International cooperation on key global challenges declined in 2013, according to a new “report card” released here Friday by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Particularly disappointing were international efforts in dealing with terrorism, nuclear non-proliferation and global finance, according to the report which, however, found some gains in two areas – dealing with or preventing armed conflict and improving global health.

The report also found that cooperation on climate change, which last year’s report card found to be worth the lowest grade – a “D” – of all the major issues on which the report card focused, was neither better nor worse than the previous four years assessed by the 50-some experts who constituted the jury.

“The report card confirms a clear trend,” said Stewart Patrick, director of CFR’s International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) programme, which issued the report. “Around the world, leaders are less willing to compromise and cooperate in global institutions – even when their interests align.”

U.S. leadership in mobilising other governments and international institutions to address these critical issues also seemed to falter during 2013, he added.

“The United States appears to be losing interest or capacity to marshal collective action to fight trans-national threats and or promote global goods,” according to Patrick.

The new report used last year’s inaugural report, which assessed progress in global governance in the six critical trans-national challenges over the period 2008 through 2012, as a benchmark.

It awarded grades based on the assessments of more than 50 experts – almost all of them from Washington- or New York-based academic institutions and think tanks, including CFR itself, as well as other mainstream organisations, such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Brookings Institution. In that respect, the assessments appear to reflect very much a U.S.-centred perspective.

In addition to the “D” on climate change, last year’s edition awarded “Bs” to global cooperation in combating terrorism and global finance, a “C+” on dealing with armed conflict, a “C” on non-proliferation and global health. To the extent the grades either rose or fell in this year’s report, they did so only fractionally; for global finance, for example, the grade fell from “B” to “B-“.

Nonetheless, the overall assessment was negative. “Despite a steady if uneven global economic recovery, multilateral efforts to mitigate global risks and threats were at best lackluster,” according to the report. “In virtually every issue area, the dearth of effective global leadership proved a major stumbling block to more effective international cooperation.”

In addition to assigning grades, the report card, consistent with its schooling metaphor, identified class “leaders”, “laggards”, “truants,” and “detentions”, and awarded stand-outs with “gold stars” and “most improved” prizes in each issue area.

On climate change, for example, it named the European Union (EU) and the Pacific Islands as the class “leaders” in 2013.

This was due to the former’s advocacy for a strong successor to the Kyoto agreement and commitment to spend as much as 180 billion euros on climate-related projects in both the EU and developing countries over seven years. And the Islands were recognised for the Majuro Declaration for Climate Leadership that commits member states to a speedy transition to low-carbon economies.

China and the U.S., on the other hand, were given the “laggard” label for their failure, despite their status as the world’s top two emitters of carbon dioxide, to produce ambitious plans to curb their emissions. And Australia and Russia were deemed “truants” for repealing anti-pollution taxes and stymieing negotiations for a Kyoto successor, respectively.

At the same time, Canada was placed in “detention” for its government’s continuing reversals on its goals for reducing emissions.

While levels of cooperation on global finance were deemed “respectable” in 2013, some collaborative efforts faded, according to the report. It praised the leadership of the new Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the U.S. Federal Reserve, but noted how little progress has been made in strengthening the EU’s financial governance and the failure of the Group of 20 (G20) to coordinate policy more closely.

It also assessed as “poor” the progress – or lack of progress – in reforming the governance of international financial institutions, notably the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to give a stronger voice to emerging economies. It blamed the U.S. Congress – named as “truant” – for failing to approve the pending reforms.

On nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, the report card cited little or no progress on key issues, including ratifications by major players of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the reduction of existing nuclear arsenals.

On the plus side, the report praised the agreement reached last November between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) on curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Significantly, the report failed to name any “leader” and awarded a gold star to the P5+1 and “most improved” to Iran and Myanmar. Pakistan and Russia, on the other hand, were deemed “laggards” for their “obstinate positions” on disarmament and “worrying modernisation activities.”

Israel and India were identified as “truants” for failing to take steps to join the NPT, while detention was given to North Korea for testing another nuclear device and explicitly incorporating nuclear weapons into its national security strategy.

On dealing with armed conflict, the report card noted that U.N. and regional peacekeeping efforts improved markedly in 2013, in part due to the strong mandates given operations in Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

But these improvements could not overcome the pall cast by the ongoing civil war in Syria and the flare-up of armed conflicts in several African states, notably in South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR).

The report also complained that the international community needed to focus more on preventive measures, such as mediation, peace-building and state-building.

It praised France and the U.N. Department for Peacekeeping Operations as class “leaders” and awarded a gold star to the U.N. Department of Political Affairs.

The Economic Community of West African States and the African Union were deemed “most improved,” while laggards included the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has failed to address impunity in other regions besides Africa, the U.N. Peace-building Commission, and the U.N. Security Council due primarily to its failure to approve meaningful resolutions to halt the violence in Syria.

On global health, the report card praised the cooperation by both state and non-state actors in dealing with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and in expanding vaccinations for other infectious diseases. On the other hand, the report said the international community has fallen short on dealing with non-communicable diseases and in strengthening national health systems.

The U.S. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest source of non-governmental funding to global health initiatives by far, continue to be class “leaders”, according to the report which awarded gold stars to the World Bank for a new focus on health; India for its successful eradication of polio; and Rwanda for achieving the steepest drop in child mortality in recorded history.

“Most improved” was given to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria for major reforms that it carried out in its management.

Pakistan, however, was deemed truant due to the sharp rise in the number of polio cases and the government’s failure to protect vaccination officials from attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, the report card also suggested that the U.S. effort to track Osama bin Laden by mounting a fake vaccination campaign contributed to that failure.

Rail networks in Africa remain underdeveloped only 10 percent of transport goes via rail. A train crossing the Namib Desert on its way from the Namibian port of Walvis Bay to the uranium rich Erongo Region. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON , May 23 2014 (IPS)

Democratic governance offers a viable option for developing countries to achieve economic growth and inclusion, yet this doesn’t need to follow the Western model, new research released here this week suggests.

India, Brazil and South Africa (collectively known as IBSA) each demonstrates how racially diverse nations with very poor constituents can make large gains in development under democratic systems. A joint paper presented here this week suggests these systems collectively offer a democratic alternative from the Global South.

The joint project, known as Democracy Works, also pushes back on a trend that has strengthened in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis: policy discussion over the benefits of authoritarian systems. Key in this debate has been the Chinese government, which has continued to deliver high levels of growth and lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

“What interests me about this story is that the global debate about this is very real,” Anne Applebaum, the project’s editor, said this week at a Washington launch of the Democracy Works final report.

“A few days ago the president of Egypt made a comment that ‘We can’t have that Western style of democracy – it just won’t work.’ And the point is that, to more countries than you may think, there does seem like there’s a dichotomy: you can choose to be Sweden, on the one hand, or China.”

Democracy Works is a collaboration between the Legatum Institute, in London, and the Centre for Development and Enterprise, in Johannesburg.

While the project highlights the IBSA nations as examples from the Global South where democracy has worked, it starts from an understanding that democracy is neither better nor worse than authoritarian regimes at economic development.

“We know from various empirical studies that democracy, as a form of governance, neither helps nor hurts economic development,” Ted Piccone, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, told IPS.

“The one advantage that democracies have is that they avoid the big swings that you see in non-democratic states with high peaks and low periods, and those low periods can trigger famine, hunger, violence, conflict. In general, there’s more open competition around political power, and that gives the investor or business community more predictability and reliability.”

IBSA model

Despite starkly differing histories, India, Brazil and South Africa are today all considered stable democracies, and each has experienced high strong growth seen as benefiting large numbers of people.

“These three countries demonstrate that it is possible to be an ethnically divided, socioeconomically divided, unequal, relatively poor country, and nevertheless maintain a democracy,” Applebaum says.

“Democracy confers some advantages – human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. And while having all those things, you can have, at the same time, economic development.”

Of the three, South Africa is the youngest democracy, transitioning only in 1994. The ruling party, the African National Congress, has instituted reforms aimed at mitigating racial imbalances in terms of jobs and land ownership, and the country’s democratic system is credited with allowing for far greater political participation than during apartheid.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s poverty rate has declined, particularly over the past decade, according to most ways of calculating this figure.

Brazil returned to democracy during the 1980s, though since then the country’s economic growth has been erratic. However, the overall trend of economic growth and robust welfare programmes has left Brazil with increased investment, rising productivity and falling income inequality, the Democracy Works analysts note.

Finally, India, one of the world’s largest and most pluralistic countries, has been a stable democracy for the past six and a half decades, ranking 38th out of 165 countries on the Democracy Index put out by The Economist magazine.

In 1991, the country liberalised many aspects of its economy, leading to social concerns but also to a rapid economic growth rate of 8.5 percent, as of 2010 (this figure has since come down). Growth and wealth have also extended to members of the most marginalised parts of society.

India is also an example of successful coalition government, belying the idea that coalitions tend to slow economic growth. Further, there are important ancillary benefits to broadening decision-making: democracies may grow slower, but they also tend to grow more equitably.

For instance, in Brazil between 1990 and 2010, gross domestic product per capita grew from roughly 5,000 to 12,000 dollars. During that same period, a measure of inequality known as the Gini coefficient (where 0 is total equality) fell from .60 to .53.

An opposite trend has been seen in China, meanwhile. Since 1980, shortly after the country began economic reforms, the Chinese Gini coefficient grew from 0.3 to 0.55.

“Democracies are better equipped to deal with inequities,” says Brookings’ Piccone. “Not automatically … you certainly have high levels of inequality in IBSA and the U.S., so it’s a political choice. But at least it’s a choice and allows for debate to happen and for policies to change.”

Less drama

Indeed, the IBSA countries continue to face significant, even mounting, challenges. Analysts point to ongoing corruption in government sapping the effectiveness of state programmes, while others suggest that redistributive social schemes need to find a better balance with macroeconomic principles.

The authors of Democracy Works recommend that more democracy, rather than less, is the solution. For example, strengthening institutions and checks and balances to cut down on corruption, they say, would make state social policies more efficient by making sure that the resources actually reach the poorest.

The report discusses an Indian website that allows people to report incidences of bribery for government services. One transportation department in India was cited so frequently that its commissioner brought in workers from the website to present their findings to his staff, in an attempt to get them to decrease the amounts of bribes they were demanding.

When a similar site launched in China, the government shut it down within weeks

“Democracies are not just an instrumental tool to get better development but a good in and of itself,” Piccone says.

“That’s what’s interesting about IBSA … they’ve done very well economically and they’ve delivered very well for their citizens, including access to health services, education, longer life expectation, lower infant mortality, etc.”

He continues: “It’s not true that [developing countries] have to follow the authoritarian model. These democracies can grow and deliver … growth may not be as dramatic, but the bad times may not be as dramatic, either.”

"Nuns on the Bus" take their campaign around the country in 2012 lobbying for social justice reforms. Credit: Tvnewsbadge/cc by 2.0

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON, May 2 2014 (IPS)

The future of religion in U.S. politics lies not with conservatives but rather with religious progressives, social scientists here are suggesting, with a faith-based movement potentially able to provide momentum to a new movement for social justice.

According to a new report from the Brookings Institute, a think tank here, the current religious social justice movement can be compared to the period of civil rights activism in the mid-20^th century.“One of the reasons religious voices are so important now is that, especially with the weakening of the labour movement, the churches are the only mass organisation representing many, many poor people." -- E.J. Dionne

“There really is an opening now for a religious movement for social justice that is similar in many ways to the civil rights movement. We see it around issues of minimum wage, budget cuts, and immigration,” E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and one of the authors of the report, told IPS.

“On social justice issues, religion has long been a progressive force, and Pope Francis is challenging people’s assumptions that religion is an automatically conservative force … After years of paying lots of attention to religious conservatives, religion by no means lives on the right.”

The United States has a strong history of religious groups in social justice movements, including in pushing for the abolition of slavery and the institutionalisation of civil rights, as well as the social welfare programmes put in place a half-century ago. Yet today, religion and progressivism are often seen as being at odds.

According to the report, for instance, just 47 percent of white Evangelicals in the United States think government needs to do more to reduce the gap between rich and poor. On the contrary, 85 percent of Democrats hold this belief.

This schism underscores two trends that have defined the U.S. religious landscape over the past two decades: a decline in those who regularly attend religious services, and a rise in the conservative “religious right”.

According to the report, these trends are interrelated, as “many young Americans were not turned off by faith itself but by the rightward trend they perceive among leaders. To young adults … ‘religion’ means ‘Republican,’ ‘intolerant,’ and ‘homophobic.’”

Yet despite these trends of growing secularisation, Dionne said, “a religious voice will remain essential to movements on behalf of the poor and the marginalised and also on behalf of the middle-class Americans who are under increasing pressure at a time of inequality.”

Further, demographics indicate that this religious voice will not be from the conservative wing, Dionne suggests. During the last presidential election here, in 2012, the ages of the religious coalitions that voted for President Barack Obama versus his Republican rival, Mitt Romney were starkly different.

Of those who considered themselves actively religious, Romney voters were primarily elderly, while Obama’s supporters skewed far younger. “What’s clear,” the report suggests, “is that the religious right is not the way of the future.”

Congregational decline

The Brookings researchers acknowledge steep challenges facing any incipient religious movement in the U.S. for social justice.

A primary challenge is congregational decline. In 1958, about 49 percent of Americans attended church services weekly, while today that number is down to about 18 percent.

This decline naturally decreases the coalition size and donor base available for grassroots work. In addition, this has often been accompanied by a decreased respect for religious groups, exacerbating divides between those who consider themselves religious versus secular.

Tensions also exist when religious groups try to engage in political issues without using morally ambiguous political methods. For example, many religious progressive leaders want to abstain from the “quid pro quo” nature of political deal-making.

Ideological divides within religious communities can threaten the work of social justice advocates, especially opposition from single-issue groups.

For example, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), which supports a spectrum of faith-based grassroots organisations, provided over nine million dollars in grants to over 214 groups last year. However, after Catholic anti-abortion groups pushed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to strictly regulate donations from Catholic coalitions, some CCHD grants were cut – even if the projects had only tangential connections to abortion or same-sex marriage.

Still, many groups have overcome such challenges.

Prominent examples in this regard include Circle of Protection, an alliance of Christian leaders who have banded together to try to protect pro-poor government programmes from budget cuts. Likewise, Nuns on the Bus, a group of Catholic nuns who travel the country lobbying for social justice reforms, played a role in the 2012 elections.

“One of the reasons religious voices are so important now is that, especially with the weakening of the labour movement, the churches are the only mass organisation representing many, many poor people,” said Dionne.

“Some research we did showed that, for example, in neighbourhood community development, the pastors are the only people who could get the attention of the banks.”

The report notes that these religious progressive groups are very active and often successful, but lack the fanfare that can receive broad public attention.

Building coalitions

Another U.S. group, the Interfaith Centre on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), has focused on trying to influence corporate decision-making, both domestically and internationally, from an interfaith perspective for nearly a half-century.

“Frankly, those who are ideologically or politically divided can learn something from ICCR,” Laura Berry, the group’s executive director, told IPS. “There are some areas where the right and the left agree, after all, and finding those places to build coalitions are wonderful opportunities to reverse trends in inequality.”

Berry highlighted ICCR’s work following last year’s collapse of Rana Plaza, the Bangladeshi garment factory that killed more than 1100 people. Since then, ICCR has led a coalition representing over 4.1 trillion dollars in managed assets, pushing over 160 companies to have their overseas factories inspected, to hire and train labour inspectors, and to adopt improved worker safety standards.

According to Berry, ICCR’s own experience elucidates several of the trends indicated by the Brookings report.

“We’ve become increasingly driven by a broader coalition that includes increasingly secular progressive voices,” she says. “First we were only religious. But now we include more secular members, like labour unions and asset managers.”

ICCR is also facing many of the challenges outlined in the Brookings report, Berry says, particularly over ideological divides. Yet she notes that important areas of overlap and opportunity continue to arise.

“There are positive signs of improved coalition-building in human rights, like human trafficking, among Evangelicals and progressive Christians,” she says.

“We’re not going to let the ideological divide in the broad Christian community prevent us from talking about inequality … And we’re starting to see some leaders like Pope Francis who are saying things out loud, and people are asking, ‘Is that progressive? Is that conservative?’”

Textiles are one of the key sectors to benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Oct 1 2013 (IPS)

With a key U.S.-Africa trade agreement up for renewal in 2015, advocates on all sides of the issue say current policies are rife with shortcomings that leave many African businesses out in the cold.

Since its enactment in 2000, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) has sought to create trade opportunities for small- and medium-sized African businesses by helping them export their products to the U.S. market.“The greater challenge is to get those key commodities such as sugar and cocoa products to access the U.S. market.” -- Kimberly Elliott of the Centre for Global Development

But policymakers and activists alike are currently increasing focus on AGOA’s failures at empowering Africa’s poorer communities, and whether the act can be tweaked by 2015.

“AGOA has been successful, but only within its limited parametres,” Kimberly Elliott, a senior fellow and expert on trade policy and globalisation at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a think tank here, told IPS. “The bill has been relatively effective in removing U.S. barriers to African trade, but it hasn’t addressed the fundamental competitiveness issue in Africa.”

And while U.S. exports to Africa have tripled over the last decade, “only as little as 1.3 million jobs have been created on the African continent since the enactment of AGOA,” Ambassador Michael Froman, the U.S. trade representative, recently warned.

According to the U.S. Department of State, “African exports under AGOA have more than quadrupled since the programme’s inception. In 2012, AGOA-eligible countries exported nearly 35 billion dollars in products to the United States duty free under AGOA.”

Limited reach

One of the obstacles to a truly successful outcome for AGOA has been its focus on only some sectors of the economy – including oil exports – to the detriment of those sectors with a more immediate impact on poorer segments of society. That includes the agricultural sector, the single most important for African communities.

“Outside of clothing and other few sectors, U.S. tariffs were already quite low prior to AGOA,” Elliott says. “The greater challenge is to get those key commodities such as sugar and cocoa products to access the U.S. market.”

So far, agricultural products have been excluded from the AGOA framework because of U.S. domestic regulations. This seems to be the biggest bump on AGOA’s road to decreasing poverty in Africa.

“There aren’t that many sectors benefiting from AGOA, apart from textiles,” Zenia Lewis, an analyst on economic development in Africa at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, told IPS. “And unfortunately, the sector that has reaped most of the benefits has been the oil industry.”

According to recent estimates, oil exports cover nearly 90 percent of goods leaving African shores.

At the same time, AGOA has managed to open the U.S. market to the growing African textile industry. Many are today touting as a key AGOA success story the recent boom in Kenyan textile exports to the United States, to companies such as Victoria’s Secret and Macy’s.

According to the most recent estimates, Kenya was the United States’ 103^rd-largest supplier in 2011, with a total of 382 million dollars’ worth of imported goods, a nearly 23 percent percent increase from 2010.

“So far,” CGD’s Elliott says, “this has been AGOA’s best result when it comes to the poorer segments of African producers.”

Sheri Berenbach, president of the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF), a federal agency, told IPS, “It is important to recognise that one of the most important constituencies of AGOA are the small local and marginalised communities. USADF has been very supportive of AGOA and trade, because a quarter of the producers that we support are small local groups that are now deeply involved with exports to the United States.”

USADF offers development grants to small African businesses seeking to access the U.S. market. Berenbach says such opportunities can have a direct impact on poverty. “Most of the work in Africa is about dealing with the weakest part of the African economy, the impoverished communities,” she says.

Deprivation

As the bill is set to expire, a broad cross-section of interests are looking to 2015 and providing recommendations on how to improve AGOA. They suggest that the bill’s ineffectiveness to date may not be entirely a result of hidden trade barriers.

“AGOA can’t reach those many African communities that aren’t involved in the production process, simply because of domestic restrictions and a lack of adequate infrastructure,” Mwangi S. Kimenyi, the director of the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution here, told IPS.

A recent poll by Afrobarometer, an independent research organisation, finds that almost half of Africans still perceive themselves as being poor. Based on polls conducted in 34 countries, the survey shows that at least 20 percent of Africans still feel deprivation with respect to their most basic needs such as food, water and medicines.

One way to do address this, some suggest, would be to include a provision in the next version of AGOA that would provide assistance to small-scale African traders to build their skills at dealing with international trade concerns. USADF’s Berenbach calls this a “trade capacity-building”, or TCB, component.

“Including a strong TCB component would enable even the smaller producers to be more productive and trade effectively, so that we can really use trade to achieve development,” she says.

At the same time, Brookings’s Kimenyi notes that many see AGOA as doing very little for U.S. companies seeking to invest in Africa. Many corporate interests will thus be looking to the debate leading up to the 2015 renewal as an opportunity to change this aspect of the trade agreement.

Party allegiances apparently mean little in the U.S. when it comes to the debate over domestic government surveillance.

A study released this morning by the Pew Research Center, a major U.S. polling agency, revealed that 57 percent of Democrats approve of government spying, along with 44 percent of Republicans.“There is a rising tide of public concern about the balance that’s being struck between national security and civil liberties." -- William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution

“There is a real division within each party on this issue,” Norman J. Ornstein, a renowned expert on U.S. politics, told IPS.

This was evident in the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, when a vote to curtail domestic spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) sundered the Democratic and Republican parties alike.

The vote was the first of its kind to take place since the revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden which, when published by The Guardian newspaper, exposed a degree of domestic surveillance far greater in scale and scope than was previously understood by the public.

The 217-205 decision to reject an amendment blocking spending on NSA domestic spying was so close that one political commentator called it a “nail biter”. Of the 205 votes in favour, 111 were from Democrats and 94 from Republicans, and of the 217 votes opposed, 83 were from Democrats votes and 134 from Republicans.

“You’re not going to see many votes like this,” says Ornstein, who is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington-based neoconservative think tank.

William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, another think tank here, agrees that the outcome was unusual.

“It did not conform to standard party lines but instead saw an unusual coalition of the libertarian right and the liberal left voting against the centres of both parties,” Galston told IPS.

Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute, a research organisation which advocates individual liberties and limited government, told IPS that there are historical reasons for civil liberties being a major issue for members of both parties.

“The libertarian strain is a natural dimension of Republican ideology which was diminished by the immediate reaction to [the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001], and now it is sort of naturally reasserting itself,” says Sanchez.

“[On the other hand,] progressive activists have frequently been the targets of abusive intelligence powers,” he added, citing historical examples of government crackdowns on unions, civil rights groups and other leftist organisations as lessons that help explain Democratic opposition to spying.

Rising Tide

Both Ornstein and Galston told IPS that the narrow decision in congress was reflective of public opinion.

“There is a rising tide of public concern about the balance that’s being struck between national security and civil liberties,” says Galston.

U.S. citizens, Ornstein told IPS, are “strongly divided as a whole”.

Indeed, the Pew poll indicates more U.S. citizens favour being surveilled by their own government, but only by a slim margin.

Of the 1480 adults surveyed, 50 percent overall said they approved of the domestic surveillance programme, while 44 percent actually said they disapproved.

In a separate question, 56 percent agreed that federal courts have failed to impose adequate limits on intelligence gathering.

Based on the Pew findings, age and gender seem to be factors in where citizens stand on the issue.

By a ratio of about two-to-one, 60 to 29 percent, young respondents said they were more concerned about the government doing too much to weaken civil liberties than they were about it doing too little to defend the nation from terror. In terms of gender, 51 percent of men agreed with this statement, as opposed to only 29 percent of women.

In the report, Pew concludes that the views of U.S. citizens on this issue are “complex”, a conclusion based in part on the relative lack of correlation with party leanings.

Spill Over

Ornstein believes that the cross-cutting divide splitting both major parties is “issue-specific” and unlikely to spill over into other major controversies, for example on social issues such as spending on health care.

To an extent, Galston agrees.

“The liberal left has strict views on economic questions that are poles apart from the views of the libertarians,” Galston says, “and it would be very hard for them to find common ground.”

Liberal Democrats, Galston explains, would have difficulty accepting the small-government solutions often championed by libertarian Republicans.

He notes, however, that more legislation on government spying will take place in the foreseeable future, and that the closeness of Wednesday’s vote was indicative of a strengthening bipartisan opposition to intrusive government tactics.

Cato’s Sanchez believes this like-mindedness could spill over into over issues, namely those related to civil liberties.

“There are civil libertarian wings of both parties, so I expect we could see cooperation on other things, such as free speech issues,” Sanchez says.

It is widely speculated that the de facto leader of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, Senator Rand Paul, will make a run for the presidency in 2016. One early poll has placed him as the current top contender for the Republican nomination.

Galston told IPS that this issue has opened the way for “conversation” between Paul’s faction of the right and the liberal left.

“Now that they’ve discovered each other, there is likely to be more conversation across party lines,” says Galston.  “This is probably a beginning rather than an end.”

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

In a recent report to the U.N. Security Council, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the possibility of poaching as a threat to not just wildlife or endangered species, but to the greater stability and peace in general.

Courtesy of Vanda Felbab-Brown

“Poaching and its potential linkages to other criminal, even terrorist, activities constitute a grave menace to sustainable peace and security in Central Africa,” he said in the report.

Early this month, U.S. President Barack Obama also announced new initiatives to tackle international poaching.

Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the rebel group responsible for killing hundreds and displacing thousands in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is poaching elephants to buy weapons and ammunition, according to a report by the Enough Project.

From ivory in Africa to rhino horns in northeast India, the poaching nexus is extensive  and complicated.

Poaching statistics say it all.

A record 668 rhinos were reported killed in 2012, according to the “Illicit Trade Report” published by the World Customs Organization (WCO), an intergovernmental organisation.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), rhino poaching in South Africa increased 3000 percent between 2007 and 2011.

In an interview with IPS correspondent Sudeshna Chowdhury, Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy programme at the Brookings Institution, a well-known think tank in the U.S., and an expert on international and internal conflicts, said, “Wildlife trafficking’s illicit economy is one of many lucrative illicit economies terrorists and other armed actors can tap into.” Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is the connection between poaching and terrorism?

A: Armed groups, including terrorist groups, tend to tax any economic activity in the area they control or where they have substantial influence. Wildlife trafficking can be extremely profitable. So, it’s a tempting target for armed groups to tax or directly participate in.

Their presence undermines park protection; and vice versa.

During an active armed conflict or insurgency, wildlife protection tends to be of least priority for security forces. Thus wildlife trafficking is both a highly lucrative illicit economy for armed groups and a relatively easy one to penetrate, particularly in remote areas.

At the same time, there is often a great deal of complicity on the part of park rangers and wildlife traffickers. Armed groups that have taxed or engaged in wildlife trafficking include the Maoists in Nepal during the civil war; the Taliban in Afghanistan; Janjaweed in Sudan; various parties to the Angola war and many more.

Q: Given that poaching and terrorism are two different issues, how do you tackle them?  

A: Restoring security is key. In the context of violent conflict, all kinds of illicit economies will thrive, including wildlife trafficking. However, focusing on the armed actors is not sufficient. Much poaching takes place in regions where there is no violent conflict. This is possible due to corruption among rangers.

Also, the local population may not be deriving sufficient economic benefits by conserving wildlife in their area.

Addressing the other aspects of wildlife trafficking is no less important than focusing on the violent armed actors. In fact, poaching is mostly being committed by actors who are not armed insurgents in regions where there are no violent conflicts.

Q: Which areas are the growing markets for wildlife products?

A: One of the most devastating and rapidly expanding markets is eastern Asia, particularly places like China, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam. Indonesia is a major source country for wildlife products. It also has a growing internal market for various kinds of wildlife products.

But among East Asian populations in the United States and Europe there is demand for such products. Similarly, in Russia, the (ill)legal trade in exotic furs is booming. East Asia also has witnessed a long tradition of seeing wildlife and nature purely through a lens of consumption. For example, traditional Chinese medicine has been consumed for many centuries now.

In parts of Africa, such as Zambia or West Africa, there is also a long and deep history of consuming bush meat.

The slaughter of elephants, rhinos, and tigers attracts most attention because they are such iconic animals. But poachers also target a large number of sharks, snakes, turtles, pangolins, and various bird species.

Q: In this day and age, is a public-private partnership (PPP) the best way to deal with poaching?

A: Public-private partnership is just one aspect of the policy that could be fruitful. Some conservation efforts could perhaps be done even without a strong role of the state. In other domains, such as the enforcement of law, the role of the state is crucial and inescapable.

Q: What role does world bodies like the U.N. could play in combating terrorism? Could sanctions work?

A: The U.N. is a body that both promulgates international laws, norms, and regimes, and has the capacity to adopt shaming strategies and developing blacklists, as well as imposing a variety of other sanction.

But actual security operations whether against terrorist groups or wildlife poaching groups have to be undertaken by member states. They may well have a blessing of the U.N, which often attracts attention and can increase legitimacy.

Q: Is the problem of terrorism as a result of poaching proliferating?

A: No, terrorism is not proliferating because of poaching. Terrorism is driven by its own enabling factors, which are varied and complex. Poaching has nowhere is the world generated new terrorists.

However, the wildlife trafficking illicit economy is one of many lucrative illicit economies terrorists and other armed actors can tap into. But, it is equally crucial to acknowledge that much poaching – in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa – takes place in the absence of violent conflicts and are nor carried out by terrorists or other armed groups.

Excerpt:

The Western Hemisphere’s approach to countering the use and flow of illegal drugs may soon change radically, as recently published reports by the Organization of American States (OAS) signal a region less willing to be dominated by the United States and anxious to act on a more multilateral basis.

On Thursday here in Washington, OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza presented two reports by his organisation on the issue, endorsing alternatives to the U.S.-led status quo.

The two reports include an analytical assessment of the current situation surrounding illegal drugs in the Americas, and one looks towards potential future scenarios for a coordinated response. The two reports, released in May, were a focus of debate at the OAS General Assembly in Antigua, Guatemala, earlier this month.

While the reports did not lead to any concrete policy shifts by the OAS at the general assembly, some observers see the reports as an indication that changes could be afoot.

“A few years ago the issue was a taboo,” Coletta A. Youngers, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group, told IPS. “It was seen as purely U.S.-dominated, and if you would have proposed something like these reports, people would have laughed at you.”

The reports favour the view that the overall drugs issue is a public health, rather than a security, matter. Youngers believes such a stance represents a “very useful tool” for starting a serious discussion on hemispheric drug policy.

“With these reports, we now have a basis from which we can carry forward the debate,” she says. “The question now is how we do that.”

At the general assembly in Antigua, representatives of the 35 OAS member states decided that the organisation would hold an extraordinary session to discuss drug policy in 2014. The United States initially opposed such a session, but in the end accepted the plan, merely adding footnotes to the declaration expressing its concerns.

Still, Youngers believes Washington is “very bothered” by the language of the reports – and by the fact that the rest of the OAS appears to be asserting its own interests at the expense of U.S. regional control.

“After decades of the U.S. being able to dictate policy,” she says, “Latin America is now taking ownership and saying this is an issue which needs to be debated at the regional level by all the states concerned.”

Decriminalisation

The United States is particularly troubled by the OAS’s forward-looking report, Youngers suggests. That report is critical of the approach long held by the United States, which tackles the drug issue primarily through law enforcement and views drug users as criminals.

The analytical report, too, contains language that runs counter to the prevailing system.

“Decriminalisation of drug use,” the report states in its conclusion, “needs to be considered as a core element in any public health strategy. An addict is a chronically sick person who should not be punished for his or her dependence, but rather treated appropriately.”

It goes on to weigh in specifically on marijuana, seemingly amenable to the possibility of removing it from the region’s list of illegal drugs.

“(I)t would be worthwhile to assess existing signals and trends that lean toward the decriminalisation or legalisation of the production, sale, and use of marijuana,” the report concludes.

The issues of decriminalisation of drug use and marijuana in general remain highly controversial within the United States. Federal laws here continue to maintain that the use of all illicit drugs, including marijuana, is a crime.

In only two states, Washington and Colorado, is the private production and consumption of marijuana legal, and that was only allowed following public referendums late last year that resulted in surprise decisions to legalise.

In Latin America, meanwhile, there is a wide array of opinions on decriminalisation of illegal drugs.

Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, who hosted the recent OAS general assembly, surprised many when he came out in early 2012 in support of legalising all drugs. Prior to being elected, he had stated his opposition to such an approach, but apparently had a change of heart after becoming leader of a country wracked with violence related to the trafficking of illegal drugs.

Pérez referred to the OAS reports as a “triumph”.

Other Latin American states, too, have made significant moves toward the legalisation of marijuana specifically. In Uruguay, for example, personal use is permitted, and the legislature is currently debating possible ways to legalise and regulate both the production and sale of the drug.

Youngers says the OAS reports will allow more “experimentation” among countries in the region in crafting their own drug policies, a change she says would be welcome.

No consensus

Others have suggested that the implications of the reports could be far broader, affecting a global anti-narcotics system which concerns nations beyond the Western Hemisphere.

“We are potentially on the cusp of the collapse of the existing international counter-narcotics regime,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, another think tank here, told IPS. “And it looks like the Latin Americans could be the ones to pull the plug.”

Felbab-Brown notes that there is as yet “no consensus” within the OAS on anti-drugs policy, and says many countries are wary of any further relaxation. For instance, countries with high consumption levels (Brazil and Argentina, for example) are “lukewarm” toward less intensive interdiction policies or any further decriminalisation of controlled substances.

She is critical of the OAS reports for professing an interest in harmonised policy, however, while at the same time endorsing a country-by-country approach.

“The reports express an OAS desire to have its drug policy cake and eat it too,” she says. “What this would likely lead to is a scenario of different countries adopting different policies, generating spill-over problems and complaints from neighbours.”