economic Forum.) Today, almost half of Swedish journalists are women, the study shows. However, three out of four leaders in the media industry are men. In other countries the situation is worse.

According to Dijksterhuis, some of the ways communication can be used in a changing landscape with new technologies are trying to set the agenda; forging stronger linkages with NGOs, media and other actors (an issue that was highlighted by many speakers in this conference); and monitoring the results, since “most information is biased towards men.”

Communications rights should be part of these efforts, said Jac SM Kee, coordinator of Women’s Rights Advocacy in the Association for Progressive Communications. Her organisation is involved in an effort to “reclaim ICTs” (Information Communication Technologies) to end violence and address the intersections between communication rights and women’s human rights, especially in relation to violence against women.

Meanwhile, Mona Azzalini, of the Global Media Monitoring Project in Italy, talked about the biggest global survey about women’s participation in the media, to be released in 2010.

The initiative “promotes a change in the way women are portrayed” and creates a “network of advocacy groups” fighting discrimination and stereotypes in the media. The last monitoring – done in 2005 – was focused on four issues: the representation of women as subjects of information, the journalists, the content of the news including cases of stereotypes and discrimination, and journalistic practices.

The results of the 2010 survey will be compared with the 2005 report, which showed that only 21 percent of the sources are women, and most experts quoted (83 percent) are men. The point of view of women is nowhere to be seen: in politics only 14 percent of the sources were women; while in economic issues, 20 percent were women. Even when the issue is violence against women, most of the voices (64 percent) are men’s.

And how do media talk about these issues?

“Victim means weakness; weakness means violence… Media love violence,” said Laila Al Shaikhli, anchorwoman of Al Jazeera, who spoke about the difficulty of getting the real story, when women are reluctant to speak out and carry on a social stigma, when they themselves participate in the cycle of discrimination, educating children with the same paradigms.

The result is that the image of women comes out distorted.

In Italy, for example, “80 percent of people form their opinions based on TV,” said Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate. “And I am not satisfied with how women’s images are transmitted in our media. It is a humiliating image… Working women do not exist. The role of media is an important part of whichever strategy you want in place when fighting against violence. It is not marginal or complementary, it is essential to forming the idea of women.”

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls about 90 percent of the TV audience through his private media empire Mediaset and the state television RAI.

Thenjiwe Mtintso, South Africa’s ambassador to Italy, spoke from the point of view of a gender activist and a former journalist during apartheid about the definition of what is news and its ownership, and who transmits it. Not women, she said. And this is something that has to change if violence against women is to end.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Nov 25 2009 (IPS)

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 102 times to 106 Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2009. Only 10 of those winners were women. Meanwhile, the Man Booker Prize has been awarded to 15 women in 40 years.

Louise Doughty signing her book at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2008. Credit: Tim Duncan

After all, in most markets more women read novels than men. Industry statistics from the U.S. Bookseller Association and Book Industry Study Group indicate that Women’s Fiction comprises at least 40 percent of adult popular fiction sold in the U.S. and approximately 60 percent of adult popular fiction paperbacks. According to a Gallup Poll, we’re talking of a 24 billion dollar industry. There is a similar situation in other languages too.

Louise Doughty – a novelist, playwright and critic – spoke with IPS about women’s standing in literature and the role of literary awards and gender. Doughty has worked widely as a critic and broadcaster in Britain, and was a judge for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for fiction.

IPS: Three women (Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison and Wislawa Szymborska) were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature during the ’90s, and another three (Elfriede Jelinek, Doris Lessing and Herta Müller) so far since. Do you think the Nobel is getting closer to equal representation? LOUISE DOUGHTY: Things are definitely improving. But the improvement is still very slow. I think we’ll all know we have reached equality in literature when nobody thinks it is remarkable when a woman wins a prize. But at the moment, when a woman wins a prize, it is still a story.

IPS: People were saying that women dominated this year’s awards because there were quite a few in the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize… LD: That is very funny. I was on a radio show in Britain, and they were talking about women ‘dominating’ the shortlist. But actually there were three women and three men. Apparently that amounts to domination! As a Man Booker judge, I felt (this year) the press was ready and waiting for a controversy about gender. They were ready to manufacture it.

(Literary awards) seem to be more representative in recent years. But that is a recent development. If you remember, the Orange Prize for Fiction, which is for literature by women, was set up in response to a year in which the Man Booker Prize had no women at all in the shortlist. That is when a group of women said ‘this is ridiculous,’ and created the Orange Prize (in 1992, and launched in 1996).

IPS: Peter England, a member of the Nobel literature prize jury, said the panel has been too “Eurocentric” in picking the writers. How come that is a problem now, but the fact that only 10 percent of the winners have been women is not? LD: I think that he has a point. It is worth noting that there were too many European novelists, but it is also worth noting that there were too many men. And the Nobel Prize is not a prize that publishers can enter their novelists for. It is a fairly secretive process. And processes like that always favour the status quo, the establishment or the people they are used to, mostly white European males. So, I think he has a point; he just needs to extend the point further to include the low representation of women on the prize as well.

I suppose it is always difficult with these prizes where there is no transparency. With the Man Booker Prize, the rules of entry are very clear and obvious. The Nobel Prize is different. It seems to be a process that favours who you know, reputation and all these kinds of things.

IPS: You are reported as saying that male academics who “have their eye on their reputations” should not be invited on to judging panels, as they are too concerned with picking a “highbrow” author who reflects well on them. How would improving the quality of the panels benefit women? LD: I think that most judging panels should aim for parity between men and women as much as possible. That just seems sensible. If you get a lot of male judges, you’ll get a lot of male winners. Because judging literature is not just about quality, it is about personal preference. People do often like novels in which they recognise themselves, not just human nature. And it seems to me obvious, historically, that when juries have consisted of white middle-aged men, a lot of the winners have consisted of white middle-aged men.

(However) those remarks I made about male academics were quoted out of context. They were part of a long discussion about the nature of judging the Man Booker Prize. They were blown out of all proportion by journalists, and given a headline that was not exactly what I said. But what was interesting to me about the whole scandal is the reaction from the male academics. Completely poisonous… and these from men that are the best academic minds in our country! And all they could do is riddle personal abuse. That made me feel maybe I had a point without realising it.

IPS: How is women’s fiction different from just fiction? Should publishers and bookstores differentiate women’s fiction from mainstream fiction? Do you think these distinctions affect female writers’ standing in literature? LD: They do. The problem is that this is an issue of marketing. Publishers need to make money. They will always market books in a way that is similar to the books that they sold before. So a lot of very good women writers who write anything with a romantic angle get trapped in a kind of ghetto, which is very difficult to get out of. Although this has improved.

Historically there has been a sense that a novel by a woman is domestic. But some people have started pointing out that novels by Martin Amis, Richard Ford or Philip Roth are about very domestic concerns, they are about relationships. They are doing it from a male point of view, but their novels are no less domestic than a novel written by a woman. And there is now a recognition that writing about relationships doesn’t make you domestic necessarily.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez and Ines Alberdi
ROME, Nov 15 2009 (IPS)

CEDAW or the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW) was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979.

Security Council debates protection of civilians - and women - in armed conflict. Credit: U.N.

In the second of a two-part interview IPS talks to Inés Alberdi, executive director of UNIFEM, about the countries holding out, including the U.S., and the new agency for women that the General Assembly has decided to create.

IPS: The U.S. is the only developed nation that has not ratified CEDAW (although it has signed it); now it’s a priority of the Barack Obama administration… INÉS ALBERDI: It is very encouraging to see that the U.S. government is expressing receptiveness to ratifying the treaty; CEDAW now has almost universal ratification, which is a sign of a global consensus. It would be truly exciting if the U.S. could ratify the Convention in this anniversary year, but whenever this happens it will send a wonderful message on the importance of advancing women’s rights.

IPS: States ratifying the Convention are required to weave gender equality into their legislation, repeal all discriminatory provisions in their laws, and enact new provisions to guard against discrimination against women. But in many cases there is a gap between legislation and real action. IA: CEDAW creates not only obligations for legal reform, but also more broadly for the full range of measures that are actually required for women to enjoy their human rights. So to meet the CEDAW requirements there is a need to integrate gender equality into laws and policies, the operation of legal and institutional structures, the allocation of budget resources, the attitudes of judicial and police authorities and so on as well as to change media and cultural stereotypes about women.

IPS: The U.N. member states that have not signed the convention are either Islamic (Iran, Somalia, Sudan) or small island nations (Nauru, Palau, Tonga)… what is the problem there? IA: As I mentioned, CEDAW has almost universal ratification so it is not one of the international human rights treaties that’s experiencing a ratification challenge. And there certainly is global consensus on the importance of achieving gender equality – as evidenced by the inclusion of gender equality as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals and the reaffirmation of the centrality of gender equality to achieving these goals in the 2005 World Summit. The precise challenges faced by the few remaining states that have not ratified CEDAW are likely different in each case – but this is something they themselves would be best suited to answer.

IPS: It seems women are increasingly being recognised and honoured. An example is the five women who won Nobel Prizes this year: Elinor Ostrom, Herta Müller, Carol W. Greider, Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Ada E. Yonath (in comparison, only 40 women in total have been awarded it between 1901 and 2009). In the field of literature, apart from the Nobel Prize, another woman, Hilary Mantel, won the Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious … Do you see this as a sign of the gap between men and women narrowing? IA: I think high profile awards like these are perhaps not the best measure. Women have long been recognised for outstanding achievement – 5 years ago, in 1992, for example Rigoberta Menchu, an indigenous women’s rights leader from Guatemala, won the Nobel Prize as did noted human rights champion Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma the year before that.

What is important is the huge expansion of opportunities for women to pursue the education and experience that will enable them to get to the top – we see this in literature and art and sport as well as science, economics and politics. And I think this is true in many, many places, not just the West.

That said, it is also true that the attrition rate of women in scientific careers is also expanding, as women still have the major responsibility for care-giving in both families and communities.

Women can’t spend the 80 hour work weeks needed to compete and still take care of children or elderly family members. As women enter the workforce in greater and greater numbers, there is no comparable expansion in the care-giving responsibilities assumed by men – with the result that women are both the family breadwinner and the family caregiver.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief. This is the second of a two-part interview.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez and Ines Alberdi
ROME, Nov 14 2009 (IPS)

The fight for women’s rights came about hand in hand with the struggle for democracy, civil rights and national liberation in different countries and periods, says Inés Alberdi, executive director of UNIFEM.

Inés Alberdi: "CEDAW is the means by which governments (can) advance gender equality" Credit: U.N.

On the eve of its 30th anniversary, Alberdi spells out the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for IPS. The first of a two-part interview.

IPS: How would you explain CEDAW to someone who has not heard about it? INÉS ALBERDI: Across the globe, women confront manifold violations of their human rights – when they cannot articipate in the decisions that affect their lives or claim fair political representation, when they face discrimination in employment, when they are denied entitlement to land and property, or when they suffer violence within their own home.

CEDAW is the means by which governments around the world have undertaken legal human rights obligations to combat these violations, and advance gender equality. It is the core international agreement on women’s human rights.

Ratified by 186 U.N. member states, CEDAW encompasses a global consensus on the changes that need to take place. Under CEDAW, states are required to eliminate the many different forms of gender-based discrimination women confront, not only by making sure that there are no existing laws that directly discriminate against women, but also by ensuring that all necessary arrangements are put in place that will allow women to experience equality.

IPS: It probably means a lot to a whole generation of women who fought for women’s rights. Could you mention some of the challenges faced at the time it was adopted? IA: This varied of course from country to country. In my own country, Spain, the struggle for women’s rights was part of the broader struggle for democratisation in the country.

Under the dictatorship, women had almost no rights, we couldn’t vote, or work outside the house without our husband’s permission for example. Reproductive rights were extremely limited, as they were in the vast majority of countries. This was very similar in countries in Latin America, where women’s rights movements emerged in the context of democratisation movements.

In the U.S., this movement came out of, and in connection with the civil rights movement, and later it was very much identified with the struggle for reproductive rights, while in many other places the women’s movement was linked to a movement for national liberation.

IPS: Do you think the time has come for the U.N. member states to fulfil the promises made since the first International Women’s Year in 1975, the adoption of the CEDAW, as well as the U.N. World Conferences in Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995)? The 54th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women in 2010 will undertake a 15-year review and appraisal of the Beijing Platform for Action. What do you expect from it? IA: At the 15 year review of implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action, women’s rights groups and gender equality advocates will have an opportunity to celebrate the progress that has been made, and to seek government agreement on the challenges we must work to address.

We have already seen some of the things that women are identifying as priorities in the regional meetings for Beijing +15 which have happened already in the European and CIS region and will take place in Asia Pacific and Africa starting next week.

At the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) meeting for example, women from Central and Eastern Europe fought hard to get states to recognise the way in which the global financial crisis is affecting their lives – not only through lost jobs and livelihoods but through a tremendous strain on household coping strategies and an ever-growing burden of care-giving work in families to make up for cutbacks in government services and falling household income.

They wanted countries to recognise the plight of women migrant workers, who are being forced to return home to no jobs or go underground, where they are subject to violence and abuse. They also expressed impatience with the fact that despite decades of campaigns to put ending violence against women on the human rights and development agendas, the multiple forms of violence in women’s lives is still a daily reality for many women in all countries.

And they want countries not only to recognise all these things, but to say what they are going to do about them – so they can be held accountable for their promises.

In Africa too, where women have been hard hit by the economic crisis, women’s groups have identified decent work opportunities and greater social protection as their number one concerns, followed by protection from gender-based violence, not only in conflict but also when conflicts end.

It is important to recognise too that by raising these issues, they can take them into other important arenas, including the Security Council.

For example, with the passage of the Resolutions 1888 and 1889- which followed Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325 from nine years ago, and SCR 1820 from 2008 – the Council strongly signalled its intention to advance accountability to women and girls in armed conflict, strengthen women’s protection from sexual violence and address their exclusion from peace building in post-conflict contexts.

Or for instance, advance women’s human rights in arenas like the International Criminal Court, which has recognised rape as a war crime and crime against humanity.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief. This is the first of a two-part interview.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Oct 21 2009 (IPS)

On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Italy is far from attaining gender equality.

“I think that something is changing…however, the Convention is still not very well known in Italy, and what has been ratified hasn’t been implemented yet,” says Ivanka Corti, former president of the CEDAW Committee.

According to the latest global gap report index, in Europe only the Czech Republic, Romania, Greece, Cyprus and Malta have bigger gender gaps than Italy. Italy ranks 67 among the 130 countries in the index.

CEDAW was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979, and Italy ratified it in 1985. Italian women are 51.4 percent of the population and 55.8 percent of university students, but their political and economic power is way below equality.

Politics shows the biggest gap, but discrimination can also be found in the workplace, according to the report Education at a Glance 2009, published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). According to the report, having a university degree pays off 2.36 times as much for men than for women in Italy. The average for the OECD, which includes 30 of the most developed countries, is 1.4.

A quarter of a century after signing the Convention, Italy is worse off than, say, Uganda (ranked 43) or Lesotho (16).

In its combined fourth and fifth report on Italy published in 2004, the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women points to “low participation of women in public and political life, (and) the lack of programmes to combat stereotypes through the formal education system and to encourage men to undertake their fair share of domestic responsibilities.”

The CEDAW Committee, whose main responsibility is to support implementation of the convection, has called on Italy “to adopt a large-scale, comprehensive and coordinated programme to combat the widespread acceptance of stereotypical roles of men and women.”

It has also recommended that “the media and advertising agencies be specifically targeted and encouraged to project an image of women as equal partners in all spheres of life and that concerted efforts be made to change the perception of women as sex objects, and primarily responsible for child- rearing.”

So what has been done, and what remains to be done? IPS talks to Ivanka Corti -who was in the CEDAW Committee for 16 years, four of them as chair – about the status of women in Italy.

IPS: What do you think about female quotas? IVANKA CORTI: I totally agree with quotas. I am in favour of them as temporary measures, as Article 4 of the CEDAW states. As many examples show, quotas are absolutely necessary to gain equality in the labour and public sectors. Scandinavian countries are the clearest examples of how women have reached equality in all sectors (through quotas). So, they should be applied to both politics and labour markets.

IPS: Why is the salary gap for educated women in Italy so wide? IC: This situation is caused by several factors that are not favourable to women, including the idea that women cannot possibly be as productive as men since they may get pregnant. This idea is profoundly erroneous, but still pervasive.

IPS: What are the stereotypes about women in Italy? IC: I must open a parenthesis. Unfortunately, the recommendations of the CEDAW Committee and the convention that Italy has signed without reservations – and I underline “without reservations” – are not being implemented.

In Italy nobody pays attention to this document of international regulation. I doubt that our Parliamentarians know this convention has been ratified at all. In many Western countries, the report that is sent to the CEDAW Committee is discussed first in the Parliament. This has not been the case in Italy, ever.

I don’t see many changes made either after the last recommendations were published in 2005. The recommendations of the CEDAW Committee must be published with the maximum publicity, something that I have not seen here. Not even the Ministry for Equality acknowledged it.

It is quite unfortunate, especially if you think that, in comparison, many developing countries grant a great importance to the document, which is published widely and produces new legislation.

IPS: How do you change the situation in Italy? IC: To change it is to change politics, and I am afraid Italian politics are very sexist.

Italy has gone backwards. The contribution of women to culture and development towards modernity has been undervalued. And thanks to the media, the idea of a woman who is attracted to power, to money, who values her beauty more than her intelligence and professional capacity, persists. I am shocked at the fact that there was almost no coverage of the predominance of women at this year’s Nobel Prizes, while Italians are more interested in the elections of Miss Italia.

IPS: What is the main factor that provokes discrimination in Italy? IC: It depends on many factors: history, culture, politics, media and religion. Religion has in Italy a very important role, because of the presence of the Vatican, which has enormous influence in politics and in many issues related to women.

IPS: Some experts say that fighting against discrimination is not a question of money, but of will. In fact some countries in Africa, including Rwanda and Liberia, and other regions, such as the Philippines, seem to confirm this. Do you agree? IC: Based on my 16-year experience in the CEDAW Committee, I very much agree. Change has come about in places where there was political will, not necessarily money. Also, where there is a strong movement of women, who put pressure on the political institutions, the process is faster.

A majority of female politicians could change the situation. But why do we have so few women in Italian politics? Spain was more backwards than Italy in the 70s and 80s, but has surpassed Italy in all aspects. Can you imagine a pregnant female defence minister reviewing the troops in Italy?

In Italy we have a female environment minister. I haven’t seen that she has engaged other women, who are more responsive to the environmental problems. The women in the government have no “gender sensitive” policies at all. There are two sides of this problem: the access to power and the attitudes inside these offices.

IPS: Could different use of media change the situation? IC: You cannot regulate what media disseminate, because that would be limiting press freedom. But there is the problem of a culture that caricatures women. We must change the stereotypes. When this stereotype emerged, there weren’t so many women in the labour market, in the scientific field; at university 30 years ago there were very few women, today they are the majority. Nothing justifies the persistence of these stereotypes.

IPS: What has changed in Italy since the introduction of Article 51 of the Constitution? And what about CEDAW Committee’s recommendations? IC: A lot has been changed. The constitution was born many years before, and it is evident that many laws in favour of women have passed since. When the constitution was adopted, there was no divorce, abortion or equality in the labour market laws. The law is very comprehensive; what is missing is implementation. A true implementation of the Convention is lacking too.

As far as politics is concerned, there is strong resistance in Italy. It is really a fight for power. This is, though, an extended phenomenon, with few exceptions in the world. When I think of Spain, though, I feel envious. When we were passing laws in favour of women here, they had a dictatorship; and today women and men sit together in Parliament, government and in all sectors of public responsibility on equal terms.

True democracy is not possible if women are excluded.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS editor-in-chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Oct 4 2009 (IPS)

"From a current 6.5 billion population, a billion don't get enough to eat right now. Extrapolate that to 2020, and you begin to recognise why this is not just a moral problem, it is a national security problem that has much more to do with civil strife, warfare, terrorism, immigration… This goes far beyond food."

An internally displaced person in Congo carries rations distributed by the World Food Programme. Credit: U.N.

And the results of the summit cannot be business as usual.

"I am not a NGO type," he says. "But I agree the current food system is fundamentally not sustainable. A billion people go to bed without enough food. Something has gone terribly wrong. In the developed world, obesity is the problem. Poor people (in rich countries) are malnourished."

What needs to be done?

For Cleaver, it is a clear, although not an easy choice. "Reallocate public resources to agriculture production in developing countries, where the epicentre of this crisis is. By the countries themselves, by the donor agencies run by the industrial countries, by the multilateral institutions like IFAD, the World Bank…A hard choice: it means shifting resources into agriculture, and taking them out of something else.

"Also, a lot has to be done in the area of policy," he says.

"We find that when the food crisis occurred in 2008, many developing countries made the wrong choices, tried to impose price controls on farmers. Argentina, for example, squeezed the farmers by taxes. The result is always that the farmers stop producing or start smuggling. A very inefficient, shortsighted response.

"Other countries did stupid things. The Philippines started to buy massive amounts of rice and stuck it in a warehouse. Each time they went to the market, the price went to the ceiling…so poor countries were crushed," he says.

"In industrial countries we have the most stupid set of subsidies…About 200 billion dollars a year are devoted to subsidies to U.S. and European companies, a bigger amount than all the aid of all institutions put together. We subsidise this tiny little group of corporate farms to the tune of gazillions. And what sort of farming do they practice? The kind the Slow Food movement criticises. Is this what we want to do with the money? No."

So what will happen during the summit?

"This is an effort by FAO to be relevant. They recognise the crisis, and they want to have a discussion at the global level to solve it," says Cleaver. "The problem with these big U.N. gatherings, however well intentioned, is that they don't actually change much. In 1974, there were some institutional changes. I hope this food conference leads to an equivalent kind of response. But my guess is it won't change much.

"The most we can hope," he adds, "is that it will raise awareness in the public about the stakes. The press is not reporting the issues, only pieces of it. They haven't quite caught on to the global dimension of this dilemma. This summit could manage to get the word out beyond a few bureaucrats."

Do others hope more from the summit?

The third big U.N. agency headquartered in Rome, the World Food Programme (WFP), specialises in delivering food to people who are caught in a humanitarian crisis, such as a drought, flood or war. "Simply put, it keeps people from starving to death," says the WFP site.

The most urgent problem facing the WFP now is the food emergencies in about 30 countries.

"Food prices on international markets reached a peak in mid-2008 and since then we have witnessed a decline. However, the cost of food in many markets in the developing countries where WFP works has remained stubbornly high," says Greg Barrow, global media coordinator of the WFP.

"For example, the FAO has found that in sub-Saharan Africa, 80 to 90 percent of all cereal prices it monitored in 27 countries remain more than 25 percent higher than before the high food price crisis began two years ago," he says.

"In Kenya, food prices have risen by 120 percent over the past year," according to INTERFAIS, the organisation that monitors the flow of food aid. "This makes WFP's work extremely challenging at a time when the numbers of hungry people are increasing…and when the international flow of food aid is at a 20-year low."

How come, when Kevin Cleaver from IFAD says money for agricultural projects has increased now to "the largest percentage ever"?

"It's important to make a distinction between food aid donations in kind, and cash donations for the purchase of food," says Barrow. "The disappearance of food surpluses is probably some part of the overall picture, but it is not the answer on its own.

"I cannot comment on IFAD's funding situation, but WFP is facing an almost unprecedented shortfall in its budget in 2009. We have barely one-third of the money we asked for at the beginning of the year, and are likely to fall far short of our 6.7 billion dollar budget to feed 108 million people in 74 countries in 2009."

WFP receives around half of the food it uses as donation. The remainder comes in the form of cash for food purchase. Of the 2.8 million metric tons of food (valued at 1.4 billion dollars) that WFP purchased in 2008, 78 percent was bought in developing countries.

So, what about the money pledged at L'Aquila?

"WFP has always advocated a twin-track approach that would see investment in long-term agricultural development at the same time as support for emergency food assistance to address urgent hunger needs," says Barrow. "However, it is important to note that even if food production can be improved, many of the poorest people in the world would still face difficulties accessing the food they require, and their needs should not be forgotten."

Barrow distinguishes between emergencies (floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes and conflict) creating the need for food assistance, and the "issue of access to food," which refers to the "difficulty that the world's poorest people have in accessing affordable nutritious food to meet their daily requirements. This challenge is likely to continue to exist even if food production increases."

Will they be forgotten at the summit?

"Any meeting that engages world leaders, policy makers and the humanitarian community in an effort to address the issue of food security is welcome," he says. "For it to be successful, the participants have to agree on a concrete programme of action…At the same time, there has to be a commitment from governments to provide the resources necessary to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people on the planet by 2015."

What do others say?

The concentration of the three big U.N. food agencies in Rome determines the presence of others. The International Alliance Against Hunger (IAAH) – born on World Food Day 2003 – is one of them. IAAH brings together international agencies, government bodies and civil society organisations "in voluntary partnerships" to advocate for concerted action against hunger.

"The fact that the number of people who are hungry continues to rise in spite of the commitments in successive summits…is appalling. It is as though leaders who come to these meetings believe that, simply by making speeches the problem will go away," says Andrew MacMillan, former Director of Field Operations Division of FAO and currently Special Advisor to IAAH. "Almost every nation on earth has pledged to end hunger, but only a handful have embarked on the hard work of putting properly funded national programmes in place.

"One lesson is that even the most eloquent commitment to a global goal is largely meaningless," he adds. "Each government that endorses the global goal should return home and make a national commitment to play its part, and agree to be held accountable for delivery. Then we might see some serious results."

The only "good thing" about this crisis is that "it has pushed the hunger issue up to the top of the international agenda, even if for all the wrong reasons," says MacMillan.

MacMillan says there are two dangers facing this World Food Summit.

"The first is that it will be used as an excuse for the international community to impose the wrong solutions to the problem. We can see this now in the emphasis being given to the use of ever higher levels of purchased inputs in small-scale farming communities without due regard to the environmental sustainability and nutritional consequences.

"The second danger is that other important themes, such as climate change, will move up the agenda and increasingly divert attention from the food issue, lulling people into the assumption that it has been resolved. The G8 might even be tempted to conclude that, by earmarking 20 billion dollars over three years to address hunger, it had absolved itself of any further responsibility.

"If the 20 billion dollars really become available and are spent on the right things, we should see improvements, but it must be put in perspective. It is the equivalent of about six dollars per year per hungry person. Will that really make a difference?"

According to MacMillan, even if FAO, WFP and IFAD "were to get their act together," it would not be enough. "Eradicating hunger and malnutrition by 2025 is entirely possible but it needs a supportive global policy environment and it depends on every country playing its full part," he says. The Rome- based agencies "must learn to work in genuine partnership" with other institutions, especially WHO (World Health Organisation), UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) and the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On policy, "any reformed institution that brings them together" must have the authority to address major global issues affecting food and nutrition security, she adds. That means it would have "a significant say" in such issues as trading arrangements for food commodities; setting of targets for minimum global food stock levels; safeguarding natural resources for future food production, and setting the agricultural research agenda.

IAAH is working with civil society organisations on urging governments to involve themselves at the November summit. "But we are also calling on them to follow this up by making their own 'National Declaration of Commitment' and to deposit this and a national food security and nutrition plan to achieve the eradication goal by 2025, in an international 'Public Register of Commitment' for all to see," he says.

Bioversity International is the world's largest international research organisation dedicated to the conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity. It is also based in Rome. It began its life in 1974 as what was called a field programme within FAO, explains Ruth Raymond, Bioversity's head of the public awareness unit. "We didn't separate from FAO until 1994…When we became independent, we decided to stay in Rome because we wanted to continue to work very closely with FAO, our main partner."

"I am delighted that the Rome-based food agencies are expressing renewed interest in food security, and the commitment to fighting hunger is strong," says Emile Frison, Bioversity Director General, about the summit.

"My concern is that unless we invest more in agricultural research and development, we will not solve the long-term problems of sustainable food security, and will continue to need emergency relief," says Frison.

"The response of donors to acute famines has been exemplary," says Frison. "But in the face of climate change, growing populations, water scarcity and other threats, we need to invest in intelligent, sustainable solutions."

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Oct 3 2009 (IPS)

It was once true that all roads led to this ancient capital. Today it is the furrows of maize, wheat and rice fields that take you to Rome, where the biggest global food organisations are headquartered, and the World Summit on Food Security (Nov. 16-18) is being organised.

A farmer harvests sorghum seeds in Sudan. The price of the seeds has doubled over the last two years. Credit: U.N.

"The global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity," says the summit website. According to the latest U.N. projections, the world population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050 – a third more mouths to feed. Most population growth will occur in developing countries.

High food prices in developing countries, a global economic crisis affecting jobs, deepening poverty, and more hungry people combine to paint a bleak picture.

So, what are the expectations of the food organisations present in Rome?

Kostas Stamoulis, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) agricultural development economics division, says this summit "is not a fund- raising exercise…the original position is that we eliminate hunger, preferably by 2025, although I am not sure if this will be the summit's objective, because the countries have yet to agree on the targets…"

One of the concrete issues on the table, he says, is "reform of the global governance of food security. It has to be better coordinated, because so far every crisis turns into a big disaster. Also, despite all the wealth in the world, we have seen chronically hungry people increasing since 1996."

A recent paper by FAO says that "producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, using scarce natural resources more efficiently, and adapting to climate change are the main challenges world agriculture will face in the coming decades."

For Stamoulis, in order to produce more food, "we have to make sure that farmers are properly supported in the developed and developing countries, not at the expense of each other." So far we are not doing a good job, he says. "Developed countries support farmers tremendously, while developing countries do not have the means.

"Part of the objective too is to make sure that countries realise that a lot more resources have to be devoted to agriculture. Not necessarily during the summit…this is not a pledge summit. That happened in July, when the G8 pledged 20 billion dollars to support agriculture. This is a summit where countries, at the highest level, reconfirm their support."

At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful countries, held in July in the Italian city of L'Aquila, they decided to mobilise 20 billion dollars over three years to fight the food crisis, and it was said the money could be used to promote agriculture rather than as aid. But people like Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International, were sceptical. "We have to change the model that caused this situation (of food crisis), not patch up the gaps with some crisis money," he said in an earlier interview with IPS.

For Stamoulis, this is a good point. The money should be invested primarily on small farmers, he says. Investments should be made too in infrastructure – roads, ports, storage facilities. "In terms of technology and access to markets, we have to make sure small holders take a fair share of this allocation, so they increase their productivity."

Considering that 30 countries are currently experiencing food emergencies, "another issue is to have a better early warning system and a better coordinated response," he says.

What is new in comparison with the food crises of the 1970s and the historic World Food Conference of 1974?

"Now we have the Committee on the World Food Security (CFS), which meets all the criteria to become a real world partnership from the bottom up," says Stamoulis. "One of the issues leaders will talk about is precisely the reform of the CFS, of which I have the honour to be the secretary-general."

According to Stamoulis, the CFS is undertaking reforms in order to involve civil society in the decision-making process, so it becomes "a real global forum for coordination of the various national and international initiatives on food security."

In the 70s, the summit took place under the pressure of the food crisis. "But here we are putting something together that will tackle not only the food crisis, but also more structural issues and chronic hunger. And this should be done with a lot of stakeholders' participation, not just a group deciding. That is a big difference. This time we have a better chance to succeed, because we are more inclusive."

The voices of the food organisations interviewed for this report seem to echo the tension between two crucial problems: the need to address urgent food emergencies right now, and the need to invest in longer-term structural solutions.

The host of the summit, the FAO, is one of three U.N. food agencies based in Rome. Each has different goals. FAO acts as a "neutral forum" where all nations meet to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO's staff includes agronomists, foresters, fisheries and livestock specialists, nutritionists, social scientists, economists and statisticians, "who collect, analyse and disseminate data that aids development."

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is another. Unlike FAO, IFAD specialises in financing rural development projects.

Kevin Cleaver, IFAD's assistant president, says IFAD has seen money for agricultural projects increase now to "the largest percentage ever."

"The economic crisis that began 2008 has affected developing countries' food production very negatively," he says. "All statistics point to that effect: in 2008 and 2009, the number of people globally suffering from hunger or malnutrition increased about 100 million.

"Things were getting better in the previous five-year period…but 2008 was a turning point," he says, due to a combination of factors: the financial crisis, fewer remittances, less income coming in, less money to buy food. "Credit dried up in the developed countries, so you can imagine what happened in the high-risk investment countries of Africa or other low income countries of Asia. It just disappeared. And that had a very negative impact on agriculture."

Then, the G8 meeting in L'Aquila happened. "One of the reasons why IFAD was so happy with the results was that the world leaders admitted that the food crisis was creating havoc in the developing countries and generating food insecurity," says Cleaver. "The increase of hungry people was unacceptable, but also a security threat. If hungry people become angry, it is more likely that they take up a gun, emigrate to Europe or the U.S…the G8 was admitting a security problem, and this is the first time we have seen such a thing."

Money was not only pledged, "some of these countries are starting to follow up, to deliver," he adds. "In the past we often had just words. Now we see some action."

IFAD was established as an international financial institution in 1977 in one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. Is the same sort of momentum building up now?

Cleaver says there are some important differences.

"IFAD was part of the response of the international community to a similar crisis," he says. "The prices of the major food staples and livestock products hugely increased in 1974 and 1975. There was a shortage of food; starvation. The international community got together, and created IFAD.

"It did some other things, like putting more money in research. A lot of bilateral aid agencies invested in agriculture. Even in the private sector, one of the things we saw is big investments in agriculture. The effect was that by the end of the 1970s, food prices had gone down dramatically. In the 1980s, there was an abundance of food even in developing countries.

"Real prices of food relative to other commodities continued to fall. The world went into abundance. The function of the World Food Programme (WFP) was to take some of this surpluses in industrial countries and distribute them in places in distress," he says. "There is no longer a global surplus.

"The world cereal stocks are at historic low," says Cleaver. "The real prices of food have increased dramatically. Look at the statistics: the rate of growth of agricultural productivity has declined to about a third of what it was. In other words, science and technology haven't generated growth, haven't kept up with people's growth. Supply is not keeping up with demand."

Why? "Complacency; we were so successful. Donors got out of the agriculture business. We also have seen less investment from the private sector. Institutions like the Inter American Development Bank and USAID, almost all of the bilateral agencies, have withdrawn from agriculture. This has destroyed agricultural capacity."

On top of this, climate change and other "serious slow environmental problems" combined to "crush agriculture". Cleaver mentions areas such as South Asia and China, dependent on natural irrigation, that are in danger now for lack of rain.

"What has happened in these areas is a salinisation," he says. "The extraction of water has been so great that the aquifers have disappeared. So, globally there are huge water shortages in irrigated areas. In Mexico, 50 percent of aquifers are totally exhausted. These areas are producing nothing. Uzbekistan had huge irrigated areas. Now it looks like snow, because the salt is so thick. Nothing can grow in that 'snow', not even weeds.

"We need to invest massively in a different kind of agriculture, less water- dependant, less destructive, less petroleum-based, less mechanised, a conservation agriculture, a complicated agriculture," he says. "The reason is: if we don't do that, we destroy the planet and everybody starves."

And that is what is at stake here, in Rome.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Sep 22 2009 (IPS)

Angelica Mucchi-Faina, psychology professor at the Perugia University, thinks that "in Italy you cannot even talk about equal opportunities for women in politics."

There are only four women in Berlusconi's cabinet. Credit: Italian government

As a result, in 2003, Italy modified Article 51 of its Constitution, introducing the principle of equality in access to political offices. For the first time the concept of equal opportunities entered the Constitution. The Ministry for Equal Opportunities exists since 1996.

But for Mucchi-Faina, there are three factors that still hinder women's entry in politics.

"First, the burden of family responsibilities falls on women’s shoulders," she says. "Women dedicate 24 percent of their available time to the family, while men invest just 8 percent … Second, the prevailing machismo in politics discourages women's involvement. To include women in the lists is just a way of saving face. We continually hear that quotas create ghettos for women, but it is men who take refuge in the Mount Athos of politics, and don’t have any intention of letting us in."

"Third, women know that they have to be much, much better and invest much more than men. The result is that women see very few opportunities to enter politics, and succeed," she concludes.

Some of her points coincide with a 2004 report on Italy released by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women – an expert body that watches over the progress for women made in those countries party to the 1979 CEDAW.

"The shortage of female representatives in the political arena is mainly due to three factors," it says. The first is linked to the fact that women are generally depicted as weak, needing protection; a figure which causes disaffection among women themselves, unfit for the environment where power is exercised."

"The second concerns an intrinsic feature of Italy's ruling class, which tends to represent and reproduce itself, and so tends to come over as inward looking, because it does not fulfil its role through a vital and open relationship with civil society," it continues.

"Whereas the first two factors are grounded in Italian culture, the third has strong political connotations. Today, there are still numerous obstacles to women wishing to take part in political life, due to the difficulty of reconciling the female role in politics and work, with family life," it concludes.

For Anne Maass, from Padova University too, "men do not want to loose their enormous privileges if they let women in. Most of them are extremely well paid professional politicians (Italian parliamentarians get four times what their Spanish counterparts earn)… Unless exposed to a strong pressure from their grassroots, male politicians oppose all change."

"But this doesn’t happen because most people are not aware of the advantages of having more women politicians," she says.

"Our television doesn’t care about foreign affairs," says Maass. "The knowledge of foreign languages is so limited that people cannot get information outside their local sources. Italians simply don’t know that half the world has quotas… Only some who read papers not controlled by Berlusconi realise that the sexism in Italy would be unthinkable in other countries, that the systematic insults against women, homosexuals, migrants would be unacceptable and politically incorrect."

For Forza Italia, the party that brought premier Silvio Berlusconi into power, "women have always been involved in 'politics', but in a different, special way. Women's politics concerns relationships, it's a work of mediation and wisdom carried out in every day life," says an enlightening document released in 2004 by Forza Italia's women's chapter in Milan.

And what is keeping women away from politics is a "psychological matter", says the pamphlet. "It’s necessary to motivate women to make them interested in political matters, it's necessary to 'educate' them, supporting their commitment and increasing the knowledge of women who want to participate in local politics."

But for Mucchi-Faina that is unacceptable.

"The idea of a 'feminine nature' that makes women inadequate for public office and positions of high responsibility is very difficult to demonstrate," she says. "If that were true, we would find many women in local politics, where practical matters are decided. But a recent survey by the National Association of Italian Local Councils (known as ANCI) says that out of 148,000 local officers, women represent only 17.6 percent. So?"

"Certain capacities women have developed, such as their ability to listen and mediate, are essential for effective political action at every level. Because to do politics means to make decisions and manage several state sectors in citizens' name," she says.

The European elections were preceded and followed by the so-called "sexygate" scandals, which include the philandering of Berlusconi, and also the fact that the female candidates of the PDL (Popolo della Libertà, the Italian coalition lead by Berlusconi and his party Forza Italia) were said to have been chosen only for their looks. Berlusconi has bragged about the beauty of his party’s female candidates before.

In fact, of the four women in ministerial positions in Berlusconi's cabinet, only two of them control real budgets and make real decisions (Stefania Prestigiacomo, minister of the environment, and Maria Stella Gelmini, minister of education). Mara Carfagna, minister of equal opportunities, was a former starlet with whom Berlusconi has flirted in public. Giorgia Meloni is minister of youth.

"These scandals show that we have lost a sense of dignity in Italian politics," says Chiara Volpato, professor of social psychology at the Milano-Bicocca University. "In the field of social psychology, we distinguish between hostile and moderate sexism… Berlusconi's and his cronies' behaviour include both types."

Volpato thinks there are signals of reaction from the civil society against "Berlusconi’s media totalitarianism."

"To voice dissent is extremely difficult in Italy today: Berlusconi has a control over media that would be ridiculous in any other democratic country," Volpato says. "I think that all this makes Italy a border-line country between democracy and a sort of regime."

However, "I see a new indignation emerging. Today, after 'sexygate', there is a growing resistance… Little by little women are starting to speak up," she adds. "Reactions are coming from the grassroots, individuals, the civil society, priests working in small communities, women, young people, not from institutions, parties, the Church or mainstream media, who act slowly."

(*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.) (This is the second of a two-part series on women in Italian politics.)

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Sep 22 2009 (IPS)

Four ministers out of 21; 193 parliamentarians out of 952 (upper and lower houses); no party leaders. Why are there so few women in Italian politics?

Luisa Capelli: Italian feminism "has been marginalised" Credit: Oriana Boselli/IPS

Capelli, who is also the head of Meltemi Editore, a social sciences publishing house, has thought a great deal about the weak political presence of female politicians in Italy.

"There have been years of exposing women’s bodies, of daily belittling women’s talents," she tells IPS in an interview. And this is the result of the systematic vilification of women on television. "At least two of our (female) ministers have been chosen because their presence sexually pleases prime minister (Silvio Berlusconi)… Why should we be shocked? When two years ago a female student asked him for advice about her future, he suggested that she marry a rich man."

Chiara Volpato, professor of social psychology at the Milano-Bicocca University, sees "historic factors" in the current impasse.

"The democratic development of Italy was interrupted by 20 years of fascism," she says. "The regime’s machismo was translated into laws that reduced women's rights even further. For example, women were forbidden to teach philosophy and history, considered the highest studies."

In spite of it, women had a key role in the fight against fascism, and created for themselves social and political spaces like the right to vote in 1946 and the divorce, abortion and family planning laws in the sixties and seventies. "But this thrust vanished in the following years, while the lack of ideas and initiatives has been replaced by the commercial Berlusconian TV," she says.

About 90 percent of Italian television is controlled by Prime Minister Berlusconi through his private media empire Mediaset and the state television RAI. He also controls publishing houses and other media.

Berlusconi's television "has disseminated a culture based on the obsessive valorisation of the woman's body," says Volpato. "It has imposed a model of a superficial woman. A woman whose main function is decorative. An object. A woman that doesn't exists for herself but through the eyes of men's… This model exists in other countries, but here it is the only model offered by mass media."

Today Italy – one of the powerful economies of the G8 – sits at the bottom of the list of European nations in the latest 2008 Global Gender Gap (GGG) index, published by the World Economic Forum. Only Czech Republic, Romania, Greece, Cyprus and Malta have worse gaps between women and men in Europe.

This is a serious issue. Denying women access to power is a "strategic waste", said Saadia Zahidi, co-author of the GGG report, in a previous interview with IPS. "The system benefits from more diversity in policy-making" when more women have access to politics.

A research authored by Esther Duflo from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Rohini Pande from Harvard, she said looked into gender quotas across Indian village councils and whether leadership was predominately in the hands of women or of men. In the first case, they found that the allocation of local budgets was devoted far more to education and health, whereas when the leadership was controlled by men it was directed towards consumer products, defence, cars, which are important but not fundamentally important.

"Men who are more than 50 years old occupy 55 percent of all positions in (Italian) Parliament, even if they are just 17 percent of the population," says Anne Maass, psychology professor at Padova University. "This concentration of power brings in risks by artificially reducing both the variety of issues confronted and the solutions proposed."

"Psycho-sociologic studies show that women are more inclined to share democratic values like equality, social responsibility and environmental protection, and less prone to accept a hierocratic structure in which a group dominates another and minorities are not respected," says Maass.

For Capelli, "it is not only a question of including issues that are dear to women. I know from my teaching at university that women speak differently before other women. Confronted by only men, they will probably change their approach, rather than the opposite. A bigger female presence is a way of guaranteeing women offer the best of themselves."

Italian women make 51.4 percent of the population and 55.8 percent of university students. But their political and economic power is way, way below equality lines.

According to the GGG Index, Italy ranks at number 67 out of 130 countries in terms of health, education, and access to economic and political power for women (Norway being number 1, with the narrowest gap between men and women). If we examine only the issue of access to political power, Italy fares better at number 46. However, that position is still below countries like Bangladesh (13) and Mozambique (17), and far worse than most of its European counterparts.

Italians are less comfortable with women leaders than the average European, according to the survey 'Discrimination in the European Union 2008' published by Eurobarometer.

Psychology professor Maass thinks that the prejudices against women are part of the wider problem of discrimination. "This doesn’t shock you if you think about the systematic propaganda of sexism, racism and homophobia that Italians have been subjected to on television for more than 15 years," she says.

"But it is also true that, in absolute terms, most of the population doesn’t have a problem with a female head of state, according to the Eurobarometer, in contrast with the parties, who nominate few women," she says. "In 63 years of the republic, no woman has been the head of a party, or premier or president; no woman has been in charge of any of the four most important ministries (foreign affairs, economy, internal affairs or defence). So, it is the parties, not the people, who have a problem with female leadership."

Last June, during the European elections, merely 19 percent of the elected candidates were women (only Cyprus, Malta and Poland had a poorer female representation, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics, known as ISTAT).

Capelli was a candidate, but she failed to be elected.

"In the lists of L'Italia dei valori, about 30 percent of the candidates were women. But out of our seven elected European parliamentarians, only one is a woman. This is also the case for other parties, or worse. It is a complete disaster… (As female candidates) even if we weren’t discriminated against, we weren’t placed by our parties in the best spots to be elected."

"I was for a long time against quotas… But from my experience at university, I’ve understood that numbers make a difference," says Capelli. "In Italy the law states that female presence in the party’s lists should be no lower than 30 percent, but women do not get elected. They rarely lead those lists. The presence of women inside institutions should be reconsidered (in quotas)."

Maass also thinks the fact that less than 50 percent of the population controls more than 80 percent of the institutions "needs a decisive corrective intervention" in the form of quotas.

For Maass, the most effective method would be that of the "zipper quota", where women are put in every second place on the candidate lists, she says.

"But this will never happen in Italy," she adds, because women who could promote it in the Parliament are ridiculously few and face the opposition of the majority of men. When in 2006, they tried to pass a modest 30 percent quota, the attempt ended in insults like those of Pippo Gianni, of the UDC (the mighty Christian-Democrats Union), who famously said, 'women shouldn’t bust our balls'."

Much more has to change inside politics, according to Capelli. "A system that doesn’t reward merit, but the ability to move in a masculine power structure only punishes women… For me, politics is the ability to negotiate and transform principles in collective actions. If politics is reduced to mere power fighting, there is only one group that has the resources to do that."

"Not women." (*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.) (This is the first of two-part series on women in Italian politics.)

Excerpt:

By Hazel Henderson and Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Sep 18 2009 (IPS)

Hazel Henderson is a futurist, an economic iconoclast, founder of Ethical Markets Media, and author of the books Building A Win-Win World, Beyond Globalization, Planetary Citizenship, and Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy. Her main focus is exploring the “blind spots” in conventional economic theory.

Hazel Henderson Credit:

In the wake of the publication of the “Stiglitz-Sen report” – which says that countries need to find ways to measure well-being alongside raw economic growth, her views couldn’t be more pertinent.

Henderson spoke to IPS in an emailed interview.

IPS: We often hear that country X will not reach the Millennium Development Goals. According to Jan Vandemoortele, one of the architects of the MDGs, the MDGs have become money-metric and donor-centric, meaningless catch-all phrases. If there are no concrete, common, comparable targets, how do we know we have been successful? HAZEL HENDERSON: We need to see the MDGs in the rapidly changing world context since 2000: the U.S. has lost its single superpower position. China, India and Brazil are now key global players, the G7 and the G8 are superseded by the G20, and soon the G192 will be the expanded venue for democratising the global economy after the crises in finance changed the game for all players.

So, we need to retain the MDGs as the goal and align them with the rapidly emerging consensus on climate change: the Global Green New Deal, lead by private investments by the world’s pension funds (assets of over 120 trillion dollars) and with low-risk government guarantees for 10 trillion dollars of Climate Prosperity bonds over the next decade.

Since all the old metrics: GDP-measured economic growth and traditional “efficient markets” model are now defunct, we need to not tie MDG goals to these old metrics. New scorecards of progress beyond money-coefficients now appearing in Europe, Canada, China, Brazil and many other countries will be able to track MDGs performance more realistically.

IPS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked award-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, and 20 other experts to find new ways to measure growth. The panel issued a report that says that countries need to find ways to measure happiness and well-being alongside raw economic growth. How would this new way of measuring growth affect poor countries? Bhutan, for example, declares a high “Gross National Happiness”. If a new well-being index is the reference for wealth, Bhutan may need no aid, trade or investment in spite of being one of the poorest countries of the world… HH: The Stiglitz-Sen report is moving in the right direction but too slowly and is still trapped intellectually in the now-defunct “economics box”.

Complex human societies can never be measured by using a single discipline, especially by economics which was never a science. Economic calculations are blind to most of the social and environmental costs its narrow decisions impose on others, reframed as “externalities,” i.e., costs companies and projects omit from their balance sheets. These uncounted impacts of financial decisions have accumulated unnoticed by economists until they are now crises of poverty, inequality, social exclusion and pollution – culminating in the greatest market failure: climate chaos.

Stiglitz and Sen cannot see that new national indicators of “progress” must be multi-disciplinary and use many metrics as appropriate in the kind of systems approach used in the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, an alternative approach I designed with the Calvert Group, tracking 12 aspects of quality of life.

I am very cautious about “happiness” indicators because they are culturally dependent and too subjective (e.g., people living near a hidden toxic dump or drinking polluted water can say they are “happy” while ignorant of these dangers). Conservative economists and statisticians have seized on “happiness” surveys as an excuse to cut social welfare budgets.

IPS: The report recommends GDP growth be used simply to measure market activity and that new systems take into account environmental health, safety and education. Aren’t MDGs enough as a reference? HH: The report is in error in recommending that GDP continue to be used to measure market activity because this would perpetuate ignoring the social and environmental “externalities” piling up. These must be subtracted from GDP to calculate a net level of real GDP.

The report also makes the mistake used by statistical offices and the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA): keeping social, environmental, health, education, poverty gaps, etc. which have proliferated but are designated as “satellite accounts” and therefore ignored by media and devalued. Real reform of GDP as I have urged, explicitly covering goals similar to the MDGs, is still needed. The Stiglitz-Sen commission was composed of economists rather than including sociologists, health experts, educators, and environment experts.

IPS: Domestic work, done mostly by unpaid women, is an economic engine. Because millions of women do it, the state doesn’t have to pay for it. How do you see domestic work being recognised in practical terms? And if this hidden underground chunk of economy is taken into account, won’t countries were women don’t have access to formal labour appear wealthier? HH: Unpaid work in the home, community, is estimated at approximately 50 percent of all productive activity even in industrial countries, and as much as 60-70 percent in many developing countries. UNSNA national accounts ignore all unpaid production. The U.N. Human Development Report and its Human Development Index (HDI) in 1996 calculated that unpaid work was estimated at 16 trillion dollars (11 trillion dollars by women and 5 trillion dollars by men), which was simply missing from the official global GDP figure of 24 trillion dollars, although a truer figure would have been 40 trillion dollars for global GDP in 1996…

This highlights that policy changes are needed to restructure work, pay, pensions and the way money itself is created and allocated. Money has no intrinsic value – it is merely one form of information. The evolution of human barter and money systems now means that money can no longer allocate resources. Finance must be reformed to serve real production and access to money and credit must also be democratised. In today’s Information Age, much trading is now via information; the new form of barter now is electronic. So, your questions focus well on the need for these fundamental reforms.

IPS: How could the value of a forest, for example, be counted as part of one countries’ resources or growth? HH: The value of forests and all our ecosystems’ life support must be valued as factors of production – much more basic than just land (in the old model: land, labour and capital). Ecosystems are natural capital assets and have been estimated at providing approximately 34 trillion dollars of services to human societies annually, but missing from GDP.

In our Beyond GDP proceedings, we went much further than the Stiglitz-Sen report. Both unpaid work and ecosystem services flow from social capital and ecosystem capital which are assets estimated by the World Bank in its Wealth of Nations Report (1995): social capital at 60 percent; ecosystem assets at 20 percent; built capital (factories, roads, etc.) at 20 percent. Thus, the World Bank admitted that 80 percent of the wealth of nations was overlooked in their programmes, which focus mostly on the 20 percent of human-built capital.

This report was never incorporated into the UNSNA’s model of GDP. This key reform of GDP is the addition of an asset account to record not only the social capital of a society and the ecosystem assets, but also its tax-supported public investments in infrastructure: roads, schools, ports, hospitals, internet, etc. These public assets if valued and on the GDP books would counterbalance the public debt used to create them.

I have argued for decades in many countries for this simple accounting change, which would cut most countries’ public debts by over 50 percent with the stroke of a pen!

Wall Street and sovereign bondholders resist this change because it would also cut interest rates by 50 percent. The U.S. in 1996 made a start at accounting for public investments as “savings”. This still inadequate change contributed about a third of the Clinton Administration’s budget surplus (the rest from tax receipts from the dot.com bubble and a cut in military spending). Canada followed suit in 1999 and turned its deficit into a 50 billon Canadian dollars budget surplus!

IPS: You are leader of the international movement to review the GDP as the only measure of growth. From your perspective, has the “Stiglitz-Sen report” left anything out? HH: This asset account is still not addressed in the Stiglitz-Sen report.

IPS: What is the practical significance of this report outside France? HH: Because Stiglitz and Sen are well known, this report will elevate the debate in media. Politicians aligned with business and finance will resist, as will conventional statisticians because it will reduce their claim to profits and politicise economics and reveal its lack of any scientific basis.

Similarly, statisticians and many academics will have to write off their intellectual investments, reshuffle their models and time series and defer to many other more scientific measures of current world problems and conditions.

IPS: Is it a coincidence that this “conceptual revolution” coincides with a new push in favour of the Tobin tax – intended to put a penalty on short-term speculation, supported now by unexpected advocates like Adair Turner, technocrat and chair of the British Financial Services Authority? HH: I am happy to see Lord Adair Turner revisiting the proposal for a financial transaction tax – which now must be by international agreements by the U.N. General Assembly. Even Larry Summers (Director of the White House’s National Economic Council for President Barack Obama) proposed a financial transaction tax in a paper he wrote in 1989. I proposed it in 1995 in the book The United Nations: Policy and Financing Alternatives, which I co- edited with Harlan Cleveland and Inge Kaul. I and my partner, mathematician Alan F. Kay, also designed a computer programme to make collection of such a small tax – the Foreign Exchange Transaction Reporting System, which earned a patent, now expired.

IPS: And now what? HH: The next steps are to publicise all these reform proposals more widely, including the European Commission’s directive September 2009 proposed for the EU countries in 2010 by Stavros Dimas (European Union commissioner for the environment) and the new Canadian Index of Wellbeing, and the Chinese Green GDP (which has run into local opposition from provincial politicians still judged and rewarded by GDP standards).

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) held a conference in 2007 in Istanbul. However, the lead statisticians at OECD and EUROSTAT with whom I co-organised the Beyond GDP conference in the European Parliament are actually very ambivalent about correcting GDP. They take the same flawed view as Stiglitz that it’s ok to still use GDP for measuring market activity – still ignoring those “externalities” instead of subtracting them…

I would love to engage in an open debate with Stiglitz et al on all this!

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Sep 15 2009 (IPS)

Something new is appearing on the Italian screen. About time, some may say.

A poster of the film. Credit:

Dissenting voices in RAI have been silenced since Berlusconi was first elected in 1994. And on Mediaset, gossip and cheap entertainment rule, and women have become decoration.

Artists are now speaking up, Gandini says in a telephone interview from Stockholm. Such as Lorella Zanardo who made the documentary Il Corpo Delle Donne. “Since we put our video on our website we have had more than 250,000 people (downloading the film).”

Produced in Sweden with the support of Scandinavian media organisations, Videocracy has been shown at the last Venice and Toronto film festivals. A trailer offered to Mediaset and RAI was not broadcast because it was considered a “political message” against the government. The film couldn’t have arrived at a worse time for Berlusconi, in the thick of sex scandals.

Gandini talks about the humiliating use of women’s bodies on screen and the brainwashing Italians have been subject to for three decades by Berlusconi’s TV empire.

IPS: You say in the film that we have to step into Italy’s television in order to understand it. But you are an Italian who has stepped out of Italy… ERIK GANDINI: It is very difficult to make documentaries in Italy because television doesn’t finance them, and if they are shown at all on television, it is very late at night. Meanwhile, Scandinavia has a long tradition of documentary making. Documentaries here have more dignity, and they are funded by television.

In Sweden, documentaries are premiered in cinemas, and offered several times a week on television at prime time. On state television, they are considered a key part of society’s wellbeing. It could be the same in Italy; it is a question of choice. But this choice has never been made, and documentaries have been marginalised.

IPS: Could you have made this film in Italy? EG: I am Italian, born and raised. I am not an exile in Sweden; I travel very often to Italy. But my point of view, as an Italian that lives outside, becomes a particular lens that allows me to interpret reality in a different way from many Italians who are accustomed to it. I think that a fundamental element of art is to see everyday things with different eyes.

IPS: How do Italians see the reality you have portrayed in your film? EG: They are used to a reality that has become normal, to the fact that women are reduced to objects on television. But I am convinced that if this film has found an audience in Italy it is because many, like me, share my views. Because my films shows a sad, almost scary, behind-the-scenes in contrast with what television offers: an innocuous, happy lifestyle to imitate. To reveal this behind-the-scenes is very dangerous for television, which has boycotted the trailer of my film. But I think many share my concerns.

IPS: Given the lack of diversity in Italian media, do you think art and films are a way to wake people up? EG: Absolutely. I think that criticism and debate have been marginalised to the reserved oasis of newspapers and words. That is why recovering the language of television and cinema to express criticism is very important. Because in a ‘videocracy’ like Italy, images have the maximum power and, in order to say something important, you have to repossess the visual language.

IPS: But it is also true that Berlusconi’s voters are not going to flood theatres to see your film. Isn’t this a case of preaching to the converted? EG: I don’t agree. I have been present at some theatres showing my film, and I have seen many young people. Most of the audience of this film is young people who don’t normally go to the cinema. Many have told me things like: ‘I teach at school, and would like to take my students to see your film’.

At Io, Donna (a magazine published by Il Corriere Della Sera newspaper), they have given the film the maximum rating and have recommended it is shown at schools. Most of the people who appear in the film are famous. So I also think some will go to watch it because of that, and they will discover a different world. It is true that the risk is to become a sermon for the converted, but this story is told in a language that reaches many people.

IPS: The film shows very hard images of women. What do you think of the role of women in Italy? Why do you think Italian women do not rebel? EG: In entering the world of Italian television, I reveal women as wallpaper, not as thinking human beings with their own will. I have two daughters, and if they grew up thinking their body is an instrument to reach success in Italy, I’d suffer an endless sadness.

The time has come for Italian women to get furious and change the situation. The numbers speak for themselves. Italy is very low in the international gender equality indexes, and it is clear that this is the result of the cultural revolution brought by commercial television.

Every family, group, social community develops a value system. In Italy, the value system dictates that women’s bodies are used as a marketing tool. The portrayal of women on television is directly linked with Berlusconi himself. He, as the man who controls television, has projected and imposed his own idea of women. His is such a machoist, anachronistic mentality that it has become impossible not so see the linkage between him and 30 years of television.

People who work at Mediaset have told me he is very much involved in the programming. It goes to the point that because he doesn’t like green, you never see green in the background of Mediaset shows.

Some say that it is not his fault if Italians like tits and bottoms. But I think it is not accidental. Who creates the television culture, who decides about which programmes to show, has a huge responsibility towards our children. Who chooses to portray our country like this should take responsibility. Confronted with the fact that Italy is so backward, changes have to be made in the culture of television. We absolutely shouldn’t give up and say that this is part of ‘Italianity’, part of our genes.

IPS: You have been called the Michael Moore of Italy, do you agree? EG: I respect what Moore has done. The documentary has become influential thanks to him. But stylistically we are very different. Moore comes from an Anglo-Saxon tradition, and his films are the result of a journalistic evolution. His films are narrated, very verbal, while my way of doing things is European. Images dominate in my films. It is an observer’s viewpoint. I try to tell a story so that the spectator can figure out half the film in his or her head. Moore illustrates his words with images; I try to show a situation in an emotive way, not just by rhetoric and logic.

IPS: As you show in your film, it all started with a housewife who took off her clothes on camera, how will it all finish? EG: I hope I can inspire young people to do what I have done, that is, to refuse being just passive spectators and transform the media… to refuse to quit. To refuse to say ‘I can only watch, I cannot do anything.’ The time has come to take the liberty of saying what we want the world to be.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
BELLAGIO, Italy, Jul 31 2009 (IPS)

Slow Food, obviously, is the opposite of fast food. And it's a movement now with more than 100,000 members in 132 countries. But what does "slow food" mean in practical terms?

Paolo di Croce Credit: Miren Gutiérrez/IPS

IPS/IFEJ: The Slow Food movement presents itself as a defender of biodiversity. But what exactly have good cuisine, tradition and culture to do with coral reefs, polar bears and rainforests? And what has the movement done to contribute to protecting biodiversity? PAOLO DI CROCE: I think that one key issue for good food is the promotion of diversity. Globalisation, the endangerment of species, the standardisation of the markets tend to make things homogeneous, reduce diversity.

It is estimated that all apples that we eat belong to only four varieties. However, hundreds of varieties of apple exist. It is fundamental for the environment, history and culture to preserve the variety of food.

Slow Food has lots of projects around the world to fight against the extinction of species. For example, there is a Slow Food project in the Amazon rainforest to protect the Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), which grows on 40-metre trees in indigenous communities. We are trying to create markets for the nut, to preserve its existence.

Another reason to preserve biodiversity is because we all are personally affected by the issue. For example, if we continue to eat tuna at this rate, in a few years there will be no more tuna.

Food is fundamentally related to agricultural diversity. Wolves and polar bears are not our main priority, but people who are associated with us care about them too because the ultimate goal is to preserve our cultural identity and our environment, including wild species. In fact, we also have programmes that have to do with traditional music and clothing, indigenous languages, etc…

IPS/IFEJ: At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful countries, held this month in the Italian city of L'Aquila, they spoke of "mobilising 20 billion dollars over three years" to fight the food crisis, and it was said the money could be used to promote agriculture rather than as traditional aid. What was your reading of that announcement? PDC: I try to see the positive aspects in everything. In L'Aquila they discussed biodiversity, they committed more money to agriculture. This is all positive. Not only the G8 countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United States) but everyone else on this planet realises there is a huge risk if we do not do anything about the food crisis.

But we have to wait and see whether this investment is good, clean and fair. We now have an opportunity to influence how this money is used. The current system has failed. Look at the number of people suffering from hunger, at the financial crisis, at the health crisis in rich countries: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems…The food production industry created by this system has to be changed. We all have the right to good, clean and fair food.

Also, I think it is wrong to respond to the food crisis with "crisis money," because it has been 20 years in the making, it didn't happen overnight. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) and other United Nations agencies talk about an increasing number of people who suffer hunger and malnutrition. We have to change the model that caused this situation, not patch up the gaps with some crisis money.

IPS/IFEJ: During the summit, Oxfam International released a report, "Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People and Poverty", which shows that changing seasonal patterns are already affecting the ability of farmers to plan the sowing and harvesting of crops. The consequences will be millions of people suffering food shortages and forced to give up traditional crops, possibly leading to social upheavals such as mass migration. What do you think? PDC: Of course, climate change has an enormous impact on agriculture, and therefore on people. Entire populations will have to move away from their territories. As temperatures get warmer in Sweden and Norway, we have seen Sami communities move along with reindeer herds, on which they depend. Reindeer are abandoning their traditional habitats, moving north, and so are the Sami.

Traditional crops can be a tool. In Mexico we have a project to grow amaranth, a traditional cereal that was abandoned as a crop when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived. This crop's nutritional value is important, and the good thing about it is that it can grow in dry areas. We are trying to replant amaranth as an alternative to maize, which is very dependent on water.

IPS/IFEJ: Slow Food says we can be co-producers, not just consumers, by being informed about how our food is produced and supporting those who produce it. But producing and consuming good, clean and fair food is much more expensive. Michael Pollan, author and co-narrator of the documentary film "Food, Inc." wonders why 99 cents can buy a cheeseburger but not even a head of broccoli? The Slow Food movement has been criticised for being elitist… PDC: We have to start by making a serious analysis of two issues. One is the percentage of our income that we devote to food. An interesting figure that comes from a U.S. survey shows that in the 1970s, families spent about six percent of their income on healthcare and about seven percent on food. When they did the same survey recently, they discovered that U.S. families now spend about 15 percent on healthcare and 10 percent on food. The expenditure on food has not increased much, but spending on health has more than doubled.

There is probably a correlation. You have to consider all the excess costs related to a deficient diet in terms of health: the money people spend on nutritionists and doctors. I feel that 10 percent of a household income on food is not enough, especially if you compare it with other expenses, like mobile phones.

The other thing is the real price of food. There are lots of externalities to fast food. I have mentioned healthcare. But there is also the environmental cost of the current food industry, which we are paying with taxes that go to repair environmental damage or to finance subsidies, and that the next generation will continue to pay. Cheap food is only possible on subsidies, and as long as society picks up the environmental bill.

In Italy in 2008, one of the products whose sales grew by 10 percent was pre-washed salad. If you compare prices with the salad you buy in a local market, you realise that the pre-washed is eight times more expensive. And it is less environmentally viable because it comes in a plastic bag.

If you take 100 grams of potato chips, for example, it is nine times more expensive than going to the local market and cooking potatoes with extra virgin oil. Nobody will say fried potatoes are elitist.

Finally, there is the issue of the food we waste. In Italy we throw away about 22 kilograms of food every second.

If you add what you spend without knowing, the health and environmental externalities and the waste, this system is unsustainable. Instead, you can have good, clean and fair food without paying so much.

IPS/IFEJ: But this message is not exactly mainstream. Don't you feel frustrated? PDC: In the last five years I have seen a lot of changes. Everywhere I go now there is more interest. I am not talking about the World Bank, but about normal people, who are the ones who can change the world, the "co-producers."

The day we all decide to eat fresh and local, to eat less meat… with these, simple daily choices we will have a revolution. But this has to be massive. It is fundamental to work with other organisations, with whoever believes eating different is possible. And one day we will able to change the system.

* Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief. This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Excerpt:

“The day we all decide to eat fresh and local, to eat less meat… we will have a revolution,” says Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International.

Paolo di Croce - Miren Gutiérrez/IPS

The question was put to Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International, who spoke about the challenges ahead for “good, clean and fair” food, and the movement itself.

IPS/IFEJ: The Slow Food movement presents itself as a defender of biodiversity. But what exactly have good cuisine, tradition and culture to do with coral reefs, polar bears and rainforests? And what has the movement done to contribute to protecting biodiversity?

PAOLO DI CROCE: I think that one key issue for good food is the promotion of diversity. Globalization, the endangerment of species, the standardization of the markets tend to homologize, reduce diversity.

It is estimated that all apples that we eat belong to only four varieties. However, hundreds of varieties of apple exist. It is fundamental for environment, history and culture to preserve the variety of food.

Slow Food has lots of projects around the world to fight against the extinction of species. For example, there is a Slow Food project in the Amazon rainforest to protect the Bertholletia excelsa, a nut that grows on 40-meter trees in indigenous communities. We try to create markets for the nut, and so preserving its existence.

Another reason to preserve biodiversity is because we all are personally affected by this. For example, if we continue to eat tuna at this rate, in a few years there will be no more tuna.

Food is fundamentally related to agricultural diversity. Wolves and polar bears are not our main priority, but people who are associated with us care about them too because the ultimate goal is to preserve our cultural identity and our environment, including wild species. In fact, we also have programs that have to do with traditional music and clothing, indigenous languages…

IPS/IFEJ: At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful countries, held this month in the Italian city of L'Aquila, they spoke of “mobilizing 20 billion dollars over three years” to fight the food crisis, and it was said the money could be used to promote agriculture rather than as traditional aid. What was your reading of that announcement?

PDC: I try to see the positive aspects in everything. In L'Aquila they discussed biodiversity, they committed more money to agriculture. This is all positive. Not only the G8 countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United States), but everyone else on this planet realizes there is a huge risk if we do not do anything about the food crisis.

But we have to wait and see whether this investment is good, clean and fair. We have now an opportunity to influence how this money is used. The current system has failed. Look at the number of people suffering from hunger, at the financial crisis, at the health crisis in rich countries: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems… The food production industry created by this system has to be changed. We all have the right to good, clean and fair food.

Also, I think it is wrong to respond to the food crisis with “crisis money,” because it has been 20 years in the making, it didn't happen overnight. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and other United Nations agencies talk about an increasing number of people who suffer hunger and malnutrition. We have to change the model that caused this situation, not patch the gaps with some crisis money.

IPS/IFEJ: During the summit, Oxfam International released a report, “Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People and Poverty”, which shows that changing seasonal patterns are already affecting the ability of farmers to plan the sowing and harvesting of crops. The consequences will be millions of people suffering food scarcity and forced to give up traditional crops, possibly leading to social upheavals such as mass migration. What do you think?

PDC: Of course, climate change has an enormous impact on agriculture, and therefore on people. Entire populations will have to move away from their territories. As temperatures get warmer in Sweden and Norway, we have seen Sami communities move along with reindeer herds, on which they depend. Reindeer are abandoning their traditional habitats, moving north, and so are the Sami.

Traditional crops can be a tool. In Mexico we have a project to grow amaranth, a traditional cereal that was abandoned as a crop when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived. This crop's nutritional value is important, and the good thing about it is that it can grow in dry areas. We are trying to replant amaranth as an alternative to maize, which is very dependent on water.

IPS/IFEJ: Slow Food says we can be co-producers, not just consumers, by being informed about how our food is produced and supporting those who produce it. But producing and consuming good, clean and fair food is much more expensive. Michael Pollan, author and co-narrator of the documentary film “Food, Inc.” wonders why 99 cents can buy a cheeseburger but not even a head of broccoli? The Slow Food movement has been criticized for being elitist…

PDC: We have to start by making a serious analysis of two issues. One is the percentage of our income that we devote to food. An interesting figure that comes from a U.S. survey shows that in the 1970s, families spent about six percent of their income on healthcare and about seven percent on food. When they did the same survey recently, they discovered that U.S. families now spend about 15 percent on healthcare and 10 percent on food. The expenditure on food has not increased much, but that on health has more than doubled.

There is probably a correlation. You have to consider all the excess costs related to a deficient diet in terms of health: the money people spend on nutritionists and doctors. I feel that 10 percent of a household income on food is not enough, especially if you compare it with other expenses, like mobile phones.

The other thing is the real price of food. There are lots of externalities to fast food. I have mentioned healthcare. But there is also the environmental cost of the current food industry, which we are paying with taxes that go to repair environmental damage or to finance subsidies, and that the next generation will continue to pay. Cheap food is only possible on subsidies, and as long as society picks the environmental bill.

In Italy in 2008, one of the products whose sales grew by 10 percent was pre-washed salad. If you compare prices with the salad you buy in a local market, you realize that the pre-washed is eight times more expensive. And it is less environmentally viable because it comes in a plastic bag.

If you take 100 grams of potato chips, for example, it is nine times more expensive than going to the local market and cooking potatoes with extra virgin oil. Nobody will say fried potatoes are elitist.

Finally, there is the issue of the food we waste. In Italy we throw away about 22 kilograms of food every second.

If you add what you spend without knowing, the health and environmental externalities and the waste, this system is unsustainable. Instead, you can have good, clean and fair food without paying so much.

IPS/IFEJ: But this message is not exactly mainstream. Don't you feel frustrated?

PDC: In the last five years I have seen a lot of changes. Everywhere I go now there is more interest. I am not talking about the World Bank, but about normal people, who are the ones who can change the world, the “co-producers.”

The day we all decide to eat fresh and local, to eat less meat… with these, simple daily choices we will have a revolution. But this has to be massive. It is fundamental to work with other organizations, with whoever believes eating different is possible. And one day we will able to change the system.

By Miren Gutierrez and Ahmed Djoghlaf
BELLAGIO, Italy, Jul 17 2009 (IPS)

Declining amphibian populations, dwindling fish stocks, waning ocean biodiversity, loss of forests…All scientists acknowledge that the rate of species loss is greater now than at any time in human history.

Ahmed Djoghlaf Credit:

Ahmed Djoghlaf is one of the most well known global warriors against biodiversity loss. He is trying to make the most out of the International Year of Biodiversity next year, and of international meetings in the run-up to the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 10) in Nagoya in Japan in October 2010.

Executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since 2003, he has also been assistant executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), coordinator of UNEP's division of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and general rapporteur of the preparatory committee of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), better known as the Rio Summit.

IPS: You said recently that "we receive increasingly strong signals of distress from the natural systems that provide the services that sustain our daily needs and livelihoods." What are those signals, and is anything being done to respond to them? Ahmed Djoghlaf: The last assessment of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) – done by 2,500 experts – demonstrated in 2007 that climate change is real, that it is happening now, and that we, human beings, are responsible for it. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – in which more than 1,300 experts participated, launched in 2005 – demonstrated that the loss of biodiversity is real, and it is an unprecedented threat to the ecosystems. The current rate of extinction is a thousand times the natural rate. We are maybe reaching a turning point where we cannot reverse this crisis. We are experiencing the sixth global mass extinction of species, but the first human-caused mass extinction. Climate change is one of the main drivers of loss. The different studies concluded that, by 2010, we could achieve what the heads of state decided in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, provided we undertook unprecedented efforts at all levels. Unfortunately, these unprecedented efforts have yet to be made. By 2010, surely, when the (United Nations) General Assembly in September 2010 meets, it will be difficult for any head of state to say that his or her country has achieved the promise. However, this will be a unique opportunity for the leaders of the world to produce a change to stop the silent tsunami of the loss of biodiversity.

Djoghlaf spoke with IPS during a meeting on agricultural biodiversity organised by Bioversity International – the largest international research organisation dedicated to conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity.

IPS: Biodiversity loss and climate change are intimately linked. However, the recent G8 forum on energy and climate in L'Aquila, Italy, produced a declaration that included no concrete commitments on how much air pollutant emissions should be cut and when. What is your reading of the meeting? Ahmed Djoghlaf: The declaration is important. Of course, long-term targets need to be set, as well as short-term targets. The leadership of the G8 should commit to a post-Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen (next December).

This has been the first time that these heads of state endorsed the biodiversity commitments contained in the Syracuse Charter on Biodiversity, issued during the G8 environment summit in April this year. The Syracuse declaration was a very strong statement to take leadership on biodiversity and to finalise the negotiation under the international regime by 2010 in Nayoga.

The climate change challenge is a technical and financial issue, but it is first an environmental issue. Tropical deforestation contributes to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Tropical forests are disappearing at a rate of about 13 million hectares per year, together with biodiversity that has yet to be recorded. Oceans absorb 20 percent of emissions; however global warming weakens the capacity of the oceans for natural abortion of emissions.

IPS: In L'Aquila, developing nations argued that, before committing to any action, industrialised countries should first agree to a 40 percent reduction of emissions by 2020, related to 1990 levels. Most biodiversity wealth is located in the so-called South. What do you think the role of developing countries should be? AD: Indeed, countries like India or China have more biodiversity than all G8 countries put together. Therefore the dialogue between the G8 and its partners in the South, that is, those who are rich in technology and financial resources, and those who are rich in biodiversity, is essential for the three objectives of the Convention on Biodiversity (conservation of biological diversity, its sustainable use, and fair and equitable sharing of the benefits of genetic resources).

The strong partnership between the North and the South that emerged from the Rio declaration (in 1992) is essential. It contained the basis for the links between rich countries and developing countries, and it should provide leadership and different responsibilities based on contributions and needs.

IPS: It should, but why wasn't a more substantial agreement reached at L'Aquila? AD: Because short-term interests are prevailing. If you think about the long- term targets, then all parties have all to win from an agreement: North, South, humanity will win. Short-term politics, short-sighted politicians are prevailing. We cannot afford to have this.

IPS: The position of developed countries – which urged developing nations to make a commitment to cut emissions by 2050 – and of developing countries stand far apart as the Copenhagen climate change conference approaches. What are your expectations for Copenhagen? How will this influence what happens in 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity? AD: Climate change and biodiversity loss are closely interlinked, and any agreement reached in Copenhagen will affect positively or negatively the biodiversity summit in 2010. The leaders of the world and the international community cannot afford to miss the Copenhagen opportunity to renew the efforts to attack climate change.

IPS: One in four mammals is at risk of disappearing, according to the red list of threatened species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). But the 2010 biodiversity target is to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Is this still achievable? What would you consider 'significant'? AD: This is a major problem the international community will face in Nagoya, where about 8,000 people will assess the progress made to achieve the 2010 target. We are working on a major study, the Global Biodiversity Outlook, which will be released in 2010, based on national reports governments are supposed to send. It will offer a snapshot of the state of biodiversity. There will be scientific data on whether countries have achieved the target.

More important than pointing fingers is to draw lessons from the Johannesburg target (for 2002) and the Nagoya strategy post-2010. So, 'significant' compared to what? The 2002 baseline assessment report? We hope that (the Nagoya strategy post-2010) criteria are measurable, identifying mechanisms to achieve targets because it is important to take decisions at the national level that translate into strategies.

IPS: COP 10 will evaluate the status of the 2010 biodiversity target and discuss a new target. Do you expect to have good news about concrete biodiversity indicators? What has changed since COP 1 in 1994 in Nassau, Bahamas? AD: The convention is unique and complex, and it has taken some time to adopt. There are work programmes in all sectors, guidelines in cross-cutting areas. And now the time has come to implement the convention.

What is happening now in comparison with the Bahamas meeting is that parties are engaged in the implementing phase. Also in L'Aquila you had heads of state referring to the Convention on Biodiversity. This started with the G8 summit of Heiligendamm in 2007, and was followed up in the Hokkaido/Toyako summit. This commitment has taken some time to emerge.

Biodiversity is mainstreamed at the highest level. Next year we will make a case in New York, during the General Assembly in September, when we will talk exclusively about biodiversity. It has never happened before. This momentum will be translated in Nagoya into concrete actions to implement the convention.

For the first time also, the U.N. has devoted one year to biodiversity. At the end of 2010 all people on the planet will be aware of the challenge, committed, and a partner to change. This is a tremendous revolution.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Jun 23 2009 (IPS)

For the first time in 15 years, an organisation, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), is attempting to measure the progress, or lack of progress, of women in media organisations globally.

Elisa Munoz Credit: International Women's Media Foundation

Its report – to be released in 2010¬ is examining the structure of the news media industry worldwide from a gender angle.

In a previous article on the same issue, IPS found that women’s representation at the higher echelons of power in media organisations is very low, even in the best cases. For example, in Sweden three out of four leaders in the media industry are men, according to the 2007 report ‘The Gender of Journalism’, authored by Monika Djerf-Pierre.

In e-mailed and phone interviews from Washington, Project Coordinator Elisa Muñoz (also the director of research of the IWMF) spoke to IPS.

IPS: What are the premises of the research? ELISA MUÑOZ: The IWMF is undertaking the most comprehensive international study ever conducted on the status of women in the news media. The study will sample 500-600 news organisations in some 66 nations (internet-only companies, news magazines and news agencies are not included). A previous study, ‘An Unfinished Story: Gender Patterns in Media Employment’, was published in 1995 by UNESCO. It was written by Margaret Gallagher, who is on our Research Task Force.

Conducted in 43 countries, Gallagher’s study found that in most countries women’s professional representation in the news and other branches of the media ranged from a high of around 30 percent down to the single digits, except in a few Nordic countries, where women were on par with men.

In our own study, we have refined the methodology (e.g., definitions of occupational categories) and evened out geographic representation.

IPS: At what stage are you right now? EM: The Global Report study takes a social science approach in its methodology. The goal is to have a representative sample of nations such that all regions will be represented, and that both the number of nations and the number of news media companies surveyed are large enough to allow findings to be generalised globally.

The unit of analysis is the media company. The variables of concern are gender with respect to occupational status, salary, reporting assignments, opportunities for training and promotion, and other company policies.

The sample of news companies per nation was determined by a laborious process that involved collecting and entering information about each nation’s newspapers, radio and television stations. For this, we used the GMMP (Global Media Monitoring Project) model for determining media density as a guideline, but our particular approach modified this by combining electronic and print companies.

We developed a 12-page, 52-question document. A questionnaire developed by Gender Links’ (a Southern Africa-based organisation committed to equality) was used as a basic model from which we developed a more extensive instrument.

We tried to keep the kind of information similar enough to the Gender Links questionnaire to assure that their data would be comparable to at least 75 percent of the items on the IWMF questionnaire.

IPS: How is this all coordinated? EM: The project’s administration is organised along a decentralised model.

The Principal Investigator, Dr. Carolyn Byerly, developed the questionnaire and the instructional materials for use in data collection. The data collection was accomplished by way of 19 regional coordinators; each oversees a cluster of nations. Their role is to select, hire, train, and supervise researchers; to propose the specific media companies to be surveyed (subject to IWMF approval); to assure that all data are submitted to IWMF on time; and to fulfill a number of related administrative tasks.

The principal investigator has established certain administrative routines that enable coordination and communication to occur on a regular basis.

All data are to be processed, analysed and written up at the IWMF headquarters, under the direction of the principal investigator.

The data is collected from Eastern, Northern, Southern and West Africa, Northern and Southern Latin America, North America, Caribbean. Asia and South Asia, Oceania, Eastern, Western and Nordic Europe, and the Middle East.

We are currently conducting interviews on the ground. Researchers are sending their data as it is collected… We will not have preliminary findings until October.

IPS: In a previous interview with IPS, former IWMF Executive Director Jane Ransom said that although she was hopeful that this report would show “some areas of progress”, she would not be surprised “if the trends show stalled progress in some important areas, too.” Would you concur? EM: I believe that we will find more women in the journalism profession around the world. However, we will likely continue to find that women are underrepresented at higher levels of management.

Excerpt:

By Sabina Zaccaro and Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Jun 19 2009 (IPS)

The promotion of biodiversity in agriculture needs political backing, Emile Frison, Bioversity International Director-General tells IPS in an interview. This kind of biodiversity can provide food security and promote health, he says.

Emile Frison Credit:

IPS: Why is agricultural biodiversity so important? EMILE FRISON: There are about 30,000 edible plant species. Yet just three of these (rice, wheat, maize) provide 60 percent of our calories. Agricultural biodiversity is the foundation for our food, our medicines, and all of the other goods we depend on to live. It has inestimable value socially, economically, scientifically, culturally and even aesthetically. But if this value is not better recognised, agricultural biodiversity is in danger of disappearing.

The loss of agricultural biodiversity is a silent extinction. There is no ‘red list’ for endangered agricultural species. What is at risk is no less than our future food security, the health and wellbeing of all humanity.

IPS: What are you doing to raise public awareness on this? EF: A year ago Bioversity International launched an international awareness campaign, Diversity for Life, with the aim of sharing the benefits of agricultural biodiversity. The campaign will spotlight the Guardians of Diversity, people who have devoted their lives to ensuring that the diversity of plants and animals is conserved.

The seven Guardians we honoured this year have dedicated their lives to slowing the loss of this precious resource in the Mediterranean. The importance of their contribution cannot be overestimated. The Guardians are being honoured not only to celebrate their own personal accomplishments, but also to recognise the thousands of unsung heroes that every day dedicate themselves to protecting and conserving plant and animal diversity.

There are many hundreds of people around the world who have dedicated their lives to using and sharing the wealth of agricultural biodiversity. We hope to recognise a fresh set of Guardians every year.

IPS: What is Bioversity’s overall task? EF: Bioversity International’s aim is to improve the life of rural people across the globe. We try to achieve this goal through scientific research that will help reduce poverty, increase food security, and guarantee productive agriculture and incomes for farmers.

Conserving agricultural biodiversity in gene banks is not enough if we do not also safeguard the knowledge around its use and benefits, and if we don’t work with farmers on the ground searching together for solutions to old and new problems, such as climate change.

For example, we recently launched a research programme to assess how a mixture of rice varieties can be used for reducing pest and diseases in rice cultivation in China. In a pilot study the benefits in terms of farmers’ incomes increased by 40 percent when diversity was correctly used. Now we want to expand that research to see how other farmers in China and elsewhere can make use of biodiversity.

Farmers’ knowledge is central in our research, and their contribution is crucial in solving the problems that agriculture is facing today, in the context of the economic and food prices crisis.

IPS: A recent declaration of the G8 development ministers in view of the G8 meeting in July seems to recognise the importance of agriculture for development. But support to agriculture has fallen from 17 percent of total aid spending in 1980 to less than 3 percent in 2006. Do you think that research in agriculture can be considered good investment for economic development? EF: In fact, this is the first time there is such strong accent on agriculture. There has been a call for action, not just for rhetoric, particularly in agriculture and food security. And a recognition also that the challenge of tackling food security and the problem of nutrition is something that needs to be science based, so that policies can be put in place that will be appropriate.

An increase in investment in agriculture has been made virtually by all the development ministers of the G8 who recognised that we need to look at the longer-term solutions, including through research. And support to public research into agriculture is the most effective investment to promote long- term economic development; it offers a better return on investment than other forms of aid.

We need to look at food security not only in terms of quantity of food but the quality of food, that will have an impact on health outcomes. And that requires diverse diet based on a broad use of local agriculture biodiversity.

Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Sabina Zaccaro and Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Jun 17 2009 (IPS)

How many varieties of date palm or melon exist? And why should we care? IPS spoke to three 'Guardians of Diversity' so named by Bioversity International for their contribution to conservation.

Panagiotis Sainatoudis Credit: Bioversity International

Slimane Bekkay is a farmer in Ghardaia, Algeria. Conservation of date palm diversity has been his mission for a long time, both for scientific and cultural reasons. His lexicon of date palm varieties explains the different terms used in Arabic, Mozabite (an ethnic language in central Algeria) and French in order to provide insight into the role of the date palm in Arabic and Mozabite culture.

Jose Esquinas-Alcazar collected seeds of nearly 400 varieties of melon while a young man in his native Spain. Today, these form the basis of the national melon diversity collection. For 22 years, Esquinas-Alcazar served as secretary of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) commission on genetic resources for food and agriculture; he is now professor of plant production at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and director of studies on hunger and poverty at the University of Córdoba in Spain.

Panagiotis Sainatoudis is the coordinator of Peliti, a non-governmental organisation in Greece that distributes local crop varieties to growers. To date, roughly 50,000 packages of 1,500 varieties of vegetables and cereals have been collected and distributed to farmers around Greece.

IPS: What prompted you to start collecting and tracking plants? SLIMANE BEKKAY: What led me to date palms is their longevity and the importance that the Islamic religion bestows on the date palm. It appeared together with human beings on earth.

JOSE ESQUINAS-ALCAZAR: In the 1970s there was a tremendous amount of melon diversity in Spain. I wanted to prevent this abundance from being lost, together with traditional knowledge. When I started to collect seeds, I found 380 different varieties of melon; nowadays only 10 or 12 of them are available in the markets or cultivated at all.

PANAGIOTIS SAINATOUDIS: In January 1991 a friend asked me if I wanted to buy some seeds that he had brought from abroad. He said they came from a bank of seeds in the U.S. The parcel contained seeds and roots from various plants from all over the world; the most impressive was a variety of maize that was very colourful and was cultivated by Amerindians, a population that had almost disappeared!

The following year, I went home for the marriage of my brother. In a courtyard I saw a kontoroko black corn. I asked the owner, an old lady, for a few seeds. So I got this idea of asking people to share with me seeds from their own varieties. I collected seeds of maize, pumpkins, beans etc…From then on, wherever I went, I asked the local people which seeds they cultivate, and also how to cook and maintain them. In the beginning I did not realise their value. Only after many years I began to see their political, economic, social and cultural dimension.

IPS: What makes dates or melons special? Why should we all worry about their conservation? SB: The date palm's specificity is that this plant is growing in warm places and its production is extremely healthy. Their diversity and conservation is important to us because of the significant number of date varieties and the continuous coming up of new varieties. We are not afraid of its disappearance because there are always new varieties. I think the date palm will only disappear with the Universe.

JES: Natural resources, and agricultural biodiversity in particular, are limited resources that we have inherited as a treasure from our parents and that we must transfer in their entirety to our children, so that they may deal with unforeseeable future environmental changes. Diversity is the basis of adaptation and we need it to meet the unpredictable environmental changes, including climate change. You can select only from diversity, not from uniformity. This is why agricultural diversity is so important.

When I was collecting melons, one of the places I visited was Las Hurdes (in Spain). While waiting for the bus, I met a farmer with a small donkey. I explained to him that I was collecting different melon varieties. He told me that he had a variety that when the rest died, remained alive, and that he could give me some seeds.

We rode on the little donkey for three-and-a-half hours. He gave me some seeds. When we analysed the seeds in the lab we discovered that they were resistant to certain diseases, including some rare ones, which was a big surprise. Nowadays, thanks to those seeds, this resistance has been introduced into many commercial varieties, both in Spain and abroad.

PS: Local varieties are living pieces of our culture, our history, our family. They fill our tables and our lives with colour and perfume, forms and flavours. They resist illnesses, and will continue giving us fruits. We can cut a beautiful red tomato, eat it, and then if we like it, keep its seeds for next year. We determine freely what we will put on our table and in our body. The seeds are food, and who controls the food has an enormous political and economic power. So, whoever keeps his own seeds is self-sufficient and keeps a piece of his freedom.

IPS: We have all heard about how a potato disease was the cause of the Great Famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. But what is the relationship between hunger and nutrition, and biological diversity? SB: Biological diversity allows maintaining an important number of species and varieties, and this can guarantee that we have enough food and prevent famine.

JES: The potato grown throughout Europe was very homogeneous since it derived from the few samples that arrived in Spain from the 'New World'. In Ireland it soon became the basic staple of the country's diet, which leads us to an event that best exemplifies the importance of biodiversity.

When the phytosphora infestans fungus appeared in Europe it destroyed all the potato farms in Ireland and the rest of Europe, causing what became known as the 'European famine'. The famine caused the death in Ireland alone of between 1.5 and two million people. Many millions more had to migrate. This potato disease affected almost half the population.

The solution was then found in Latin America, where they were surprised to find potatoes of all colours: violet, blues, red, orange, yellow, shaped like a corkscrew, cylindrical, oval, etc. In this immense variety a large number of resistances are hidden, among them resistance to phytosphora infestans. Through crossbreeding the resistant plants with European commercial varieties, the resistant genes were introduced and the European problem was solved. Biodiversity is essential for buffering unexpected changes and to prevent future famines.

PS: What is it that saves people when an epidemic strikes? The fact that all humans are not the same. Exactly the same thing can save a plant population: diversity, or what scientists call a "large genetic base".

Modern varieties and hybrids have a limited genetic base. This is dangerous in case of an epidemic. For example, 30 percent of the wheat in the world comes from only one parent and 70 percent is derived from a total of six parents. During the 1970s in the U.S. an epidemic destroyed more than half the production of corn, which was all derived from the same hybrid. The solution was found in a little variety of corn in the region of Chiapas, Southern Mexico. The 'rich' U.S. survived with the help of the 'poor' farmers of Southern Mexico.

Today a great famine in the world could happen because there is a very poor genetic basis, and also because of the lack of genetic material.

IPS: What is the link between culture and biological diversity? SB: Language is a means to study biological diversity as a science and a culture at the same time. The relation is interdependent.

JES: Genetic resources represent the identity of the people. Language is the instrument used for transmitting this identity and the traditional knowledge on the natural world that surrounds us. I am thinking for example of traditional medicines. Altogether, culture, language and genetic resources are the three pillars that define the identity of people.

PS: Where there are minorities there is also increasing biodiversity. The Greek immigrants of the 1960s and 1970s cultivated their own seeds from their villages in their new homelands. Today's refugees come from rural areas and preserve their own seeds, as a living memory of their homeland. Seeds are an essential part of culture and language, customs, cuisine and even clothes. Maintaining agricultural biodiversity is maintaining our historical memory. And this is important because people without history are a tree without roots.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Mario Soares, Mario de Queiroz, and Miren Gutierrez
LISBON, Jun 3 2009 (IPS)

Global house prices are diving further, unemployment in the 16 countries using the euro increased in April to its highest level in almost ten years, and Eurozone Gross Domestic Product is expected to shrink by 1.9 percent during 2009…

Mario Soares Credit: Fundação Mário Soares

Socialist Mario Soares thinks these elections are crucial, and that the socialists of Europe should put up a presidential candidate for the European Commission who can implement their anti-crisis plan.

Soares was the first Premier of democratic Portugal from 1976 to 1978, again from 1983 to 1985, and then President from 1986 to 1996. Even his critics admit that his main accomplishment was to turn public opinion around and to negotiate Portugal's entry into the EU in 1986. Portugal at the time was suspicious of integration into the EU.

Soares wrote recently about the financial crisis and the position of the Socialists of Europe. He responded to IPS in line with some of his analysis.

IPS: What has been the difference of response to the financial crisis between the U.S. and Europe? MARIO SOARES: The current global crisis is the worst since 1929, and will be a prolonged one. But some positive signals are now coming from the U.S., which is focussing its efforts on the real economy.

Barack Obama is saying that we only will overcome this crisis by taking measures that ordinary citizens understand because those measures meet their needs and aspirations, involving social and environmental changes, and also punishment of those who are guilty of greed.

In contrast, the European Union, governed by actors of the past – some of them close to former U.S. president George Bush — has not been able to agree on a coordinated plan to respond to this crisis. This was the final outcome of the London G20 Summit on Apr. 2. It seems most of the European leaders just want to change the minimum possible to keep things as they are.

IPS: The U.N. will soon hold a conference on the world financial and economic crisis. What should the European position be? MS: Europe should present a united front. I always believed in the U.N. for the resolution of major global problems, but without Europe the world will hardly emerge from the global crisis affecting us. Without a concerted anti- crisis strategy, no European country by itself will be capable of overcoming the global crisis, not even the larger one, Germany, and the EU will enter a period of decadence.

The U.S. of Barack Obama has understood this, even though the U.S. has not yet emerged from the crisis. In contrast, the EU, divided, without an assertive leadership and lacking a clear path, is being marginalised, with negative repercussions for all European countries.

IPS: How do you see the Socialists of Europe reacting in the face of the crisis? MS: The Party of European Socialists (PES) has understood the situation, and in a declaration signed by all the 27 (Socialist) European leaders, they pointed out seven priorities to overcome this crisis: stronger and coordinated plans for investment; restoring banks lending to companies and people; safeguarding jobs and creating new ones; fighting poverty and supporting low-income groups who are losing their incomes and houses.

We also need to eliminate bank secrecy and tax havens, where top managers and wealthy people have been hiding their exorbitant profits. We also need to have transparency to avoid speculative financial and commercial transactions.

As the crisis is global and multi-dimensional – not only financial and economic, it also affects energy, the environment and food security – we need to ensure solidarity between countries, paving the way for a Global New Deal and reforming the international financial institutions, which have become obsolete.

These simple ideas were presented in the Declaration of the Party of European Socialists. They concur with the proposals made by the International Trade Unions Confederation to the G20. But although all the European socialist leaders have subscribed to this Declaration, few of them have discussed the ideas with their parties or in the international meetings they attend.

IPS: Why should Europeans care about it? MS: The policies have to change, and the European electors have to understand this clearly. However, European citizens are largely indifferent to the elections in all 27 member states because they have not seen convincing proposals to change and overcome the crisis. In these conditions, why should they vote?

From my viewpoint, only the left is in condition to overcome this crisis, and has concrete and systemic proposals. This is unhappily not the case of the right-wing parties, notably the parties which have abandoned Christian- democracy and have become popular parties, in line with the U.S. Republicans and with Bush, in particular.

IPS: So, if that is the situation, the socialists can present a strong case at the elections… MS: The European Popular Party has appointed Jose Manuel Barroso as candidate to the presidency of the European Commission. Barroso was the host of the Azores Summit, which green-lighted the invasion of Iraq.

However, three leaders and heads of government – Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Gordon Brown and Jose Socrates, heads of government in Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal – have announced that their parties are ready to vote with the European Popular Party to elect Barroso.

I am asking: how is it possible? Because of national politics reasons, because of personal and political agreements? Does this mean that the ideological reasons do not count? This is a situation that means a kind of political suicide for the PES, and which will likely damage the outcome in the European elections.

As socialist, former member of the European Parliament and honorary President of the Socialist International, I think that I should protest and send a wake-up call. This is about the future of Europe, about a new and effective cooperation with the U.S. of Barack Obama, and about defeating a crisis that is hitting billions of human beings.

We should have the courage to be coherent European and internationalist socialists. We should not let the hope of democratic socialism die, refusing to present a candidate from the PES. These candidates exist.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

(Not for publication in Italy.)

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Apr 28 2009 (IPS)

Puerto Rican Juan Melendez spent more than 17 years on death row in a Florida prison for a 1983 murder to which another man had repeatedly confessed – evidence prosecutors withheld. He was only released in 2002. Now a documentary by Luis Rosario Albert tells Melendez's story, the multifaceted circumstances that surrounded it and the human rights struggle in Puerto Rico that followed.

Juan Melendez Credit: Luis Rosario Albert

However, because of Puerto Rico's status as a Commonwealth of the U.S., it is subject to some federal laws, and the U.S. has sought the death penalty on federal charges in a number of cases, including Melendez's. This has been considered by many to be a betrayal of the island's autonomy.

In an e-mail interview, Albert says the "reasons for Juan's release do not appear to have been related in any way to Puerto Rican opposition to the death penalty, although groups such as the Puerto Rican Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and the Comision de Derechos Civiles de Puerto Rico helped promote Juan's story since his release. Juan's story has provided a very effective example for educating the people of Puerto Rico about the death penalty system."

IPS: So far, you have done documentaries illustrating Puerto Rican culture. Why this change in subject? LUIS ROSARIO ALBERT: This case struck me because after being on death row for almost 18 years for a crime he didn't commit, Juan has become a prominent member of the abolition of the death penalty movement in the U.S. The first reason was that his story needed to be documented. I remember that after watching "The Exonerated", the film by Bob Balaban, thinking why we cannot do something to help the cause of this fellow Puerto Rican.

Secondly, I have great respect for a person that after all that time in jail – he could have done other things… But he decided to fight back and help transform his reality by fighting the death penalty. He has a unique ability to tell his story in an especially captivating and dynamic way.

The extent of the injustice, and the remarkable way in which everything had to line up all at the same time in order for Juan to be exonerated is also extraordinary. Had everything not lined up perfectly, he would not be alive today.

His appellate attorney quitting and being replaced by a team of exceptional attorneys, and an investigator; his trial defence attorney becoming a judge which created a conflict of interest and required the case to be removed from the county where he was convicted; the fact that the case fell into the hands of a courageous female judge; the fortuitous rediscovery of the taped confession of the real killer 16 years after Juan had been sentenced to death – all of these factors had to come together – it is extraordinary that they did. And it is shocking to think what would have happened if they did not.

IPS: The U.S. has executed 1,158 people since 1976, and has currently more than 3,000 inmates on death row. What makes Juan Melendez's story special? LRA: I think the length of time Juan was on death row is remarkable in and of itself. Although there have been 131 death row exonerations since 1973, Juan is one of only a few death row exonerees who spent more than 17 years on death row. For a human being to survive for almost 18 years in a 9- by 6-foot prison cell under the psychologically devastating threat of death is extraordinary.

His story shows how a person from a weak socio-economic background can be caught in such a bizarre circumstance. It is not that it can happen to any of us but the fact that it is happening to people with clear economic and social disadvantages. His story is extraordinary among the other over a hundred exonerations already granted. Each of those cases is an exceptional case in itself. If you are an innocent person fighting to be alive and you have spend a big time of your life on death row and one day they tell you that you are free to go, I guess that is shocking.

IPS: Melendez was released in 2002. Why is this documentary still relevant today? LRA: The documentary is still relevant for several reasons. Firstly, beyond the issue of the death penalty, the documentary tells an inspirational story of human resilience, faith, and hope – this aspect of the documentary renders it relevant, irrespective of the date of Juan's release from death row.

With respect to the death penalty issue, the documentary is relevant in terms of its potential for changing public opinion about the death penalty. Not only does the documentary demonstrate the many problems inherent in the death penalty system, including its high risk and inevitability of being imposed on innocent people, its unfair application on the basis of race, and it's almost exclusive application on the poor, but it also demonstrates the tremendous damage that the death penalty inflicts on those involved in the system: the family of the condemned person, the lawyers, even news reporters to some extent. In that sense, the documentary examines the specific problem of the application of the death penalty in Puerto Rico.

Governor [Bill] Richardson who signed the death penalty repeal bill into law in New Mexico on Mar. 18, 2009, watched the documentary shortly before making his decision. He mentioned to Juan Melendez that he was deeply moved by it and in justifying his decision to repeal the death penalty, he stated that his primary concern was the large number of death row inmates who had been released from death row with evidence of innocence.

He also stated that he was troubled by the racism of the system. Both of these issues were squarely and centrally addressed in the documentary. It is expected that the documentary will serve as a very powerful educational tool that will help change public opinion about the death penalty in the United States and will also change the minds of some important policy-makers.

IPS: Again in 2003, the U.S. justice department sought to execute two Puerto Rican men – Joel Rivera Alejandro and Héctor Oscar Acosta Martínez – accused of kidnapping and murder. Do you think Melendez's case set a precedent at any rate? LRA: I think Juan's case certainly should stand as a warning signal in death penalty cases involving other Puerto Rican nationals, particularly, where the victim is white, the jurors are predominantly white and the defendant's witnesses are people of colour. One of the arguments of the documentary is that some people may think that Juan's case is just an exception to the rule and that his case shows that the system works – after all, he didn't get executed. This is an argument for the reform of the death penalty. The administration of justice can be an imperfect activity sometimes and some may argue that the system works towards the reduction of the mistakes.

But when we are dealing with a punishment that cannot be reversed, reducing or minimising the risk of mistakes is not good enough. All mistakes must be eliminated and we know that in any human system, it is not possible to eliminate all errors. Aside from religious and moral convictions, I don't think you can reform the death penalty system. You don't reform a procedure that you know will always be imperfect and could allow the death of an innocent person. That's the primary reason why it's a bad public policy.

IPS: What is Melendez doing now? LRA: Juan lives in New Mexico with his girlfriend who is an attorney and anti-death penalty activist. It is difficult for Juan to hold a regular job because he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and because he travels quite frequently around the U.S. and abroad sharing his story and advocating for abolition of the death penalty. Upon his release, the state of Florida sent Juan on his way with just 100 dollars, a pair of pants and a t-shirt – the same things provided to all released prisoners in Florida. Unlike some other death row exonerees, he received no compensation for the many years he wrongfully spent on Florida's death row. He also received no apology from the prosecutor or the state of Florida.

IPS: What cinematographic language did you choose to tell this difficult story? LRA: I tried to work around the three main geographies. First, Naguabo, the coastal town in Puerto Rico where Juan lived before migrating to the U.S. Second, the Oso Blanco penitentiary facility, now closed, where we recreated some scenes, the time he spent on death row. Thirdly, the city of Albuquerque where he lives now. The openness of Albuquerque's geography and the happiness and colourful imagery of Naguabo's coast are a contrast to the limited and negatively charged environment of death row. These spaces allowed us to present different psychological moods.

In our conversations before the shooting of the documentary, Juan told me that when he was sad he would try to think about good things such as his mother and his town of Naguabo where his mother still lives in, his friends and family in Puerto Rico. From that remark I started to visualise the story according to the visual imagery of each of those spaces.

IPS: Where do you intend to show the documentary, and what response do you expect from the public? LRA: We hope to show the documentary as much as possible in the U.S. at middle and high schools, colleges and faith communities and also at small theatres. The documentary's length of just 49 minutes is especially conducive to showings at these venues. Now we are sending the piece to different film festivals in the U.S. and Europe.

From the beginning we had set a specific goal and that is to produce a piece that is educational in a contemporary and cinematic fashion that can dialogue with young and adult audiences. There is already interest in showing the movie in Canada and Germany, so we believe the documentary will be shown outside the United States as well. We know that international opinion against the death penalty is becoming a more significant factor in the death penalty debate in the U.S.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Mar 18 2009 (IPS)

Denying women access to political and economic power is a "strategic waste", says Saadia Zahidi, co-author of the WEF’s Global Gender Gap (GGG) report in a telephone interview from Geneva.

Saadia Zahidi. Credit: World Economic Forum

IPS: You have participated in the GGG from the beginning, since 2006. Could you highlight an important trend since then?

Saadia Zahidi: If you look at the 115 countries, the majority of them are improving. This is quite a positive feature. Out of the 115 countries covered in 2006, 2007 and 2008, more than 80 percent, including developed and developing countries, have shown an overall improvement. There are few countries, though, 22, that are actually regressing. This is something to worry about.

From the GGG Report · The Philippines (6) and Sri Lanka (12) are the only Asian countries among the top 20 for the third consecutive year. · In Europe, the Nordic countries come out on top; in North America, the U.S. leads the way; in Latin America and the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago is the best performer; in the Middle East and North Africa, Israel holds the top position; in Asia, the Philippines; and in Sub-Saharan Africa, Lesotho holds the highest ranking · Eight European countries are among the 10 highest ranked countries in the world, and 14 are among the top 20. · Moldova holds the second spot on economic participation and opportunity: women?s labour force participation is almost 85% that of men's. · While most Middle East and North Africa region countries continue to perform far below the global average, countries such as Tunisia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Oman, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen have all shown improvement. On the other hand, countries such as Syria, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have deteriorated.

In a backwards calculation since 2001 for 32 countries, we also see a lot of them that made an immense amount of progress, like Turkey, Japan, which have big gender gaps, but improved 7 to 10 percentage points. This can be interpreted as an actual change on the ground.

IPS: How do you explain the regression in 22 countries?

SZ: I cannot definitely say that there is something in common. The countries that have regressed include Germany (11) and Saudi Arabia (128). Those are vastly different countries.

In some countries, the percentage of women in parliament or ministerial positions can change quite fast. It is more disturbing when the economic participation and the access to health and education –which take a long time to change fall.

IPS: Mozambique (18), a low-income country, ranks number one in economic participation of women.

SZ: Basically, what we are trying to do with the report is to show gaps rather than levels of development. One possibility was to create an index that tells whether a country shows low levels of education, for example. And, really, Bangladesh (90) has lower levels of education than Sweden (3). But it is not very helpful to do this type of analysis. However, if you compare the difference in access to education between women and men, it becomes a meaningful comparison for policy makers. We look at the reasons behind the gaps and how equality resources are being accessed regardless of the overall level of resources available.

That is why Mozambique rates number one in economic participation in spite of being a low-income country. Because it performs quite strongly in terms of labour force participation.

IPS: On what factors does access to political power depend?

SZ: All countries show a low level of political empowerment for women. This is one aspect in which most perform very poorly. Even in Norway (1) only half the gap has been closed. And there is a long way to go before this gap is closed.

There are reasons why this gap should be closed. The system benefits from more diversity in policy-making.

A research authored by Esther Duflo from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Rohini Pande from Harvard looked into gender quotas across Indian village councils and whether leadership was predominately in the hands of women or of men. In the first case, they found out that the allocation of local budget was devoted far more to education and health, whereas when the leadership was controlled by men it was directed towards consumers products, defence, cars, which are important but not fundamentally important.

IPS: One of the surprises of the index is The Philippines, which fares extraordinarily well at number six.

SZ: The case too illustrates the point about the report examining the gaps rather than levels. The Philippines do well all around. They have lower levels of education and health for everybody. But whatever education and health available, they are equitably divided among women and men. Their economic empowerment rate ranks at number 8. They have almost closed the gap, with 77 percent economic participation for women. It is good even compared with Iceland (4), with a lower economic participation (73 percent). In terms of political empowerment, they rank fairly well too.

IPS: The report also says that "rich countries have more education and health opportunities for all members of society." Among the ones at the end of the ranking are high-income countries like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states?

SZ: We don’t have an explanation for this. Some people, when they look at how we have broken this up, say it is so because of Islam. But I am not sure we can say that. With the lowest scores we see different countries with different incomes, religions and cultures. In the middle of the list, you have Indonesia (93), which is doing much better than Saudi Arabia (128), for example.

What we can say is that we have to learn from the countries that are doing well. I would rely on data… Kuwait (101) gave women the right to vote only three years ago. Maybe we will see a dramatic improvement in the future. China (57) is doing very well in comparison with other countries, for example. That goes contrary to the assumption that democracy has to do with the gap. We need deeper research to determine that.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Feb 13 2009 (IPS)

Shipping used to be for men. Now women are starting to be seen commanding merchant vessels, oil tankers and cruisers, "manning" ships and operating liner engines.

Sarah Finke Credit: ITF

IPS: The ITF says "millions of women work in the transport industry world-wide". How many of these are in the maritime sector? Sarah Finke: We estimate that there are around 23,000 women seafarers worldwide, representing a low 2 percent of the total workforce, and clustered disproportionately in the ferry and cruise sectors, and in service roles. The total number is slowly increasing, as is women’s representation in the ranks of ships’ officers and masters. But it is an unacceptably slow process, and one that trade unions have to lead and drag forward.

IPS: Which countries ‘produce’ more women seafarers? SF: It largely shadows the situation for men, with the Philippines and Indonesia (the biggest seafaring nations in the world) ranking highest, but also with significant numbers of Eastern Europeans, which reflects that region's history of cruising and cruise fleets.

IPS: In 2005, at a conference in Rio de Janeiro, a group of 40 female seafarers called for greater attention to job prospects for women and discrimination. "Sexual harassment is a reality for many women at sea," says a recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) report. Has anything changed? SF: It will take a new research project to establish an improvement on the ground, but there are hopeful signs. Positive measures on bullying and harassment have been introduced by European ship owners and by unions in the European Transport Workers' Federation, the ITF’s European arm. There has also been real campaigning by our affiliated unions for equality and against violence towards women.

IPS: They also noted that "the flag of convenience system is a barrier to the promotion of gender equality, and that the effects of outsourcing to ever cheaper labour markets has made the situation worse." Why is this connected to equality? SF: Because terms and conditions may be inferior, denying job and promotion opportunities. They are governed by the legislation of the flag state, which may not give any rights at all. Family-friendly policies and measures covering pregnancy and maternity vary widely, along with the right to return to work after having a child.

However, minimum rights in equality and pregnancy are included in ITF approved agreements, which we seek to put in place on FOC (flag of convenience) vessels in order to ensure basic protections for those working on them.

IPS: Could you give an example of the sort of obstacles women encounter? SF: Two examples with names omitted for obvious reasons: A woman cook on an FOC ship was told verbally by the master that it was time for her holidays and she could sign off the ship for six weeks. She had no written contract. Another colleague secretly told her the managing agent had stated that it was not company policy to employ women on board. The ITF intervened on her behalf and got her reinstated in her job.

A stewardess on another FOC cruise ship, who was four months pregnant, was signed off. She was happy about this but unhappy that the company did not want to pay her repatriation expenses. The ITF got the company to pay.

IPS: According to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the estimated number of women at sea in the world remains low, but seafarers’ unions’ female membership is higher in comparison, at around 6 percent… SF: Probably because there are specific issues regarding woman and work – for example sexual harassment, inequality and maternity right – which unions can help with. The figures also reflect a high number of women in the cruise and ferry sector in Northern Europe, where union membership is traditionally higher than in many other areas. For example around 30 percent of the seafaring membership of the Seko Swedish general workers' union (the Swedish Union for Service and Communications Employees) are women: 2,754 out of 7,367.

IPS: According to female seafarers, unions need to give women more voice. What presence do they have at the ITF? SF: The ITF Executive Board has 40 members, of who seven are women. A 30-strong women’s committee advises the Board and provides elected regional and sectional representatives who feed in to all the ITF’s work. An example would be Jaqueline Smith, president of the Norwegian Seafarers’ Union. Nine out of the ITF’s 130 inspectors – who undertake some of the ITF’s most dangerous and difficult work – are women.

IPS: Seafaring is a dangerous profession: accidents happen, ships are hijacked … Do these incidents pose special problems for women? SF: We're not aware of many women having been among the pirated vessels, except, possibly on the Faina (hijacked in Gulf of Aden by Somali pirates last year with 20 Ukrainian, Latvian and Russian sailors on board). There were no reports of special problems. Going back beyond the current wave of attacks, there was the case of Deborah Harrison, a British Numast (the National Union of Marine, Aviation and Shipping Transport Officers, now Nautilus), who was used as a human shield by hijackers in Brazil (in 1998), and was shot and seriously wounded as a result.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Jan 26 2009 (IPS)

NGOs like Dignity International are packing their bags to fly to Belem in Brazil where the World Social Forum (WSF) is taking place this year. The stakes are high.

Aye Aye Win Credit:

Aye Aye has worked for the Council of Europe, an organisation that seeks to develop common principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights. She has coordinated the Global Forum for Poverty Eradication, from which Dignity International originated. She has worked also for the Advocacy and Early Warning Department of the London-based NGO International Alert, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan, and the Development Centre of the Organisation For Economic Cooperation And Development (OECD, a grouping of 30 wealthy nations).

Aye Aye Win spoke with the IPS Editor-in-Chief about the role of the WSF today.

IPS: The WSF is a movement against the “kind of globalisation which is based only on the values of market and profit,” in the words of WSF international committee member Roberto Savio. Do you feel vindicated by the global financial crisis? Aye Aye Win: The financial crisis is a sad proof that globalisation based only on the values of the market is fundamentally flawed. You cannot endlessly go on speculating in the global casino. The bubble cannot endlessly grow. All of them eventually burst, leaving millions destitute, as is the case now. The reckless behaviour of the financiers, and the system that permits it, amount to a crime of unimaginable scale. What angers me in all this is that governments come galloping along to rescue the very financial institutions that have profiteered from the people and whose behaviour has led to the crisis! Having said this, it is also obvious that state intervention is necessary now that chaos has come.

IPS: Do you think this will lead to a different type of capitalism? AAW: After a bit of patchwork here and there through bailout plans and stimulus packages, there is a real risk that things will soon return to business as usual – capitalists return to market worship, start playing again in the global casino and again enter another cycle of speculation. We as social activists have an opportunity now to go back to the drawing board to reconstruct the global economic system to be one based not on greed but one that does reward hard work and innovation, a system built on solidarity and justice. We need to come up with viable alternatives – move beyond ideology and find solutions that work. This will indeed be a challenge. We are so good at ‘opposing’ but we need to become much better at ‘proposing’!

IPS: The WSF meets in January, when its ‘rival’, the WEF convenes in Davos. How far do you think the WSF has imposed issues on the WEF agenda? AAW: Whilst the WSF is really the Mecca for the social activist, very little about the WSF is known outside this circle. On the other hand, the WEF, that enjoys not only access to but also control of the global media, is much better known to the broader public. Whilst recognising the efforts made by charismatic civil society leaders from the WSF to influence our issues at the WEF, I feel that the impact so far has been marginal. Therefore we need to sharpen our ideas and develop viable proposals. If our leaders need good ideas, let them come to us at the WSF, and not go dancing to the corporate tune at the WEF circus in Davos.

IPS: The eighth WSF last year was truly global, with the Global Call for Action (GCAP) inviting organisations from all around the globe to mobilise on Jan. 26. How do you see this wandering meeting evolving? AAW: To get good coverage and make impact you need a combination of interventions acting in concert. So this global mobilisation was great to have; different groups ranging from the most well-known international NGOs all the way to community based organisations doing something on that same day. There are clear opportunities to go beyond your usual conference circuit goers and reach out to the people to organise something at national or local levels and yet have the feeling that you are part of a global initiative. Obviously it cannot work on its own. This needs to be combined with a clear central message that captures the spirit of the WSF.

IPS: Inside the WSF, there are different groups, some advocating a more centralised, coherent approach. Others have criticised it for its attempts to become a central decision-making venue for dissident groups. What is your position? AAW: The WSF is many things to many people including what you have just described. I personally don’t get involved in either the romanticising of the WSF or the politicking within it. I look to the WSF for what it is – a great global space for exchange and solidarity. I also look to the future – when WSF can be practical and effective, be a global leader and opinion shaper – to communicate our messages clearly, and to develop our proposals and to bring about change.

IPS: Dignity International strives to build new generation human rights NGOs aiming at lasting social transformation. What is your role at the WSF? AAW: Dignity’s role at this forum is to support our social movement partners from Africa, Asia, the Americas, to consolidate existing alliances and to make new ones, but above all to sharpen our strategies and work out joint concrete action for the future. We want to strengthen local-global linkages and develop innovative ways of doing local-global campaigning.

IPS: What do you expect from this edition of the WSF? With the conflict in Gaza and the financial crisis, the WSF seems to be the last thing on anyone’s mind… AAW: WSF will certainly come up with strong views on all the prevailing global issues – foremost being the situation in Gaza, and the financial crisis. I expect there will be clear solidarity statements with our brothers and sisters in Gaza, and renewed calls for peace in the Middle East and the realisation of the Palestinian statehood dream. On the financial crisis there will be very strong ‘I told you so’ statements. We need not be smug but now put our heads together to propose what the reformed global financial and economic architecture can actually look like.

IPS: In December, IPS spoke with Sylvia Borren, Co-Chair of the GCAP, about the results of the Doha Financing for Development Conference, but she said that it had been “four days spent agreeing to another expensive U.N. meeting.” What is your opinion? AAW: To be honest I am not sure that we need any additional agreements and yet more inflation of so-called political commitments. We already have very strong human rights standards and the human right of everyone to live life in dignity entrenched in the various national, regional and international human rights instruments. Everything about legal justice, social and economic justice, gender justice and an enabling international order to achieve it all, and the obligations of governments including donor countries is all there.

With these instruments governments not only have a moral obligation but they have a legal obligation to eradicate poverty from our planet. We need to discover the power of human rights and bring it back from oblivion. In an age when our basic human rights are being attacked from all sides, let’s wake up, re-establish the primacy of human rights – take a clear stand that human rights prevail over corporate ‘rights’.

IPS: President Barack Obama has brought a message of hope. What do you expect from the new government in the U.S.? AAW: Once the honeymoon is over, the new administration will be confronted with the fact that there are so many vested interests at play, most notably from powerful corporations. It will feel somewhat daunted by the fact that the structures of discrimination and injustice are so deeply rooted that it isn’t going to be so easy to bring about fundamental change! All through the campaign he has talked the talk, now Obama needs to walk the walk!

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Jan 22 2009 (IPS)

The war of words continues in Gaza, in spite of the ceasefire. Nancy Snow, propaganda expert, talks to IPS about information spin strategies and whether we, the public, have learnt any lessons from Iraq.

Nancy Snow Credit: Nancy Snow

IPS: The Israeli propaganda effort is being directed to justify their attack. The sight of Hamas rockets streaking into Israel has been helpful in this respect. But do you think Israel's effort has achieved anything? NS: Israel's effort seems to be designed to shake the confidence of Hamas. Of course, innocent people are in the way of this power struggle. We don't know yet if Hamas will be emboldened or weakened by the Gaza conflict. We do know that global public opinion is against Israel for its raining of air attacks on a densely populated area. A lot of people died unnecessarily simply because of where they lived.

IPS: On Dec. 28, Israel released a video of a missile attack against what appeared to be a lorry being loaded with rockets. A caption says: "Grad missiles being loaded onto the Hamas vehicle." As of last week, 632,714 people had watched it. However, it turned out that a Gaza resident named Ahmad Abdallah Muhammad Sanur claimed that the truck was his and that he and his workers were moving oxygen cylinders from his workshop. How do you think this case has hampered Israel's propagandistic efforts? NS: If one believes that the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is acting in self-defence and that Hamas is completely responsible for creating the Gaza conflict, then the resident's claim that this truck was his and that they were only moving oxygen cylinders places innocent victims smack in the middle of the propaganda war between Hamas and the IDF. If Sanur's claims are true, naturally it hurts the IDF position that only Hamas is the target of its rockets.

IPS: Has the ban on foreign correspondents "helped"? (The television channels Al-Jazeera and BBC operated there during the attack). The absence of reporters from other major organisations has meant, for example, that Sanur's story has not been as widely told as it probably would have been, or his account subject to examination. How do you think the ban is affecting this war of words? NS: I'm all for the complete access of media to conflict areas. If correspondents are willing to put themselves in harm's way in order to tell the story, completely and truthfully, then they should be allowed in. When a ban takes place, all we can wonder is what is being left out of the story being told? We cannot allow just officials to tell their stories. We need people on the ground, both citizen journalists and foreign correspondents, to complete the landscape picture.

IPS: Only last week, if you typed "Gaza" in the YouTube search engine, you would get 47,200 hits. Some of the titles included "Mortar Bombs Shot from U.N. School in Gaza" (from Oct 29, 2007); "Hamas terrorists kill innocent Palestinian in Gaza"; and "White phosphorus shells on Gaza." Some of them come from established TV channels like Al-Jazeera, BBC or CBS. Others come from unclear sources. We have seen pictures of the conflict in Lebanon in 2006 and videos of the Jabalya refugee camp from September 2005 passed off as images of the current conflict in Gaza too. An apparently conclusive piece of evidence can turn into something doubtful. How can the reader know that what he or she is seeing is true or an honest rendition of the truth? NS: I wouldn't entirely trust Youtube for the whole story. We often say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but if that picture has been doctored of if the caption is inaccurate, then the picture is utterly worthless. I would tell people to utilise a wide spectrum of sources, both print, online, and video, to dig deeper. Compare and contrast media coverage, for instance CNN versus Al-Jazeera. A lot of the story is being left out or told from a biased perspective. We're all biased; no one is without a slanted perspective, but we can try to overcome our worse biases by constantly questioning the story, its conclusions and the sources used. Always ask yourself, what is being left out on the cutting room floor?

IPS: In an interview with IPS in 2004, you said that, once the masses have chosen sides, "propaganda is used to reinforce existing attitudes more than it is used to change attitudes". Is that what is happening here? NS: Yes, this is still the case. Propaganda is generally ill-suited to completely change opinions from one side to another. What it can be more effective at is challenging a prevailing assumption among those who aren't yet fully committed to one side or another. Also, the best propaganda, like the best persuasion, is that which is subtle and designed to make one believe that the conclusion comes from oneself and not an outside sponsor.

IPS: In the same interview with IPS, you said about the invasion of Iraq that the propaganda surrounding it that it was more "about not seeing images. People in the U.S. didn't see the same war as people outside the U.S. or as did viewers of Al-Jazeera." What about Gaza now? Are we seeing the same war? NS: Absolutely not. Just the other day, my colleague, Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of Middle East studies here at Syracuse University, commented on how different the media coverage of the Gaza conflict was between CNN and Al-Jazeera English. He said that just five minutes of watching convinced him that the media are setting the agenda and creating different wars through their distinct coverage. CNN was much more pro-Israeli and pro-official sources while Al-Jazeera English gave voice to the people on the ground.

IPS: You also said that with Iraq, the U.S. public "succumbed more to the stupid propaganda tricks than did the rest of the world". Are they succumbing to Israeli propaganda now? Has the public learnt any lessons from Iraq? NS: I'm not sure if we learned anything from Iraq. It's still too soon. We're in the midst of saying goodbye to a most unpopular war president whose favourability is at an all-time low of 22 percent. I think most of us don't know whose propaganda is more credible.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez and Sylvia Borren
ROME, Dec 4 2008 (IPS)

The Doha Financing for Development Conference is over and many are now wondering how it went and what really happened. Sylvia Borren, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), was there.

Sylvia Borren Credit: Sabina Zaccaro/IPS

IPS: What was civil society’s role in this process? SB: Well, the two day pre-conference of the civil society was rather good. We had enough expertise in our networks and 250 people attending to have well-researched argumentation in the room. And we put together a solid civil society paper of improvements and additions on all issues for our governmental delegations.

The official U.N. meeting opened against the horrific backdrop of the Mumbai attacks with blood and violence on our TV screens. It proved that no ‘war on terrorism’, masculine competition and a ‘winner takes all’ mentality can stop terrorist or violence.

A press conference gave us the opportunity to hand over our input to the president of the General Assembly (Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann), who gave an impassioned speech about the urgency of putting need above greed, and changing paradigms in our world. He spoke of our input in his opening speech to the General Assembly the next day where Gemma Adaba from ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) was our strong civil society voice, high on the five-minute speakers list.

IPS: What were the governments’ contributions? SB: French President (Nicolas) Sarkozy, holding the EU presidency, made a strong plea for urgent solutions, especially for Africa. But for me he was too ‘pro’ his own G20 initiatives and rather ‘divide and rule’ towards the G77 as well as the EU, in stressing the French bond with Africa. His proud claims about 60 percent of official development aid coming from Europe and the extra 1 billion euro for the food crises made me snort cynically…

Yes, 60 percent of about 100 billion euro. And the French are still not near reaching their promised 0.7 percent of GNI (Gross National Income) for aid or supporting unfair trade practices. He didn’t mention the 260 billion euro which the EU just approved for stimulating the economies of Europe itself: encouraging consumerism in order to keep production going. Save the car industry, who cares about climate change.

The U.S. delegation was the same, they kept boasting about being the biggest bilateral aid donor, and having doubled that in the last eight years. As it was only 0.16 percent of their GNI in 2007, and they have never committed to the 0.7 percent – they too were walking on thin ice. After all twice (nearly) zero remains (nearly) zero.

Strong speeches came from the two special envoys to this conference: the development minister from Germany, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeuland, and the finance minister from South Africa, Trevor Manuel.

IPS: How did the negotiations go? SB: The six roundtables started badly, with civil society invited but given virtually no airtime. Only on the last day the roundtable on systemic issues allowed some real input and dialogue.

The side events suffered from having too many speakers, but were very good. My favourite was on Decent Work, chaired by Mary Robinson, with a great lineup of speakers: ambassadors from Norway and Bangladesh, multilateral institutions, UNCTAD and more civil society input. We also had a great dinner with UNIFEM – arguing about needing a new U.N. women’s conference in 2010… It needs to be about designing and implementing transformational gender strategies, as well as exchanging notes on stopping violence and making more inroads with quotas and gender mainstreaming.

Contact with official negotiations was mostly bad news. The paragraphs on climate change and tax evasion were tricky, some found there to be an overdose on gender… But the main fight was about where the follow-up process was to be placed. There were strong attempts from the (George W.) Bush administration on its last legs to ensure that the responsibility for redesigning the financial architecture of the world stayed with the Bretton Woods institutions, and in the hands of the G20.

IPS: But the heads of the IMF and the World Bank didn’t even show up… SB: It illustrates their lack of respect for the U.N. and the developing countries. Their standard recipe is cutting down on governmental spending and keeping education, health and wage bills low, keeping the next generation stupid and poor. The IMF now wants to sell its gold to pay its oversized staff, but would not consider that to solve the food crisis or to invest in local agriculture. Giving this responsibility to the IMF for me it is like letting a wife-beater back into the house.

Sharing power in a world clamouring for inclusive democracy at the U.N. level is obviously not easy for the rich countries. But it is exactly the power of money, rather than putting people and values at the centre, which has got the world in this mess – what I call a moral crisis.

IPS: So, what was the decision on the follow-up? SB: The G77 wants to be involved in the follow-up (of the Doha conference), for which this process must stay in the hands of the General Assembly of 192 countries. Europe first backed the G77 completely, but threatened not to hold a steady line, not to challenge the U.S. enough, and started to favour some developing countries above others.

I heard that this is the usual U.N. pattern: First, lots of agreement, just a few paragraphs to solve. Europe starts supporting the developing countries. Then, the U.S. goes for the lowest common denominator, threatens a veto and a failed conference. That forces compromises in which Europe gives in too much. And finally a rather weak result, which the global south is not very happy with.

We as civil society got so frustrated on the second day that we staged a quick action with two ballot boxes, asking delegates what they voted for: ‘democratic people centred development’ or ‘Bush & Co’. We got quite some attention – and we heard later that this had quite an impact in isolating the U.S.

IPS: What were the concrete outcomes? SB: The end result of four days was back to the original text: ‘The U.N. will hold a conference at the highest level on the world financial and economic crisis and its impact on development’. On content the outcome document is not too bad, reaffirmation of Monterrey’s agreement to eradicate poverty, no slippage on the volume of aid, better gender and decent work language, a little advance on stopping tax leakages and acting on climate change.

But many issues were referred to the next conference – with a different and hopefully more democratic U.S. player at the table.

IPS: So, was it a victory for civil society? SB: But do we have time for these kinds of power battles? It took most of the U.N. energy during the four days, which should have been spent on the real issues, the urgent crises, and on working towards solutions with the corporate sector and civil society. In this sense it was very much ‘business as usual’- although every speaker claimed it was not.

What a result – four days spent agreeing to another expensive U.N. meeting.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Nov 19 2008 (IPS)

The oil tanker Sirius Star may be the largest ship to have been hijacked so far, but piracy is far from rare. In all 251 such incidents worldwide have been reported this year to the Piracy Reporting Centre (PRC) of the International Maritime Bureau.

For ship crew, sailing can often be a matter of life and death.

In the first six months of 2008, 71 vessels were boarded, 12 vessels were hijacked, and 11 vessels were fired upon. A total of 190 crew were taken hostage. Seven were killed, and another seven are missing, presumed dead, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB). The IMB is a non-profit organisation established in 1981 as a focal point in the fight against maritime crimes and malpractices.

"The overall number (of incidents) is slightly higher than last year…but in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia there has been an increase of hijacking incidents with hostages, of incidents with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, of fire aboard the ships. The level of violence associated is a lot higher," says IMB Manager Cyrus Mody in a telephone interview from London.

Sailors have been advised by Commercial Crime Services (CCS), the anti-crime arm of the IMB's International Chamber of Commerce, to "be extra cautious and to take necessary precautionary measures" around Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, the Malacca Straits, the Philippines, the Singapore Straits, Lagos and the Bonny River (Nigeria), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, Somalian waters, Brazil, Peru and the Arabian Sea. "But the waters around Somalia, including further south off Kenya, are very high risk areas, the most dangerous," says Mody.

"Somali-based piracy in and beyond the Gulf of Aden is the most dangerous at the moment, with significant numbers of attacks on oil workers off Nigeria also taking place, and similar incidents happening off Indonesia. And to that you also have to add the less well publicised acts of theft by gangs in ports and inshore waters on several continents and in many nations," says David Cockroft, general secretary of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), in an emailed interview from London. The ITF includes 654 unions representing about 4.5 million transport workers in 148 countries.

Although a very old trade, piracy grabbed headlines around the globe when the 'very large crude carrier' (VLCC) Sirius Star – owned by Vela International Marine, a subsidiary of the company Saudi Aramco, was captured by Somali pirates this week. The ship was carrying two million barrels of oil (a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily production), worth 100 million dollars. Its crew of 25 includes 19 Filipinos, two British nationals, two Poles, a Croatian and a Saudi.

The pirates have captured other ships, including a cargo ship with grain from Hong Kong, with 25 sailors, and a fishing vessel with a crew of 12 registered in Kiribati, a tiny island nation in the Pacific. Hijackers in the area now hold dozens of vessels, the IMB says. The waters between Somalia and Yemen are a major artery used by nearly 20,000 vessels a year heading to and from the Suez Canal.

"The pirates do not allow outsiders to visit the crews they kidnap," says Cockroft. "From those released we know that conditions vary from months of boredom and being penned up to gross maltreatment and, for a few, death."

Very little is known about the pirates. "Between 1,000 and 1,200 people are associated with them," says Mody. "They are probably different groups loosely connected with each other."

Somali pirates, he says, "are showing a growing confidence in their attacks, they are organising themselves a lot better because of their previous successes. So now they able to attack such a big vessel and hold it for ransom. They have the capacity to sustain themselves out at sea for a number of days. Attacks are happening further away from the land."

According to Mody, piracy off Somalia increased in 2007 after Ethiopian forces backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) troops to oust the Islamic Courts in December 2006.

Somalia has experienced constant conflict since the collapse of Mohammed Siad Barre's regime in 1991. An interim government called the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was formed in 2001, with a five-year mandate. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was chosen president. But not all Somali factions accepted the government.

Its authority was put into question in 2006 after Islamists gained control of much of the South. With the military support of Ethiopia, forces loyal to the TFG ousted the Islamist militia at the end of 2006. Since then, Al-Shabab and other Islamist insurgents have been fighting back.

In an overview published by the CCS, Mody says lawlessness in Somalia has given pirates free rein without any sort of deterrence from the law, suggesting that the problem should be solved inland.

"There appears to be steady growth in the numbers of pirates coming from Somalia as local warlords see their neighbours' power and influence growing after expanding into this area of criminal activity," says Cockroft. "So you now have not just criminals working close to the coast in fast inflatables, but fishing boats getting into piracy as freelances, and now organised gangs working far out in international waters using bigger fishing vessels and mother ships."

The first essential step in the response chain is the PRC, a 24-hour centre that receives and processes reports of attacks from around the world. This enables the IMB to identify high-risk areas and alert the governments concerned.

In response to the dangers around Somalia, the navies of several countries have dispatched warships to the region to safeguard the trade route.

"We have to understand that the traditional role of the navy always was to safeguard trade routes. When maritime trade started, the navies were created to accompany and safeguard it. Today, again, it is the responsibility of the navies," says Mody.

"The IMB does not advocate carrying weapons on board vessels for a number of reasons," he says. If a ship owner requires more security, "it is ok to hire the service of special security teams as long as there is no use of weapons on the ship. Armed guards aboard ships are not appropriate, especially if there is dangerous cargo. If there are guns on board, the pirates will fire even more, and produce a disaster."

Commerce at sea is a complicated business. A ship may belong to a Japanese company, but carry a Panamanian flag. The Sirius Star is a Liberian flagged vessel. That raises the question whose responsibility it is to protect it. "The legal implications are too much," says Mody.

The answer to this in the Gulf of Aden area is a stable Somalia, "but that is not likely to happen any day soon," says Cockroft. "The realistic solution is for the navies currently in the area to safeguard World Food Programme supplies to Somalia or to patrol a corridor through the Gulf of Aden, to actually get in and intercept and arrest the criminals. So far many of the naval vessels are taking a static role – probably under instruction from their governments, who don't want messy legal cases. They react only when they stumble across an attack in progress, and some have then kindly let the pirates go.

"This is clearly no answer to a snowballing problem that is endangering seafarers' lives and the world's trade. Only scooping up the easily tracked mother ships and engaging the smaller vessels which are happily sailing around packed with arms and looking for victims will help," says Cockroft.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Oct 16 2008 (IPS)

“Our voices must reach the ears of the leaders who govern us,” says Marina Ponti, describing this year’s campaign by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP).

Referring to the Stand Up and Take Action campaign, Ponti, the United Nations Millennium Campaign Europe director, says that “standing up is a sign of solidarity. By doing so, we are saying that we cannot remain seated in the face of poverty in the world.”

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by the international community in 2000 to set specific targets for reducing poverty and inequality in the world.

“Last year, we strengthened the concept by adding ‘Speak Out’, because our voices had to reach the ears of our leaders. Now it is no longer enough to stand up and shout; we have to demonstrate our efforts by means of concrete actions,” she added.

The number of people who have stood up for each edition of Stand Up has grown every year. In 2006 an estimated 23.5 million people took part in the campaign’s events around the world, setting a Guinness World Record. But last year, the total reached 43.7 million people.

This year’s aim is for 67 million people around the world to stand up and call on their governments to put an end to poverty and inequality, in the activities scheduled for Oct. 17 (the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty) through Oct. 19.

“We are very optimistic,” Ponti told IPS. “Reaching that number of people would be something that governments won’t be able to ignore. It would be proof that people’s consciousness has been raised with respect to this serious problem. I am sure that citizens are much more aware of the problem of poverty than their governments are.”

Italy will be one of the “hot spots” for this weekend’s GCAP activities, said Ponti.

In this southern European country of 60 million, where 7.5 million people were poor in 2007 according to the National Statistics Institute, 756,000 people took part in the events organised in last year’s campaign.

“The success of ‘Stand Up’ was due to the fact that it was organised simultaneously with, and was incorporated into, the Perugia to Assisi Peace March. We also owe the success to organisations that are active at a local and national level,” said Ponti, who is Italian.

According to Sergio Marelli, president of Italy’s association of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), “the Italian coalition is very important within GCAP. But the most important thing is the internal structure of the movement, which is made up of more than 70 NGOs, trade unions, social organisations and other associations. This presence gives us strength at the international level.”

The Stand Up protest in Italy will be focused on the government’s cuts in international development aid. Ponti noted that “Italy announced cuts in development aid long before the financial crisis broke out. Given that it is one of the smallest European providers of development aid, we are calling for more vigorous involvement, because a three-year cut sends out a very negative political message.”

For that reason, the Italian organisers of the campaign are urging people to protest decree-law 112, passed in June, which reduced Italy’s aid to developing countries by 170 million euros (232 million dollars) a year for the 2009-2011 period.

The decree law actually bypassed the 1987 law on Italian aid to developing countries, which establishes that the amount of aid must be set every three years, when the budget is approved.

According to the web site of the Foreign Ministry, which handles the country’s official development aid, the amount set for this year was one billion dollars.

But regardless of how many people make their voices heard this year, it is not clear what the concrete results will be.

Ponti admitted that “the situation is especially worrisome in view of the fact that next year Italy will preside over the G8 (the eight most powerful countries). So many cuts in development aid hurts its credibility.”

The G8 is made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

In Marelli’s view, the attitude of governments towards the question of development aid should not be analysed at a global level, but in terms of each country’s individual commitment and stance.

“States are increasingly divided between those that hide behind the justification of the difficult economic situation and those that, by contrast, continue to provide aid,” he told IPS.

“There are countries, like France and Spain, which have increased their development aid, and others, like Germany and Britain, which have maintained their levels. The Nordic countries have even reached 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP),” the commitment assumed decades ago by the world’s wealthy nations.

“But Italy has drastically reduced its aid, and projections for the future are bad. Development aid in proportion to GDP will drop from 0.2 to 0.1 percent,” he added.

In Marelli’s view, “the current economic situation is not sufficient justification to reduce development aid. The government must understand once and for all that investment in the fight against poverty is a safe investment, which supports more rational and orderly economic development.”

“The duty of citizens is to exercise oversight and to monitor whether the government’s decision is in line with the country’s political will,” said Ponti. “We demand that the state comply with its commitments, and we call on people to express their dissent.”

“Our criticism goes beyond whatever party is in power or the political stripes of the parties. Italians are a united people and very sensitive to these questions and willing to mobilise against whatever government is in power at the time,” said Marelli.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Jun 9 2008 (IPS)

"We should not be all that surprised that we are stalled," says Jane Ransom, executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF), referring to the absence of women leaders in media organisations.

Two journalists at the recent FAO summit in Rome. Only one-third of the journalists working in Italian newsrooms are women. Credit: Sabina Zaccaro/IPS

According to the report "Women Make the News 2008", published by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, "Progress of women journalists' careers is still hampered by lingering stereotypes and subtle discrimination. Women journalists continue to face substantial obstacles to full participation in the newsroom – particularly in terms of management opportunities."

This "patriarchal ideology" seems ubiquitous and culture-blind in the media sectors of many countries.

Editor of South Africa's Mail & Guardian, Ferial Haffajee, says that a 2006 "Glass Ceiling Study" published by the National Editors Forum and the NGO Genderlinks found that "the larger media contingent in South Africa lags behind, that the number of women in senior positions is not near equality, and that women felt themselves to still inhabit patriarchal workplaces."

It seems that women's access to universities and newsrooms is more or less equal, but at some point, their progress stops. Do women "opt out" or are they "pushed out"?

"Women are pushed out because of unfriendly, child-unfriendly working hours," says Haffajee. "Owners haven't created crèches or made job arrangements which allow women to thrive and climb. Journalism is a hard slog. Stories happen at inconvenient times, deadline is way beyond normal societal hours, maternity leave provisions are poor. The lack of paid maternity leave, and the unsociable hours of journalism really emerged as huge push-factors."

Ransom concurs. "My observation is that women in the news media have some extra special challenges," she told IPS. "Compared to women in some other key professions, such as law and finance, I think women journalists receive less institutional support addressing career advancement, work-life balance, and skills training."

"(The information) is fragmentary and comparisons are difficult. But the overall picture painted by the studies we are aware of is troubling, with women's professional marginalisation a strong thread running through the findings in both the developing and developed countries," she adds.

"We hear a lot about this from women journalists throughout the world. A key point we hear is that news organisations are not very family friendly," Ransom says. "Women journalists feel forced to choose between work and family. For example, the IWMF held a leadership institute for women journalists from the former Soviet republics just last month. The participants were clear that you can't move up in the news media if you have children."

Nevertheless, Haffajee points out that there has been a wave of appointments of women editors across Africa, and some reason for optimism.

At the Mail & Guardian, she says, "The visage of the editor had always been male… The political context of my country assisted enormously: the ANC (African National Congress) has made a mission of non-sexism. It is a cornerstone of our Constitution and the ruling party has pushed hard for women to take their places in politics and in the private sector… So, that context allowed the net to be widened when my predecessor Mondli Makhanya left."

"Since my appointment, several women have become editors, like Phyllicia Oppelt at the Daily Dispatch; Zingisa Mkhuma at the Pretoria News; Lizeka Mda as deputy at the City Press. Women run radio stations. Debra Patta is editor-in-chief of the biggest private television station," Haffajee says. "I have met some phenomenal women who manage their own agencies or run their own newspapers like Pat Mwase and Zarina Geloo in Zambia, Rosemary Okello in Kenya, along with Lucy Oriang."

Enough? Hard to say.

IWMF is in the planning stages of a global report on women in the media. But Ransom remains sceptical. "I am hopeful that we'll find some areas of progress that we can build upon… (But) I would not be surprised if the trends show stalled progress in some important areas, too," she concludes.

*This is the second of a two-part report on women in media, written in cooperation with Aldo Ciummo in Rome. Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Jun 6 2008 (IPS)

Observe any summit picture – you won't find many women. The mystery of female underrepresentation in the echelons of power persists: after so many decades of the feminist movement, why are women at the helm scarce? A look at the media sector may provide some answers.

Heavy duty. Women are often the face, but rarely the boss behind the news. Credit: Sabina Zaccaro/IPS

Media organisations are the gatekeepers of much of what is known in the public sphere, while journalistic stories contribute to perpetuating stereotypes, or changing them. It is quite revealing, then, to find out who is in the kitchen cooking the news.

"The influence of women in journalism is one of the most central problem areas in feminist media research," acknowledges a recent report entitled "The Gender of Journalism", authored by researcher Monika Djerf-Pierre.

It is difficult to draw global conclusions about the role of women in media organisations, since studies are largely focused on specific countries, and deal mainly with western women or with how women are portrayed in stories as sources or topics. So let's have a look at some examples, even if fragmented.

Djerf-Pierre's study shows that even in a female-friendly nation such as Sweden, "journalism as a field has remained male-dominated". (Sweden ranks number one – or the country with the narrowest disparity – in the Global Gender Gap [GGG] published by the World Economic Forum).

A period of tokenism was followed by the upsurge of a critical mass of women who entered the newsrooms in the last 25 years. Today, almost half of Swedish journalists are women, she says in the study. However, three out of four leaders in the media industry are men.

Only in two sectors, public broadcasting and magazines, do women fill more than 40 percent of leadership positions. Djerf-Pierre explains that a general pattern – she calls it "gender logic" – persists: men typically cover the public sphere of politics, business, and power, speaking to male sources and assuming the mantle of objectivity; women tend to cover the private sphere, drawing on female sources and writing in a more intimate style.

"The main finding is that status, prestige and power have been associated with conceptions of masculinity and these conceptions, in turn, have been associated to the beliefs that underpin the field – the image of the journalistic mission," says Djerf-Pierre.

According to a survey published in 2005 mentioned in her report, "many women journalists… feel that women are at a disadvantage when stories are assigned, but say at the same time that gender has no importance with respect to how a desk chief performs his or her job."

Similar patterns emerge in the U.S. (GGG rank 31), which is in a worse position regarding equality.

"Women have reached the proverbial glass ceiling in the media," proclaims the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) in its 2006-2007 report.

A study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2006 showed that the number of women executives has stagnated in this sector. "The percentage of women in daily newsrooms increased slightly to 37.7 percent… 64.5 percent of all supervisors are men. They are also 58.5 percent of all copy editors, 60.3 percent of reporters and 72.6 percent of photographers," says the study.

"Part of the reason could be that women are frustrated with their progress. A 2002 study by the American Press Institute and the Pew Centre for Civic Journalism documented a brain drain among women who didn't anticipate moving up in their organisations and thought they might leave journalism," says the IWMF report.

The group Media Report to Women, a provider of information about how media depicts women, cites a 2006 study by the Atlantic, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, which found a 3 to1 ratio of male to female bylines.

And the American Journalist Survey, released in 2003 by Indiana University, showed that female journalists' median salary in 2001 was about 81 percent of men's salary of 46,758 dollars. The wage gap widened as journalists grew older.

The situation is analogous to other places. "Our network members report common types of sexist discrimination, such as wage inequality and unequal opportunity in reporting assignments" in different newsrooms around the world, IWMF Executive Director Jane Ransom told IPS.

In Spain (GGG rank 10), there are 1.22 women to each man at university, but in terms of leading roles, women are far from achieving equality, "even in the most 'feminised' sectors (of culture), such as literature," says a report about women and culture published recently by El Pais newspaper.

"In the media, in spite of the fact that 46 percent of journalists are female, women take up only 24 percent of managing positions," according to the paper, which quotes the Annual Report on the Journalistic Profession 2006.

The writer Laura Freixas attributes this gap to what she calls the "patriarchal ideology".

"Female presence among cultural agents is very marginal. How is this marginalisation perpetuated, when faculties are mainly female? Let's have a look at an example: an article about biography as a genre, published by a magazine (Letras Libres, January 2008). The text contains 60 names. Only two are feminine. Were there no female biographers or biographied in history? If there were, weren't they good enough for inclusion? And if they were, why weren't they included?"

"The important thing is not the answer to these questions, but that the author didn't even wonder why…," she concludes. "The absence of women among culture creators produces only contents that legitimise the absence of women [as subjects] and vice versa."

It is not enough that women flood universities, if the "patriarchal ideology" not only distorts our perceptions but also acts upon reality, argues Freixas.

There are even comparatively more women at university in Italy than in Spain, 1.35 per each man, according to the GGG report. However, women were only one-third of the journalists working in Italian newsrooms in 2006, and the situation hasn't changed much since 2002, researcher Marina Cosi, who works for the Italian National Press Federation (known as FNSI), told IPS.

The daily papers were in the worst position, with only 27 percent female journalists, while news agencies employ more women (35 percent). Women make up 37 percent of the journalists in national television, and 38 percent of spokespersons in public institutions.

There is no information, though, about how many of these women are top editors, directors, publishers and media owners. IPS approached Stampa Romana, a national association of registered journalists, and women's organisations, without success.

*This is the first of a two-part report on women in media, written in cooperation with Aldo Ciummo in Rome. Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.

Excerpt:

By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, May 27 2008 (IPS)

The room is packed, the film ends with pounding music, and the word “Gomorra” is shown in an uncomfortable fuchsia over black. The audience applauds and leaves quietly while the music continues to hammer home the message.

A scene from "Gomorra". Credit:

“We’ve known this to be true already,” said Eliana Villa, as she left the theatre. “But this movie has showed us the reality in an unprocessed, detailed way.”

“It is impossible to be optimistic, but we need to fight this situation,” added audience member Lidia Marzoli.

The publication of the book in 2006 was followed by death threats against its author, Roberto Saviano, who relates the first-person account of a young man learning the ropes of illegal toxic waste disposal.

“I am constantly escorted by police, I have to move all the time… I don’t lead a normal life anymore,” Aviano told the daily La Repubblica last year.

From underworld warfare to the Camorra’s control of the building industry, arms and drug trafficking, haute couture manufacturing, and even the handling of toxic waste, Saviano depicts a shocking portrait of a crime syndicate that has killed 3,600 people in the last 30 years, according to different accounts, including that of former prosecutor Gen. Pier Luigi Vigna.

Camorra is a criminal organisation that operates in the region of Campania and the city of Naples. Compared to its counterparts elsewhere in Italy – for example, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria or the Sicilian Cosa Nostra’s pyramidal structure – it has become more involved in piracy and is made up of many clans that often fight each other.

A clash between the Misso and the Secondigliano clans in 2006, for example, left 15 people dead and many injured.

“Gomorra” has been released in a country obsessed by illegal immigration, neck-deep in economic stagnation and political decline. Italy’s economy grew at an anaemic 0.4 percent in the first quarter of the year; Alitalia, the national airline, is debt-laden and losing a million dollars a day; and Naples is a city whose streets are engulfed by uncollected and untreated garbage, another mafia-related problem.

The Camorra transports refuse from northern Europe at discount prices and dumps it illegally around Naples, a problem shown in detail in “Gomorra”. But it also sabotages the municipal garbage trucks paid for by Neapolitan taxpayers in order to transport the local rubbish itself, at a profit. The garbage company gave up doing its job before Christmas and the rubbish started to pile up.

In Naples there is a sense of collective dread. Only a few days ago, a supposed attempted abduction of a child by a young gypsy woman prompted vigilante attacks on camps, one of which was set on fire after its inhabitants were removed by the authorities.

“The book depicts really well the cultural breeding ground in Naples suburbs; it gives the reader a deep understanding of the psychological situation of the people living here,” “Don” Tonino Pugliese, an activist priest living in Naples, told IPS in a telephone interview.

“It also gives a new perspective of the Camorra, a perspective removed from old images. It talks about an organisation with national and international businesses, with a military arm controlling this southern region,” he added.

Pugliese works with “Libera Antimafia”, an association that works with children and tries to teach a culture of legality, solidarity and participation, in his words.

“I am not able to imagine its immediate effects, but ‘Gomorra’ has become a necessary reference in any analysis about Naples’s problems,” he concluded.

The filmmaker, Matteo Garrone, decided to turn the book into a movie, choosing to focus on five characters whose paths crossed with the Camorra. He shot it secretly in Naples, mostly with amateur actors, in poor neighbourhoods, including the Camorra stronghold of Scampia.

“It’s an apocalyptic, hopeless film,” Garrone told the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera. “Don’t think of it as a classic expose film pitting good against evil…because in reality things are more complicated and the boundaries are less clear.”

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.

Excerpt: