Brian Atwood Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS

By Sanjay Suri and - -
LONDON, Nov 22 2011 (IPS)

For a start, stop calling it “aid”, Brian Atwood, chair of the Development Assistance Committee at the OECD, tells IPS.

Brian Atwood Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS

Signs are that the Busan summit will take agreements on development cooperation forward substantially, Atwood says in an email interview. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is leading the fourth high-level forum on aid effectiveness taking place in Busan, South Korea, Nov. 29-Dec. 1, says that at a time of particular economic difficulties, agreements reached at Busan would be vital.

Following is the text of the interview:

Q: What is the best-case scenario that can realistically emerge at Busan? A: We will improve global cooperation and local coordination, reaffirm commitments made in Paris and Accra and rededicate the development community to achieving the MDGs. We will state that north-south and south-south cooperation are complementary and will commit to working together, including in triangular efforts.

Q: What might be the worst-case scenario, and what would be its implications? A: That Busan becomes a finger pointing exercise rather than an effort to overcome political obstacles to progress. Thus far, there is no indication of that.

Q: What does the Paris sherpas meet tell us? A: This represents a real negotiation over differences of interest and perspective, but it has been infected by a spirit of accommodation.

Q: Is language a problem: and so is the word ‘aid’ itself a problem, in that it suggests a giving that implies patronage and loss to the ‘donor’? A: We hope that Busan will eliminate words like “aid” and “donor” and “recipient.” However, the forum is called “aid effectiveness.” The word is used in the outcome text as a synonym for Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) at a time when developing partners are increasingly concerned that ODA levels might go down. So “aid” remains for now, but is hopefully to be replaced by “development cooperation.”

Q: The idea that aid is not a loss but is for the greater good, including one’s national own, is becoming a bit more current. Are there signs that governments are buying the argument? A: Never has the need for development been discussed at such high levels of government, including the G-20 and G-8. The attention being paid to Busan, versus Paris and Accra, is phenomenal. Attending will be the U.N. secretary-general, the U.S. secretary of state, 110 ministers, 30 foreign ministers and a half a dozen heads of state.

Q: Could such an idea be interpreted to take us back to the practice of heavily tied aid that some countries at least have been stepping away from? A: Around 80 percent of tied aid has been eliminated and I see no effort to turn the clock back on previous commitments. The last 20 percent is the most difficult because it involves popular programmes like food aid, scholarships, civil society organisations from donor countries and technical cooperation. However, I believe we will continue to make progress.

Q: Is there a distinction to be made between ‘evolved’ self-interest and narrow self-interest? Can politicians be persuaded to see that difference? A: We have a self-interest in bringing people out of poverty. That is a long-term endeavour and in that sense it is not ‘narrow,’ rather it requires an enlightened view. I believe that despite the economic pressures, we have acquired that view and I believe that Busan will demonstrate that.

Q: In the current economic squeeze, cutting aid might be more populist than sensible, and keeping up aid can potentially be unpopular. Are voters in Western Europe and North America showing any indication of resisting development aid? A: Some politicians are resisting and advocating budget cuts, but I believe they are in the minority. There is little to be gained in cutting these programmes which represent a small part of budgets, but much to be lost.

Q: If aid must be channelled in harmony with national priorities set by governments, where does civil society stand? Can we go back to old classic patterns of non-government organisations (NGOs) carrying out pockets of aided development? A: Civil society is a vital part of development and the development of a viable civil society is best carried out by NGOs with similar missions.

Q: In what way does the aid story change when it flows from south to south? Are those more instances of heavily tied aid? Is it more legitimate when the flow is south to south? A: We don’t know enough about the details of south-south cooperation. There is an important affinity among these nations and that is an important attribute.

Q: It may take a book and more to really answer this, but broadly, in what ways has the Paris Declaration worked, and where and how has it not? A: Yes, a book. Please take a look at our evaluation and survey. It is the evidence that demonstrates that ownership, alignment and mutual accountability produce results.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 10 2011 (IPS)

Campaigners from around the world have called upon the Arab League and on the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to explore the possibility of adopting regional protocols to abolish the death penalty.

The campaigners adopted a resolution following a meeting organised by Penal Reform International (PRI) last month that was attended by more than 100 campaigners and government and civil society representatives from around the world.

The campaigners called for the Arab League and the African group to intervene “in recognition of the important role that regional and inter-regional government bodies play in forming standards and norms”.

The resolution called upon the Arab League also to “amend Article 7 of the Arab Charter for Human Rights to absolutely prohibit the sentencing to death and execution of those under the age of 18 at the time of the commission of the crime.”

“The London Declaration, which was adopted unanimously by over 100 participants at PRI’s conference, including governmental and civil society representatives from abolitionist and retentionist countries across almost all regions of the world, is seen as a great achievement to the abolitionist community,” Jacqueline Macalesher, death penalty project manager for PRI, told IPS.

“Endorsements from organisations will follow, however the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office have already agreed to endorse this declaration.”

PRI hopes that “this London Declaration will build upon the current momentum toward moratorium and abolition at the global level,” Macalesher said. “It echoes the determination of the human rights community to move towards universal abolition.”

The declaration, she said, “will be used as a new tool in the abolitionist’s toolbox in their advocacy efforts to encourage retentionist states to implement minimum standards, a moratorium on executions and sentencing and to move towards full abolition in law.

“It also makes an important statement that those states that have abolished the death penalty should only implement alternative sanctions, such as life or long-term imprisonment, that are fair, proportionate and respect international human rights standards.”

The declaration noted that there is no convincing evidence that the death penalty deters criminal behaviour any more effectively than other punishments. It said that “where the death penalty is retained at all, it should only be imposed for the ‘most serious crimes’, and after a fair trial has been granted to the accused.”

While calling for full abolition, the campaigners said that if at all used, the death penalty should only be applied to crimes that lead to loss of life.

The resolution points out that “the death penalty creates additional victims – the family members of those who have been executed – who are often forgotten, marginalised or stigmatised by society.” It says that “the essential aim of the penitentiary system should be the ‘reformation and social rehabilitation’ of prisoners.”

The resolution says mandatory death sentences should be abolished, and sentencing guidelines established for capital cases where there are none.

Participants who attended the PRI conference, and who backed the resolution, included government officials and representatives of civil society and inter-governmental organisations from 31 countries (Algeria, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Georgia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States).

The resolution said states must “prohibit the use of the death penalty against juveniles, persons who were juveniles at the time when the crime was committed, pregnant women, mothers with young children, and those suffering from mental disabilities,” and “provide training for judges and professionals working in the criminal justice system to ensure they are fully aware of the relevant international standards relating to the death penalty.”

It called upon those states that have an official or de facto moratorium on executions, or a partial abolition, to establish a moratorium on sentencing, commute sentences for prisoners on death row, taking into consideration the time already spent in prison, and “take the necessary steps through legislative or constitutional reforms to abolish – in law the death penalty for all crimes”.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Sep 27 2011 (IPS)

The image endures of the death penalty in force across the Arab world because it is considered somehow Islamic, and because most regimes are undeniably autocratic. But campaigners on the ground say the death penalty might just be in place because the people want it. Which would make it in essence a democratic institution.

“If you look closer, it’s a tribal issue,” says Tanya Awad Ghorra from the Academic University for Nonviolence and Human Rights in the Arab World (AUNOHR) based in Beirut. “Because our world is tribal. We still have tribes, the traditions, the revenge…it’s in the mentality. So that’s why they try to stick it to the Quran but if you look closely it’s a way of reducing direct revenge between tribes.”

The regimes in these countries are in that case only listening to the voices of their people. “Yes, we live in a region where revenge is a natural thing, extreme revenge is still in the culture, so even though there have been many campaigns in Arab countries, none have signed the (2007) U.N. moratorium because they have an issue with their population. Because in public opinion revenge is a legitimate thing to ask.”

“Ask people,” Ghorra told IPS in an interview at a conference called in London by Penal Reform International (PRI) last week. “To them it’s natural. Yes, it’s a demand.” To someone whose family member has been killed, “it’s my right, it’s my tribal right, it’s my culture, it’s my background, it’s my history to get revenge. I don’t get it, you want the government to get it for me, I’m fine with that. But I want my revenge.”

The Beirut-based AUNOHR has been campaigning actively against the death penalty for years. But Ghorra says it’s an uphill struggle. “You can campaign a lot, you can have the support of all the Europeans, of the world around you, but if you don’t focus on creating public opinion, on educating people, I think we’ll be stuck for long years.”

Lebanon, which saw a National Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty, has seen some success. After the wars with Israel the government “pulled out a long forgotten law that ‘the killer is killed’, and a long queue of people started going to the gallows,” said Ghorra. “That’s what pushed us to start our national campaign.”

The campaign won two significant achievements: “The first, the abolition of that law in 2001. We are the only Arab country that managed to abolish a law (on this issue). In 2004 the prime minister refused to sign the execution papers of one convict. He called it the refusal of conscience. Since then Lebanon has been following an oral moratorium.

But this, she warns, “is very fragile because it’s oral, not written, the draft alternative laws have not been passed yet by parliament, and Lebanon has not signed the U.N. moratorium.”

Campaigners are now looking out for changes that the Arab Spring might bring. Not everyone is confident, though, given the rising force of Islamist groups and parties in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Much will depend on the policies the Islamist parties adopt, whether these are radical or moderate.

Campaigners in Tunisia expect the Islamist groups there to be moderate. “Tunisia has adopted a position of stopping use of the death penalty since 1991,” Dr Amor Boubakri, associate professor in public law at the University of Sousse in Tunisia, told IPS. “But several laws have been adopted which provide for the death penalty, the last dated 2005. Since the revolution, there is a big hope we can abolish the death penalty.”

Campaigners are taking heart, he says, from decisions made by the interim government a few weeks after the revolution. “The most important is the adoption of the Rome Statute, so Tunisia has become a member of the International Criminal Court. And other human rights tools have been adopted.”

As Tunisia heads for elections for a constituent assembly next month, campaigners are seeking to raise a national debate on capital punishment. “There is a possibility that the next assembly could adopt abolition of the death penalty,” says Boubakri.

The rise in the power of Islamist parties is not necessarily a hurdle, he says. “These parties have a big chance to get the majority in the next assembly but Islamism in Tunisia is basically a moderate movement. We have some radical Islamist movements, but the most important one is a moderate one and is likely to adopt the Turkish way of Islam.

“As a consequence the attitude of the Islamist party to human rights issues is generally positive. We don’t know their attitude towards the death penalty, but their stand on human rights issues is positive.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Sep 21 2011 (IPS)

Islamic regimes look for provisions and precedents to carry out the death sentence in the name of Islam. But, says Dr. Mohammad Al-Habash, director of the Islamic Studies Centre in Damascus, they are not looking enough at 13 provisions within the Quran to commute the death sentence to a lesser punishment.

Regimes have the death penalty in place for many more crimes than mentioned in the Quran, Habash told IPS at a conference on the death penalty held by the rights group Penal Reform International in London this week. “In Mauritian law there are 361 crimes that can invite the death penalty. In Yemen, there are 312 crimes that can be punished with death, and the same in Saudi Arabia. But in the Holy Quran there is only one crime.”

There is a provision for the death penalty only for murder, says Habash, who is also a member of the Syrian parliament. But alongside this one provision, there are 13 tools for a judge to cancel the death sentence, he says. “For example, God did not mention Al-Qassas, which provides for the death sentence for murder, without mentioning Al-Afou, which means forgiveness. Sharia asks a judge to use these 13 tools to fight against the death penalty.”

Under Al-Afou, the family of a victim can forgive. “All members of the family of the victim have the right to forgive. If even just one among 20 says they forgive, or says they are looking for Dia (financial compensation from the killer’s family), the judge must avoid the death penalty. Even if a small baby from the victim’s family says so, the judge must avoid the sentence, and wait for the baby to grow to the age of 18 to confirm if he or she wants the death penalty or not.”

A judge acting under Sharia law cannot in any case order execution without first considering the position of the victim’s family in a civil claim, Habash says. The right to demand or to forgive goes first to the family, not to the judge in a case where capital punishment could be ordered.

Yet another tool is “Choubouhat” under which a judge must refuse the death penalty if any doubts arise about the culpability of the accused. For example, “if the killer was under the influence of alcohol, or if he did not understand what might be the punishment for such crime.”

But Habash acknowledges that this is not as simple a matter as a reading or interpretation of the Quran. “You do need to look also at the history of Islamic heritage,” he says. The death sentence comes more from that tradition than from the text of the Quran, he explains.

“Islamic legislation is itself a result of the practices of courts during history. In Islamic history, as with Christian history, European history, you can find a lot of use of the death penalty. It’s in the tradition, not in the book.”

The dispute goes beyond differences over an interpretation of the text and an interpretation of tradition. As Mustapha Bouhandi, professor of comparative religion in Casablanca in Morocco told IPS earlier, Arab countries retain the death penalty because they “do not want to lose their most important instrument of repression…the death penalty is for them an effective means to eliminate opposition leaders, or at least to intimidate and curb them.”

Often these opponents are liquidated without trial, even without their families ever hearing of their execution or being able to arrange a funeral, Bouhandi said. “Where there are trials, justice in the Arab world does not enjoy a good reputation. It depends on the wishes of the ruling powers. Every death sentence, even in non-political cases, is politically influenced.”

Maryam Namazie from the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Equal Rights Now told IPS in an earlier interview that use of the death penalty is closely related to the political situation in these countries.

“Islam is fundamentally no different from other religions in that death is prescribed for a large number of transgressions in all of them,” she said. “However, because it is linked to a political movement with state power in many instances, the medievalism of religious rule becomes the law of the land.

“So in Iran, for example, stoning is a legally sanctioned form of execution with the law even specifying the size of the stone to be used in killing someone. Clearly, when the law and in many instances the state is divinely ordained, abolishing the death penalty becomes all the more difficult.”

But a change in laws in these countries may need a return to the question of what is in the Quran and what comes from tradition. Habash says it is a view shared by many Islamic scholars “that this kind of punishment belongs to the old testament (of Islam). Prophet Mohammad tried to use such punishment for some years. After that the Holy Quran said, No, and that such punishment has been cancelled.”

Are many Islamic countries then looking at Islamic tradition rather than at the Quran itself to justify use of the death penalty? “There are divisions on this within Islam,” Habash acknowledges. “Some scholars believe we have to follow the traditions of Prophet Mohammad, and that there is not enough proof that this kind of punishment has been cancelled.”

Such differences have led to different punishments for adultery, for instance. Some places carry out death by stoning. Others go by the punishment prescribed by the Quran itself of handing out up to 100 lashes, Habash says.

The majority of Islamic countries reject punishment such as death by stoning for adultery, he says. “You can find such punishment handed out by the Taliban, and in Somalia. But even in Saudi Arabia I have not heard of such punishment for at least 30 years.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ISTANBUL, May 16 2011 (IPS)

Women entrepreneurs and workers will soon help Bangladesh shake off the Least Developed Country (LDC) label, business leaders say.

Nasreen Awal Mintoo, president of the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Bangladesh, speaks with IPS. Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS

The move is being fuelled by growth in the private sector, says Mintoo. This was quite visually evident at the parallel private sector events held throughout the Istanbul conference. Bangladesh made a strong showing of its private sector products and services – amid the largely deserted exhibition space allotted to the other LDCs.

“The Bangladesh private sector is doing really a lot – it’s because of the private sector that Bangladesh is growing faster,” Mintoo said. “And women entrepreneurship is growing fast, helping Bangladesh to grow. A lot of women entrepreneurs are coming up.”

That may not seem surprising in a country where the prime minister and the leader of the opposition are both women. But those facts do not make it easy for women, either as entrepreneurs or as workers.

“There are lots of problems in working outside home, and at home also, and there are social barriers,” says Mintoo. “But the women are doing really great despite all these barriers they face. We want that women can work in a better environment.”

The government is going to some lengths to make work more conducive for women. But it’s not enough, says Mintoo. “They should work faster to help women come up.”

Sabera Ahmed, chief executive director of Pentasoft Center of Excellence, says that despite the strong presence of women at the top of government, “we face problems that were previously there.” Ahmed, who has worked both with the government and the private sector, told IPS, “everywhere you go you face problems.”

Some of these arise from religion, she says. “In our religion we don’t have equal rights. So we work in the household, and outside we do men’s jobs, but we are struggling; and we are fighting with the guys.”

Bangladeshi women have been demonstrating in support of the National Women Development Policy, which is being resisted by Islamic clergy. The Jatiya Mahila Sangstha (National Women’s Organisation) has been holding rallies in cities across Bangladesh to press for implementation of the new policy.

The policy, proposed earlier this year, would give women equal political and economic rights. It would also provide for laws to protect women from violence, and make provisions for their health and nutritional needs.

The women’s demonstrations followed street protests by Islamic leaders against implementation of the policy.

But women have been moving ahead despite the hurdles and the lack of a level playing field, said Ahmed. “We are a role model, inside the house, outside, outside the country even.”

Much of the growth in the private sector has been fed by the garments industry, Ahmed said. And women – both women workers and women entrepreneurs – have led that growth.

“In the garments sector we have a revolution. Like in the U.S. there was a women’s revolution in the sixties, in our country we have seen a revolution in the eighties, in the nineties, in the garments sector.”

And that has also changed equations socially and economically, and within the home, Ahmed said. “Very often we see the men taking care of the kids in the house, and the wives are going to the garments factory.”

The difficult position of women is not unique to Bangladesh, Ahmed said. “In India, too, and throughout the sub-continent, we have the same problem.” In Bangladesh, women seem also to have worked to make Bangladesh far from the least of the Least Developed Countries.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ISTANBUL, May 16 2011 (IPS)

For Jany Chen from Shanghai, concern often-raised in Europe and North America about the Chinese invasion of Africa is a lot of wasteful talk that deserves to be flushed down the toilet. Efficiently.

Jany Chen, CEO of Shanghai Environmental Group, speaks with IPS. Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS

“This is absolutely not the case for our company,” she told IPS. “Because what we offer is a very efficient and very hi-tech water saving solution for toilets. The traditional toilet will use either six litres or nine litres of water to flush clean the toilet but what we use is just one cup of water. So what we can offer is to save the environment rather than exploit the environment.”

The system abandons the conventional siphon pipe for a fast ‘blow-down’ of about a cupful of water, operated by a foot switch. The company, that has an extensive research and development centre in Shanghai, has filed for patents for this technology, Chen says.

Shanghai Environmental Group has made some high profile demonstrations of its technology recently – it was used in the U.N. pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. Now the company is looking for business – rather than looking at criticism over such business.

“As far as the company and ourselves are concerned, we don’t care much about those false claims,” says Chen. “Because we believe the actual deeds will speak louder than empty words. We will just go to African nations and contribute our solutions and services to local people. And those people will see the value of our technologies and solutions.”

The company held discussions with representatives of several of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) during the Fourth U.N. Conference on the LDCs (LDC-IV) in Istanbul last week.

“This is the purpose of our participation in the LDC conference, to take this technology also to Africa,” said Chen. “We hope that through the public sectors and private sectors we can provide the right water conservation solutions to the Least Developed Countries, including African nations.”

The technology would be greatly beneficial, she said. “Many of the LDCs on the African continent are facing a severe shortage of water. So we can help them save that valued and limited water resource.”

The new toilet technology’s prime market remains China itself. More than 400 of 667 Chinese cities are reported to suffer from water shortage to varying degrees, and more than 110 are reported to be in a state of acute scarcity. The company says toilets consume the largest quantities of water, and discharge the greatest amounts of waste.

Chen says countries would like to jointly create more local employment. “Also, with our solutions people can spend less on water consumption, so they will feel rich. And the government will spend less to treat wastewater. So the government will be richer. So this is an all-win solution. Quite contrary to the notion that we go there to exploit natural resources, we go there to help local people save natural resources and to protect water resources.”

The company says it is seeking to work with international organisations to launch water-efficient systems. “As a private business concern we will just focus on what we are very good at,” says Chen.

Private sector engagement and involvement now has official blessing to the extent that a parallel ‘private sector track’ was set up throughout the weeklong LDC conference, May 9-13.

The Chinese don’t move without ‘sayings’. “There’s a Chinese saying that water can float a ship, but also sink it,” says Chen.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ISTANBUL, May 13 2011 (IPS)

The glass isn’t exactly half-full, but it certainly is not entirely empty either. Within the broad failure of the weeklong Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) in Istanbul that concluded Friday, many delegates are taking heart in a strengthening South-South front that has emerged.

Demba Moussa Dembele, chairperson of LDC Watch, speaks to IPS. Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS

There was no hiding the disappointment over the conference, though. “We were looking for a bold, forward looking and ambitious programme of action,” Arjun Karki, chair of the LDC-IV Civil Society Forum told IPS. “We thought member states would learn from past three conference failures.”

The LDC conference, organised through the U.N., is held every ten years. That gives countries a lot of time to prepare progressive policies for the LDCs – and then just a week to give expression to them. The developed world largely failed, despite progress at this conference on some counts.

“We had really been looking for a new aid architecture for the LDCs,” said Karki. “The present structure is not really helping LDCs. That is based on the principle of market fundamentalism and neo-liberal policies that have privatised profits and nationalised losses.”

But looking at the silver lining, Karki said, “we are also encouraged by the political spirit of the LDC member states. They are working unified, very close together, and they tried to defend their interests until the very last minute. So there is some political achievement in terms of building and strengthening the LDC group as a political bloc.”

The partnership between the LDCs and civil society has really improved, Karki said. “So we can work together as a political group and as a pressure group in days to come so that our voices are heard by key development voices who make policies and programmes.”

There are deeper gains that others point to, even if these did not show by way of a deliverable new trade deal for the LDCs.

“South-South is really picking speed because the latest UNCTAD [United Nations Conference on Trade and Development] report for the least developed countries for 2010 says the South is now the major market for LDC exports,” Demba Moussa Dembele, chairperson of LDC Watch told IPS.

“Most foreign direct investment received by LDCs comes from the South,” he said. “Not only in terms of financial resources but technology transfer. The emerging companies are becoming major players in the LDCs’ economies. And loans given by emerging economies are mostly on a concessional basis, or grants.”

That new cooperation was strongly confirmed and strengthened at the Istanbul conference, Dembele said. “We would like to push for greater South-South cooperation because in our opinion it’s one way for LDCs to have more political autonomy to design their own policies and formulate their own priorities, and to implement policies that are in the best interests of their citizens.”

A clear sign of progress is what is not taking place, or at the least not being so confidently pushed, to corner the LDCs. Prime among these are the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that the European Union (EU) has been seeking with many of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. The EU has succeeded in forcing Papua New Guinea and Fiji already to sign such deals.

There is widespread unanimity among the poor countries against such agreements that can be seriously damaging to LDC economies in the long run. The new South-South front is a bulwark against such agreements, says Dembele.

“The EU wanted to force these agreements on Africa in 2007,” Dembele said. The EU is easing pressure now “because the EU is seeing the South-South connection becoming stronger and stronger, especially through China, India and Brazil. These three have very deep financial and political relations with Africa. And so the EU is afraid of losing its backyard, economically speaking.”

For the LDCs this means an important new path, he says. “For 500 years and more we have been mistreated by Europe. This South-South cooperation is fresh air for us. It is excellent for our liberation – if of course we use it wisely.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ISTANBUL, May 12 2011 (IPS)

Upstairs in halls where the conference of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is being held, all the right things were being said about the misery of poverty and the virtue of opportunity and development. Several floors below, what are called ‘market forces’ were at work.

Turkish section of the private sector bazaar packed with goods targeted at LDC buyers. Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS

A battery of Turkish companies set up stalls at a bazaar here, eager to sell to businesses from the LDCs. Many managers from these companies had received financial assistance to come to Istanbul to look at the goods on offer. This was the “private sector track” of the conference – that ran parallel to the talking at the meetings.

In fairness, stall space was set up also for each of the LDCs. The Turkish section, however, had been packed with goods on offer; the LDC section sat almost completely vacant, to the extent that most countries had not even a desk and chair. These wouldn’t have been necessary, because there was no one there.

The private sector bazaar is a symbolic expression of the dramatic imbalance that delegates upstairs spoke of, and attempted in vain to overcome

It was a snapshot of decimated private enterprise in the LDCs.

“The private sector is very much underdeveloped in a number of LDCs,” World Trade Organisation (WTO) Deputy Director General Valentine Rugwabiza told IPS. “You do have a very dynamic private sector in Bangladesh, but you can’t say you have the same in a number of African LDCs.”

She pointed to the stark contrast in approach between the LDCs and Turkey. “The private sector in the LDCs needs a far closer partnership than what is currently the case,” she said. “And the country that is hosting this conference is an excellent example of that.

“I was amazed how the private sector and the government are working shoulder to shoulder,” Rugwabiza said. “It’s impressive, the way they meet with their governments and key ministers. And the government provides solutions within two weeks.”

Many countries have private sector organisations that organise groups with common interests, Rugwabiza said. Or they have industrial groups pushing their governments and following negotiations and sending clear signals to their governments on what their industries can accept, what they can offer, and what they can’t bear.

Traditionally the LDC governments have not been business oriented, Rugwabiza explained. And that is at the heart of the imbalance.

As are business patterns that keep the LDCs suppliers of raw materials. “We want a situation where the LDCs can export furniture, not wood,” Martin Khor, executive director of the Geneva-based South Centre told IPS.

The LDCs have few finished goods to offer: according to U.N. figures, trade accounts for 70 percent of the gross national income of the LDCs, but almost three-quarters of total merchandise exports from the LDCs are of just a handful of products.

Home to more than 700 million people, the LDCs have long been seen as suppliers of raw materials and markets for finished products.

The export bazaar here at the congress centre in Istanbul offered a vivid picture of just what companies are looking to sell. A number of Turkish companies were offering hospital beds and equipment – a business seen as promising in countries with high levels of disease and scarce medical infrastructure.

A wide range of consumer goods was on offer as well – from high fashion dresses to ornate home decor. Many of these goods were aimed clearly at the few well to do among the LDC populations, the fraction of the 700 million that is middle class or more.

The Bangladeshi stall was a virtual island of bustling activity amidst the deserted spaces of the other LDCs.

“The fact is that we are hoping very soon to come out of our category as a Least Developed Country,” Nasreen Awal Mintoo, president of the Women Entrepreneur Association of Bangladesh told IPS.

Much of that growth is being led by the private sector, she said. “The private sector in Bangladesh are doing really a lot. It is because of the private sector that Bangladesh is growing faster. And women entrepreneurship is growing fast, and that is helping Bangladesh to grow.”

Perhaps the empty spaces on the LDC side of the great bazaar may need to be filled by the private sector – with the strong involvement of women – rather than through talks at international conferences.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ISTANBUL, May 11 2011 (IPS)

Leaders from the Least Developed Countries are making a strong push in Istanbul for a mini trade deal for their 48 impoverished nations – ahead of any worldwide agreement under the Doha Round.

Valentine Rugwabiza, deputy director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) speaks with IPS. Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS

Leaders from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are said to be looking for some kind of deal to fall in place by the end of the year – they aim to secure a pledge of commitment towards that goal at the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) under way in Istanbul this week. The conference is held every ten years, and the LDC leaders consider this a critical moment to secure their demands.

These demands have been put across strongly, says Rugwabiza, who is from Rwanda – an LDC. “They are frustrated about the length of these (WTO) negotiations. A clear sign of that is that they are saying that if the round cannot be completed this year, then we need something, we need results for the LDCs.”

The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations was launched by the WTO in November 2001. The talks have now slowed to almost a halt, and the rise of emerging Southern economies has made the donor-client rhetoric of many players increasingly irrelevant.

LDC leaders, Rugwabiza says have sent a “clear and strong message” that they are “frustrated by the current situation, by the impasse, and by the prospect that in 2011 maybe they will not get the big package that they wanted”.

But at the same time, she said, there is a “clear resolve that we are not ready to accept no results. Because we are also members of this organisation (WTO), and we will simply not accept no results.”

Rugwabiza sums up the arguments being made by heads of many of the LDCs. “[They say] after all we represent only one percent of global trade. If because of disagreements among major players – developed or emerging developing countries – that we cannot reach an agreement this year, we cannot afford to continue to wait infinitely. Because time does not have the same cost on our and your economies.

“We are not at the origins of this impasse, we are not the ones preventing the round from progressing, but we are the ones who are going to pay the highest cost. In an environment which is deteriorating not because of us, but because of the crisis that was not of our making.”

Rugwabiza says the LDCs are emphatic that they want a multilateral trade agreement and that regional and bilateral deals are no substitute for that.

“A number of presidents are coming with a very clear and loud message that the multilateral route is their avenue for multilateral trade rules. They are not ready to leave the multilateral platform of negotiations.”

That affirmation seems to have come with veiled warnings.

“There is at this stage a broad consensus around the specific circumstances LDCs are faced with – but there is also an interest of all members to maintain LDC commitment to the system,” says Rugwabiza. “[They say] their involvement and commitment has been very useful, they have contributed in a very constructive manner, they have put a number of proposals that are today a part of the Doha Development Agenda. Proposals on disciplines regarding cotton, proposals on more flexible and simplified rules of origin, that are much more of a barrier than tariffs for a number of LDCs.”

The LDC leaders are saying they clearly have had enough. Their argument, says Rugwabiza, is that they have so far struggled “in an environment that was not necessarily the most conducive, the most supportive, in an environment where we still have a number of barriers, a number of disincentives to adding value to our products, in an environment where we still have tariff peaks, we are still faced with tariff escalation, in an environment where we are still faced with subsidies, and in an environment where we are still faced with lack of predictability.”

Zambian President Rupiah Bwezani Banda, for instance, told a meeting on trade that the “concerns of ACP [African, Caribbean and Pacific states – many of them LDCs] have not been fully addressed, though discussions have reached a critical stage”. In private meetings with WTO officials, many leaders are reported to have been far more blunt.

Many critical rounds of talks have been held between LDC leaders and WTO chief Pascal Lamy in Istanbul. The LDC meeting is not formally a part of WTO negotiations, but trade has been at the heart of talks here.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ISTANBUL, May 10 2011 (IPS)

On the face of it, a rapidly rising population among the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) spells the usual doom about adequate resource distribution. But the least developed are also among the youngest in the world – and well channelled, they can be a valuable asset, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) head Babatunde Osotimehin told IPS.

“The population growth in the LDCs is higher than the growth in other developing countries,” Osotimehin said during the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) here. “We are seeing a trend of 3 to 3.5 percent in the LDCs.” That is much more than in the developed world, and in other developing countries. “And to that extent we are contending with a situation where there are 900 million people in LDCs now, and if growth continues that way, in 2050 it would double to about 2 billion.”

Osotimehin acknowledges an established trend that, in most places, where the population growth is fast, poverty also goes up. “So we need to reverse the poverty cycle. And if you do, you invariably find that population growth also goes down.”

But as strongly emerging economies like China and India have found, more mouths to feed means also more hands to produce, and more minds to create. And what is working for India and China could work for the LDCs.

“It could be a demographic dividend for LDCs going forward, utilising the energy of young people to increase their productive base in every possible way,” says Osotimehin. “The Southeast Asian tigers grew with young people. Even in countries where populations seem to be shrinking, we are coming back to a situation where we are putting in place family programmes and policies to increase the base of young people.”

And in the LDCs, “if the right policies come into place for education, for health, for social inclusion, we would actually see productivity go up. On the other hand, if we don’t do those things in LDCs, what will happen is that you will have young children doing what their parents have done – have children and more children, so the cycle of poverty will just increase.”

That ‘if’ is for people and governments within the LDCs to handle. It was almost universally acknowledged at the conference of the LDCs being held here, that a fair worldwide trading system is necessary to enable these countries to shake off their unhappy tag.

Population growth and longevity are closely tied with the issues of growth and trade, says Osotimehin.

“In LDCs we are gaining some momentum in terms of longevity because we are beginning to look after those diseases that actually affect infant mortality, and maternal mortality, and we are contending with infectious diseases that tend to kill people and children so the cycle of poverty increases. It may not be happening as fast as we want to see, but it is happening.

“So that’s why we need to look at issues of population, because if people are living longer, the demands are also going to increase, the productive base would have to provide for those demands, and this has to be finely balanced.”

A new report from UNFPA, ‘Population Dynamics and Poverty in the LDCs: Challenges and Opportunities for Development and Poverty Reduction’ says investments in young people, women’s empowerment and reproductive health, including family planning, are critical to boosting LDCs productive capacity and speeding their escape from the cycle of poverty.

The report says the world’s 48 LDCs have a large and rapidly growing youth population, with some 60 percent of their population under the age of 25.

These young people, it says, can drive economic growth if they enjoy health, education and employment. Investments in young girls, often overlooked, could provide a significant development dividend, says the report.

“Empowering women and girls starts with improved access to reproductive health care and family planning,” Osotimehin says in the report. “Too many teenage girls become mothers, too many die giving birth, too many drop out of school, too many are abused and discriminated against in their daily lives.

“The investments would also reduce maternal death and lead to smaller families with more resources to pour into the health and education of each child. This virtuous cycle helps families, communities and nations escape poverty.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Apr 26 2011 (IPS)

Quite a treat Britain has on offer for the world these days. Or who would ever have been talking – in this day and age – about a prince and princess riding in splendour into a world of pageboys and palaces.

The royal wedding comes in the great royal tradition, and it’s actual enough for undeniable legitimacy. That’s at the heart of the treat – we can slurp over the feast of this royal vocabulary and summon an old world excitement where royal is for real. And we wait for the day when Britain will wrap that tradition in exquisite ceremony to showcase before the world.

And showcase it will, to an estimated two billion who will watch. Doesn’t Britain know that royalty doesn’t just stay royal and be; royalty sells.

The world is fascinated, probably more than Britain itself. “I think the international view is still based on the fairy tale view that has diminished considerably in the UK,” Dan Leighton, senior researcher at the London-based think-tank Demos, tells IPS. “We’re not quite sure what to make of them. Externally it’s an important aspect of how we’re perceived, but internally, what the royal family are for in the 21st century is very uncertain.”

What sells abroad is the grandeur of the choreographed ceremony – and for this there is not a remote second best to Britain. The country doesn’t have much of an economy left to speak of, but it can do royal weddings as none else can.

“There’s a part of this that is the big glossy soap opera,” says Leighton. “It is hard to underestimate how many people from abroad, particularly America, still see it as a part of the fairy tale soap opera.”

Support for the royalty in Britain has remained high. Over several surveys in recent times, only about 16 percent of the British oppose it. It might just surprise many outside the country that one in six Brits don’t want the royalty at all. But a minority that is, and likely to remain so.

“There’s no doubt that lots of people in Britain like the royal family,” Dr. Tim Leunig from the London School of Economics tells IPS. “It makes them feel good, they think we’re not a republic, we don’t have Mr. Berlusconi in charge of us. So one thing great about the Queen is that all the other alternatives seem to be much, much worse.”

The royal are born with the virtue that they can never be politicians – royalty never contests an election. The price to pay for keeping royalty free of politics is a small one: by the highest estimates the taxpayer pays on average no more than a pound a year to keep the royal in their palaces. “It isn’t going to make any difference to how well off people feel they are,” says Leunig.

But there’s a great deal more to royalty than simply something the British suffer because it would be too expensive to erase. They are a picture of a grand continuity, even if that grandeur is something of an illusion, or at the least a truth out of sync with the harder truths of the day.

It would in any case be far more expensive to remove royalty. The monarch (add that to the quaint royal vocabulary on offer) is also the head of state, of the Church of England, of the Commonwealth, of the armed forces. It’s figured that constitutional changes that would make Britain a republic would take 18 months of legislative process. Why bother. As Leighton says, “there are far more important things to do.”

And yet the debate within Britain whether the royals should be kept or not never quite goes away, hard as that may be for the rest of the world to understand. Those old enough to have lived through World War II seem mostly quite earnest about royalty. Nobody really knows how seriously the young will eventually accept royalty.

“There’s a mix of indifference and ironic attachment to it for the younger generation,” says Leighton. “For those above their sixties with some recollection of the world war, there is some degree of deference to the mystique of the royal family. For the younger generation it does not seem to do an awful lot.”

That’s where it will count how far, and how long, the young William and Kate – eventually Queen Catherine – can hold on to a place in the imagination of the young as royalty. And just how far they can bring palaces, and themselves, closer to the young like them.

The spectacle of pageantry and ceremony will be such a saleable story of an image of Britain around the world. But the royalty, the new young royalty, first carries the burden of selling that story at home. William and Kate will of course have to keep their marriage going – and that’s not always been the royal tradition. But, they also perhaps carry the burden of keeping royalty itself going.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
MADRID, Nov 28 2010 (IPS)

The population of migrants worldwide could rise above 400 million by 2050 if present rates of growth continue, says a report by the International Organisation for Migration released Monday.

The report says that “if the number of international migrants, estimated at 214 million in 2010, continues to grow at the same pace as during the last 20 years, it could reach 405 million by 2050.”

“The world itself is becoming a hotspot for migration,” Peter Schatzer, chief of staff of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told IPS. “It’s no longer the traditional migration routes to Europe and the U.S. alone that will see pressure. Now the emerging economic powers also attract migration, such as Brazil, South Africa, India, China.”

Governments everywhere are ill prepared to deal with the new migration explosion, Schatzer cautioned.

“Most governments do not have a systemic and systematic approach, they do not have even a single ministry dealing with migration,” he said. “It may be the labour, health, interior ministry and so on. What we suggest is the need to coordinate and have a dialogue between countries that send migrants, transit countries, and destination countries in order to get a handle on this.”

The report warns that without such action the world “will be taken by surprise by the relentless pace of migration.”

The report, ‘The Future of Migration: Building Capacities for Change’, says demographics, economic needs and environmental change are driving the growing numbers of international migrants.

One of the reasons for this steep rise will be significant growth in the labour force in developing countries from 2.4 billion in 2005 to 3.6 billion in 2040, the report says. This could accentuate the global mismatch between labour supply and demand.

The economic crisis has hit migrants hard. Remittances to developing countries declined by 6.0 percent in 2009 due to the economic crisis, the report says, “although some countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines benefited from an increase in remittances between 2008 and 2009.”

“In the developing world, between 2005 and 2014, 1.2 billion people will newly move into the labour market,” Schatzer told IPS. “At the same time in the developed world populations are aging. This requires new types of work that cannot be filled by jobs by the indigenous population, but clearly the developed world cannot offer more than a billion jobs to the developing world; most jobs have to be resolved in the countries of origin.”

The mismatch is becoming ever more serious, Schatzer said. “This is a tremendous challenge for countries of the South because young people today have a lot of information. The globalisation of information has also let a lot of people in the South know how one could live, what conditions exist in destination countries. Dealing with these expectations will be a major challenge for the governments in the South.”

“It is easy to say people should go away,” he added. “But people don’t necessarily follow that if they don’t see a future for themselves. We must give people a future in their own countries.”

Recent moves against migrants in several European countries could be excessive, Schatzer said. “Such actions are a reaction to a perceived or real malaise; they are also part of the response to an economic crisis where migrants are blamed, not necessarily justifiably, for competing for jobs with the local population.”

In the EU, Frontex has become the controversial strong arm of immigration control. Such organisations have a limited role to play, Schatzer said.

“Frontex is the European agency trying to help European governments control their borders better. It is an effort to coordinate these approaches, but border guards or walls cannot solve such problems because when one area is controlled, smugglers and traffickers move somewhere else.”

Beyond the headline-grabbing migration moves into Europe, South-South migration is becoming increasingly an issue, the report says.

“The emerging economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America are becoming ever more important countries of destination for labour migrants, emphasising increasing South-South movements of people and the need for those countries to invest in migration management programmes and policies.”

Not all new migration is for economic reasons. Emerging patterns of irregular migration involve “growing numbers of unaccompanied minors, asylum-seekers, victims of trafficking, or those seeking to escape the effects of environmental or climate change but for whom there is currently little international protection,” the report says.

“Investing and planning in the future of migration will help improve public perceptions of migrants, which have been particularly dented by the current economic downturn,” IOM director-general William Lacy Swing says in the report. “It will also help to lessen political pressure on governments to devise short-term responses to migration.”

The report identifies labour mobility, irregular migration, migration and development, integration, environmental change and migration governance as areas expected to undergo the greatest transformation in the coming years.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
MADRID, Nov 25 2010 (IPS)

There is the image of Africa, worse than Africa is, and then there is Africa, so much of it better than its image. It’s the continent whose time has come, African civil society leaders emphasised at a meeting in Madrid Thursday.

Primary school children in class, in Harar, Ethiopia. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Malawi has become a maize donor now to countries in need, and sells its surplus on world markets, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, president of African Monitor, an NGO based in Cape Town said in his keynote address at the meeting organised jointly by the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID), the Spanish agency for international development, and Inter Press Service (IPS).

“This success came after the Malawian government ignored recommendations by some funding agencies not to subsidise fertiliser and other farming inputs,” Ndungane added.

This is one success among many. The very stories of failure are becoming stories of success, Ndungane said. Africa still has the lowest life expectancies and the most extensive poverty, but “the good news is that we are reversing many of these trends – and that is why we dare to claim that Africa’s time has come.”

Ndungane pointed to several positives. The extreme poverty rate peaked in the late 1990s at more than 58 percent, but by 2005 it had dropped to less than 50 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa is bucking global trends to push growth from 5.3 percent this year to 6.0 percent in 2011.

Within the next year the African Development Bank will finance $10 billion in infrastructure projects, though the World Bank says Africa needs $93 billion a year on roads, water and power. Where it gets $40 billion a year in aid, it is raising $400 billion through bonds, remittances and other financial mechanisms.

This is the best, but not all. Back then to that overriding image, and to the facts that sustain it. And Ndungane more than acknowledges these.

Corruption could be the biggest. “In 2008 illicit outflows from sub-Saharan Africa amounted to $96 billion,” he said. “It is scandalous.”

On the one hand African nations have committed to spending 10 percent of their budget on agriculture, but only 10 are meeting that commitment. It hasn’t helped that donors have delivered only 60 percent of their pledges.

But there is near agreement that the balance is shifting – and that media are falling far short of reporting this new balancing. “There needs to be a paradigm shift in media because the progress in Africa is not being reported,” Themba James Maseko, CEO of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) in South Africa, said at the meeting to a packed house.

Many European countries have few migrants from Africa, and the only image children growing up in these countries have is of a poor conflict and poverty-ridden continent, he said. On the other hand Africa needs to do its bit: to build leadership, build industries rather than exporting raw material, check brain drain, ensure environmental sustainability, and fight corruption.

Inevitably, a meeting on Africa in Spain threw up the question of undocumented African migrants arriving in Europe.

“Through history there has always been migration,” said Cheriff Sy, chairperson of the African Editors Forum. “People have always migrated for a happier life. And there is migration within Africa too.”

And, he added, “Let’s not talk of these people as if they are cattle.”

Rather than rely on the media, it might help to bypass it, suggested Javier Bauluz, photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner. People don’t know about each other, he said, and rather than rely on the media, they should go for exchange programmes. Such moves at the school level between Africa and Europe can lead to more understanding, he said.

Getting such ideas across was the goal of the meeting, IPS Director-General Mario Lubetkin said in his closing remarks. It was “to listen to the new African reality, one that can be heard in a new way, with dignity, without fear, without fear even to be wrong or to make mistakes.”

It is now, he said, “an emerging Africa in an emerging South, that is not just in the future, but present, and in which Africa is joining the dynamism of China, India and Brazil.”

The capacity of Africa, and of South Africa, he said, had been demonstrated in the football World Cup. “Many had said it would be a failure, but life proved to be different. Media, focused on football, failed to bring out the dimensions of what South Africa and Africa accomplished in organising the championship. It was a watershed.”

Picking up on the expression “Afro-pessimism” at the meeting, Lubetkin said that media sometimes helps to deepen this “Afro-pessimism”. The meeting, he said, had opened minds to a new “Afro-optimism”, not as a public relations exercise, but as a perspective to understand Africa.

A new IPS Africa website was launched at the meeting.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri and Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
LONDON, Oct 20 2010 (IPS)

The U.S.-led invasion and then occupation of Iraq brought a sharp setback to the rights of women in that country, UNFPA head Thoraya Obaid tells IPS in an interview.

Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

Obaid spoke to IPS Wednesday at the launch of the annual UNFPA report, focused this year on the role of women in peace building. Excerpts from the interview:

Q: Is there any evidence that women are better than men at peace building and rebuilding? A: There is evidence that not only in peace building and rebuilding but in other areas as with migrant workers, the priorities for women are usually different. As a result women invest in the family, and during conditions where there is war or natural disaster, you will find that women can even cross borders to be able to keep the family together, and are able to negotiate the safety of their families. So in that context we see that women should be a part of any peace building negotiations.

Q: Women can play that role when they have an opportunity, but is there any sign that women are getting more such opportunities? A: Sadly, no. Opportunities are still limited because the recognition that women can play that role is still limited. We are saying that if we invest enough in women, in their education, in empowering them to have a voice, to raise their voice, and if we recognise their voices and find space for them to play a role in peace building, then they will do a good job.

Liberia is a very good example of that. It’s women who walk the streets saying we want peace. But society still does not recognise the real value of women, and that is a real problem.

Q: There is a widespread perception that the position of women in Islamic societies is low. But in Iraq women had many rights, that vanished after the Americans came along. A: I worked in Iraq for eight years until the invasion of Kuwait. We were there as a part of the Economic Commission for Western Asia, and we worked with women’s groups there at that time, and certainly, by the time we left the Federation of Iraqi Women had put together the best family laws you can get from all the different sects, and also labour laws. But then the invasion came and the whole thing went apart.

When the U.S. came in, they went back to the family laws of 1958. That tells you how far they have gone back. What they did was to cancel everything that was previous. And that is not really a good judgment for women. It was quite a bit of difference.

Q: How does this square with the perception that left to themselves, Muslim societies are backward, and that the U.S is the progressive one? A: That is a political question in many ways. There are stereotypes of Muslim countries, and Muslim women. I’m a Muslim woman, and I don’t fit that stereotype. There are many like me. I come from Saudi Arabia, and see where I am right now. This is the stereotyping of a people and also of a religion, and as a result assumptions are based on such perceptions. In many ways it is perceptions that hinder Muslim women in many places.

Q: Is the U.N. making a difference, or does it just produce reports? A: Look at the report we are putting out on Security Council resolution 1325. This has brought the issue of women as peace makers and peace builders into a higher level of political awareness. As a result, at least 19 countries are putting into place their own plans on how to bring women to end violence against women in wars, conflict and natural disasters, in camps and so on. These studies are important because they mobilise political leaders and I think that is a very important role for the United Nations.

Q: What does this report say that is significant and new? A: The new trend we are trying to bring into the discussion about women is the three R’s – Resilience, Renewal, and Redefining roles. Women are always seen as victims. We are saying women are not victims. Women have the resilience, they keep the families together. And with renewal, when we are rebuilding after a crisis, we should not rebuild society as it was before, with all the inequalities and inequities in it, but on a new human rights paradigm that will bring equality.

Q: How can the MDGs targets be met in relation to conflicts? A: A part of conflicts is poverty, and poverty brings conflict. So MDG 1 on poverty cannot be achieved if there is no peace and security. Each of the MDGs requires peace and security.

And with MDG5 on maternal health, for a long time actors in the humanitarian field did not recognise that women have special needs. In war and natural disasters, they do deliver babies, they do have biological functions that require special attention. There is a need to take care of their integrity and their dignity. So we are looking at MDG 5 because we want women to deliver babies in a clean state, and that they are safe.

More importantly [is] that they are protected from violence – when violence takes place, that they are provided with the services that support them but also that perpetrators of violence are brought to justice. Violence against women is part of the MDG5 target on universal access to reproductive health.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Aug 17 2010 (IPS)

Jake Hess, a U.S. freelance journalist who also wrote for IPS on Kurdish rights within Turkey, is to be deported following a government order.

“I’m waiting to be sent back to the U.S,” says Hess, who is a U.S. citizen.

Jake Hess was taken into custody by Turkish anti-terror police on Aug. 11 from a hotel in Diyarbakir, a Kurdish dominated area in south-eastern Turkey where he had been staying. He was kept under detention and interrogated over three days. His deportation was ordered Sunday.

“The police claimed that I have contacts with the PKK,” says Hess. The PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) is a separatist group listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkish authorities, and by the U.S., the EU, the United Nations and several countries.

Since the beginning of this year military staff have been killed by suspected PKK militants on a weekly basis, either in the Diyarbakir region or in areas remote from the conflict areas, including Istanbul.

“Through the interrogation, the authorities also said I’m running a smear campaign against the Turkish Republic,” Hess told IPS. The deportation order said Jake Hess has been “taking orders from a terrorist organisation.”

Hess says he was interrogated at length over links with the PKK. His name figures in indictment papers in a much-publicised trial of Kurdish leaders and other public figures accused of supporting the PKK. But Hess is not among the accused in that case.

According to the indictment papers, Hess voluntarily interpreted for the Human Rights Association’s Diyarbakir branch during the visits of some foreign delegations, and he also translated some letters and articles issued by HRA to the media and to international organisations in October 2009. Hess speaks fluent Turkish, and has a degree of proficiency also in Kurdish.

But while Hess seems to have been under watch over such work, “much of the interrogation focused on the IPS articles,” he says. Jake Hess wrote three reports on Kurdish issues for IPS this year.

The deportation, he said, “is a move to silence the international media and to prevent the international community from learning about the situation here. It is also a move to intimidate local people, and to discourage them from speaking to international media.”

The arrest, he said, points to “the bigger picture where innocent people have been targeted for years.” According to some reports, about 1,600 Kurdish activists have been taken into custody, but more conservative estimates have put that number at 840. Some have been held now for up to 18 months without trial, according to local reports.

Hess has clarified that there was no undue pressure on him through detention. “It was not a five-star hotel but the facilities were not the worst,” he says.

Reporting the Kurdish dispute is to touch a raw nerve in Turkey. It comes ahead of a referendum due Sep. 12 on a new constitution proposed by the government. The outcome of this referendum will affect the balance of power between the government on the one hand and the military-judicial bloc on the other. Nationalist tendencies are on the rise, and conflicting parties may be using a case such as that of Jake Hess to score a point.

The Turkish government has been making sustained efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue by offering new rights to Kurdish people, while standing firm against separatist demands and militancy to that end. Opinion polls indicate that the vast majority of Turkish people are seeking strong action against the PKK and allied groups.

Deportation is seen as a mild step. A Turkish journalist in a similar position could face up to three years imprisonment.

The Ankara Head Office and the Diyarbakir Regional Office of the Directorate General of Press and Information of the Prime Minister’s Office were unable to give more information, on the grounds that this was a matter the police was dealing with. The local office clarified that Jake Hess had been held at the Foreigners Section of the Diyarbakir Police Headquarters.

At the U.S. embassy, officials said that there were “privacy issues” and that Hess had requested that no details be disclosed about his deportation.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, May 26 2010 (IPS)

Amnesty International is calling on the G20 to lead the world out of a crisis in justice, after the band of major industrialised and emerging nations has led a fair bit of the world out of economic recession, to some extent.

“We have made a special claim to the G20 countries because they themselves have staked a claim to global leadership,” Amnesty International interim secretary-general Claudio Cordone told IPS at the launch of the human rights group’s annual report. “If you really want to be global leaders, you should take the lead also on issues of justice.”

It’s a timely call, ahead of the G20 summit due in Toronto Jun. 26-27. And along the way, Amnesty is looking to raise the temperature at the International Criminal Court (ICC) meeting set to begin May 31 in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

The human rights organisation is demanding that the G20 put their own house in order first to enable the group to then offer leadership on justice. Seven of the G20 countries, Cordone pointed out, have not signed up to the ICC (specifically, the U.S. Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia).

Amnesty says signing up to the ICC is an important marker for closing the justice gap. And many countries must also close the gap between what they see as justice abroad and what they practise as justice at home.

“Unfortunately when it comes to international relations, even governments that are open at home and have relatively good justice systems may still apply double standards,” said Cordone. “As with the United States, there is no direct link between domestic policies and international relations.”

But the Amnesty appeal goes out to countries beyond the G20. At the ICC meeting it plans to lobby African countries strongly. “We will appeal to the African states who have not been cooperating in terms of the arrest of President (Omar Hassan) Bashir of Sudan to do so — it is their legal obligation. But we will also appeal to the countries who have not yet signed up to the ICC to do so,” he said.

Amnesty International, Cordone said, is putting faith in fellow campaigners, and in “people within governments who are genuinely keen that this justice gap is closed.”

The closing of the gap is the thrust of the Amnesty International report this year, which says “powerful governments are blocking advances in international justice by standing above the law on human rights, shielding allies from criticism and acting only when politically convenient.”

The African Union’s failure to cooperate with the ICC was paralleled by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s “paralysis over Sri Lanka,” the report says, “despite serious abuses including possible war crimes carried out by both government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.”

Meanwhile, “recommendations of the Human Rights Council’s Goldstone report calling for accountability for the conflict in Gaza still need to be heeded by Israel and Hamas,” it adds.

The justice gap has “sustained a pernicious web of repression,” the report says. “Amnesty International’s research records torture or other ill-treatment in at least 111 countries, unfair trials in at least 55 countries, restrictions on free speech in at least 96 countries and prisoners of conscience imprisoned in at least 48 countries.”

The report highlights the following:

– In the Middle East and North Africa, there were patterns of governmental intolerance of criticism in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Tunisia, and mounting repression in Iran.

– In Asia, the Chinese government increased pressure on challenges to its authority, detaining and harassing human rights defenders, while thousands fled severe repression and economic hardship in North Korea and Myanmar (Burma).

– Space for independent voices and civil society shrank in parts of Europe and Central Asia, and there were unfair restrictions on freedom of expression in Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Uzbekistan.

– The Americas were plagued by hundreds of unlawful killings by security forces, in countries like Brazil, Jamaica, Colombia and Mexico, while impunity for U.S. violations related to counter-terrorism persisted.

– Governments in Africa such as Guinea and Madagascar met dissent with excessive use of force and unlawful killings, while Ethiopia and Uganda among others repressed criticism.

– Armed groups and government forces breached international law in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka and Yemen.

– In the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel, Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups unlawfully killed and injured civilians.

– Thousands of civilians suffered abuses in escalating violence by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or bore the brunt of the conflicts in Iraq and Somalia.

– Women and girls suffered rape and other violence carried out by government forces and armed groups in most conflicts.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
BEIJING/LONDON, Apr 14 2010 (IPS)

The black, curvy London cab is so much more than just a taxi. It is an icon without which the picture of London can never be complete.

London cabs at Heathrow airport Credit: Wikipedia commons

Geely, the independent Chinese auto manufacturer, first entered into a partnership with Manganese Bronze in 2006 to produce components and, four years later, on Mar. 17, announced plans to become majority shareholder.

Globalisation certainly, if this will now be the London cab built in China, and will carry passengers from just about everywhere in the world. But globalisation Chinese style is nearly always to its own advantage, rather than that of whatever gets taken over.

It is a brave move for Geely, though not as big as the Chinese manufacturer’s takeover of Ford’s ailing Volvo car unit, also in March, at a cost of 1.8 billion US dollars.

Ownership of the black cab is a small acquisition but a big statement coming from Geely founder Li Shufu. Li’s is a legendary rags-to-riches story told and retold in China. He was the ‘country bumpkin’ from Zhejiang province who tapped into the surging ambitions of would-be car owners to build affordable little cars.

The cheaper Geely models sell in China for as little as 40,000 RMB (5,670 US dollars). “It is cheap, it uses little petrol, and I thought it was ideal for a first car,” said Feng Wencong, a guard at the National Exhibition Hall in Beijing.

It is here that cutting edge cars will be on display at April’s Beijing Auto Show. “But Geely is what the laobaixing (100 Chinese names, or ordinary folk) will go for,” Feng says.

Rather than taking cheap cars abroad – as the Indian company Tata is trying to do with their Nano – Geely wants to take over some established icons and build them in China.

Geely did follow the Nano strategy earlier, exporting small cars to developing countries. But the company’s ambitions have grown rapidly through the 13 years of its existence – making the company upstarts in the eyes of some in the auto industry.

Geely made a beginning, and found success, with copying foreign models. Li now clearly wants to part with that less than flattering image and establish Geely on the world stage.

But if the black cab is partly about image, how Chinese will the image of the black cab now become?

“The Chinese deal has brought no loss to that iconic image,” a spokeswoman for Manganese Bronze, so far the manufacturer of the London cab, tells IPS. “It is very much an English brand. We are looking to sell the Britishness abroad, rather than diminish the Britishness in the UK.”

The London cab, the TX4 to be precise, does step out of Britain – there are a couple of hundred around in the U.S., and they are a little more common in Cyprus, South Africa, Israel and Singapore. But more as a picture of quaint Britain outside of it; only London is their natural home.

“There are very strict rules for qualifying for a taxi in London, and Manganese Bronze meets those,” says the spokeswoman. Geely will now have to meet those standards.

Many have their doubts, going by some of the remarks on the websites of auto fans in China. “A funeral car,” said one visitor to autohome.com.cn. “Geely is a foreign lackey,” said another. “The black cab has no relation to Chinese aesthetics. It is just a matter of time before this plant goes out of production.”

Geely has plans to move more of the production from the plant in Coventry to China. The doubters see Geely as over-reaching itself, but Li clearly has other plans.

For Britain, this is about the last blow to what was once a thriving auto industry. After the Indian company Tata acquired the iconic Jaguar and Land Rover car in 2008, Manganese Bronze, small as it is, was about the only seriously British car maker left.

And, it needed help. The manufacturer of the protective undercoat of paint for the cab went bust, setting off a break in the manufacturing cycle in Britain. Reduced sales last year already had the company in a spot, with an operating loss of about 10 million dollars.

The cab is facing competition now from Eco City, which distributes the Mercedes Vito. The TX4 still has about 80 percent of the London taxi market. Geely will want to keep that, and keep up sales to at least 2,000 units or so a year.

Not a lot, but this is about the Chinese stamp on a British icon – how good it is, and low long it lasts.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Mar 29 2010 (IPS)

The Middle East leads the world in executions after China, says an annual Amnesty International report released Tuesday.

“The Middle East and North Africa have the highest per capita rate of executions in the world, according to our figures,” Phillip Luther, deputy director for the region with Amnesty, tells IPS.

The Middle East; must be Islam then, most people would imagine. Wrong.

“If you take Egypt, or Syria, or Yemen, or Iraq, the vast majority of death sentences and executions carried out in those countries have nothing to do with Islamic law in any sense,” says Luther. “They are on the basis of civil codes – often inherited, and the death penalty provisions within it – from the previous colonial period.” Most executions are carried out under the penal code for offences related to drugs and violent crimes, Luther says.

So are executions in non-Islamic countries such as the U.S. and India, to say nothing of China, which is believed to execute thousands a year that it lets the world know nothing about. And Amnesty acknowledges as much, challenging China this year to produce a figure rather than guessing one of its own.

But religion is not behind most executions in the Islamic world of the Middle East and North Africa – and not even in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, says Luther.

“If you look at the majority of those sentenced and executed (in Saudi Arabia and Iran), they are executed on the basis of penal codes. Those sentenced under Islamic law are very few.”

In Iran, many have been charged with enmity against god, “which clearly has a religious sanction,” says Luther, “but which is used in a political way against people who are perceived by the state of rebelling against the state.” The motives in Iran are more political than religious because among those executed are a disproportionate number of political prisoners, or members of ethnic or religious minorities.

The sanction comes in the name of religion, but is basically a handle used by the state for its own political ends, and not because it’s out to create Islam justice in society.

Amnesty International recorded 388 executions in Iran last year, but says the true figure could be higher. “At least 14 executions took place in public,” the report says. “In one eight-week period between the presidential election on Jun. 12 and the inauguration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as President on Aug. 5, Amnesty International recorded 112 executions; by contrast, in the five-and-a-half months between Jan. 1 and Jun. 12, at least 196 executions had taken place.”

Many countries within the region such as Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon have maintained a long-term moratorium on the death penalty of at least ten years.

The Amnesty report lists 624 executions across the Middle East and North Africa last year. There are no definite figures over earlier years to compare this with, but the general trend in the region is downward, says Luther. “Only seven countries in this region carried out executions last year (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen). In terms of the number of countries, that trend is going down, as it is across the world as a whole.”

At the same time there is a louder legislative debate in many of these countries to at least reduce the number of crimes punishable by death. “In Lebanon the ministry of justice itself is campaigning to end the death penalty,” says Luther. “Algeria was one of the co-sponsors in the U.N. General Assembly in 2008 for a call for a global moratorium, the first Middle East or North African state to do so.”

But even though executions are carried out mostly under the penal code, they are at their highest in Iran and Saudi Arabia. “In Saudi Arabia, the authorities continued to execute at an alarming rate,” the Amnesty report says. “At least 69 people were publicly beheaded during 2009.

“At the end of 2009 Amnesty International knew of at least 141 people on death row in Saudi Arabia, including at least 104 foreign nationals, mostly from developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Prisoners are sentenced in largely secret and unfair trials, often without a defence lawyer, and so the true figures for those under sentence of death are believed to be much higher.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Mar 28 2010 (IPS)

A high-level meeting in London of political and business leaders will consider this week ways of raising 100 billion dollars to fight climate change. And yet another one in Washington will search for ways of finding, and funding, more three-dollar stoves around the world.

The second one is more ambitious than it sounds; it aims to get more than half a billion clean stoves around the world. But working with the little and the tangible, it might just be more effective than the London meet. And, it brings simultaneous health benefits.

The Britain-based Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy is pushing strongly for cleaner stoves around the world. “Fighting climate change and improving the health of the world’s poorest people are often seen as competing priorities,” says a report from the Ashden Awards. “Yet some technologies address both tasks at the same time.” For example, the cooking stove.

“Almost half the world’s households, some three billion, eat food cooked on fires and stoves burning wood, dung, coal, straw, husks and charcoal,” says the report released in London Sunday evening. “Pollution levels from smoke and gases such as carbon monoxide are typically hundreds of times those that would be tolerated in the streets or a factory.

“An estimated 1.6 million people die annually as a result, including around a million children under five, mostly victims of childhood pneumonia.”

Getting half a billion stoves to these households will begin to address the problem substantially. But that’s a lot of stoves, and it’s not clear how these households will get them.

“That’s the big question which the United Nations Foundation/Shell Foundation meeting in Washington DC will be looking at next week, so we may have some detailed strategies after that,” Dr Anne Wheldon, technical director of the Ashden Awards, tells IPS in an interview.

The clean stoves certainly exist, and at that price. “For instance, in Cambodia traditional stove-makers have been trained to produce an improved version which sells for only three dollars,” says Wheldon.

“We are also starting to see the factory-scale production that can make cheap stoves available more readily on a global basis. A very basic stove produced by the Shengzhou Stove Manufacturer has an ex-factory price of 3.50 dollars, with other models at eight to 12 dollars. Envirofit has also started mass manufacture, with some higher price range models with more features to them.”

Success on scale has been achieved in China. An estimated 180 million improved stoves were introduced from 1983 to 1995, and cook for most of the population, the Ashden report says. China has recently renewed efforts to provide a new generation of yet more efficient stoves.

But scaling up is now feasible elsewhere too, says Wheldon. “Provided that a stove is developed that people really like to use, it is quite feasible to get to the 100,000s scale, and there are a range of ways of doing this that work well in different circumstances – for instance, a government-led programme in Eritrea, an NGO-led programme in Bangladesh, upgrading of existing commercial production in Cambodia. Such programmes could probably grow to the 1-10 million scale.”

The Ashden calculations suggest that a global programme to manufacture the half-billion improved stoves needed to convert the world’s poor to safer cooking could save hundreds of thousands of young lives a year – and at the same time cut global greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of up to one billion tonnes of CO2 a year.

“Such investments ought to attract large sums through the carbon market,” the report says. “We calculate that improved cooking stoves can keep a tonne of CO2 out of the atmosphere for as little as one to three dollars – an exceedingly good deal in a market where offsets can be sold for 20-30 dollars a tonne.”

The carbon market could fund cleaner stoves in a number of ways, says Wheldon, such as “directly subsidising a government or NGO programme that provides stoves at low cost or sometimes zero cost as with the Eritrea stove programme, directly subsidising commercial sales, or supporting an umbrella organisation that coordinates independent producers, and takes responsibility for quality control and monitoring, as with the Cambodia stove programme coordination.”

Since 2001, 18 stove projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America have won Ashden awards, most of which have gone on to expand and develop, the Ashden report says. Time now, it says, for a scaling up of these successes.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
NEW DELHI, Mar 27 2010 (IPS)

Most of these women had never known what it is to have the dollar a day everyone speaks of. And last year, they were seen as good enough between them to be lent a billion and a half dollars.

Women at a self-help group meeting in Andhra Pradesh. Credit: SERP/IPS

And to a few million among them, it was a dramatic leap out of poverty; with them their families, so multiply one of these women’s success five times. And that was just last year.

This year those women in the villages of the southern Indian state Andhra Pradesh plan to raise close to 2 billion dollars in commercial loans, in this mass exodus out of poverty. On scale and success, this movement overtook the celebrated Grameen Bank in Bangladesh about two years back.

This one is working because it worked the conviction that “the poor can come out of poverty by coming together,” says Vijay Kumar, CEO of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, the official name for this movement – it’s too big to be called a project.

It came out of sitting around and talking, says Kumar.

Typically, a group of ten to 15 very poor women in a village would come together as a thrift and credit organisation, and agree to lend to one another, depending on needs and ability. That brought a radical departure from moneylenders who would often charge 10 percent a month interest.

This would help women in need, and provide seed capital often just for seeds to grow something. Increased income and repayments bring trust enough for women, and their groups, to approach commercial banks, for yet more loans and then further investments in a spiral up out of destitution. Through the success the groups would stay, and in time women share skills, not just credit arrangements.

And, why not, also friendships and bonding. Relationships form. A gathering of the poor evolves into a middle class group.

Masipovu Pakiramma, 45, raised all of 500 rupees (12 dollars) from the group in Kurnool district when she joined in 1995, in one of the first stirrings of what was then experiment.

“I used that money to start selling vegetables; it was my first loan,” she tells IPS on phone from Andhra Pradesh capital Hyderabad. “It worked, and I have by now taken loans worth 700,000 rupees (15,000 dollars). I educated my eldest son, he now has an MBA. We were ten members in the group that started, we all came out of poverty.”

Shameem, 35, says her husband earned 150 rupees (3.50 dollars a month), and her father-in-law 40 rupees a day (less than a dollar). “As Muslims we had restrictions going out, but I did join my village group.” It’s a group call Chand (moon) – all groups name themselves, and members meet usually once a week.

She raised money and support to pull her family out of poverty. “Now I am president of a group of village committees. Now nobody says to me that we are backward Muslim women confined to home.”

Women like Pakiramma and Shameem who succeed with their group then become community resource persons; they help go to other districts and now also other states in India to help set up similar groups.

“These are knowledgeable, empowered women; they succeed more than some outside expert because they work as insider-outsiders,” Kumar tells IPS. The movement has by now thrown up more than 20,000 women as these community resource persons, in effect multipliers.

The Andhra team is supporting similar projects now launched in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan, and the model is being adopted also by projects financed by the World Bank in Africa. The World Bank has supported the Andhra movement, as has the state government and the central government in India. Many of the groups have needed help with some seed money to get going.

“This has worked because the poor are involved at the start, where they can make their own plans, shape their own dreams,” says Kumar. “But this does not happen automatically. You need a sensitive support mechanism that can act as catalyst.” Up to a point, till the energy of the group takes it forward.

A little help from the government to each group has helped also do more than support borrowing. “It’s a slippery path up,” says Kumar. “A small setback can push you back a generation.” And so the government has helped set up an insurance programme through the government-owned Life Insurance Corporation, and managed by the women’s federations. The government pays the premium for the still poorest, and for the others, half.

The women have now formed co-operatives, to collect and sell milk, and introduce innovations in agriculture, substituting chemical and pesticides in many areas with natural ways, and helping women plan crops. One way and another, millions who were seriously poor are now in business. It all still needs another ten years at least to see that all women in the state have at least a decent income of 5,000 rupees a month (120 dollars).

Progress is becoming faster, says Kumar. The root idea is simple enough: the difference in Andhra Pradesh is that it’s an idea that has been made to work, and on scale. Seventy percent of the poor in the state are covered already. The ambition now is not success to show, but saturation, so there are no poor women in the state any longer. And when women are not poor, then no one is poor.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 2010 (IPS)

Male leaders fail to break the Mideast impasse. Enter women from Israel and the Palestinian territories working together. And… it would have been nice to say they succeeded where the men failed.

Molly Malekar Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS

“It’s an ironic paradox,” Molly Malekar, former director of Bat Shalom of Jerusalem Link, tells Terraviva. “Ideas taboo many years ago are more accepted now at the centre of the political spectrum. If you take the issue of the rights of Palestinians to a state of their own, more than 20 years ago this was never recognised. Now no one can ignore it.”

And yet, the women looking for peace have little hope.

Israeli and Palestinian women, together within the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace, have spoken of many solutions since the 1990s, when the very thought of these seemed taboo.

Maha Abu-Dayeh Shamas, founder and executive director of the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) based in Ramallah and Jerusalem, mentions several others:

• The women were saying in 1995 that Jerusalem must be shared between the two peoples “when it was sacrilegious to say that.” Now leaders are considering this seriously.

• The group talked about human security, because “ending the shooting is not peace. We mean access to resources, a people’s peace, not just an agreement between armies and leaders. Here again now more leaders speak of this need.”

• The women have been saying the Arab initiative is a good one. “Nobody wanted to admit it, now everybody is talking about it, even Israelis are starting to say let’s work within that framework (under that initiative, Israel would end occupation beyond 1967 borders in return for recognition from Arab countries).”

• The women had been demanding a two-state solution when it was unmentionable in Israel. Today even a right-wing government speaks of it.

• The women said from the start, like others of course, that the last Gaza war was a mistake. Now many more Israelis are beginning to accept that.

But still, there is no neat division between progressive women and regressive men. The International Women’s Commission – that includes 20 members each from Israel and the Palestinian territories, and 20 from international groups – has seen just the kind of divisions within that exist in the mainstream of the Middle East dispute.

The group cracked during the Gaza war because some women supported the war, Shamas says, and had to be reconstituted. Which throws up the other fault line: that the Israeli representation of women who oppose the occupation is far from representative of Israeli society.

“It is not taken for granted that (Israeli) women are pro-peace,” says Malekar. Nor do most Israeli women oppose the occupation, as members of the group do. “Inside Israel there is a backlash to freedom of speech and space for civil society to operate on these issues. Disagreements that are the essence of democracy are equated with betrayal.”

For that matter, the Palestinian women are not representative of the larger public opinion either. “Most Palestinians think it is a waste of time to discuss peace with Israelis because they don’t want peace, and say that during peace talks things have become worse,” says Shamas. “So neither is a representative group, and we don’t claim we are. Most societies do not have majority feminist thinkers.”

And now it has got harder within Israel for women such as Malekar. “The last elections crushed the left and pro-peace political parties,” she says. “Racist and fascist groups, only 20 years ago were not allowed to run for elections. Now their followers are in big numbers in parliament.” She herself has been attacked, and is seen by many as traitorous.

And all the while the reality on the ground has become more difficult to shift – over the years settlements have expanded. “To undo the damage now requires massive force,” says Shamas, “I am not any more hopeful.”

Nor is Malekar, “I’m afraid we don’t see much progress.”

But, if the women’s group is right at all once again on anything ahead of time, it’s that stress on third party intervention that it institutionalised for itself by involving international members.

“Now everybody says a third party must be pro-active to ensure implementation of agreements,” says Shamas. “There is even talk that in new negotiations, the U.S. will have to be a guarantor.” Like peace itself, that too seems a long way off.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
NEW YORK, Mar 8 2010 (IPS)

The problem now, almost, is to find a way to relive the peak of that economic crisis of September 2008. The current move back to business of old – on the face of it anyhow – could well turn out to be a longer-running difficulty than the crisis it supposedly left behind. A difficulty far greater for women than for men.

“I was hoping this crisis would be used more effectively to challenge those in power, and I’m really disappointed that the opportunities we thought would be there in September 2008 somehow don’t seem to have been used effectively to challenge the power of the powerful,” Prof. Diane Elson from the University of Essex in Britain said at a meeting on gender equality in the economic crisis. “That’s what we need to work on now.”

The “we” are women. But in this, as with just about everything else, women’s rights are no other than human rights, and no other than what is right for everyone.

The more immediate question is, what’s next? “Women’s organisation is a good way to do that,” Prof. Elson tells IPS. “Women in think tanks doing analysis, women elected representatives, women ministers, placing emphasis on realisation of women’s rights.

“And then if you do develop your economic strategies to realise women’s rights, you do also get a payoff. By way of less of a food crisis because women farmers are producing more, and more productivity because you are educating women more.”

Governments instead have introduced fiscal stimulus measures whose beneficiaries are primarily men, such as spending to support cars, and roads to run them on. “But these are largely jobs for men,” says Prof. Elson. “Women may just sell lunches to men at the car factory.”

As unemployment hits – and it will hit harder now than it did in 2008, according to projections by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) – it is common to believe that men have been hit first, and hardest.

But in countries engaged in export-led development – where women are the majority of workers in such industries, as in Guangdon, China – demand for their exports is becoming scarce. And with this falling demand, jobs for women are disappearing as well.

What is clear is that women are affected too by the economic crisis – even more, when men are affected. “There is a secondary impact of the crisis on women when a lot of men lose their jobs in terms of how women take up those responsibilities,” Yassine Fall, senior economic advisor at UNIFEM, tells IPS. “How are women going to get double jobs, or more employment, again to respond to the needs of families, but also to respond to the increased care need because costs recoveries go up, because women are not able to pay for what they used to pay for?” “Access to water, they’re not able to pay for, for example, access to healthcare, they’re not able to pay for, all of these things that now are more and more privatised. When income goes down, unemployment is increased – one of the members of the family loses their job, there is a shift of responsibility on the backs of women, both in terms of paid and unpaid work,” she says. Women have long had the worst of unpaid work, and the economic crisis will make that no better. But it might still be an opportunity to bring about long- awaited change.

“It’s those three ‘R’s’,” says Prof. Elson. “Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute.” Recognise for a start the unpaid work done by women, not just in statistics, but in economic policies that are implemented. Reduce such work, and when it must be done because it has intrinsic value, such as looking after the family, redistribute it among men and women alike.

In Bolivia, for example, efforts have been made to engage civil society and economists together for more gender responsive budgeting. “To allow the two to work together, and agree on areas that make sense to both,” says Letty Chiwara, global programmes manager at UNIFEM. “In developing countries, that means usually the informal sector. That is a dialogue we are just beginning to have now.”

“We need to go back to look at the alternatives women have been providing,” says Fall. “These are economic actors in their own rights, that have been developing their own ways of dealing with crisis, their own ways of really dealing with social systems, that can sustain human capital, that can sustain economies.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
NEW DELHI, Jan 26 2010 (IPS)

“Passport Please.” That’s what everyone thought they’d ask if you queued up at that exclusive new ice cream shop in one of those smart new malls of fashionable south Delhi.

As it turned out, they did not. But the sign put up at the new Haagen Dazs ice cream shop at the Select City mall had done enough to set off those scenarios.

“Partied at the French Riviera? Welcome”, said the banner put up at the store. “Exclusive preview for international travellers”, it added. And in case of doubt: “Access restricted only to holders of international passports.”

Citizen journalism spotted the poster, and reported. A blogger published a picture of the sign. Before Haagen Dazs figured out what they’d got themselves into, the picture was multiplied across blogs, and picked up by the media.

The outcry led to an immediate apology – and a somewhat unconvincing explanation. A company manager said “it was a wrong choice of words, and we regret the error.”

Clearly, Haagen Dazs, which plans to open about 40 new shops across the country over the next few years, is targeting Indians – not just foreigners in India. But these were not just some ill-advised words about an ice cream shop – they might in fact have put their finger on something regarding urban India’s embrace of globalisation and the West.

The Haagen Dazs store is in good company, even if it put up the wrong sign for a while. The India that is middle class and upwardly mobile – and given the country’s 1.1 billion population and advancing prosperity, that is a large and growing fraction – is increasingly brand conscious.

The Select City mall packs store after store around Haagen Dazs. The local market is giving way to the suburban mall, and shops have become ‘outlets’, or even just the ‘shoppe’. Globalisation has come to mean access to the specific brands they stock and sell, and development now means the ability to afford them.

A new shopping centre near the fashionable Vasant Vihar neighbourhood boasts every branded store worth the overpriced name. A fairly ordinary pair of shoes would mean a month’s wages for one of the guards outside, of whom there are plenty – as a local product they come cheap.

Smart new housing developments in Delhi, or in the now upmarket Gurgaon rapidly looking to rival the capital as a twin city, have names like Beverly Park and The Belaire. Learn to speak these names with ease if you’ve arrived.

School after new school to educate the growing middle class now refer to themselves as “international”: Amity International School, Delhi Public School International, Ganga International School, Sadhu Vaswani International Girls School, VSPK International School, MBS International School, Shri Sai International School, Mayo International School, Mount Abu International School, Mahavira International School, Ryan International School and even a Toddlers International School. The list, of course, is a good deal longer.

And local produce wants an international stamp. “India thinks it does not sell unless it comes through the international market,” veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar, also a former ambassador and MP, tells IPS. “Everything, even films, books…it’s when foreigners praise something that it becomes acceptable in India.”

If there is success to show – and what is success without the show – the kitchen has been replaced by ‘kitchen solutions’ that look like a picture from a Western magazine.

Not least, and most inevitably, there is the foreign car, even if Indian-made models from local manufacturers Tata and Mahindra might be the more sensible choice. To be globalised is to make enough money to buy what someone with money in the West might buy – especially if that someone is a relative abroad.

And yet, there are pointers seemingly to the contrary: many young people in India have none of that awe of Western ways. Signs of a growing pride in things Indian are everywhere: the software success, the first to find water on the moon, the many Indians among Nobel winners, the new imprints on Hollywood…the very rage over the misplaced invitation earlier to the Haagen Dazs store.

“But an obsession with foreign approval underlies even such pride,” says Nayar. “And what someone might claim to be pure national pride is really only chauvinism and jingoism.”

And as the West gets familiar with the colours and costumes of Bollywood, cinema itself is moving towards the West, to feature the Indian who left India, and locations abroad. For those with the means, the mind has moved West.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
GENEVA, Dec 2 2009 (IPS)

Three minutes to speak about the world trade situation was a little more than U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk needed to sum up his country’s position on trade; after eight years of talks to thrash out a single trade deal, he needed less time than that.

Trade ministers were allotted three minutes each to state their positions at the start of the three-day ministerial of the World Trade Organisation that ended in Geneva Wednesday.

The meeting itself was about two years late. Meant to be held every two years, ministers skipped one after the meeting held in Hong Kong four years back. The talks launched in Qatar capital Doha in November 2001 to work out a set of rules to guide world trade have not led to an agreement yet.

Coming after all that, many thought three minutes too little for ministers to describe their position within the deadlock – a deadlock seen by much of the world to have arisen from the position of an unyielding U.S., although the U.S. does not quite see it that way.

Kirk used part of his three minutes to put it across succinct and straight, in the celebrated North American way, after the usual politeness about how trade “can play an important role in the restoration of global prosperity.” He was speaking of course of that part of the globe occupied by the U.S.

“The creation of new trade flows and meaningful market opening, particularly in key emerging markets, is required to fulfil the promise of Doha,” said Kirk. “We are looking for concrete signs from other members that they are ready to join us in that commitment.”

The International Monetary Fund has pointed out, he said, that “58 percent of global economic growth between now and 2014 will be provided by China, India, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and the ASEAN countries.”

But the U.S. wants far more access to the markets of developing countries, particularly the emerging economies among them, than they are prepared to allow. Fleets of cars from General Motors on the streets of Delhi and Shanghai would be a better deal for the U.S. than for those cities, and not because the cars will take up so much space.

If the U.S., it is argued, can get flooded by Chinese goods, it should in turn expect to flood that market back with its own, given the fast rising spending power of China’s consumers. Separate rules for the two sides have long been claimed as valid on that principle of ‘common but differentiated’. The U.S. is seeing commonness more closely now than the differences, and wants quid pro quo.

Few now expect the government of President Barack Obama to yield. “We are still waiting for the big speech from Obama on trade,” Pradeep Mehta, secretary-general of CUTS International, a leading watchdog on trade issues, tells IPS in Geneva. “Their position is that they are keen but not ready. They still have not appointed their ambassador to the WTO.”

The U.S. needs to produce a deal they can sell back home. But so does everyone else. “Basically everyone has to go back and sell a deal to their constituency,” Theresa Carpenter, executive director of the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration in Geneva, tells IPS. “It’s not going to be a situation where you have one winner and everyone else a loser. And within a national community there will be some who benefit and others who don’t benefit so much.”

Across these vast differences Carpenter nevertheless is optimistic over eventual convergence. “People are optimistic that there is a landing zone,” she says. “I think that a deal is near; there is no complete breakdown of talks.”

Past all the grand jargon and the opaque acronyms that crowd discussions of the WTO kind, the issues are a good deal simpler to figure out than what one might expect to find – though they are not quite as simple to resolve. So when the U.S. is spoken of as taking a hard line on sectorals in NAMA (non-agricultural market access), what the U.S. is asking for is essentially that emerging economies allow import with little or no taxation of a range of U.S. goods it particularly wants to sell.

That’s because a sweeping deal now seems unlikely. “The ordinary tariff cutting negotiations are at such a stage where they are unlikely to produce any major new market opportunities for American exporters,” Simon Evenett, professor of international trade and economic at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, tells IPS.

“They have said this is not enough; either we cut the tariffs, which there is not much appetite to do across the board, or we have a series of sectoral negotiations where we try and go for zero tariffs or very low tariffs. The Americans have pushed for those proposals very aggressively.”

The biggest in these sectors, Prof. Evenett says, is chemicals. “This covers about a thousand different kinds of products. They (the U.S.) are looking for zero tariffs or close to zero tariffs in that particular sector.” Inevitably, this is a major issue for both India and China, who have very strong domestic chemicals production that could get knocked around if the U.S. were to have its way.

Automobiles and related parts is another one of these “sectorals” where the U.S. wants to drive into Delhi and Shanghai with General Motors or its giant, if now ailing cousins. Other kinds of goods the U.S. wants to sell without tariffs: bicycles, electrical goods, electronic products, fish and fish products, forest products, gems and jewellery, industrial machinery, clothing and footwear.

“There will be proposals to have zero tariffs in all of these areas,” says Prof. Evenett. “But these are only proposals. This has not been accepted.” Naturally, as seen from India and China. In many of these sectors (sectorals for someone anxious to sound WTO-literate) the two countries have strong production spilling over to exports. No one wants to buy what they are themselves making and selling.

To ‘Buy American’ is controversial enough within the U.S. For the rest of the world to skip their own and also buy American could be non-controversial – many might not even consider it.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ST. ANDREWS, Nov 7 2009 (IPS)

It has been a bad week for the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. During the week the last meeting in the formal round of pre- Copenhagen talks collapsed in Barcelona. Then, meeting here on the weekend, the G20 finance ministers put the seal on that failure by failing to agree a financial package.

The G20 is clearly a platform, not a group. And inevitably, the developed nations as they are labelled, and the emerging economies, stuck to their positions, that have conflict and differences built into them.

It is in the nature of these summits that – after all this – everyone still announces an agreement.

“We committed to take action to tackle the threat of climate change and work towards an ambitious outcome in Copenhagen, within the objective, provisions and principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),” the G20 ministers declared.

“We discussed climate change financing options and recognised the need to increase significantly and urgently the scale and predictability of finance to implement an ambitious international agreement.

“To deliver this financing, coordinated equitable, transparent and effective institutional arrangements will be needed. Coordination of support for country-led plans and reporting of this support should be ensured across all financing channels, multilateral, regional and bilateral. We discussed a range of options and, recognising that finance will play an important role in the delivery of the outcome at Copenhagen, we commit to take forward further work on climate change finance, to define financing options and institutional arrangements,” announced the ministers.

The bureaucracy attached to these things is clearly not new to the business of producing language to defy facts.

The meeting in St. Andrews in fact “turned out to be a mostly irrelevant sideshow on the way to the talks in Copenhagen,” says Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland. “This is a group that can throw money at collapsing banks but cannot find adequate figures for the far worse challenge to the global economy of a collapsing climate system.”

The collapse came after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stepped into the meeting to make what many considered a bold, if carefully worded, suggestion.

Brown spoke sharply against the culture of banks, saying, “it cannot be acceptable that the benefits of success in this sector are reaped by the few, but the costs of its failure are borne by all of us.” He then mentioned a financial transactions tax as a possibility, that would also tax banks.

“I believe we should discuss whether we need a better economic and social contract to reflect the global responsibilities of financial institutions to society. There have been proposals for an insurance fee to reflect systemic risk, or a resolution fund, or contingent capital arrangements, or a global financial transactions levy.”

The fact that he mentioned the last of these is significant, arising as it does from ideas of the Tobin tax. Proposed by economist James Tobin, this would be a tax on all currency trade across borders. Brown spoke beyond that of a “global financial transactions levy.”

The yield could be massive. A tax of 0.05 percent on financial transactions could produce 700 billion dollars a year, Oxfam estimates. This would be enough to pay for climate change mitigation and adaptation actions, and a good deal of development work besides.

It is as significant that the proposal came from Britain, which has long wrapped that kind of suggestion in cold silence. Oxfam estimates that 60 percent of the kind of financial transactions Brown spoke of take place in Britain, where the City of London – the financial district of the capital – is a global centre for bank and currency transactions.

Brown’s proposal did not get anywhere during the meeting. “Talk of a financial transaction tax has the potential to raise hundreds of billions in new funding every year, but turned out to be a red herring without solid political support,” Dixon stressed.

Germany and France have supported such a tax. But, with financial powerhouse Britain now indicating that it should be considered, this opens up a new division between major European economies on one side, and the U.S. principally on the other – the U.S. very clearly is not supportive of this family of tax proposals.

This was not the only possibility raised, and dumped. At the London G20 summit in April the developed countries spoke of action against tax havens, to enable developing nations to use money saved for development. The communiqué from St. Andrews, ActionAid points out, speaks only of “the possible use of a multilateral instrument” to that end.

The possibilities here are huge, Martin Hearson from ActionAid tells IPS. “What is needed is for developed countries to set up a system and to force tax havens to participate. At the moment information is available to developed countries bilaterally, but developing countries often lack information or the means to protect their money.”

The implications for development, including action on climate change, can be huge, Hearson says. “We believe that potentially 160 billion dollars a year can be saved for developing countries through action on tax havens, and that money can be used for development and for actions over climate change. It’s a sum of money that dwarfs aid budgets.”

Campaigners are now looking more for such collaborative actions, and for actions on suggestions such as Gordon Brown’s, rather than hoping for governments to dish out money directly.

Several campaigners believe these proposals will bear fruit later, even if they did not find instant agreement during the course of a day. “Gordon Brown today signalled that payback time for banks could be just round the corner,” says Max Lawson, Oxfam senior policy adviser. “A tax on banks would be a major step towards clearing up the mess caused by their greed.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland, Nov 6 2009 (IPS)

You could almost begin to divide the figures before you add them up. The numbers being advertised by way of aid to the developing world to contain carbon emissions do not quite add up. What is more certain is the division to follow.

The divisions are coming in many kinds, and at many levels, the last of which surfaced with the African delegate’s walkout at the pre-Copenhagen talks in Barcelona this week. The hope of overcoming such divisions, now redirected at the northern end of Europe at the G20 finance ministers meeting, is at best a weak one.

Few expect the G20 finance ministers meeting Friday and Saturday in St. Andrews, a pretty if desolate little town on the east coast of Scotland, to agree a financial package ahead of the climate change conference due in Copenhagen next month, which has been called to attempt a new agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol that ends in 2012.

The meeting at St. Andrews is an early test for the G20, hailed at the Pittsburgh summit in September as a permanent fixture – even a permanent fixer – for global problems. That worked to an extent over the financial crisis – everyone was agreed the markets should begin to move again as before, and the major developing countries needed that movement in developed markets to push their own exports and economies.

But the gathering in St. Andrews brings together the developed and the major developing countries as the opposites of old. Which then becomes the first big test for the resolve declared at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh: “We welcome the work of the finance ministers, and direct them to report back at their next meeting with a range of possible options for climate change financing to be provided as a resource to be considered in the UNFCCC (U.N. Framework Convention for Climate Change) negotiations at Copenhagen.”

The talks in Barcelona, the last official round before the Copenhagen summit in December, produced no agreement on targets for cutting carbon emissions – or any commitments on climate finance. Not many expect the same nations to find agreement a day later only because they meet under the umbrella of the brave new G20.

“But there are some signs that this meeting is more serious in terms of finance,” Dr Richard Dixon from conservation group WWF tells IPS in St. Andrews. “Even if they say they have discussed the new EU financing proposals, and if they can say they agree on a right kind of number, that will be good progress.”

That could then be built upon, says Dixon. It could also be significant if the finance ministers can discuss the role of the international finance institutions in handling the distribution of money. In the absence of any major breakthrough, campaigners say an advance on some specific aspects could be meaningful.

One of the best possible outcomes, says Dixon, would be for the ministers to bring together actions on the economic meltdown and the climate crisis. “Public money could go into new green projects,” he says.

Officials also expect the finance ministers to take forward progress made on some specific issues at the Barcelona talks, particularly consideration of some form of taxation on aviation and shipping to help some of the poorest countries.

The Barcelona talks also pledged new steps to curb deforestation. It does appear that governments are prepared to do something – so long as they do not have to foot a bill for it.

And this, when no one is looking at a particularly heavy bill. The take-off point for much of the talking is a new EU policy paper, and its nice round target of 100 billion euros (150 billion dollars) a year by 2020 for limiting emissions. A fund for which all, it says, but the poorest must pay. Which opens up the question no one has a clear answer to yet: would China and India be donors, or recipients? The first is hardly conceivable; yet “all but the poorest” must bring in those two as payers.

Keep those two out as donors, and count them in as beneficiaries, and the imagined sum total begins to get divided, in fact to disintegrate. For a start, the EU proposal suggests that governments would produce only about half that sum – and only if other nations make similar commitments. The rest would come from private sources, mainly the carbon trading scheme.

The promise that the carbon trading scheme holds to cut emissions is in severe doubt, and appears more uncertain than even the money it could hope to raise. The Friends of the Earth (FoE) international network argues that the scheme only shifts emissions from one location to another for a fee, and does little to reduce them.

“Relying on a dodgy market system like carbon trading to reduce emissions is irresponsible and dangerous,” the group says. “The EU must commit to cutting its emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 at home by investing in renewable energy generation and slashing energy waste.”

And, it says, governments must pay, as those principally responsible for the setting up of polluting systems. Dividing up who may pay what, Britain, for instance, would have a national bill of less than a couple of billion euros a year. And only eventually, if at all. The U.S. would be expected to shell out ten times as much under the European proposal. In the U.S., that is considered inconceivable.

The EU has proposed no more than seven to 10 billion dollars towards that fund over the next three years. And several European countries, in Eastern Europe particularly, are declining to do even that. The share of each country in the 27-member EU would be very small. If a readiness for that too is not forthcoming, it becomes difficult to see what finance ministers could agree in St. Andrews by way of government pledges.

As seen from much of Europe, the U.S. on one side, and India and China on the other, are holding back a binding agreement. And the focus here is on those three, holding out steadfastly against binding international commitments to cut emissions.

Officials from these countries are certainly clear about the strength of their position, particularly after they agree to work together at these negotiations. “With India and China working together, we have a very strong bloc here that will be able to stand up to any pressure,” a senior official here told IPS.

“The two countries are not spoilers as some of the Western media are making out. We are only asking the developed world to meet their share of the responsibility.”

With a financing agreement looking more and more uncertain in St. Andrews, to seal the failure in Barcelona, everything points for the moment to a future along the lines indicated by the U.S, and by India and China – that national commitments, at least for the foreseeable future, may be the way forward rather than an international agreement.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 20 2009 (IPS)

The European Union is intercepting big shipments of medicines on their way to poorer countries, according to a new report published Tuesday.

The generic medicines, coming mostly from India and headed for Latin American countries, have been intercepted and blocked on the grounds of alleged infringement of intellectual property rights.

A report produced jointly by Oxfam and the independent Health Action International says the generic shipments are legitimate under WTO rules.

India and Brazil are due to file a complaint against the Netherlands before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) after it seized a shipment of anti-HIV drugs headed from India via Europe to Brazil, Colombia and Nigeria.

"Although in transit, the patent law of the EU member state was called on by the right holder, and this was also the basis of the detainment by Dutch customs," Sophie Bloemen from Health Action International told IPS by phone from Brussels.

Since late last year Germany and the Netherlands have made customs seizures of 19 shipments of generic medicines bound for developing countries, the report says. Of the last 17 shipments, 16 were from India and one from China.

Of these 17 shipments, five were headed for Peru, four for Colombia, two each for Ecuador and Mexico, and one each for Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Nigeria.

Many of these medicines are urgently needed to treat life-threatening conditions such as AIDS.

The medicines included 30,000 pills that are AIDS inhibitors,100,000 pills of cardiologic medicines, 500,000 pills to treat schizophrenia, and 94,000 pills to help treat dementia, according to customs information made available to IPS by Health Action International.

The seizures are dubious to begin with – and may not serve the intended purpose either.

"The EU has argued it needs to check for counterfeits as these are dangerous for public health," Bloemen tells IPS. "But counterfeits actually relate to a trademark infringement, not a patent infringement.

"So these are two different things, and you check for them in a different way too. Actually customs officials are incapable of checking adequately for patent infringement as it requires lab tests."

The European Union is putting the interests of big drug companies before people who cannot access essential medicines, the report says. The EU's actions undermine its obligations to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as well as World Trade Organisation agreements, it says.

"The EU is increasing pressure on developing country governments to surrender their rights to obtain affordable, generic medicines in order to protect public health, even though these rights are guaranteed under global trade rules," the report says.

The EU is also insisting on tough new intellectual property rules in bilateral free trade deals that go beyond the WTO's existing Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the report says.

"The EU is pushing these measures that will result in higher medicine prices in developing countries at the same time it is trying to reduce domestic medicine prices," the report says. "Twenty-four out of 27 EU member states have taken steps to implement price controls for medicines."

Companies making the complaints leading to the seizure of generic drugs may not themselves have a clean record. "The European Commission is carrying out a high profile investigation into the pharmaceutical industry for intellectual property abuses in the European Union, and is contemplating action against these companies," the report says.

"The EU is guilty of double standards," says Elise Ford, Oxfam head of EU advocacy. "One rule for the rich and another for the poor. A crackdown on European pharmaceutical prices is happening alongside a concerted effort to further push intellectual property rules that prevent poor countries from buying affordable medicines."

The EU's policies are increasing the cost of medicines, according to the report. "This is hitting the poorest people in developing countries disproportionately hard, as 20-60 percent of their health budgets are spent on medicines."

"Millions of poor people have to pay for medicines out of their own pockets, so even a small price rise can make them unaffordable," says Ford. "Europe's policies are directly responsible for this scandal."

The EU's trade policies demand that developing countries protect the interests of drug companies above public health priorities, and the EU demands exceed even those made by the much-criticised U.S. administration of former president George W. Bush, the report says.

The report details a number of other EU policies that it says are damaging access to medicines in developing countries. These include:

– promotion of a new global framework to enforce intellectual property rules which delay access to generic medicines in developing countries, including through seizures of legitimate medicines;

– obstructing progress at the World Health Organisation towards new models of research and development that meet health needs in developing countries;

– spending on research and development for developing countries that remains insufficient in spite of increases in recent years.

While the EU is increasing funding to improve healthcare for European citizens, it is denying developing countries the affordable medicines they need to ensure good health, the report points out.

"It's time that the EU joins up its policies. Both the European Commission (the executive arm of the EU) and member states must promote access to healthcare in their development policies and access to affordable medicines through their trade policy," says Ford.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 15 2009 (IPS)

They are calling it 'The Great Persuasion' in Britain as millions prepare around the world to stand up for action against poverty.

The persuasion will be targeted at 200 members of parliament. As part of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) from Friday to Sunday this week, constituents will call on local MPs to talk to them about their commitment to reducing poverty.

The constituents will of course stand with the MPs and have their pictures taken. That is not going to swell magnificently the number of people who will be counted as having quite literally stood up to demand action against poverty. The UK campaign will have fewer numbers, but they believe their stand will go far.

The targeting of MPs is being coordinated by BOND (British Overseas NGOs for Development), an umbrella group for about 330 NGOs campaigning for rights and development. The particular call on GCAP has been endorsed by more than 70 development charities, including several large organisations such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and Care International.

"The MPs will be handed two copies of our international development manifesto, one for them, and one to hand to their parties," Tim Gee from GCAP UK told IPS. "That would provide the framework for them to take action against poverty in the next parliament."

General elections are expected in Britain in May next year – though they could come earlier. All recent general elections in Britain, BOND says, have seen a degree of collective campaigning on development issues with action at a local and national level targeted at political parties and prospective MPs.

Among the MPs chosen, Gee said, are Oliver Letwin, policy director with the Conservative Party who is writing the manifesto for the party, Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party, and Vince Cable, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. "These will be particularly important MPs to target," said Gee.

BOND says this is an especially meaningful weekend for action because it includes three key days: World Food Day (Oct. 16), U.N. International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (Oct. 17) and Micah Sunday (Oct. 18), a global day of prayers held in churches against poverty. Last year, it was estimated that more than 100 million people across the world took action against poverty at this time.

The end of the weekend will also mark 20 days to the G20 (major advanced and emerging economies) finance ministers meeting in St. Andrews in Scotland, and 50 days to the Copenhagen climate summit in December. The weekend will also be MPs' first weekend back in their constituencies after the summer recess, and "there has never been a more important time for politicians to feel the heat," BOND said in a statement.

In addition to the lobbying, 'stand-up' events are being planned at more than 100 churches and schools "to say their wishes should be heard against poverty," said Gee. "The thousands in the UK will express their solidarity with millions around the world." British international development NGOs have set out five areas for action in their manifesto presented to the political parties:

– More and better aid and debt relief – Tackling climate change – Making the global economy work for the poor – Good governance and addressing corruption – Responding to conflict situations

"There is a global democratic deficit," Gee added in a statement released by BOND. "UK policies on aid, trade, debt and climate change can change the lives of the world's poor. As the world's poor cannot vote in UK elections, it is up to us to stand up on their behalf."

Parliamentarians are not being contacted in Britain alone. "Over 2,000 parliamentarians across more than 50 countries will be contacted by citizens as part of the 'Stand Up and Take Action' initiative of the Global Call to Action against Poverty and the UN Millennium Campaign," BOND said.

Some highlights of action planned around the world, BOND says, include:

– India: Campaigners will take action in 100 constituencies to demand functional health centres in every village, town and country.

– Nigeria: Thousands of people at concerts by Sarah Mitaru and Femi Kuti will sign a petition demanding accountability and transparency in their governments in order to achieve the MDGs.

– The Philippines: campaigners will launch a survey about the issues people want their leaders to prioritise, which will be presented to the country’s presidential candidates on Oct. 20.

– South Korea: Thousands will take to the streets calling on their government to increase overseas aid.

– U.S.: Citizens will take part in events to pressure the United States Congress to pass the Roadmap to End Global Hunger Plan.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 13 2009 (IPS)

Unsafe abortions kill about 70,000 women a year, says a report by the U.S.- based Guttmacher Institute. An additional five million women are treated annually for complications arising from unsafe abortion, adds the report, based on a global survey.

The institute, which seeks to advance sexual and reproductive health through research and policy education, notes that the number of abortions worldwide fell from 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003. But that has still not reduced the number of deaths.

“Unsafe abortions, including deaths from unsafe abortions, have not changed, even though overall rates of abortion are declining,” Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, told IPS in an interview.

“The explanation for this is that populations of women are growing faster in various parts of the world that are least likely to make safe abortion widely available, and so women in some of the poorest countries of the world with the most rapid rates of population growth are having unsafe abortions at the same rate as they have for the last decade,” she said.

Half of the deaths due to unsafe abortions are in Africa, Camp said. “The next largest number are in South Asia. Even though in India and Bangladesh abortion is legal, not all women in those countries have access to quality services.”

The most timely prevention inevitably is contraception, Camp said. “Behind every abortion is an unwanted pregnancy, and if women can avoid those unwanted pregnancies in the first place, then abortion, whether legal or illegal, will go down. But until women’s need for contraception is met, abortion rates are going to remain high.”

Governments need to expand high quality family planning services because that in itself will reduce the need for abortion, Camp said. “But it won’t reduce it to zero. And so I would hope that governments would liberalise abortion laws and make the investments that are needed in making safe abortion services available.”

Greater investment needs to be made also in medical services for women who suffer the effects of badly done abortions, Camp said. “Obviously if you do the first two things, that problem will largely go away. But until it does, governments are going to need to put out services so that women who suffer complications from unsafe abortions should have humane and good quality medical care.”

The report, titled ‘Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress’, notes that 19 countries have significantly reduced restrictions in their abortion laws since 1997. But despite these trends, 40 percent of the world’s women live in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws, virtually all of them in the developing world.

In Africa, despite the progress in some countries, 92 percent of reproductive- age women live under highly restrictive abortion laws, and in Latin America, 97 percent do so, the report says. These proportions have not changed markedly over the past decade.

The report says three countries – Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua – have increased legal restrictions on abortion. But it also makes note of considerable progress in many countries.

“Most of the countries that have liberalised abortion laws are in the developing world,” Camp said. “Eight African countries have modified their laws, including two of the largest – South Africa and Ethiopia.”

The new laws in South Africa have delivered dramatic results. “In South Africa early abortion in the first 12 weeks is available on request, at least in principle,” Camp said. “Obviously not all rural women have access to good services, but even with the investment that has been made so far, there has been a more than 90 percent reduction in hospitalisations from unsafe abortion, and a more than 50 percent decline in abortion- related deaths.”

Worldwide, the unintended pregnancy rate declined from 69 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1995 to 55 per 1,000 in 2008, the report says. The proportion of married women using contraception increased from 54 percent in 1990 to 63 percent in 2003. Increases also occurred among sexually active single women.

However, regional levels of birth control use varied greatly. “While 71 percent of married women in Latin America and the Caribbean were using contraceptives in 2003, only 28 percent of married African women were doing so,” the report says. “Nearly one in four married women in Africa had an unmet need for contraception in 2002-2007, compared with 10-13 percent of their counterparts in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 7 2009 (IPS)

The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have run into a predictable roadblock in setting out brave new directions: a roadblock called memory. What could have been an immensely sensible idea of turning the IMF into a new central bank for the world is up against years of mistrust the IMF has built for itself.

Its disastrous structural adjustment programmes are too recent for countries to be convinced that they can cut national reserves in order to spend more because there would now be this new global bank sitting on a trillion dollars or so, and that if they should need money, they could have it from here without the kind of conditions attached that the IMF has made itself notorious for.

In the 1990s, the IMF controversially forced East Asian countries towards the path of reduced social commitments and high interest rates as a condition for loans. But there is more to the misgivings than the cutting of programmes for the poor, and the IMF record during the Asian crisis.

As recently as last month at the G20 meeting of developed and emerging powers in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the IMF turned down demands from emerging economies for a seven percent shift in IMF quotas to their advantage. Instead, a five percent shift of quotas from over-represented to under-represented countries was agreed.

"It is a compromise figure because as of now the developing countries' quota is about 44 percent," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had pointed out in Pittsburgh. "The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) had suggested a rebalancing to the extent of seven percent, in which case the developing countries would have more than 50 percent. Seven is the demand, five is what was agreed, so obviously it is a compromise."

In developing countries, the IMF is seen as a supposedly global body where they still have to fight for their due place – and their overdue share. Not quite a circumstance that might encourage them to drop national reserves and leave it to any considerable extent to the IMF or to some new bank it may metamorphose into. The IMF remains accountable to shareholders first, not to countries in need. And this is a matter of fact here and now, not of memory.

It is against such resistance that IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn declared brave new ambitions for the IMF at the meetings of the IMF and the World Bank held in Istanbul Oct. 6 and 7. "This annual meeting may be the starting-point of a new IMF, and you may say later when you will be talking with your grandchildren that you were in Istanbul at this time," he told delegates.

But grandchildren may well remember the Istanbul meetings for divisions over the new dreams – if they have reason to remember them at all.

The policy steering committee asked the IMF to consider four areas for change – reviewing the IMF mandate, its financing role, multilateral surveillance, and governance. Of these, the one that's in the bag for sure is its new role of surveillance, to report on policies and trends as watchdog standing back. The business of doing rather than reporting is the more problematic issue.

Within the new mandate, the IMF has shown some success also in its financing role, with its new flexible credit line, offered so far to Mexico, Poland and Colombia, that Bank of Mexico Governor Guillermo Ortiz called the IMF's first "stigma free" lending. Mexico has a 47 billion dollar credit line with the IMF.

For the IMF this credit line is almost an advertisement, a foretaste of what a global IMF with a trillion dollars could do for the world. There would no more be those dreaded IMF reforms; this would be a reformed IMF.

But the doubts have not vanished as swiftly as Strauss-Kahn would like them to. Because the thrust of the argument is seen now with suspicion: the aim is to dissuade governments from holding on to large dollar reserves. The worrying flipside of the reserves is that much money is not now getting spent. The industrialised countries need the developing and emerging economies to do the buying as spending flattens out in the U.S. and across much of Western Europe.

Further, the recession-hit world of the developed countries needs new buyers abroad that it cannot find within. That could be helped immensely by a sharp drop in national currency reserves that the IMF now wants.

The opening of markets to goods from other countries is next on the agenda, when trade ministers meet to restart the stalled Doha round of trade talks in Geneva. The flight out from Istanbul to watch is the one headed for Geneva.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
PITTSBURGH, Sep 25 2009 (IPS)

Something that was perhaps only half-expected has happened in Pittsburgh: the G20 has moved on from being an event to becoming an institution.

Protesters have also descended on Pittsburgh demanding solutions to environmental and economic crises they say were created by the G20. Credit: whatleydude/flickr

A draft communiqué says the G20 will have "responsibility to the community of nations to assure the overall health of the global economy".

U.S. President Barack Obama is believed to have taken the lead in bringing more solidity to the G20. And in a symbolic indication of its new inclusiveness, the next G20 will be held in Seoul, Korea next year, following on from the summits in Washington, London and Pittsburgh.

The moves from the so-called emerging economies have delivered much of what they sought. And these have been firm moves – pressure as seen by some, but at the least, firm persuasion.

The emerging formed a group of five, the G5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) that took a collective stand to speak to the rich at the last G8 summit in L'Aquila in Italy. And earlier this month, the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) made a collective presentation at the G20 finance ministers meeting in London for more representation within the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than the rich were bargaining for.

It was perhaps a matter of time before someone ended an arrangement of a sub-group contesting the bigger group within a coalition. Obama has.

Simultaneously, the G8 fizzles out as a group claiming clout. It has not been officially disbanded, but will be a security grouping now. What that role will imply has not been clarified as yet. But the focus is clearly the G20 now.

The end, practically, of the G8 is not necessarily a concession offered by the developed world. "The G8 faced a credibility crisis," John Samuel, international director of ActionAid tells IPS. "It produced a record of broken promises, made statements it did not follow up."

"And secondly, it celebrated the liberal new market which collapsed. It has become redundant, and it really has now only an ornamental position," he notes. The G8 has agreed to give way to the G20 "not out of choice but out of the compulsions of the economic crisis."

A step forward, an undoubtedly historic one at that, but not perhaps occasion for uncritical celebration.

"The question is whether we will now have a super-8 within the G20," says Samuel. "What matters is whether countries such as India and Brazil will be able to change the discourse within the G20. If the G20 becomes a handmaid of the G8, then it does not carry much possibility."

And a new success for major developing countries that a stronger G20 represents may be less romantic than it first seems. "A lot of the countries with G8 are less democratic than the G8 countries," says Samuel.

Saudi Arabia is an obvious instance. But even with India, says Samuel, there is insufficient consultation within parliament and with civil society. "It cannot be left to bureaucrats to negotiate the future of the world."

But few can deny that the change has brought to the major developing countries a historic opportunity to influence the way the world goes. And potentially, to speak also for the poor in nations outside of the G20 – a reminder, surely, is the fact that there may be more poor people within just India than in the rest of the world.

The G20 is believed to account for 90 percent of the world's economic output, and has two-thirds of the world population. There is a telling mismatch in those figures, high as they both seem, and the legitimacy of the G20 will depend substantially on how it addresses that gap.

A telling test will come early enough, as early as November, at a meeting of trade ministers in Geneva. The meeting follows a history of one set of G20 countries like India, China and Brazil at war with the G8 part of the G20 over subsidies and market access. The 20 will no doubt be considering, as will the rest outside of the 20, who will surrender what claims in this as yet fragile new alliance.

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By Sanjay Suri
PITTSBURGH, Sep 24 2009 (IPS)

Almost before anyone knew it, a new language has become current leading up to the two-day G20 meet in Pittsburgh that divides the world in ways that seem suitable at the high table of the day. The new tiers are the developed, the emerging, and of course the poor.

That last is the one category that seems not to change.

Until the other day, what are now classed the emerging economies were simply the developing nations. The developed would remain, it was rarely questioned, prosperous in perpetuity because they were simply who they were. The developing would remain that way forever too, never quite getting there. And whoever thought the poorest will one day be rich?

But in what was the world known as the developing world, there are now two, in terms of nomenclature: the developing and the emerging. And on the world stage, the emerging now sit at a table with the developed, not with the developing.

“We need only to look at the history of international negotiations to see patterns of divide and rule,” Asad Rehman from Friends of the Earth tells IPS. “This is an effort to weaken the G77 bloc.”

That has been an effective bloc “able to hold together for the WTO (World Trade Organisation) negotiations,” Rehman says. “We need a strong G77.”

This bloc, he says, is being split into the most vulnerable developing countries on one hand and the bigger and more developed ones who may only look after their own interests. And with the creation of the G20, the voices of others will not be heard, or at least, heard very much less than if the developing world had stuck together.

“It really means that the G8 table has been expanded to include the emerging economies,” John Hilary, executive director of the independent development group War on Want tells IPS. “This raises the big question where they will stand vis-à-vis other developing countries.”

This will be a particular issue with the WTO negotiations coming up, says Hilary. “At the WTO the developing countries have been seen as a coherent bloc, and identified by that name. If that goes, and there is then another layer, it can be very dangerous. The unity might go, and then the power.”

The emerging economies are clearly keen to leave that ‘third world’ tag behind. That tag was a shaming one, almost. No one ever spoke of the first world of the developed, or was ever quite sure what and where the second world was, unless it was that of relative prosperity of the socialist kind, the old Soviet republic, their protégés in Eastern Europe, and places like what was formerly Yugoslavia.

That category dissolved away for a new tier to take second place. This category is identified as usually China, India, Brazil and South Africa. But there is another lot in second place usually not spoken of, at least at global negotiations: the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The region has a bigger economy than many of the economies classified as emerging. The region includes big economies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. From MENA, Saudi Arabia is in the G20.

But the difficulty with the ’emerging’ bloc is not the others like it that it excluded – it may be those within itself that it may fail to include. The poor within South Africa, China, India, Brazil have been seen as, and certainly claimed as, insurance that their governments will not adopt policies hurtful to the poor. The tests for this are near at hand now.

About the first will be the meeting of ministers to resume talks on a new trade round. The meeting has been called in Geneva in November. Leaders from the developed and emerging economies agreed at the G8 summit in L’Aquila earlier this year that a new trade deal would be concluded next year. The question is what present position the emerging economies may be prepared to surrender for that to happen.

That might well decide whose side they are on – and whether they are on their own side.

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By Sanjay Suri
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 19 2009 (IPS)

Major developing countries are again preparing to stand together on critical issues at the G20 heads of government meeting in Pittsburgh Sep 24-25.

Mergers such as the one proposed between telecom giants Bharti of India and MTN of South Africa and others will give substance to IBSA. Credit: IPS

A big test case could be IBSA – a grouping of India, Brazil and South Africa, which brings together major developing democracies across three continents.

Many believe IBSA holds greater possibilities than does BRIC, the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China, which is seen more as a strategic negotiating coalition than as a solid bloc of rapidly emerging economies.

“I think IBSA is an association of countries which is built on a very solid reality,” Ron Davies, South African trade and industries minister tells IPS.

“That we are the bigger developing countries on different continents, and that we have a series of cooperation agreements which at least for South Africa have some real meaning.”

But amidst his enthusiasm for new South-South links, Davies acknowledges it’s early days yet. “I think there is work ahead to consolidate and deepen IBSA. And that’s one of our very significant priorities here in South Africa.”

For the moment, the immediate sense of presenting a single negotiating face is clearer than the future dimensions of the trilateral initiative.  

“To some extent I think IBSA is a bit of a romantic idea in the sense that linking up the three countries through common air links or shipping links is a long way into the future,” says Prof. Stephen Gelb, executive director of The Edge Institute, an independent economic policy centre in Johannesburg.

“I think there is a lot of scope for political alliances in multilateral fora like the WTO or the United Nations but actual links between the three countries lie somewhere in the future.”

And that push will come, Gelb says, not at political gatherings but in company boardrooms.

“Business links that happen, or would have happened, would help to build the IBSA idea rather than the other way round,” he says.

“Businesses find each other when they need (to), they find markets that help to create linkages that then take on a political expression.”

What the three countries need is more trade with each other, and joint activities in third markets, Gelb says. “What I think is very important to make it a reality is that links between each pair of countries becomes much more substantial,” he says.

One instance could be the merger deal being negotiated between two major telecom companies, Bharti in India and South Africa-based MTN, looking to create a merged entity worth 23 billion dollars with more than 200 million subscribers.

The merged company would service markets in Africa, the Arab world and in Asia. Several managers are already speaking of looking further afield to Latin America, where Brazil, the third pillar of IBSA, has the potential to be a big market.

There are several other agreements being worked out between companies from the three countries, and trade among the three is picking up rapidly.

Visiting Brazil in early September in preparation for October’s IBSA Business Summit, Indian external affairs minister S. M. Krishna underlined common opportunities, and also common threats arising from the financial crisis.

The crisis will push millions in developing countries back into poverty for another generation, he said ahead of the summit in Brasilia. IBSA, he said, “can be a game-changer in today’s circumstances.”

IBSA is now considering ways of opening up opportunities beyond the three-nation base. Officials are exploring increased trade links now between India and MERCOSUR (the South American group comprising Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina), and between India and the South African Customs Union.

The three IBSA countries have a population of close to 1.5 billion (mostly in India), and a combined GDP of about 3.2 trillion dollars, officials say. One way of beating the crisis arising in developed countries, they say, is for IBSA nations to sell far more to one another.

Foreign ministers Celso Amorin of Brazil, Krishna of India and Maite Nkoana-Mashabane of South Africa have set a target more than doubling trade among the three countries to 25 billion dollars by 2015. The total trade among the three last year was 10 billion dollars.

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By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Sep 4 2009 (IPS)

Every one of these 'G' meetings becomes now an occasion for the developing countries – say the emerging economies – to turn that extra energy into a louder voice in the business of global decision-taking.

A day before the leaders of the wealthiest developed nations met at the last G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy in July, the G5 met with announcements of consolidated positions. They held together jointly, and therefore that much more firmly, against a particularly European push for some binding commitments on actions towards curbing climate change.

And now on the eve of the substantive part of the G20 finance ministers meeting in London Saturday, the BRIC nations came together to make a collective announcement that would both inform the formal meeting in advance of common positions, and pre-empt increased pressure from the developed – the G8 part of the G20.

For the record, the G8 are the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia; the G5 are Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Mexico; and BRIC are Brazil, Russia, India and China. The remaining members of the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey and the EU represented by its rotating presidency (currently Sweden).

Russia belongs to both the G8 and outside, China some say should really belong to a G2 alongside the U.S., to sit above the G8. These numbers are not that serious; certainly they are not formal. That one or two may move this side or that is just a fallout of what everyone calls these days 'the changing world order.'

Change has come outside of the U.S. too, and U.S. President Barack Obama is not the only one looking for change, even if that sort of push coming from others makes for smaller headlines. But the push is unmistakable – and change inevitable.

So the BRIC finance ministers did not just call for reform of the international financial institutions when they met in London Friday ahead of the finance ministers meeting proper. "The main governance problem, which severely undermines their legitimacy, is the unfair distribution of quotas, shares and voting power," the BRIC ministers said in a statement following their meeting. That they have said before, but on Friday they went further.

"We propose the setting of a target for that shift of the order of seven percent in the IMF and six percent in the World Bank Group so as to reach an equitable distribution of voting power between advanced and developing countries. This would lead the overall share of emerging market and developing countries in the IMF and World Bank to correspond roughly to their share in world GDP."

Six or seven percent may not sound like a lot. But the last time, three percent of votes shifted from rich to developing countries. Now they want the next shift to be twice as big. Push has not yet come to shove – the emerging economies are looking for change, not upheaval, for steps that will in time add up to a change that is certain to be revolutionary, but not looking for a dramatic revolution in the old ways.

The G8 governments have been dragging their feet since agreeing to reform of these institutions. At this G20 gathering, the pressure will be on for reform. U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner dropped in at the end of the BRIC ministers meeting to hear what the ministers had to say, and to reassure them the U.S. will back change. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega reported at the end of the meeting that Geithner agreed action to reform the international financial institutions, and to do so quickly.

And he agreed too, as the BRIC ministers demanded, that the next managing director of the IMF and the next president of the World Bank should be elected "irrespective of nationality or any geographical preference." And that the executive boards of these institutions give more representation to developing countries.

This was always a good argument, but now strength speaks. As Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji said after the meeting, BRIC nations between them have a higher gross national income (GNI) now than does the U.S. Sure, that is still four big countries that just about surpass the U.S. standing alone – but the U.S. giant stands less tall above others now than it did before, and looks more fragile than the smaller economies.

"Emerging market economies have shown resilience and helped the world economy absorb the impact of the deterioration of trade, credit flows and demand," the BRIC ministers pointed out in their statement. "In many of them, growth is already back on track after a few quarters of recession or slowdown."

And with 80 billion dollars of their money now going into the international financial institutions, it does not seem likely they will be able to resist change for long along the lines that the emerging economies are pushing insistently for.

The BRIC ministers held on to earlier positions on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in taking action on climate change. But they acknowledged too that there is much that needs to be reformed beyond voting rights and the lot within financial institutions.

"Permanent, stable reforms must still be implemented on multiple fronts," they acknowledged. The need, they said, is to "change international practices, rules and governance structures to make the global economy more resilient to future crises." They have an interest in this, suffering as they did from a crisis not of their making.

Few expect the developing nations to secure all the reforms they want in a hurry. But few doubt, either, that the developing world has taken at least some steps towards that end as never before.

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By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Sep 4 2009 (IPS)

The tests are coming thick and fast. After the G20 summit in Washington last year, the G20 in London in April, and the G8 in L'Aquila that was substantially a G20, the G20 finance ministers are meeting in London this Friday and Saturday ahead of the G20 gathering in Pittsburgh later this month.

Finance of course is what it is all about. And conflicting financial interests along the traditional divide between the developed and developing, now complicated by what are called the emerging economies – a little developed and a lot developing.

These now occupy an increasingly more formal in-between space. They are the G5 when the G-whatever meet, the club of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC), or the club of India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA), looking one way and another to solidify a new strength they found only the other day.

Through various ways of getting together they are looking like a new force in negotiating with the traditionally rich club, the G8 – if you count in Russia on that side as well.

But they are running the risk – and warnings over this are getting louder – also of a new rich-clubbing at the expense of their own poor, and the poor elsewhere that they could speak for; that they are instead going with the G8 part of the G20 (group of major industrialised and emerging nations) in maintaining the status quo to help large corporations.

"When the G20 meeting took place in London at the beginning of this year, there was a call for a radical new beginning," says John Hilary, chief executive of War on Want, a London-based independent group campaigning for development for the underprivileged. "The G20 business leaders themselves said we can't go back to business as usual. But the problem is that since then we've seen no real steps forward in trying to transform the global economy."

The G20 could be calling for change, while changing nothing. "We've heard language, we've heard calls for a new beginning, but every time there is a new proposal for something to change, they say we can't do that," Hilary told IPS.

"For example, recently we heard new calls for taxes on banks when they get involved in currency transactions, but immediately the governments say we can't do that. We've heard talk about trying to clamp down on bankers' bonuses, but again they say we don't want to do that," he says.

Underneath the apparent inclusiveness that comes with expanding the G8 to G20 – for at least some of the time – may lie an exclusion of the really poor, says Hilary.

"In June of this year, 192 member states of the U.N. came up with a plan to take away power from the existing institutions and to have a rethink of the global economy, and yet again all the rich countries of the world snubbed that meeting, they said they didn't want to be involved; instead they just want to go back to their cosy clubs at the G8 and the G20."

But clearly the talking cannot just go on and on. If only because decision time is coming closer by the day, with the climate change summit in December, and the agreement at the last G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy to conclude an international trade agreement by the end of next year.

Agreements on climate change, on trade, and the issue of protectionism within the context of reviving the global economy are expected to be dominant issues at the G20 finance ministers meeting, leading up to the G20 summit itself in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The moves among the developed countries, inevitably, are to push for access to markets abroad, while restricting access to their own markets, and energetically cutting down on the movement of people into their countries.

"In a number of EU countries, restrictions on migration have become tighter," says Dirk Willem te Velde, programme leader at the London-based Overseas Development Institute, an independent research institute. "I don't think that is the right way to go."

This is a form of protectionism against which developing countries will have to press hard at G20 meetings, he says. "For a country like India, for example, it is important to highlight that it is not good for India, but it is also not good for developed countries themselves."

A country like India, with vast numbers of skilled personnel, is particularly affected. "It's very important for India that developed countries are not returning to protectionism, whether it is trade protectionism or labour protectionism," te Velde told IPS. "India has a lot to offer to developed countries, whether it is skilled personnel, or exports, and in that respect it is very important that developed countries promise not to return to a protectionist world."

Doubts have been raised as to whether the developing countries within the G20 will push their case aggressively enough.

"The G20 is a bit better than the G8, but the problem is that the G20 still excludes 172 countries," says Hilary. "The other big problem is that the G20 has kept the same tune as the G8. If the G20 could change the tune, that would make it a great deal better. But the problem is they have also said they believe in free markets, they believe in increased trade liberalisation, they want to try to rush through the Doha round of the world trade talks.

"Well, all of these things are known to be part of the problem. So why is it that the G20 leaders, even the G20 leaders from developing countries, are saying that they see this as part of the solution."

The danger for the G20 could be that it endorses more of the same – and by very many more countries. The opportunity is for the emerging nations together to manage to break, or at least shake, traditional dominance. The time is fast approaching when everyone will have to show which it will be.

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